Blisworth Canal Partnership

On a snowy February morning in 2010, the hardy amongst us travelled up to the Buckby Flight and watched a pair of decommissioned lock gates being removed. We looked on tentatively as the balance beams were then separated from the main gates, as we knew that these were to be given a new lease of life as benches along our towpath. Much was made of this, Anglia TV filmed the event and we were interviewed by British Waterways Press Officers. We’d saved the beams going to landfill, which has to be a good thing.

After wrestling with the planning permission required for installation of the lock beams as seating opposite the Mill, thinking all was lost when British Waterways discovered a spaghetti junction of fibre optic cabling under the proposed site, thankfully by the end of 2010 the project was completed. Many thanks go to British Waterways staff who helped us every step of the way and Tuckey’s who provided the crane lift and made the installation possible.

Alan Andrews, one of the Partnership’s Directors has re-painted the lock beams a few times to keep them looking in good order. Many villagers have already said that they’ve loved sitting on them and enjoying the scene, one lady in the Mill says that she could already write a book about some of the activities on them! What can she mean?