Limehouse Cut - History

History

The Limehouse Cut was authorised by the River Lee Act, an Act of Parliament obtained on 29 June 1767, after the engineer John Smeaton identified the need to make several cuts and to replace existing flash locks on the river with pound locks. Two days after the Act was obtained, Thomas Yeoman was appointed as the company surveyor, and one of his first tasks was to investigate a route for the Limehouse Cut. It would provide a short-cut from the Lee Navigation at Bromley-by-Bow to the River Thames at Limehouse Basin, avoiding the tortuous curves of the lower reaches of the River Lea at Bow Creek, and the need to wait for the tide to make the long detour round the Isle of Dogs. The trustees accepted Yeoman's proposed route on 14 September 1767, which would terminate at Dingley's Wharf at Limehouse. The contract for the excavation of the cut was split into two, with Charles Dingley, owner of the wharf and also a trustee, getting the southern section up to Rose Lane and Jeremiah Ilsley getting the northern section to Bow Locks.

The construction of Bromley Lock was let as a separate contract, which was awarded to a millwright from Bromley called Mr Cooper, who also built some of the locks on the Edmonton Cut. The lock into the Thames was designed by Mr Collard, another of the trustees, who produced a model and plan for the structure. The estimated cost was £1,547, but Collard has miscalculated the length, and it had to be increased by 16 feet (4.9 m), resulting in the estimate rising to £1,696. By 1769, barges were using part of the cut, and in May 1770 an opening date of 2 July was set. However, 60 feet (18 m) of brickwork failed, and fell into the canal, delaying the opening until 17 September. There were further problems in December, when a bridge collapsed, blocking the canal, but once the teething problems were resolved, traffic increased steadily. The cut was only wide enough for one barge, and in May 1772, a passing place was added, but by March 1773, the company had decided to widen the whole cut, so that barges could pass as any point. The contract for the work was given to Jeremiah Ilsley in June 1776, and the widened cut was operational from 1 September 1777, having cost £975.

In 1854, Bromley Lock was moved and rebuilt to accommodate the larger barges which were using the navigation. A report made in 1888 noted that the lock was so full of rubbish that it did not maintain the water levels when the adjacent section was drawn down, and in 1899 the company stated that the lock was only used when levels were drawn down for maintenance. The southern gates were removed soon afterwards, with the northern gates retained as a stop gate. Some remains of one of these gates can still be seen beside the floating towpath. At the southern end of the cut, Britannia Lock was built in 1853. From 1 January 1854, the Regents Canal took control of the Limehouse Cut, and built a connecting link into the Regents Canal Dock, now called Limehouse Basin. The arrangement was short lived, and the link was filled in again in May 1864. The main gates were either side of Commercial Road bridge, and pointed towards the Thames, but a third set of gates faced the other way. These were installed when the link to the dock was opened, to cope with the situation where the level in the dock was higher than the level in the cut. A report in 1893 noted that there was no evidence that they had ever been used, that the third set of gates had been removed around 1868, and that the other gates had been removed because they were useless. Following the takeover of the canal by British Waterways in 1948, a vertical guillotine gate was fitted on the north side of Commercial Road bridge, but this was removed in the 1990s.

Bow Locks were originally semi-tidal, as high spring tides flowed over the top of the locks, altering the level in the Limehouse Cut and the southern section of the Lee Navigation. They were modified in 2000, when a flood wall and an extra pair of flood gates were installed, enabling the lock to be used at all states of the tide and stabilising the level of the cut. Funding for the project was provided by the London Waterway Partnership.

By the 1960s, the lock that connected the cut to the Thames was in need of replacement. It had been rebuilt in 1865, after the closing of the link to the Regents Canal Dock, and the design had included massive timber ties over the top of it to prevent bulging of the walls. These were eventually replaced with a steel cage, which served the same purpose. Access to the lock from the cut and from the Thames was awkward, and the gates were operated by winches and chains, as the site was too narrow to accommodate balance beams. At the time, there was significant commercial activity on the cut, which would have been severely disrupted by the construction of a new lock. The solution adopted was to reinstate a link to the Regents Canal Dock. The route used in the 1860s could not be reused, as it was now covered by buildings, and so a new length of canal, only about 200 feet (61 m) long, was built. The new link was opened on 1 April 1968, when the tug Miriam towed four lighters through it. The old lock was then filled in, but one of the winches was saved, and was put on display at Hampstead Lock.