Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead.
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Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead. |
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The following articles appear here by kind permission of the author, Brian Holt, and were first published in the IWA Ipswich Branch magazine.
The Blyth navigation was opened in the 1760's which makes it one of our earliest canalised navigations. The engineer was Mr. Langley Edwards from Kings Lynn and the cost was £3000. It joins the North Sea between Southwould and Walberswick and travels 7 miles inland to Halesworth.
Navigation ceased in 1934 and it has been used for land drainage ever since. It is believed there were originally 4 locks of a similar design to those on the Stour with a wooden lintel above the gates. A fifth, Town Lock, was built later in Halesworth by Patrick Stead, to allow him to get the wherries which plied these waters to his maltings, less than a quarter of a mile above the original terminus basin. The brickwork of this Lock and Halesworth lock, which is about half a mile East of the town, still stands.
Early this year the Halesworth Millennium Green Society contacted Chard to ask for advice on restoring Halesworth Lock. They had received a sum of money to carry out this work from the EU, which unfortunately has to be spent before June of this year. To discuss things further a site meeting was arranged for Saturday March 17.
It was a cold wet morning on the Saturday when Chard, Colin, Diana and myself met Richard and Judith from the Halesworth Millennium Green Society at their house in Halesworth, where we looked at various references before walking down to the Navigation.
Due to the recent heavy rains the Navigation was in flood with very fast flowing deep water. We looked around the town lock and then followed the footpath/towpath downstream along the New Cut to the first bridge which has now had a flat concrete deck fitted. From here The Halesworth Millennium Green Society owns all the marsh land to the South of the New Cut We continued on to where the Cut passes under the Lowestoft to Ipswich railway line. This looks to be quite a new bridge and not in keeping with the rest of the railway architecture. Here the footpath/towpath leaves the waters edge to pass under the railway line in its own tunnel and then crossed the Town River by a wooden foot bridge to continue down to Halesworth Lock. Here the path changes to the North side of the Cut via a wooden pedestrian bridge that is presently set across the middle of the lock.
The brickwork of Halesworth Lock is in remarkably good condition for it's age and the walls are very slightly concave and faced with a local yellow brick. It has a few trees growing out through its walls with bad damage to the tail wall on the South side. The amount of water flowing through the lock resulted in quite a high water level which made it impossible to see very far down into the lock.
After getting thoroughly cold through we went back to Judith and Richard's for some hot refreshments and to discuss the way ahead. Colin agreed to contact Roy Sutton to see if he would come to survey the lock as he had done on the Gipping and it was suggested that I should sit on a sub committee for restoration of the navigation of the Halesworth Millennium Green Society. We advised Richard not to spend money on materials as he could well end up buying things that were not suitable as they get further into the project, but he could well spend some of the money on tools and equipment etc. but Roy would be able to advise him further.
As I said in the last issue of Anglian Cuttings, the Halesworth Navigation starts between Southwold and Walberswick, where it joins the North Sea. It then follows the River Blyth to Blythburgh. It is believed this was the site of the first lock and the end of the tidal river. From here the navigation continued along the path of the river, passing through Wenhaston and Bullhorn locks before leaving the River Blyth and turning right, up the Town River. After about 150 Mts. it left the rivers completely to pass through Halesworth Lock and up the New Cut or New Reach (as it's now known) into Halesworth. At the west end of the New Reach was the terminus of the navigation, which is now builders merchants yard. The first wherry was recorded as arriving in 1756. Some time later a local malster built a fifth lock just above the terminus where the New Cut rejoined the Town River. The design of this lock appears to be different from Halesworth lock but this will become more obvious as work on Halesworth lock takes place. This lock raised the river by a few feet to allow the Wherries to travel a few 100 Mts. further up the Town River to his Maltings.
The surveyor responsible for making the Blyth navigable and excavating the New Reach was a Kings Lynn man called Langley Edwards. As well as working on the Halesworth Navigation Edwards was also working on the Ivel, Witham and Nar Navigations.
A second site meeting was arranged for Saturday 24 March with Roy Sutton coming to carry out an initial survey of Halesworth Lock. The plan was that Roy would arrive by train on Saturday morning and we would visit the lock, returning to Richard and Judith's for lunch with two of the Halesworth Millennium Green Association trustees. When Roy arrived we headed off down to the locks and what a different sight greeted us compared with last week. The sun was trying to break through and I was feeling more than warm wearing leggings and wax jacket.
The Town Lock was completely dry with all the water flowing down the Town River, which meant we were able to walk around inside the lock. Again the brickwork is in a pretty good state and the wooden posts are still visible where the bottom gates were hung. On top of one of these was a Blackbirds nest with three eggs in it. An unusual thing about these posts is that they are just rectangular timbers with no sign of where the gates sealed against them. It can only be assumed that metal castings were attached to these timbers suitably shaped to hold the gates. These were probably sold for scrap when the waterway went into disuse. The top end of this lock has been completely lost and has had a concrete sill laid across it to act as a flood weir where it forms a junction with the Town River. Just below the town lock in the new Reach, where on our last visit the water was running in a torrent, there is now a sand bar. This stretches all the way across the cut and is probably 25 Mts. long. This has occurred within just a month of the Reach being dredged by the Environmental Agency.
We headed down stream towards Halesworth Lock. The old Accommodation Bridge was just about dry as was the Railway Bridge. Just below the railway the Town River has had its course changed and now rejoins the New Reach. There was still a lot of water coming down the Town River and due to its course change it was all flowing through Halesworth Lock about 18" deep. If the river had still followed its old route meandering across the marsh to below Halesworth Lock before joining up with the east end of the New Reach the lock would have probably been almost dry.
Roy had a good look round the lock from the south side. Unfortunately he couldn't cross to the north side due to the Foot and Mouth precautions in force. By now it was time to return with Richard back home for lunch with the Trustees. A small discussion then took place as to what the weather was likely to do. As there were some very black clouds forming and it looked as if it could turn to rain, Roy said that he would prefer to stay on site to survey the lock, pointing out it's next to impossible to make accurate drawings in the rain. We decided that Richard should go home for lunch and give our apologies to the trustees, have lunch with them and then return with "Red Cross parcels" for us. As things turned out, not only did we miss the meeting and getting wet, we also missed the "Red Cross parcels". Roy carried on measuring and drawing with me holding the tape as necessary. The more we looked at the lock the more things unfolded and the more we changed our original views on things. At first look the lock appeared to have been built in yellow brick which is in very good condition and repaired in red, which is not so good. By the end of the day we suspected that the yellow bricks were later facing with quite a hard mortar and the red was original. The Locks have a gauge of 14 ft. and a length of just under 50 ft. It is thought that not only was there a lintel above the gates similar to the locks on the Stour but about 12 ft back from the gates there was another set of timbers set into the lock walls with lintels across the top of them. Between the two sets of inner timbers the lock walls curve out to increase the gauge of the lock by 18". The floor of the lock was probably flat and made of timber but this won't be confirmed until the lock is drained, it's possible that the floor of the lock has been destroyed by dredging over recent years. Just visible below the water level the lock walls are cobbled out over about 5 courses by about a quarter of a brick on each course and then the wall dropped vertical until it entered the silt. There is no indication of an inverted arched bottom. Below the tailgates there are signs of an accommodation bridge crossing the navigation, which is were the towpath crossed to the other side.
Just before 3 PM Roy decided that he had collected as much information as was possible under the circumstances, of water in the lock and Foot and Mouth precautions restricting access, so we headed back towards the town, meeting Richard on the way. After a quick discussion we decided to go back to Richard and Judith's for soup and rolls before Roy caught his train home.
Related Waterways
Text and photographs copyright of Jim Shead.