History of the locks

In the 1830s traffic between on the Trent & Mersey Canal was so heavy that the Cheshire Locks proved a bottleneck for all the goods going to and from Stoke-on-Trent so, apart from Pierpoint Locks nos. 55 and 56, all the locks in the flight were duplicated. This considerably reduced the time to pass through the flight and also helped conserve water as the likelihood of boatmen finding one of the locks already in their favour increased, so filling empty locks or emptying full ones was reduced.

As commercial traffic declined, especially after the Second World War, some of the locks suffered the effects of subsidence due to brine pumping and coal mining. One, Thurlwood no. 53a, was replaced by a steel lock, but others (nos. 51a, 57b and 62a) were simply filled in. The duplicate Red Bull lock no. 42a fell victim to a road widening scheme.

Boatmen always said that the long flight was a hard one, hence they named it “Heartbreak Hill”.

Since 1965 – during which time the waterway was classified as a Cruising Waterway – four other locks closed “temporarily” but have not reopened due to lack of funding. These are the two at Wheelock, nos. 65b and 66b, and Church Locks, nos. 47a and 48a. Two of these locks are closed because the pound (stretch of water) between the locks is so short that water management is problematic. The two Wheelock locks have been closed for over four years, and Church Locks considerably longer. In addition, the Thurlwood Steel Lock was dismantled in the 1980s due to difficulties in operating it.