I got Twisted, good morning my name is Paul and I'm Rebecca we've been here before this is the
Stroud navigation we're in Stonehouse we're near Westfield lock which we've seen before we've seen
it being dug up that was great but on the way to that last time something piqued my interest
a particular piece of infrastructure and it's been puzzling me ever since
that is just a joy isn't it
it's a bit excited I'll explain when I used to work on one I used I built
that with my own Bailer string we're on our way to Westfield lock and the thing that we
want to show you today we've just we're at blunder lock and uh what is this Rebecca
um I don't know it looks like a little bit of a lot but it's got little push buttons on it
do you want to press the button should I go press button press the button I think it says something
okay this is cool that's kind of funk isn't it sorry
well if we could just get through the look this is great but we do need to press on I
know it's really good though isn't it I've only pressed button number one right let's leave them
talking and we'll we'll press them we're going to meet Steve and go and find out what this thing is
um blunder lock we've got a couple of locks to go before we get there
so when we were here last time and we had a look at Westfield lock it was amazing and there was all
these volunteers they would dig it all up and it's absolutely brilliant and they've only got a mile
to go they've got to stretch the gap between Westfield lock and just the other side of the
M5 and then this canal is completely completely restored they're working on the locks ahead which
we're just going to see now absolutely brilliant and I think they've been doing it probably since
the 80s and 90s because it was in the 80s and the 90s that um they discovered the thing um
they we're going to have a look at today right I've seen Steve's van where's Steve hello well
we found we found Steve just Steve there he is yeah I'll tell you about Steve and Steve's
channel in a minute but we're coming up to I want to say Pike or dock uh this is Pike lock and uh
when I came here because of me and Matt wasn't there yeah so they were they were still doing
the brickwork uh last time you're here yeah uh which is now all done uh so they're just waiting
for the gates now we'll try out for tender at the moment oh wait I think yeah it's uh about
150 000 pounds of Saturday so uh the the locks on the stroudwater navigation are absolutely
massive yeah is there a reason for that yeah so they actually took the sailing vessel so there's
seven shows which used to come up the river seven they were sort of 15 foot wide rather
than the standard sort of right seven foot wide of an narrow boat or 12 foot of uh some of the other
sort of boats that were on the canals so this goes up to Brimstone Port which is a trans shipment
Basin and there they transferred to the to the to the tens barges which were 12 foot wide right
so the Canal's narrower Beyond so almost almost like um changing your gauge on a railway exactly
like yeah okay wonderful [Music] right so Steve when we walked down here last time on this very
pathway we're nearly at Westfield lock which we're gonna have a look at obviously after this and see
what progress they've made you pointed out a rear or an over spill yeah and we carried on but since
that point which is about four months ago I think maybe four and a half months ago was it January
yeah and that is stuck with me ever since and it's been bugging me ever since and I've been missing
Steve are you free Steve are you free I want to go and have another look at that
um that Weir now the reason why I want to have another look at it because I don't
know of any other example of a triple Weir existing and how it works and what it's for
I also can't not talk about this little landscape in front of us right now
okay enough of the pleasantries Let's Get Serious put your coffee down and buckle up
folks now this is a drone shot of the area that concerns us today and for added context here is
a delightful late 1800s map of the same view by the good people at the National Library of
Scotland now the first important factor here is oldbury Brook here marked in red
pre-canal it followed this line again here on the Drone image you can kind of sit over the back
there there's some uh there's a clump of trees you can see a little concrete bridge and a gate there
with another bridge going across and the container behind the container I guess so along that back
route there runs runs an old stream which is still in place which runs into the bottom of dock lock
okay right that's going to take a look at that because that's essential to today's little story
now you said that part of that Brook they obviously then utilized as a mooring area
yeah so back in a day when it was in use it was uh it was a lot higher um so you used to run down
the back there so they would they would take their boats up there to unload and store stuff and stuff
like that so it was it was like a back channel for the what was the main coming headquarters up here
at the time so the brook came into the canal but they're also almost immediately opposite
the entrance to the brook the back brook or the oldbury brook yeah was this weird that we're going
to talk about in a second but it was basically a three level wear yeah um so you could have
the canal full and then it would just overflow and that's the important normal job of an over
spill or wheel or whatever it's called right so it was a pound effectively this here with the stream
running into it so you had water coming down from the lock through you had water coming from the
street now it went down but obviously they needed maintenance yeah so they had the ability to lower
it by about two foots that's the cold pound of the canal level could be lowered by two foot right
uh and then obviously drain it as well so that's a good explanation of why you might want free levels
on your canal in a pound let's take a look and see how this would have worked now it's important
to know that the brook was diverted to the West in the 1980s partially destroying the Westfield
lock so this Weir doesn't see the action it used to however that does mean we can take a good look
so in the 1980s and the 1990s they were doing a bit of restoration work they came across this
so this is massive in terms of a weir the biggest weir I've ever seen yeah and have you come across
any more triple spillways or triple Wheels no most most of them are just sort of overflows
with maybe a paddle in the bottom to just strain out um right you know it's loose in the bottom
this is it Steve what we're looking at goodness me it's a massive oval rugby ball shaped brick
lined vegetation covered thing I don't know where to start really so you've got a you've got your
obviously your canals over here yeah uh you've got your channel comes underneath here you can
just see the arches over across here this fills up this uh which fills to the level of the canal
probably looking at the top of the wall top of the wall so then you want to take a couple of feet
off of your Canal how do you do that with this so there's a sluice uh which literally just opens the
top uh you can drop drop the level down a couple of foot so you can kind of gain access to various
things in the canal to Brook whatever you need to do then if you want to empty the canal there will
be another sluice I'm not exactly sure where they are on this where you can um drain the whole thing
right and take it out so it means you can control that on three levels yeah so you can still keep
water in the canal probably still use the canal um whilst maintenance is going on rather than having
to completely shut it off yeah let's see where it comes in for free so there we go there's a [ __ ]
underneath of that which will take you through into that level that goes that goes lower than
this so that's that's the main drain across which this canal is fully drained at the moment yes
I'm just wondering how if you want to lower to level two I would assume that goes down
I feel like it would need more than one gate though yeah but the gates would have been in
that section over there water in Gates and section drain down which is about two foot
if you look at that section there yeah on that wall and then that section goes
across and through well I think I understand it I think that's a complicated piece of Victorian
slash Georgian engineering and that is just a joy isn't it when you think that there's no
I don't say computers obviously no computers there's nothing to design this other than a mind
of people at the time going right we need to solve this problem of three different levels of a canal
how do we do that with one Weir wow so at this stage we thought we had everything figured out
but I don't think we did let's map this out so you can see if you can figure out too so this is what
it would look like filled up but it didn't because the water would drain over the middle lip and down
the sinkhole at the back at its highest therefore would look like this so that's the top level the
canal pound filled this area had two separate infills from the canal that's here and here
now the image on the other side of the Towpath the inner part of the canal well it shows those
three arches better the two outer ones being a key here to fill the bits that we want filled
we'll come to the middle art very shortly so back on the inside here is the will and thus the canal
filled up so what if you want to drain the canal a couple of feet like we suggested earlier well
you're going to need a sluice in those chambers somewhere this is where we struggle because we
couldn't find them either way when you do find those sluices as long as a middle sluice in the
middle Arch is completely blocked well the canal will too lower itself down to the middle level
so when you do want to drain the canal completely well that's when we think the main middle sluice
comes into play raise it up and the entire Canal water disappears but the issue remained finding
any form of sluice in those middle Chambers how do you let the water out of there we couldn't see
anything at all we looked around the back in case they had a separate Inlet but no luck there too
camera on a long pole again down the middle sections of where to see
if those outer Chambers drained into it but again no luck there
right so Before We Say Goodbye there's one more important thing to have a look at which
is Westfield lock which we came and saw uh back in January as we said I wonder how far they've got
[Music]
to say you're wrong with both I'm not at the moment I'm only filming with the overlay one
not the uh just so confusing luckily they slightly different the context Rebecca swimming are behind
the scenes for our lovely patreon and YouTube members and filming overlay for this video too
footnote for you all um after today's little Adventure you need to go and have a look at
Steve's Channel caught above the cut Link in the description below because it's a joy um Steve does
either Drone footage or a lot of info on canals is that a good Fair assumption. A LOT of info
but for me Steve Rebecca thanks for watching we'll see you next time [Music]