Locking in history - water-way to make a living as tradition is kept alive
Craftsmen using traditional methods to build timber lock gates for the country's canal network – it could be a scene from decades ago.
But this is a workshop in a corner of the Black Country that is producing gates for the latest £45 million overhaul of the waterways.
The site in Bradley, Bilston, is one of only two in England that makes the gates. And with up to 200 due to be replaced over the next year, the team of 13 skilled workers have plenty of work to do.
Each one is handmade traditionally out of oak timber, while steel brackets are fitted to strengthen the joints to make sure it lasts longer than 25 years. The workshop has been open since 1963 and while the tools and technology have become more advanced – the same methods are still used on a daily basis. Usually it will take two carpenters two weeks to build a pair of lock gates, but for the biggest gates it can take at least a month.
The Bradley workshop and another in Stanley Ferry, near Wakefield in West Yorkshire, are the only two sites in the country that make the gates. Dave Constable is a team leader at the workshop and has worked for the Canal & River Trust, formerly British Waterways, for 27 years.
He said: "It was 1963 that this place was built and the guys before that had a depot at Ocker Hill – but then I think they closed that and came here.
"It's been here since – we've got a pump house round the back which feeds the canal network in this area as well so the whole site has got a fair bit of history to it." Now we've got 13 people working here including the office staff. We've got three carpenters including one apprentice as well as a welder and an apprentice welder too."
A canal lock is used for raising and lowering boats between stretches of water of different levels and the gates, made at the Bradley workshop, are watertight doors that seal off the chamber from the upper and lower pounds.
Mr Constable said: "All our gates are hand-finished. The guys take pride in what they do.
"For years the canals were in disrepair but now its gone the other way – they were used for transport of coal back in the day but now it's all leisure."
The Canal & River Trust will this month begin a new maintenance programme across the West Midlands. A series of public open days are going to be held at Birmingham Canal Navigation Society in Wolverhampton city centre on December 5.
