BY VICTOR SPINK
In 1653 the ‘Water Poet’ John Taylor died aged 75. Had he lived he might well have written a poem about the opening of The Wey Navigation from the River Thames at Weybridge to Godalming.
The work was completed in November 1653, at a cost of £15,000. Isaac Walton also wrote his discourse ‘The Complete Angler’ which could have been found on the towpath by a fisherman somewhere on the 20 miles of The Navigation.
Sir Richard Weston (1591–1652) decided in the early 1630s to copy the canal and lock system then prevalent in The Netherlands to make the River Wey navigable between Weybridge and Guildford.
He was appointed one of the Royal Commissioners to oversee the work in 1635. During the English Civil War (1642–1651), his property was sequestrated and he went into exile.
In 1644 he visited Ghent, Bruges and Antwerp and took the opportunity to study lock building and have his portrait painted by Cornelis de Neve in his silk doublet and Flemish Lace. By 1649 he was back in England where he instigated a bill in Parliament to authorise the construction of the navigation which became an Act of Parliament in 1651. Weston immediately set to work on construction, although he died before the scheme reached completion. Instigating the construction of the Wey Navigation – one of the first man-made navigations in Britain, he used pound locks. Pound locks were first used in China during the Song Dynasty having been pioneered by the Song politician and clever naval engineer Qiao Weiyue in 984.
Starting at the Thames Lock at Weybridge, the lock, which opened in 1653, was originally constructed of timber and stone in common with other Wey Navigation locks but was rebuilt in 1863 – one of the earliest uses of concrete along the river. The 1765 lock cottage was rebuilt in 1975 with the National Trust successfully preserving the building’s original appearance. As the entry and exit point for the Wey Navigation the lock keeper here was instrumental in collecting and recording the transit fees paid by the barge owners for using the navigation. The ledgers date back to 1739.
Ham Haw Mill
Thames Lock Mill or Ham Haw Mill was also known as Whittets Mill by Thames Lock was one of forty historical mills on the whole of the River Wey Navigation. The river was home to more mills per mile than anywhere else in Great Britain. It was created in 1691 and made paper from the lintier fibres of linen. It then worked iron found on St.George’s Hill nearby. When the iron ran out it was a corn mill, and in 1817 it became derelict for 25 years or so until rebuilt for oil crushing in 1842 with a second wheel added.
About 11pm on Monday Christmas Eve 1877, a tremendous fire broke out which started on the wharf and reached the warehouse where several tons of linseed in cakes and vats were stored.
It spread to where 40 tons of cakes of oil were kept. The whole was fanned by a strong wind. By now cakes of linseed were rolled into the river and the fire took hold where vats of linseed oil were stored. A vat caught fire and the flaming oil flowed into the Wey and set the floating kegs alight. Flames rose higher than the fourth story of the mill. More vats of oil caught fire and flowed into the river. There was no Christmas Day rest for the local firemen. The mill was in operation until the 1960s when (again) it was largely destroyed by fire.
No trace of the mill remains. The site is now occupied by a residential development. Hardly a drop of linseed oil is to be found except by a weekend painter doing an oil painting of the delightful lock scene from the towpath opposite. Today the aspect is more semi rural, so close to a busy town of Weybridge. To walk along the towpath here is the start of many riverside towpath walks towards Godalming some 20 miles (32 km) away.
There are always boats moored on the North bank next to the weir called ‘The Bulldogs’. The trees here are plentiful and one can get out the map and the wildlife recognition books to take in the abundance of flora and fauna examples. Some of which will be described in later issues. There are fishermen on the towpath bank, and canoeists in the river – many of whom are young – trying not to tangle with the fisherman’s lines. There are pleasure boats, some of which are silent, and others chugging up and down on blissful summer days to and from the Thames especially at weekends and national holidays.
In deep contrast there is much flooding after prolonged rains. With so many locks on the Wey the weirs can hardly cope. The river and National Trust bailiffs have to put up signs on the lock gates to stop boats which might be swept down river by the sheer force of the current from the water runoff from fields and motorways upstream. Global warming will not improve matters.
A towpath walk up to Weybridge lock and bridge takes us near the site of the old Tudor Oatlands Palace on the hill opposite to the South. Some of this was built from the stone masonry remnants of the newly demolished Chertsey Abbey. During the Commonwealth the palace was sold off to Robert Turbridge on the condition that he destroy it. In turn he sold off the building materials from the palace, some of which went into building the River Wey locks. So it could be that there are still fragments of medieval Chertsey Abbey stone behind the modern facings of the locks, unless they have been removed by later refits.
Future articles will include Weybridge Bridge, Chertsey Lock and Coxes Lock Mill and Addlestone Canoe Club.