Sandford Lock

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The Sandford Lock looking downstream
The Sandford Lock looking upstream

The Sandford Lock is a lock in the River Thames near the village of Sandford-on-Thames on the southern outskirts of Oxford in England. The first lock was built in 1631 by the Oxford-Burcot Commission and later rebuilt. At 2.69 m, the lock has the greatest height difference of all locks in the course of the Thames. It is connected to one of the three islands at this point.

The main weir connects an island with the opposite bank at Kennington. Here is the Sandford Lasher , a notorious stilling basin in which several people drowned.

history

A mill was built on this site around 1294 by the Knights Templar . There are also reports of a ferry and a weir from the Middle Ages. From the time of Edward III. there is a report on the dispute between the millers and the boatmen, in which the boatmen are said to have broken open the lock. It is probably a water lock . This was described as the Great Lockes in 1624 . This was replaced in 1631 by the Oxford-Burcot Commission, which built one of the first locks in England here. The lock was given to the Thames Navigation Commission in 1790 and extended by Daniel Harris in 1795 for nearly £ 1,800  . In 1836 a new lock was built at the current location next to the old lock. The lock keeper's house was built in 1839. The old lock was filled in after a miller opened the gates and caused damage to the embankment. The location of the old lock can still be seen above today's upper gates. An iron bridge was built over the lock between 1866 and 1877. The last construction work was carried out in 1972.

Deadly accidents

The basin below the weir is known as Sandford Lasher , and has been infamous since the 19th century for the number of people who drowned here:

  • Henry Fawcett, a student at University College , drowned while swimming in May 1833. John Richardson Currer, brother of Charles Savile Roundell and a student at Balliol College , drowned in February 1840 while trying to row a skiff across the pool.
  • A sixteen-year-old student at Cowley Diocesan School, Edward John Templar, son of the Vicar of Great Coxwell , drowned on May 21, 1864 when he jumped into the water to meet another boy who could not swim and accidentally fell into the water help.
  • Clarence Sinclair Collier, a student at Balliol College, drowned in June 1879. He and another student were in their boat above the weir. The boat capsized and the current washed them over the weir, where Collier drowned. Collier is remembered with a plaque in the entrance area of ​​the college.
  • There is an obelisk on the weir that records the deaths of five Christ Church College students : Richard Phillimore and William Gaisford in 1843; George Dasent in 1872 and Michael Llewelyn Davies and Rupert Buxton in 1921. William Gaisford was the son of Thomas Gaisford , Dean of Christ Church College. He got into trouble swimming on June 23, 1843. His friend Richard Phillimore tried to help him, but they both drowned. Richard Phillimore was the son of Joseph Phillimore , the Regius Professor of Civil Law . They were in the Christ Church Cathedral . Two plaques in the north cloister of the cathedral commemorate her.
  • Michael Llewelyn Davies was the foster child of the writer JM Barrie , and one of the main inspirations for the character of Peter Pan . Rupert Buxton was the son of Thomas Buxton . Both drowned on May 19, 1921 in calm water in Sandford Lasher is reported.

Access to the lock

The lock can be accessed from the end of Church Lane in Sandford.

The river above the lock

After the third island in the group at the lock of Fiddler's Elbow , the river makes a sharp bend at Rose Isle . Kennington is on the west bank . Further upriver is the Kennington Railway Bridge where the Hinksey Stream flows back into the Thames and the Isis Bridge crosses the Thames.

The Thames Path runs on the west side of the river until it crosses the Hinksey Stream at Iffley Lock on the Kennington Towpath Bridge.

Mention in the literature

The Sandford Lasher and its dangers are described in chapter 18 of Jerome K. Jerome's book Three Men in a Boat (1889).

Jerome was a close friend of JM Barrie's and probably knew Michael Llewelyn Davies.

The Sandford Lasher is in The Dictionary of the Thames by Charles Dickens, Jr . mentioned.

In Tom Brown at Oxford by Thomas Hughes , the main character barely escapes a misfortune when she rows a skiff into the pool. The Sandford Lock is mentioned in The Four Feathers by Alfred Edward Woodley Mason (1902) as well as in the poem The Burden of Itys by Oscar Wilde .

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Fred. S. Thacker: The Thames Highway. Volume II: Locks and Weirs. 1920. p. 135 (reprinted 1968 by David & Charles, ISBN 0-7153-4233-9 ) OCLC 55209571 .
  2. ↑ Jackson's Oxford Journal. May 25, 1833.
  3. ↑ Jackson's Oxford Journal. February 8, 1840.
  4. ^ A Young Gentleman Drowned at Oxford. In: The Standard. May 28, 1864, p. 5.
  5. ^ The Death of an Undergraduate by Drowning at Oxford. In: The Star. June 10, 1879.
  6. ^ John Jones: Memorial Inscriptions Balliol College, Oxford.
  7. ↑ George Valentine Cox: Recollections of Oxford. Macmillan 1870, p. 330. books.google.com
  8. ^ Fatal Accident. in: The Ipswich Journal. July 1, 1843.
  9. ↑ Michael Popkin: Brave Deeds and Tragedies ( Memento April 24, 2002 in the Internet Archive ) Oxford Inscriptions.
  10. ↑ Paul Goldsack: River Thames. In the Footsteps of the Famous. English Heritage / Bradt, Bucks 2003, ISBN 1-84162-044-0 .
  11. ^ Charles Dickens Jr .: Dickens's Dictionary of the Thames. Macmillan and Company, London 1883, p. 19 or edition 1885, p. 24 bottom left ( archive.org. )

Coordinates: 51 ° 42 ′ 29.8 "  N , 1 ° 13 ′ 58.3"  W.