Trip to Brentford Lock
A group of Year 1 children visited Brentford Gauging Lock on Thursday 19th May. The Canal & River Trust volunteers opened the lock especially for our visit. The children were very excited to see the lock being operated and the water levels rising and falling. After that, the children were given a photograph of the lock taken in the 1930s and asked to find similarities and differences. They spotted that the bridge was the same but the people, trees and telegraph poles had all changed. The children also spotted lots of birds during their trip, including a heron, Canada and Eqyptian geese. On the way back to school, we walked through the Butts and had a look at the Boatman's Institute. This was build in 1904 as a school for children of the boatmen.
Brentford Gauging Lock was once one of the busiest places on the Grand Union Canal. It is so-called because here, the toll keeper checked how much cargo boats were carrying. He used a gauging rod to measure how high the boat sat out of the water and calculate the amount of cargo carried. From that, he could work out the toll to be paid to use the canal. If you would like to learn more, click here.
