Burland Wanderings, Wainwright Walks etc.: Bingley Walk & the 5 Rise Locks

On Saturday 9th July we went over to Bingley in the afternoon and had a walk from the town centre out to the 5 Rise Locks and then back via the 3 Rise Locks.

Bingley Five Rise Locks is a staircase lock on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal . As the name implies, a boat going up the lock is lifted in five stages. In effect the 5-rise consists of five locks connected together with (as always with a staircase) no intermediate "pounds": the lower gate of each chamber forms the upper gate of the chamber below. There are therefore five chambers, and six gates (the top and bottom gates and four intermediate gates).

As the Leeds Liverpool canal is a wide canal, the chambers are 14 feet (4.3 m) wide, and each "gate" consists of two half-gates, "hinged" from opposite sides of the canal. Each half gate is slightly more than 7 feet (2.1 m) wide, so that the two halves close in a "V" shape (pointing "upstream"). Water pressure on the "uphill" side of the gate thus keeps it tightly closed until the water levels on either side are equal, when the gate can be opened and the boat moved to the next chamber.

The 5-rise is the steepest flight of locks in the UK, with a gradient of about 1:5 (a rise of 59 ft 2 in (18.03 m) over a distance of 320 ft). The intermediate and bottom gates are the tallest in the country. Because of the complications of working a staircase lock, and because so many boaters (both first-time hirers and new owners) are inexperienced, a full-time lock keeper is employed, and the locks are padlocked "out of hours". Barry Whitelock, the current lock keeper, after twenty years based here is now almost synonymous with the flight. Barry was awarded an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2006 New Year Honours List for "Services to Inland Waterways in the North". The structure is Grade I listed.

Five Rise Locks opened on 12 March 1774 and was a major feat of engineering at the time. When the locks and therefore the canal from Gargrave to Leeds were opened in 1774 a crowd of 30,000 people turned out to celebrate. The first boat to use the locks took just 28 minutes and the whole first trip was described in a newspaper of the time - the Leeds Intelligencer. They said at the time, "From Bingley to about 3 miles downwards the noblest works of the kind are exhibited viz: A five fold, a three fold and a single lock, making together a fall of 120 feet; a large aqueduct bridge of seven arches over the River Aire and an aqueduct and banking over the Shipley valley. This joyful and much wished for event was welcomed with the ringing of Bingley bells, a band of music, the firing of guns by the neighbouring Militia, the shouts of spectators, and all the marks of satisfaction that so important an acquisition merits". The smaller Three Rise opened at the same time several hundred metres further down the canal.

The "flight" (it is a moot point whether a staircase is strictly a "flight", used strictly the term means a group of locks separated by intermediate pounds, so each lock has its own top and bottom gates) is a major tourist attraction in the area. Most boats that pass through attract a lot of attention especially at weekends where there may be a crowd of thirty people or more watching a boat go up or down.

The staircase underwent extensive restorative maintenance in 2004, and again in 2006 when the lock gates and paddles were replaced. As is expected with such a feat of engineering it requires a lot of maintenance and is often on British Waterways' list of winter stoppages for maintenance.

The bridge over the new Bingley by-pass