28/07/2026
Good evening everyone, i hope you have all had a great day, heres tonights canal photo along with some history i hope you enjoy the history lesson too, ive included facts that many people do not know and are not often talked about .... the famous bingley 5 rise locks, i hope you find it as interesting as me,
They opened on 21st march 1774
They rise 59ft,2 inch over just 320ft (the steepest lock staircase in the uk)
Its grade 1 listed (the same level as buckingham palace)
The first passage took just 28 mins and was watched by around 30,000 people
The locks were completed earlier than the official date, construction evidence suggests the chambers were completed months before the public opening.
The bottom gates are the tallest in Britain, thier height is needed to cope with the extreme gradient.
The by wash is oversized on purpose, the overflow is unusually large for the era, Engineers feared catastrophic overtopping, so they built a flood handling system decades ahead of its time.
The chambers are wider than most uk canals, at 14ft they were designed for two boats side by side, incredibly rare for a staircase lock.
The v shaped gates are not just structural, the shape means water pressure forces the gates shut, if they were straight it would make it unsafe and almost impossible to operate.
Early plans included mechanical winches, Engineers originally proposed mechanised assistance for gate movement, the idea was abandoned due to cost and reliability concerns.
The 5 rise locks nearly wasn't built at bingley, early leeds & liverpool canal plans placed the staircase half a mile downstream, land disputes forced the shift, which is why the three rise sits unusually close, a layout not seen anywhere else in the uk.
The first lock keeper wasn't even officially appointed, the earliest "keeper" was a local mill worker who stepped in because boats kept getting stuck, the role existed informally long before the canal and river trust official records begin.
The locks were once considered too dangerous to keep, in the early 1900s, there were serious proposals to replace the staircase with and incline plane due to accidents involving inexperienced boaters, the plan was dropped due to cost.
The chambers are not perfectly aligned, each chamber is offset by a few inches, this reduces stress on the shared gates, a technique unique to Bingley.
The stonework varies in density, Pennine gritstone used here has natural density variations, engineers compensated by over building the lower chamber walls to prevent un even wear.
There's a hidden emergency spillway, behind the main by-wash is a concealed overflow channel designed to activate only during extreme floods, its rarely mentioned because its not accessible to the public.
The five rise locks isn't just a landmark, its a masterpiece of problem solving, improvisation, and engineering bravery, every inch of it was built to survive extreme pressure, unpredictable weather and heavy industrial traffic.
its one of the few places where you can see 18th century engineering still working exactly as intended 250 years later, its truly a masterpiece, and it was all done in the 1700s its amazing !!
Canal & River Trust
