Bingley, West Yorkshire, England,UK. Bingley Five Rise Locks. June 2014 Bingley Five-Rise Locks is a staircase lock
Bingley, West Yorkshire, England,UK. Bingley Five Rise Locks. June 2014 Bingley Five-Rise Locks is a staircase lock on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Bingley. As the name implies, a boat passing through the lock is lifted or lowered in five stages. In effect the five-rise consists of five locks connected together without intermediate "ponds": the lower gate of each chamber forms the upper gate of the chamber below. There are therefore five chambers, and six gates. As the Leeds Liverpool canal is a wide canal, the chambers are slightly more than 14 feet ( 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 ( m) wide, so that the two halves close in a "V" shape (pointing "upstream"). Water pressure on the uphill side of the gate 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 (see canal locks for more information on how a lock is constructed and operated). The five-rise is the steepest flight of locks in the UK, with a gradient of about 1:5 (a rise of 59 ft 2 in ( m) over a distance of 320 ft (98 m)). 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 lock keeper, after twenty years based here is now almost synonymous with the flight.
Size: 4256px × 2831px
Location: Bingley; Five Rise Locks; Leeds and Liverpool Canal; West Yorkshire
Photo credit: © BRIAN HARRIS / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: 5, bingley, boats, brian, canal, harris, leeds, liverpool, locks, restored, rise, staircase, steepest, tourism, travel, waterways, west, yorkshire
