Canal boat hire and Narrowboat Timeshare Rentals in the U.K.

The Foxton Inclined Plan

At the moment this is still very much a restoration project, with the full realisation of a working inclined plan still on the plans. That said the amount of basic work already done in preparing the site by restoring the basic canal structure, towpaths and bridges etc has been impressive and bodes well for the future success of the project.

The flight of locks was built in 1810, using 10 locks to climb  75 feet up the hill, this journey  typically this took 45 minutes with a horse drawn narrowboat, though queues could increase the delay to a few hours. With pressure from competing railway companies increasing, companies like Fellows Morton and Clayton (FMT) wanted to see the route made available to bigger boats for the transportation of coal  to the London factories etc regarding the Foxton flight of locks as a "bottleneck" in the system. The simple solution may have been to widen the locks, but there were real fears that the water supply would not cope and so other options had to be considered.

The accepted solution was the inclined plane constructed by W H Gwynne of Hammersmith, London.
This provided two caissons, wide enough to take two narrowboats or a barge each of up to 72 feet in length, counterbalancing each other, allowing the lift to be powered by a 25 horsepower steam engine. The journey time for four boats two going up and two going down being 12 minutes, a big improvement on the locks and far more economical of water.
Leaving the locks were still able to run in parallel, as a separate facility.
The lift worked well enough , but unfortunately the locks at Watford gap further down the system were never widened, so the proposed new route for barges  never actually materialised and the inclined plane was  never used to it's full capacity.

The plane was closed and mothballed  in 1911, probably to avoid the cost of maintaining, staffing and fuelling the now 10 year old structure.
In 1928, sadly the original the machinery was sold as scrap.

Today The Foxton Inclined Trust has taken on the challenge of restoring the surroundings of the Inclined plane and Foxton locks in partnership with British Waterways and much has been achieved, funded in part by lottery grants. The big challenge of restoring the lift itself is still some years away, but current progress suggests that it will eventually happen. To eventually provide a working example of an inclined plane in the United Kingdom.

Visitors may view what remains of the original Inclined plane and the considerable progress made to date. A museum and visitors centre will help update you on plans and progress and possibly even give the opportunity for the enthusiastic and will to get involved in the project as volunteers.

Whether by boat or on foot Foxton locks are worth a visit and make an interesting day out with facilities for the visitor continually improving