Papermill Lock

We drove to South Woodham Ferrers yesterday for a family birthday gathering. On the way we stopped briefly where we crossed the Chelmer and Blackwater Navigation in Essex.


This is Papermill Lock, where the old stables have been converted into The Old Stables Tearoom. There's a good account of the fourteen mile waterway here: the navigation was authorised by an Act of Parliament in 1793; horse-drawn barges survived into the 1950s, and the last diesel lighter loaded timber from a Scandinavian steamer for Browns Wharf in 1972.


The above photo shows the weir; the lock cut is out of shot to the left. For a bit of fun I played around with iPhoto to produce the image below.