Camden Lock is a small part of Camden Town, London Borough of Camden, England, which was formerly a wharf with stables on the Regent's Canal. It is immediately to the north of Hampstead Road Locks, a twin manually operated lock. The twin locks together are "Hampstead Road Lock 1"; each bears a sign so marked. Hawley Lock and Kentish Town Lock are a short distance away to the east; to the west is a long level pound (also known as tract or reach) — it is to the next lock.
History
Regent's Canal was authorised by an Act of Parliament obtained on 13 July 1812, for a canal from Paddington to Limehouse. When the directors first met, they had decided that all locks would be paired, so that some of the water from a lock emptying could be used to fill the adjacent chamber. Water saving was an important factor, as they knew that water supply would be problematic. Colonel William Congreve, a military engineer who was later knighted, proposed the use of hydropneumatic boat lifts instead of locks. Various designs of a similar nature had been tried in the early 19th century, notably at Mells on the Dorset and Somerset Canal and at Tardebigge on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, but none had proved successful. Congreve's design used two water-filled caissons, which were moved up and down by hand, assisted by compressed air trapped beneath the tanks. With no working examples of such lifts, the directors were understandably cautious, but following an engineer's report, decided that Maudslay & Co should build a prototype at Camden Town. There were a number of technical problems, with the canal company blaming Maudslays for poor design, and Maudslays blaming the canal company for changing the original design and failing to maintain the structure. Congreve's claim that it could be operated in just three minutes was never proved, and in 1818, the directors decided to cut their losses, and reverted to using paired locks. The lift was sold at auction in November 1819, and the 13 lots raised just £404.
Construction of the canal was overseen by architect John Nash, with James Morgan acting as supervising engineer. Hampstead Road Locks were built between 1818 and 1820, with the chambers made of brick and stone coping along the top. The two locks are arranged side by side, with an island platform between them. Each chamber has two gates at both ends, and they have been Grade II listed since 1992 (this is the initial, most common category of listing). They were the first of 12 pairs of similar locks which dropped the level of the canal by to reach Limehouse Basin. The transfer of water between the chambers made operation of the locks more complex, and so they were permanently manned during the heyday of the canal, with lock-keepers working a shift system to provide 24-hour cover. As the use of the canal declined, in part due to railway competition, manning levels were reduced, and padlocks were used to prevent operation of the locks at the weekends. Following the end of commercial traffic and the growth of leisure boating, the locks reverted to operation by boat crews, and in order to prevent flooding caused by incorrect operation of the paddles, in the 1980s most of the pairs were converted to single locks, by replacing the lower gates of one chamber with a fixed weir. Hampstead Road Lock is the only one where both chambers have been retained, although they are now emptied conventionally. In November 2013, the locks were fully drained for maintenance; the public were invited for the weekend of the 16th and 17th of that month to see the infrastructure for themselves.