Maryhill Locks

It turned out a beautiful afternoon in Glasgow, and as I was near Maryhill Locks I stopped to take some shots of the basin and the lock. You can understand why Maryhill was called the Venice of the North in the early 20th century.

Maryhill Locks is a flight of five locks, as part of John Smeaton's Forth & Clyde Canal, which links the east and west coasts of Scotland. The flight drops the waterway from Lock 21 at the west end of the canal's summit stretch to Lock 25, 12.2m below in Glasgow.

Construction of the Forth & Clyde Canal started in 1768 and after delays due to funding problems was completed in 1790.

Each lock in the Maryhill flight is designed to hold enough water in the basin between it and the next lock to allow more than one vessel to use each lock at once, making the the system more flexible.

Robert Whitworth, one of Smeaton's supervising engineers for the canal project, is responsible for the Maryhill Locks, with William Gibb - founder of the company that became Sir Alexander Gibb & Partners - and John Muir as contractors. Both were from Falkirk and also worked on Whitworth's Kelvin Aqueduct, which takes the canal over the River Kelvin nearby.