Navigation on the Stour

Bures had a mill as did Nayland and Stratford St Mary.  Mentioned in the Doomsday book. There is also a mill at Flatford. There are now many mills on the Stour although in some way they improve navigation because the weirs deepen the water

The use of stanches or flash locks on the rivers continued from mediaeval times until the 19th century, although to a limited extent, and chiefly owing to the value of the 'flash' of water which helped to take the barges over the shallows and thereby reduced or eliminated the need for repeated and costly dredging operations. But the stanches had usually been built in mill weirs, and more as an adjunct to the mills than as works designed to improve navigation. With the single-door stanch a period of an hour or two elapsed before there was a sufficient "abatement of the fall" for boats to pass, and a vast quantity of water (the 'flash') escaped from the river above.

Early locks were designed with a single gate, known as a flash lock . The "gate" was a set of boards, called paddles , supported against the current by upright timbers called rymers . Boats moving downstream would wait above the lock until the paddles were removed, which would allow a "flash" of water to pass through, carrying the boats with it. Upstream boats would be winched or towed through the lock with the paddles removed. Considerable skill was involved both in removing the paddles in a timely manner and navigating the boat through the lock.

Flash locks were commonly built into small dams or weirs where a head of water was used for powering a mill. The lock allowed boats to pass the weir while still allowing the mill to operate when the gate was closed.

Old winch at Hurley, 2006

But of course its not a drum winch with a big handle that the name winch had led me to imagine. In naval terms, the difference between a capstan or windlass and a winch is that a capstan or windlass has a vertical axis of rotation, while a winch has a horizontal axis of rotation.
However this "winch" has a rotating vertical shaft (presumably well sunk down into the ground) with six horizontal beams. The line might either have been wound up on the vertical shaft as it was rotated by pushing round the beam, or maybe there were just several turns on the shaft and the line then led off to be laid out ready for use? Either way the thought of pulling a heavily laden barge up that weir by this method makes me devoutly thankful for pound locks with keepers and hydraulics.

WHITCHURCH LOCK
Left bank, length: 135'3", width: 18'0"

1580-5: Bishop – Whitchurch Lock (i.e. Weir) belongs to Harry Knappes and is kept by Nicholas Wilford

So how did this towing and winching a barge up a weir work? – almost nobody living can have experience of it – so what follows is just guess work – With a long towline the barge is steered into the bank (bottom centre, with the horse(s) near the weir. The line is loosed from the horse(s) and carried out over the weir and looped round the roller marked near the opening and then round the roller to the left of the weir and then re-attached to the horses. The horses then tow the barge so that it approaches the gap in the weir. Meanwhile a line on a float is towed by boat from the winch into a position such that it naturally floats down through the gap and can be picked up by the barge. The barge is attached to the winch line and loosed from the horse line. See Hurley for a picture of an old winch. The winch slowly winds the barge up through the gap – the steering of the barge being crucial! The breaking strain of the hand made rope will of course not be known. It was accepted that most lines would not outlast one voyage up the river. It would of course have broken at the moment of greatest strain when the barge was half way up the weir … Once safely above the weir the horse line is rowed out to the barge which continues on its way. Going down is simpler – but maybe nerve racking! The towline has to be cast off in good time with the barge in such a position that it can be steered to shoot the weir. Below the weir the line must be taken out to the barge and reattached – by whom? Or did the barge come into the bank – not if it could help it is my guess – because towing a heavy barge off a bank with horses on that same side would be a difficult matter. When Captain Horatio Hornblower steered a fast passenger barge down the Thames and Severn and Thames to Oxford through several flashlocks it was done without loosing the towline. (Captain Hornblower and the Atropos, C.S.Forester) Of course this is somewhat thin evidence being fiction – or maybe that was possible on the small flashlocks above Oxford but I can’t see how it could work at Whitchurch in the sketch.

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