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Original Text (Annotation: EAW026495 / 2183081)
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The Chess Lock, leaving the main line of the Grand Union Canal to go up into the canalised river Chess. The river is flowing over the weir just above the lock.
The lock was built for the brewer Samuel Salter in 1805, and served the Town Wharf (off the shot) to the right. His brewery will have used the wharf, which closed in the 1930s, but the main purpose was probably to provide a wharf for general business nearer the middle of the town than either Frogmoor Whaf or Batchworth Bridge wharf. It could also have served the gasworks, but only for the removal of waste products - its coal came by rail. By the time of this image the large timber yard was probably the main customer for this trafffic, although the transhipment wharf for the railway also seems to have timber on it - it had been termed 'Batchworth Dock' when being used to transfer asbestos cement sheet from the canal to the railway, having been brought up for the works at Copper Mill, Harefield. It had earlier been used to remove gravel from the gravel pit to the right, but this traffic had ceased by this time. '