Marsh Lock

The earliest record of a flash lock is in 1580, but the lock and weir existed for some time before that. The 1698 painting Henley from the Wargrave Road by the Flemish artist Jan Siberechts includes this original flash lock in the picture. The pound lock was the third downstream of the eight locks built after the Thames and Isis Navigation Act 1750 (24 Geo. 2. c. 8), and was completed in fir wood in 1773. Humphrey Gainsborough, a non-conformist minister at Henley Congregational Church, was concerned in the building of the lock. He was an inventor and the brother of the artist Thomas Gainsborough. By 1780, the lock was reported as decaying fast, and in 1787 it was rebuilt of oak. The first…

Because the lock is unusually situated on the opposite side of the river to the towpath, a long wooden bridge was built from the Oxfordshire bank to carry the path out to the lock island below the weir, and then back again to the riverbank above the weir. This feature is unique on the River Thames.