Stepping up to repair Oxford canal lock gate

Canal lock gates play a pivotal role in allowing boats to go up and down hills by adjusting the water level. When the gate at lock 27 on the Oxford Canal in Little Bourton, UK,  was found to be in need of urgent repair works, it was critical that the matter was sorted as soon as possible to avoid making the route unusable. Waterways and marine engineering specialists, The Rothen Group, came to the rescue to fix the problem and make the canal accessible again.

The Oxford Canal has been an important waterway for over two centuries, having been open to public use since 1790. It was originally mainly used for transportation, with goods such as coal transferred from Coventry to Oxford and the River Thames. It now mainly serves as a popular leisure route for narrowboat owners enjoying the waterways.

However, when the Canal and River Trust’s operational team discovered damage to the canal gate on lock 27 in Little Bourton, Oxfordshire in February 2025, which rendered it unusable, the issue needed to be fixed immediately. As repairs were required, the charity, which is responsible for the care of 2000 miles of rivers and canals in the UK, requested the services of waterways specialists The Rothen Group to fix the gate.

Canal and River Trust’s operational team visited the site to undertake an inspection of the damage. During this, they found that the collar and heel, which is a metal band at the top of gate that attaches it to the lock, had been snapped. As a result, the entire collar and heel needed to be replaced, otherwise the gate could fall off. Unable to fabricate a new replacement themselves, Canal and River Trust took measurements of the existing structure and reached out to the Rothen Group.

Knowing that the repair needed to be actioned quickly and to avoid needing to replace the entire lock gate, the Rothen Group’s fabrication team decided to modify a separate collar and heel made of metal to fit the exact measurements sent by Canal and River Trust. It also needed to make slight modifications to ensure it would be robust and able to fit onto the lock gate, with the fabrication works taking place at its headquarters in Mancetter Wharf.

As soon as the fabricated collar and heel was finalised, it was transported to a crane boat that the Rothen Group had available in the region and then boated the rest of the way down the waterway. Thanks to this logistical planning, the Rothen Group was able to lower fuel consumption and carbon emissions that would otherwise have been incurred through road transportation. Once there, the crane boat lifted the gate out of the canal to allow for the original collar and heel to be removed so that the new one could be fitted.

From shipping to eventual repair, the entire process from commissioning the work was completed all within a working week, with it taking just one day to fabricate the new collar and heel. Following this, it was one day boating to the site from the area that the Rothen Group’s crane boat was in, and one day on site to undertake the maintenance works, underlining its ability for rapid response.

The work on the Oxford Canal in Little Bourton was a joint task that involved several team members from the Rothen Group. This included an appointed person planning the lift alongside Canal and River Trust, a crane operator and a slinger banksman who ensured the health and safety operations on site were at an excellent standard. To further ensure health and safety was upheld, a detailed lift plan was laid out prior to the operations by the Rothen Group team.

Discussing the work of the team, Wayne Moore, the Reactive team manager at the Canal and River Trust says, “The team from the Rothen Group were nothing but professional, attentive, and totally mucked in with all aspects of what was a very delicate and stressful operation. Our main goal was to reopen the canal as soon as possible so that the impact on the boating community was limited.

“Thanks to The Rothen Group’s experienced fabrication team and being able to redirect a crane boat that happened to be in the region to the site in Little Bourton, we were able to achieve this. I know I can always put my trust in The Rothen Group to help us in these situations so solve it as soon as possible. “

Dan Harding, head of Marine Plant Hire at The Rothen Group, says, “Due to the positive and longstanding relationship that The Rothen Group has with the Canal and River Trust and because we have our specialist fleet or crane boats on waterways up and down the country at all times, the emergency was able to be attended too quickly. We were able to respond to the situation swiftly and provide what the Canal and River Trust needed in this urgent situation and are very pleased to we could help resolve the issue.”

As a result of the work of everyone involved, the gate has now been repaired, and leisure boaters can now continue to use the route to travel along the Oxford Canal.