Linton Lock

From the Archives: NarrowBoat, Autumn 2015

Joseph Boughey

Joseph Boughey explores Linton Lock through the West Yorkshire Archive

The former British Waterways collection held by the West Yorkshire Archive Service at Wakefield includes much material on large and significant concerns, like the Aire & Calder. But it also contains many papers about a far smaller waterway: the Linton Lock Navigation, which covers a short section of the Yorkshire Ouse. Histories of this navigation have been based on whatever records could be discerned at the time; for instance, one of the most recent, Pat Jones’ Linton Lock Navigation in the 20th Century, draws upon records of the hydropower installation opened at Linton Lock in 1923. While the collection of papers on Linton Lock held at Wakefield are substantial, this piece focuses on just two, which represent the kind of incomplete insights that many surviving records provide. File C299/18/7/1 is a bundle of papers headed “Linton Lock Misc Traffic Office”. This largely comprises details of traffics and tolls passing between 1917 and 1930, although some records…