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. I did, in fact, introduce myself in the Virtual Pub section. But for those who didn't spot that, my name's Andy.

...the next one of Norwood 2 we generally referred to as Sid's as Sid was the lock keeper there.... Ah, yes. I remember Sid. His house was on the inside - but I'd misremembered it as being beside the top lock not the second lock down. Tommy Osbourne ...moved to the top a bit later. I remember him (and his son Albert) but I don't think I knew which lockhouse he lived in. Didn't Ken Dakin live at Kings for a while? Cale Lane was in the next one down. Now I think about it, wasn't Caleb in the house on the outside at the top of the thick? And what was Mrs Lane's name - I think she was one of the Humphries girls (as in Tom's sister)? Ozzley I think is just (mis)pronounciation of Osterley... Undoubtedly, yes. We always called Hunton Change "Geordie's", though he was a lengthsman rather than a lock keeper. I remember that name now you mention it. I think Change Lock was more common but I didn't know where it originated until your post so ta for that . ...Sarah's 2 ... never did know if she preceded Albert or came after. Because Alberts was more commonly used than Sarah's, I tend to assume she was a predecessor of Albert. But I don't know. Nor did I know about Herman the German (or, indeed, multiple Hermans) on the Junction - they were after my time I suspect. But, going a bit off topic, there was a German guy called Pete who lived at Lapworth and worked for the Trust that ran the South Stratford (before BW took it over) and he was always known as The German. I don't want to sound sententious but I think it is important to record these vernacular names before they slip beyond living memory. As part of a largely oral tradition, unless they are set down they will be lost as the people who used them die. Preserving artefacts is, in some ways, easier than preserving traditions and cultures. Does it matter if the nomenclature, working techniques and ethos of the working boatmen are lost? I think to those of us who were there the answer is emphatically 'yes'.

Not really much help to you but we relied on the dog barking as our main deterrent to theft.

And here it is. I've listed the names of locks on the Junction (and some of the pounds) in common use in the late 1960s and into the 1970s. The list is off the top of my head (but the handwritten list in this thread has been a useful aide memoir) so these names are a rough guide not a definitive list. I picked up these names from boatmen and BW staff (many of whom were ex-boatmen) and I think many of them differed from the 'official' BW names. As noted in a previous post, very few locks were referred to by number by boatmen although presumably BW staff knew the numbers; I never memorised any of them (except, obviously, Lock Eighty). No doubt there are errors and, possibly, omissions in the list; I've nothing at hand to check against so corrections and further info are very welcome. Where there were common alternatives I've put them in brackets. I'll start from Cowley as I've previously posted the names down Brentford end (or at least those that I remember). Locks: Cowley Uxbridge (Kings Mill) Denham (occasionally Deep Lock) Widewater (Harefield) Black Jacks Coppermill Springwell Stockers Ricky Lock Eighty (Walkers, Moor Lock, Lot Mead) Croxley Casey Bridge Iron Bridge Albert's Two (Sarah's Two) Lady Capels Hunton Bridge Two (latterly Patterson's) Hunton Change Five Paddle Langley Bottom of the New 'Uns Nash Mills Middle of the New 'Uns Yard Lock, Apsley Top of the the New 'Uns Boxmoor Fishery Slaughters Bournend locks (Winkwell Locks) Sewage Lock Bottom Sidelock (often Bottomside) Top Sidelock (often Topside) Sweeps Two Broadwater (Berko) Gasworks Two Bush's Northchurch Dodswell Two Cowroast Maffas locks (the bottom lock was sometimes called Starrupsend) Two-Below-Maffas (Peter's Two, Storkie's Two) Nagshead locks Corkets Two Pooles Neales Church Grove Leighton Stoke Hammond (sometimes Three Locks) Talbots Fenny Cosgrove Stoke locks Buckby locks Braunston locks Pounds: From Suttons (where a lot of boats came off the Coventry bound for the Junction) the pounds were known as: Morton pound Braunston pound Summit pound Blisworth pound Stoke pound Fenny pound Water Eaton pound Stoke Hammond pound Jackdaw pound Leighton pound South of Leighton, my memory is much hazier. The section from Church Lock to the Nagshead was often referred to as 'The Fields'; the long pound above Grove was known as the Two Mile (although I'm sure it was only a mile-and-a-half). The pound above Nagshead locks was usually known as Pitstone pound. Below Cowroast, the first long pound was Northchurch pound (and it leaked badly) but I can't recall other specific names until much lower down. The river pound below the New 'Uns was Langley Stream. The section from Lady Capels to Casey Bridge was collectively 'The Parks'. The pound above Ricky was the Ricky pound and below it the Stockers pound. IIRC 'Coppermill Stream' referred only to the tail race and river section below Coppermill lock. The pound above Widewater was sometimes referred to as the Harefield pound; the one below was invariably known as Denham Straight. I don't recall a name for the short turnover pound below Denham lock but the next one was the Uxbridge pound. The long pound between Cowley lock and the top of Brentford locks was the Cowley pound (the branches were known as the Slough cut and the Paddington Arm - just 'the arm' if it was clear by context where you meant). Most of the other pounds we identified by reference to the adjacent locks. Warwick section On the Warwick cut, the pounds I remember names for were: Tomlow pound (below Wigrams) Cement pound / Shop pound (below the thick of Itchington locks) Bascote pound (below Itchington bottom lock) Longhole pound (below Welsh Road lock) Leamington pound (also sometimes 'the valley pound') Saltersford pound (above Warwick locks) The eight-mile (above Hatton locks) The ten-mile (above Knowle locks) Addenda Boatmen's corruptions of place names still in use in the 1970s included Noble for Newbold, Maffers for Marsworth, and Arriston for Atherstone (there were several others but I can't call them to mind) and boatmen tended to pronounce Birmingham as either Brummajum or Bernigun. The locks below Berko were very occasionally referred to collectively as 'the wet locks'; working the section down from Cowroast was sometimes described as "all bike, mop and windlass" for obvious reasons (I also heard the phrase used to describe doing the barrels). Ah! Yes, you're right; one of them was called Clitheroes (though I don't know which lock is 99) I've heard that usage too. See my list. It was generally pronounced (or mispronounced) Starrupsend. Good info - thank you

I hope someone does! It's on the fringe of my memory but not being able to pin it down is very vexing. You sure it was Mary's not Sarah's? Some of the older boatmen referred to those locks as Sarah's Two (although Albert's was the most common name). When I get round to it I'll try to remember the rest of the Junction lock names and type up a list. I can remember them all from Brentford to Boxmoor but I'm a bit hazy from there to Leighton.

Yup, Itchington. The list has several phonetic spellings - as the OP explained, the boatwoman only learned to write late in life. A bit of a puzzle there as she has definitely put '8' against Radford and '7' against Itchington. Those collective groups are the Radford Ten and the Itchington Ten. The others listed for the Warwick cut is more or less as they were still known into the 1970s: Camp Hill (sometimes called Bordesley); Knowle; Hatton (there were individual names for several of the locks in the flight); Warwick Two (sometimes called Cape Two and very occasionally referred to as Doris's), Radford Ten, Itchington Ten; and Wigrams. From memory, the Radford Ten individually were: Bascote rising lock; middle lock Bascote; bottom of Bascote; Welsh Road; Billy Mill's (occasionally referred to as Wood Lock); Fosse top; Fosse middle; Fosse bottom; Radford bottom. The Itchington Ten used to have a BW sign naming 'Stockton Locks' but I never heard them called that. I suspect, however, that 'Stockton' was an official name as the cast quoins of the former narrow locks are identified with the letter 'S'. At all events, they were invariably the Itchington Ten to boatmen. There were fewer individual names for specific locks among the ten - well, fewer that I heard. Again from (fallible) memory the named ones were Itchington top, Limkiln lock (the third or fourth one down, can't remember which), bottom of the thick; Shop lock and Itchington bottom. Sorry, I wasn't suggesting you did. I accept your point about folk song and story being an engine of preservation up to a point.

Just remembered (or, rather, forgot) another name -Gregory's. But I'm b*ggered if I can remember where that was. Anyone?

That handwritten list (above) is much as I remember the names we used late 1960s / early 1970s for locks on the Junction (there were also vernacular names for locks on the Warwick section). We trainees picked the names up from the boatmen; very few were still boating when I was on the boats but many of them worked on maintenance for BW. With respect to the post above, I'm not entirely convinced that a theatre company song is the most definitive source. It's also worth noting that the vernacular names changed over time. For example, a lock might be referred to by a long-serving keeper's name for decades but that name would evolve as a new keep established length of service. As an aside, the boatmen usually lumped the locks below Norwood together as 'Brentford locks' (as in the handwritten list above). However, there were individual names within that catch-all - I can't remember all of them but they included: Top Lock (or Norwood Top); (we called the next one Caleb's but I think that was a comparatively recent coinage adopted because Caleb Lane lived in the house there); Top o' the Thick; Asylum Lock; Bottom o' the Thick; Ozzley (also, IIRC, Osbournes); Kings; Dockhead. I can never remember anyone colloquially referring to Junction locks by their numbers. To this day I have only a hazy idea of the lock numbers - I know the bottom of Braunston is Lock 1 but that's about as far as I can get from memory. However, there was one notable exception - we almost always referred to Walkers (also known as Moor Lock) by the name Lock Eighty. OK, here's a teaser. Where was Molly Lump's? Where were Sarah's Two? Where were Storkie's Two?

Yup! Sounds like Janusz - although, on reflection, a lump hammer and mooring bar would have been even more characteristic. Well, good luck with that! I can honestly say - though doubtless it will provoke howls of outrage in some quarters - that the Petter PD2 was one of the most malign and evil pieces of machinery ever devised by hunmankind, a recalcitrant bad-tempered unco-operative conglomeration of cast steel hiding under a tin-can chip frier and relying on rubber bands to prevent it turning itself into a volcano. 'Twas a clattering barking hateful beastly loathesome engine, an abomination, truly the worst creation in the long and multi-faceted history of diesel power. And if the weather was chilly you needed Geoff Capes to start the thing. I still bear the scars. The Lister JP2, by contrast, was a prince among marine engines, a veritable paragon of the arts and sciences, a joy, a delight. It was all that an engine should be - friendly, unhurried and unflustered, steady and reassuring, solid and dependable. And green, of course - all enginers should be green. The JP2's melifluous chuffing was the sound of contentment and peace - listening to it under load convinced you that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world. What's more, a child could swing it into life even on a frosty morning. Er, I suspect we may be drifting off topic here ...

He was indeed. I worked for Janusz for several years. In fact, if he and his wife Ruth had not befriended me I doubt if I'd have gone onto the boats full-time. Januscz was co-owner (with Robin Hewitt) of Union Canal Carriers Ltd during the late 1960s and the 1870s. They started at Foxton I think before moving their operation to bottom lock, Braunston. Janusz and Ruth were killed in the mid-1970s (to my shame I can't remember what year) when a lorry went out of control at Ironbridge, Salops, and crashed into a cafe where they were sitting in a window seat. Tragically, both their sons are now dead too. Below is a photo I took at Braunston (no idea of the date). Sorry about the poor image quality but this is a second generation copy.

I'm very glad you did. The pics below bottonm lock must be about 1972 or 1973 - that's exactly how I remember it there at that time. Of the people you name, Ted Ward and John Duddington are no longer with us but I don't know if Alf is still alive - he'd be a fair old age by now.

And another shot of Stamford and Lyra at Ash Island. We appear to be living on the motor - can't remember why - even though the washing is hung on the boat. If you look on the boat's mastbeam you can see our dog Vulcan (an uncastrated terrier whose priapic reputation stretched from Brummagem to Brentford).

Below is a rather grainy (second generation) photo of Stamford then owned by T&D Murrell paired with Lyra then owned by Collier brothers. The pair is winding on the Thames below Ash Island, Molesey, in early October 1976. The job was retailling coal to riverside properties and the pair was crewed by Andy Farquarson and Sandy MacDonald (that's her wielding the longshaft in the photo).

Well, more 'joined the forum' than 'back to the canals' - the cut itself is now very different from when I worked boats so I content myself with walking beside it. Several other interests and incarnations, in fact. The current obsession is walking up mountains. When I still had hair, you mean? Unfortunately, at my advanced age I find it hard to remember much before last Tuesday week unless nurse reminds me Which was Nebulae? Was it the one owned by Mike Samualson with the luxury conversion under faux 'cloths'?