Coxes Lock Then and Now . . . by Avril Lansdell

Among a batch of canal cards sent to me by the Leprosy Mission postcard bureau was one from a tear-off calendar. I do not know who commissioned the calendar, but it was printed by Judges of Hastings, and show Coxes Lock on the Wey Navigation with two holiday boats in the lock. The scene was photographed by Jim Shead in the late 1990's and is a great contrast to my other cards of Coxes Lock which was pictured by Hugh McKnight in 1965 and shows wide barges moored by the loading by at the then working flour mill.

In the 1960s, the grain was brought to the mill from the Pool of London by barges which traveled only as far as Coxes Lock Mill; all other commercial traffic has ceased on the Wey by then. (The barges, in earlier years, had carried timber, grain, flour, chalk, gravel and other loads from Guildford to the Pool of London, drawn by pairs of horses as far as Weybridge, until 1959, then in convoys down the Thames drawn by a tug.) A small tug took the barges to Coxes Lock in the 1960's to and from the Thames.

In 1965 Harry Stevens, the last of four generations of Wey Navigation wharfingers and owners announced that he was closing his carrying company and would give the Wey Navigation to the National Trust for a leisure waterway. This meant the end of all commercial carrying on the Wey and the grain for the mill was thereafter carried by road. (Editor's note: There was at least a trial of carrying by narrowboat pair trans-shipping from a barge below the entrance lock as I witnessed this in the late 1970's - TE)

Coxes Lock mill went on working until 8th April 1983. The building were bought by a developer, who converted them into luxury apartments.

The sales brochure for these apartments is very impressive, with many photographs of the mill's three buildings and a rather (unfortunately) inaccurate history of the mill. No two of the apartments are quite alike, as all three of the buildings are converted and mooring marked our along the bank beside the mill where once several barges could tie up without obstructing any other traffic.

There are one, two and three bedroom flats plus three galleries, duplex, penthouses; all apartments have balconies with an outlook on either the river Wey, the lock, or the mill pond above the lock. In the late 1980's a number of houses were built behind the mill and named Millpond Court. These and the converted mill buildings can be seen on the 1990's postcard.

It is hard to believe that the two postcards show the same place, but I can assure you that I have known it for thirty-four years and indeed it is. These two cards are a good example of how much we can learn from our postcards with a little extra research. The 1980's sales brochure is in the Elmbridge Museum at Weybridge.