The bed for the remaining 50 yds or so is incorporated into this garden, and partly built over, up to the site of Grove Bridge.
Length: 700yds/640m
O.S. Reference: 395891 to 400894
Water Level height A.O.D.:
Features:
From Barwell Link Road the bed is filled to the top of Grove Top Lock, about 10 yds. from the stile.
The lock itself is substantially complete, and filled with household rubbish deposited over the last 80 years or so. The lower gates have been replaced with concrete block walls, to maintain the appearance of the tail of the lock.
The pound (Elm Farm Pound) between this Lock and Limekiln Lock is 300 yds. long, and is in water, having been cleared between Christmas 1988 and late 1990. It first filled in January 1991.
A few yards below Top Lock a pipe on the nearside enters the Canal through an attractive brick-edged opening, and supplies water to the section from a spring and drainage from nearby housing development.
Limekiln Dam and its wing walls were built in summer 1990 of concrete blocks. The dam is anchored into the stop plank grooves of the lock.
Limekiln Lock has been lowered to about the upper water level. A massive poplar tree is growing from the top cill. It is full to about half its depth with miscellaneous rubbish.
From the tail of the lock for about 100 yards the bed is filled and has been incorporated into a cultivated field. A culvert leads a drainage ditch into the channel from the offside at the end of the lower wing walls, and this has been continued in a concrete pipe under the field.
| At the end of the field, the course of Letcombe Brooke appears to have been altered, so that it covers the bed of the Canal for a few yards up to the site of the siphonic aqueduct. One wall of this still stands, incorporated into a garden. The bed for the remaining 50 yds or so is incorporated into this garden, and partly built over, up to the site of Grove Bridge. |
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Grove Bridge has been lowered and the road widened over it. It is not known precisely what services run in it, but they are believed to be substantial.
Serious restoration of this section cannot be undertaken until the level of the canal under Grove Bridge and Mably Way has been determined.
The well-maintained towpath along the whole of this length is a public right of way.
See Description. The water supply is generally inadequate in summer.
There are two hostelries in Grove.
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