Beside the canal at Bourne was an important boat building and repair yard.
This lock is unique, as it is wide enough to take barges from the Severn and long enough to take barges from the Thames. This was necessary so that Severn barges could reach the dry docks in the boat-building and repair yard, located approximately one hundred yards to the east.
To conserve water, the T&S Company required a narrowboat to wait for another to go through a lock together, particularly at this big lock. When one boat passed through on its own in 1854, the master was taken to court, and as he could not pay the fine, he was committed to Horsley House of Correction for 14 days.
From the start, the T&S Company established a boat-building yard to the east of Bourne Lock. The site was later dominated by the GW railway embankment, which crossed the canal via a viaduct.
Over the years, the yard produced hundreds of barges and narrowboats. The facilities included a timber store, two dry docks for repairing vessels, a steam chest for bending wood and a house for the resident shipwright. The early shipwrights were much involved with developing vessel designs to suit the different locks of the two connected canals.
This sketch shows how Bourne Mill became enclosed by the T&S Canal on the north and the GW Railway embankment on the south.
By the 1860s, the mill was producing mattress-wool, mill-puff and shoddy, and in the twentieth century, umbrella and walking sticks. Small businesses, including the Felt Café now occupy the buildings. The millpond on the left has now been converted into a car park.
Boatman sent to prison from Stroud Journal 19 August 1854 p4.
History of Bourne Mill from https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/glos/vol11/pp119-132.
