Camden Lock is a small part of Camden Town, London Borough of Camden, England, which was formerly a wharf with stables on the Regent's Canal. It is immediately to the north of Hampstead Road Locks, a twin manually operated lock. The twin locks together are "Hampstead Road Lock 1"; each bears a sign so marked. Hawley Lock and Kentish Town Lock are a short distance away to the east; to the west is a long level pound (also known as tract or reach) – it is to the next lock.
Physical layout
The lock is to the west of the Camden High Street road bridge. When the canal was built, the road was carried over it by a brick bridge, but this was found to be inadequate, and was replaced by a cast iron girder bridge in 1878. The cost was met by the St Pancras Vestry and the Metropolitan Board of Works, and the bridge, which has brick abutments with stone coping, carries a plaque recording this fact. Like the lock, it is Grade II listed.
At the south-east corner of the lock is a building dating from 1815, which was originally constructed to house air compressors for Congreve's boat lift. It was subsequently used as the lock keeper's cottage, and by 2010 had become a Starbucks coffee shop. The building was extended in 1975, when it was also stuccoed, and a crenellated parapet was added.
To the west of the lock is a cast iron roving bridge, dating from the early or mid-19th century. The official name for this bridge on UK Government websites is "Roving Bridge Over Grand Union Canal West of Hampstead Road Lock". This is commonly referred to as the "Roving Bridge" at Hampstead Road Locks, or alternatively as the "diagonal bridge"Roving Bridge, official website of Camden Railway Heritage Trust, accessed February 13, 2026. It is diagonal across the lock, due to the layout of the nearby docks when it was built in 1816. It had wrought iron tension stays when built, but these were replaced by steel cables in the late 20th century, when the deck was also replaced. According to the website of Camden Railroad Heritage Trust: The Regent’s Canal Company decided in mid-1846, after the Roving Bridge had been completed, to provide horses for towing. The stabling at Hampstead Road Locks provided stalls for up to 18 horses. Barges in the southern lock had to be towed across to the northern bank to continue their journey. The rope would pass under the Roving Bridge on the upstream side to be attached to the horse, now on the bridge. The horse then pulled the barge across to the other bank. The force on the rope required to turn the barge against the flow of canal water was so great that the parapet rail of the bridge and the stone parapet of the abutments are deeply scored, evidence of past operations. According to the UK website "Local local history": ...barges travelling up-stream were raised by the lock to the level of the Lock Basin but, when they reached the top they had no motion. The barges were still and had to be towed. ....the barges which had come up on the right hand lock had to be towed across to the towpath bank, before they could continue their journey. This was the purpose of the Roving Bridge.The Diagonal, or Roving Bridge. Camden Lock, accessed February 13, 2026.
The towpath is on the northern bank of the canal at this point, and is carried over the entrance to a dock which formed part of Camden Goods Depot by a cast iron single span bridge with stone capped abutments. It was constructed by J Deeley and Co, of Newport in Monmouthshire between 1848 and 1856. The granite setts which form the approach ramps were taken up and relaid in 1978.
History Regent's Canal was authorised by an act of Parliament, the Regent's Canal Act 1812 (52 Geo. 3. c. cxcv), obtained on 13 July 1812, for a canal from Paddington to Limehouse. When the directors first met, they had decided that all locks would be paired, so that some of the water from a lock emptying could be used to fill the adjacent chamber. Water saving was an important factor, as they knew that water supply would be problematic. Colonel William Congreve, a military engineer who was later knighted, proposed the use of hydropneumatic boat lifts instead of locks. Various designs of a similar nature had been tried in the early 19th century, notably at Mells on the Dorset and Somerset Canal and at Tardebigge on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, but none had proved successful. Congreve's design used two water-filled caissons, which were moved up and down by hand, assisted by compressed air trapped beneath the tanks. With no working examples of such lifts, the directors were understandably cautious, but following an engineer's report, decided that Maudslay & Co should build a prototype at Camden Town. There were a number of technical problems, with the canal company blaming Maudslays for poor design, and Maudslays blaming the canal company for changing the original design and failing to maintain the structure. Congreve's claim that it could be operated in just three minutes was never proved, and in 1818, the directors decided to cut their losses, and reverted to using paired locks. The lift was sold at auction in November 1819, and the 13 lots raised just £404.
Construction of the canal was overseen by architect John Nash, with James Morgan acting as supervising engineer. Hampstead Road Locks were built between 1818 and 1820, with the chambers made of brick and stone coping along the top. The two locks are arranged side by side, with an island platform between them. Each chamber has two gates at both ends, and they have been Grade II listed since 1992 (this is the initial, most common category of listing). They were the first of 12 pairs of similar locks which dropped the level of the canal by to reach Limehouse Basin. The transfer of water between the chambers made operation of the locks more complex, and so they were permanently manned during the heyday of the canal, with lock-keepers working a shift system to provide 24-hour cover. As the use of the canal declined, in part due to railway competition, manning levels were reduced, and padlocks were used to prevent operation of the locks at the weekends.
Following the end of commercial traffic and the growth of leisure boating, the locks reverted to operation by boat crews, and in order to prevent flooding caused by incorrect operation of the paddles, in the 1980s most of the pairs were converted to single locks, by replacing the lower gates of one chamber with a fixed weir. Hampstead Road Lock is the only one where both chambers have been retained, although they are now emptied conventionally. In November 2013, the lock 1B (by the market) was fully drained for maintenance; the public were invited for the weekend of the 16th and 17th of that month to see the infrastructure for themselves. A similar operation was carried out on lock 1A in 2016.
Camden Goods Depot Camden Goods Depot was the London freight terminus of the London and Birmingham Railway, the first inter-city railway to reach London. Robert Stephenson was the engineer in charge of the project, and he picked the site for the goods depot so that direct interchange with the Regent's Canal was available, from where freight could reach the London docks. A site on the north bank of the canal was obtained from Lord Southampton in January 1837, and the goods depot was completed in 1839. Major features were a stationary winding engine house, which was used to pull trains up the incline from to Camden, a shed for stabling of locomotives, 18 coke ovens which were used to make smokeless fuel, two goods sheds, stables for 50 horses, a wagon repair shop, and various ancillary buildings. Much of the site was supported on brick vaults. Pickfords, the public carrier, built a warehouse on the south bank of the canal in 1841. It was designed by William Cubitt, was extended in 1846, and was the first rail, road and canal interchange building in Britain, being linked to the goods depot by a wooden railway bridge over the canal.
In 1846, the London and Birmingham Railway merged with several other railway companies to become the London and North Western Railway (LNWR). Just prior to the merger, they decided to build their own interchange facilities, rather than using Pickfords, and this was carried out by the LNWR. Semple's Wharf, on the north bank of the canal, was purchased, and the towpath bridge was built by 1846. A basin and dock were built once the sale of the wharf was completed in 1847, and a new rail link to the goods depot was added. As part of this expansion, two new engine sheds were built, one to the north of the tracks for goods locomotives, and one to the south for passenger locomotives. The southern shed was demolished in 1966, but the northern one, known as the Roundhouse, is Grade II* listed. A second wooden railway bridge crossed the canal to the former Pickfords warehouse.
Following the construction on lines to link to the East India and West India Docks in 1851, which became the North London Railway in 1853, further upgrading of the goods depot was necessary to cope with the volumes of traffic. This took place between 1854 and 1856, and included the enlargement and realignment of the canal basin. When completed, it was with railway tracks on both sides running to the edge of the canal. Four new stable blocks were built next to the Hampstead Road, and the complex was linked to the marshalling yards by the Eastern Horse Tunnel. A Western Horse Tunnel was also built to link the goods depot to new stables near the present Gloucester Avenue, to the west of the mainline tracks. In 1864, the LNWR built a new goods shed, at the time the largest in the country, and in 1876, additional stables were built to the north of Gloucester Avenue. Access to the Western Horse Tunnel was by a set of horse stairs, which have survived. The LNWR good shed was enlarged in 1931, but subsequently demolished. The goods depot closed around 1980, and many of the stables were demolished in 2000. The Interchange Warehouse was remodelled in 1989, to become offices, and further restoration work occurred in 2007, when some of the later additions were removed. It is now known as The Interchange.
Despite some demolition, the complex of buildings, which includes parts of the goods depot, the winding engine house, the Roundhouse, the eastern portal of Primrose Hill railway tunnel, and the canal, represent one of the most important groupings of 19th-century transport infrastructure to have survived in Britain. The survival of the horse tunnel and stairs shows the importance of horse-drawn transport in the developing railway system.
Restoration 1960s to present Commercial traffic on the Regent's Canal had almost ceased by the late 1960s, and the area had become run down. Much of the industry had moved away, partly as a result of the passing of the Clean Air Act 1956, but also helped by government grants to encourage companies to move away from the city. The area around Hampstead Road Locks was populated by disused warehouses, derelict land and a towpath which desperately needed some repairs to be made. In addition, the area was blighted by the proposed London Motorway Box, which would have seen much of the canal culverted, and a sliproad built over the site of the locks. To the north of the lock was a wharf, owned by British Waterways, but rented out to Dingwall's since 1946. The company made packing cases, but their business had been hit by the change to containers, and in 1971 they decided to sell up. They had about ten years left on a 25-year lease.