Of all the great countryside controversies, the debate in the pages of BBC Countryfile Magazine over which is Britain’s longest set of staircase locks on a canal is one of the fiercest.
It stems from Tim Relf’s travel piece on Leicestershire (in the February 2025 issue), in which a caption written by the editorial team claimed Foxton Locks on the Grand Union Canal for the title. Since then, readers have put forth Caen Hill on the Kennet and Avon in Wiltshire, Tardebigge Locks on the Worcester and Birmingham Canal, and Neptune’s Staircase on the Caledonian Canal in Scotland.
Everything depends on how you define your terms. Strictly, a staircase lock is one where each lock directly opens into the one above or below it – ie one lock’s lower gates are the upper gates of the next lock.
Foxton has two sets of five staircase locks but the sets are separated by a short stretch of water known as a ‘pound’. Caen Hill has 29 locks and Tardebigge has 30, but, crucially, these are separated by pounds and so are not staircase locks.
The longest single flight of staircase locks is Neptune’s Staircase, comprising eight locks over a quarter of a mile. Hopefully, that’s the dispute settled!
Top image: Foxton Locks on the Grand Union Canal, Leceistershire
