Limehouse Cut

The Limehouse Cut is a largely straight, broad canal in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in east London which links the lower reaches of the Lee Navigation to the River Thames. Opening on 17 September 1770, and widened for two-way traffic by 1777, it is the oldest canal in the London area. Although short, it has a diverse social and industrial history. Formerly discharging directly into the Thames, since 1968 it has done so indirectly by a connection through Limehouse Basin.

The Cut is about 1.4 miles (2.2 km) long. It turns in a broad curve from Bow Locks, where the Lee Navigation meets Bow Creek; it then proceeds directly south-west through Tower Hamlets, finally making a short hook to connect to Limehouse Basin.

Already in Elizabethan times there was a vigorous river trade between towns on the River Lea and the City of London, but watermen had to await the tides and row round the Isle of Dogs. Thus, in 1588 (wrote G. B. G. Bull):

A fleet of 44 barges, bearing such names as Maltsack, Ramshead, Greyhound, Pheasant, Primrose, Hind and Cock, with a total capacity of 1100 quarters were engaged in transporting wheat and malt from the Hertfordshire markets of Ware and Hoddesdon to Queenhythe in London. Barges were loaded at Ware on Saturday, reached Bow Lock on Monday, and awaited the opening of the gates with the turn of the tide. Brisk rowing on the Thames brought the barges to London within four hours of clearing the Lea. The return journey, with passengers or with a load of coal, pig-iron or salt, began on the ebb tide. When the tide changed, Bow Lock opened once more. From thence to Waltham took six hours, and to Ware six hours more.

The goods came from even further afield: by 1663 the road from Huntingdon and Cambridge was worn out "by reason of the great Trade of Barley and Mault, that cometh to Ware, and so is conveyed by water to the City of London". In 1739, 25,000 tons of malt and "all sorts of Grain, Flower, and other Commodities" went by the Lee. When the Limehouse Cut was built this traffic had increased to 36,000 tons—about a quarter of London's grain supply.

The Limehouse Cut was authorised by the Lee Navigation Improvement Act 1767 (7 Geo. 3. c. 51), after the engineer John Smeaton identified the need to make several cuts and to replace existing flash locks on the river with pound locks. It occurred to Smeaton as an afterthought to have a cut from Bromley to the Thames at Limehouse and his assistant Thomas Yeoman had the same idea. Thomas Yeoman was appointed as the surveyor to the River Lee trustees, and one of his first tasks was to investigate a route for the Limehouse Cut. As authorised by Parliament, it would provide a short-cut from the Lee Navigation at Bromley-by-Bow to the River Thames "at or near Limehouse Bridge Dock", avoiding the tortuous curves of the lower reaches of the River Lea at Bow Creek, and the need to wait for the tide to make the long detour round the Isle of Dogs. The trustees accepted Yeoman's proposed route on 14 September 1767, which would terminate at Dingley's Wharf at Limehouse.

The contract for the excavation of the cut was split into two, with Charles Dingley, owner of the wharf and also a trustee, getting the southern section up to Rose Lane and Jeremiah Ilsley getting the northern section to Bow Locks. Dingley contracted to make his end of the canal for 10d. per foot; Ilsley's charge was 7d. per foot.

The construction of Bromley Lock was let as a separate contract, which was awarded to a millwright from Bromley called Mr Cooper, who also built some of the locks on the Edmonton Cut. The lock into the Thames was designed by Mr Collard, another of the trustees, who produced a model and plan for the structure. The estimated cost was £1,547, but Collard had miscalculated the length, and it had to be increased by 16 feet (4.9 m), resulting in the estimate's rising to £1,696.