London Teddington Locks satellite view

I find the history of locks in Europe fascinating. I’m sure my fascination with it is linked to my fascination with marine traffic in general, but my interest is probably stirred mostly by the tendency of America to pave, plow down, or otherwise make invisible much of its past. Though locks wouldn’t have existed in the east coast Florida of my childhood, steamboat traffic had been common but Florida’s tendency to avoid the past meant that there was very little remaining history of the wharves, ports, or boats of that era.

Seen here is a satellite view (thanks to Google) of Teddington Lock (dating back to 1810) on the west side of London. Because of the twists and turns of the Thames, the orientation of this image can be somewhat confusing. The Thames flows eastward, in a very twisting path, into the North Sea, but at this particular spot the downstream portion of the Thames is on the left (west) side of the picture. Most important, Teddington is the end of the tidal flow of the Thames (the left side of the picture), and the Teddington Weir (the ‘dam’ on the right side of the picture) is the lowest on the Thames (sort-of, there’s another weir further downstream at Richmond, but somehow it doesn’t count the same.)
Skipping over the mumble-jumble of the previous paragraph, what’s important here and shows in later pictures is, starting from the right, the weir (the ‘dam’), the footbridge (clearly marked), and then the locks – all of which are in the accompanying photographs.

The best source I could find about the Teddington Lock is Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddington_Lock

(Part of a documentation of 2018 exploration/reflection on Brexit and populist movements in Europe, keyword Europe2018)