Lock holds key to glimpse of the past

How the local landscape has changed in 150 years! I was fascinated by a watercolour added recently to the Surrey Heritage collection held at Surrey History Centre in Goldsworth Road, Woking.

The painting by Ada Long (born in 1867) shows lock nine of the Basingstoke Canal with the Invalid Convict Prison in Knaphill visible on elevated land in the background.

It alludes to the local topography on which the modern town of Woking resides: mainly open heathland, with some areas of deciduous woodland.

The soil, both around and to the north of the modern Woking town centre, is sandy: geologically speaking, on the “Bagshot Beds”. To the west (where St John’s and Knaphill are today) the ground is higher due to the “Bracklesham Beds”, which have a higher clay content, so brickmaking historically took place in that area.

Ada’s painting shows the scene looking west where the canal clings to the edge of a slope. St John’s Road is away to the left and Goldsworth Park is in the lower land to the right. (The junction of Bampton Way with the appropriately named Lockfield Drive is at the bottom of the slope at this point.)

I spotted Ada’s painting in one of Surrey History Centre’s monthly email newsletters, around a year ago, after the artwork had been purchased by Surrey History Trust on behalf of the centre.

This past summer I decided to see how the scene painted by Ada compares with that today. The photo shown for comparison was kindly taken by my wife Sue.

It appears Ada imagined the scene from a viewpoint a couple of metres higher.

You can see that whereas Ada’s scene shows heathland and scrub between the lock and the Convict Prison, the view today is dominated by trees, not present in her time.

Today, just beyond the lock and hidden in the photo by the trees to the right of the canal, is a row of cottages. And whereas the next lock (lock 10) of the canal is visible in her painting, it is hidden today by a small bridge giving access to the cottages.

Trees hide the modern housing in the landscape up to the former prison and the housing on the higher ground where the prison used to be.

The prison opened as the Invalid Convict Prison in 1859 to house invalid male prisoners whose health prevented them doing hard labour. It closed 40 years later.

Then, together with a women's prison built close by, it was converted into the Inkerman Military Barracks. The name derived from the Battle of Inkerman, a successful conflict of 1854 during the Crimean War.

In 1947 the Royal Military Police made it their depot. The barracks finally closed in 1970, when the site was sold to the local council and developed for residential use. The former military accommodation on Raglan Road is all that remains of the former Barracks today.

Surrey History Trust (which purchased Ada’s watercolour for Surrey History Centre) is an independent charity that supports the work of Surrey Heritage, a part of Surrey County Council, in caring for the collections in Surrey History Centre and preserving and promoting the county's history.

Thanks to the Trust, Surrey History Centre has been able to secure many rare documents, artworks and historical items at auction and other sources.

See https://tinyurl.com/surreyhistorytrust for more details.