Description: Trent Lock looking north with The Steamboat Inn on the right. The River Trent is to the rear of the photographer. Reflecting its name, the inn has a 'funnel' and a couple of air vent cowls mounted above the entrance.
Trent Lock marks the commencement of the Erewash Canal, which runs for 12 miles (19 km) from the River Trent via Long Eaton, Sandiacre and Ilkeston to Langley Mill with 14 locks. The Canal was engineered by John Varley and opened in 1779. Serving the industrialised Erewash Valley with its many coal mines, iron works and factories, it remained a useful transport artery well into the 20th century and it was only after World War Two that it began to fall into disuse. The section north of Gallows Inn at Ilkeston up to Langley Mill was declared unnavigable in 1962 and closure was proposed. The Erewash Canal Preservation and Development Association was formed in 1968 and after much restoration work the Canal was reopened throughout. In the 1980s it was duly upgraded from a 'remainder' waterway to 'cruiseway' status.
The Erewash had been taken over by the Grand Union Canal in 1932 and the locks are numbered in that concern's sequence northwards from London. Hence, Trent Lock, although the first on the Canal, is No 60.
Trent Lock is, in fact, just part of a major canal intersection hereabouts, a sort of canal cross-roads where the Erewash Canal and the Soar Navigation connect with the River Trent by means of the Cranfleet Cut downstream, and the Trent and Mersey Canal via the Trent and the Sawley Cut upstream, both cuts avoiding non-navigable stretches of the river.