Lock-keeper's Cottage is a retired hand-made and hand-painted David Winter Cottage in it's original box and with a Certificate of Authenticity.

"In days when road transport was difficult and dangerous, Britian's network of canals linked all the navigable rivers, and provided a safer, albeit slower, mode of travel

'Locks' are an ingeniously simple device comprising two pairs of heavy, water-tight gates that are built and fixed in the canal itself. The path of the canal wound its way through many different elevations, and as a result, the river water would have flowed and sunk to the lowest level, making the canals useless hence the 'locks'. These great pairs of gates are to be found all along the canal route. They kept the water level at the correct height, effectively creating 'steps' of water which would enable a narrowboat to travel the river even at higher elevations throughout the country.

A boat wishing to pass 'upwards' through a Lock, would come to rest inside the great gates. Sluices in the 'up-river' doors would allow the water to fill the chamber between the gates, until the boat was at the same height. The up-river doors would then be opened, and the boat coulf continue on its journey. The reverse would happen for a boat travelling downstream.

The peculiar curved roof of the Lock-keeper's Cottage came to be, because the Canal building company were running out of money and left the construction of these riverside cottages to the Navvies, who were the people who dug the canals, but these builders only knew how to build tunnels and consequently the roofs were curved and made of brick, and were known as 'barrel vaulted roofs'. these types of buildings can still be seen on the Stratford-upon-Avon canal."

...from the Certificate of Authenticity