01 · Mill Lane

The wicket on Mill Lane

Where the pavement stops and the cut begins.

The Long Cut starts in a gap in the hawthorn. Two oak posts and a lintel make a wicket low enough that a cyclist ducks and a child does not. Low Field Office set new posts in March 2024, after the east post split along the grain. The oak is unfinished, so it silvers with the hedge.

From the lane you see the water before you hear it. The cut runs straight for forty metres, then bends toward Hollow Step. The rails are set for a hand, not for a horse. Clear width is 1.16 m. Ned Harrow measured it twice, because the old opening had narrowed as the posts leaned.

Oak posts, 1.45 m · Lintel span 1.50 m · Rebuilt March 2024

02 · Hollow Step

The cistern at Hollow Step

A stone tank the width of a small room, left open.

Hollow Step is a gritstone tank set flush with the towpath. Brick barges watered here. The rim is one course, and the water sits 180 mm below it, dark and still. In late summer the surface holds a skin of pollen. A round capstone rests on the near corner, the one the barge hands used as a step.

We left the cistern open. A lid would have made it safe and made it nothing. The only addition is the memory of a rail on the towpath side, painted the same clay as the joints at the belvedere. The tank is 1.55 m square. Do not lean on the rim. The stone dusts off on a wool coat.

Gritstone · 1.55 m square · Water 180 mm below the rim

03 · Far Bend

Belvedere Three

The last lookout, and the only one you can stand on.

Belvedere Three is a square shaft of pale limestone with a roof on four posts. From the platform the water reads as one line, the hawthorn as another, and the mill roof at Far Bend as a third. The stair is outside the shaft: twelve treads, no handrail on the water side. A clay rail marks the edge you are meant to trust.

Three treads were replaced in 2025. The new stone is a shade warmer and will not match for a decade. That is the point of a path that is still being walked. Platform height is 1.55 m. The roof clears a raised hand. This is the end of the model. The cut goes on. The study stops here.

Limestone · Platform at 1.55 m · Twelve treads · Three replaced in 2025