‘The pound lock is a chamber with pairs of mitred gates at each end, a design conceived by Leonardo da Vinci about 1495, and this method of moving vessels from one reach level to another uses far less water than flashing a barge through a weir and does not flood the adjoining land. The earliest locks were built at Iffley, Sandford and Swift Ditch, Abingdon by the Oxford-Burcot Commission in the late 1620s, but... It was not until the formation of the Thames Conservancy in 1857 that work began in earnest culminating in the building of Eynsham Lock and Kings Lock (the next lock downstream), the last pound locks to be built on the river in 1928.’
Maureen McCreadie - extract from ‘A History of the River Thames at Eynsham’ (opens in new window).