By Pete Cadogan (Former Staff 1969 - 2003):

The job of opening and closing the sluice gates near Salisbury House (as it was) used to go with being in charge of the Boat Club.  In those days the path to the platform with its three winding gear handles and over onto the island was open.  I kept this job after passing the Boat Club to a successor and looked after the sluice gates for at least ten years (1971-1981). 

One May when closing the sluice gates we were impressed to see several large salmon flopping back into the weir pool from the sluice gate apron as we closed off the water.

I soon learned that it was easier to lift the gates when the river was not already flowing over the top, and I had an ally in this respect.  In the evening I would get a call from Mr Ricketts of the Water Board in Blandford telling me they had “ten foot coming down”.  It paid to respond quickly. 

In term time my favoured victims would be a class of Fourth formers doing German, who may have been happy to trade a grammar lesson for some fresh air turning the handles.  In the holidays I was on my own, and, given the time-lag between rainfall and high water, the weather was often fine when the gates had to be lifted.  More than one moonlit night saw me, turning the handles, quite content to be involved with the river in this way.

By contrast however, the most important function of the sluice gates is to hold the river up rather than to let it go.  When flow is normal or low, just one open gate could drain the river with serious consequences upriver not just for wildlife and recreational uses, including Canford’s rowing, but also for landowners with an interest in riverbanks which don’t collapse.  Canford’s stewardship of the river at this point (take for example the piling which now stabilises the banks of the weir pool) is a long-standing responsibility which reaches well beyond the site at Canford.