River Thames at Lechlade

At Lechlade-on-Thames the Thames is still a small river, winding through flat meadows below the town. Here the Coln and the Leach flow into it, the Thames and Severn Canal once joined it at the Round House, and the Thames Path follows its bank past Halfpenny Bridge to St John's Lock, the first lock on the river. The Victoria County History counts Lechlade as the head of navigation on the Thames.

History

The river made Lechlade a port. The Victoria County History says the main wharves and warehouses were built in the mid-seventeenth century, and that cheese from the farms around was the chief cargo shipped down to London. The parish adds that Taynton stone, quarried near Burford, went down the river from Lechlade to London for St Paul's Cathedral.

The canal

In 1789 the Thames and Severn Canal reached Lechlade, linking the Thames with the Severn, and coal became the main cargo coming the other way, from west to east. The junction lay about 1km south-west of the town, where a circular watchman's house, the Round House, was built. The canal closed in 1927.

Bridges and the lock

Two bridges and a lock frame the town's stretch. St John's Bridge, downstream, goes back to the thirteenth century, when a hospital stood at its end, and was rebuilt in 1831. Halfpenny Bridge, built under a turnpike Act of 1792, carried a new road south and charged walkers a halfpenny until 1839. In 1791 the commissioners for the upper Thames cut a short channel and built St John's Lock to bypass the old bridge.

What to see

The Round House at Inglesham, the canal's circular watchman's house, marks the old canal junction, where the Coln also comes in.

Halfpenny Bridge is the town's landmark, a single tall arch with its tollhouse. Downstream, past the meadows, Father Thames, Raffaelle Monti's cement river god of 1854, reclines beside St John's Lock, and the River Leach joins near St John's Bridge. The way back to town is Shelley's Walk, the church path to St Lawrence's, which has been closed for restoration since January 2026; the parish expects it to reopen in time for Christmas 2026.

In summer, walkers report their dogs swimming in the river from the meadow banks.

Visiting

The Thames Path and the riverside meadows are free and open at all times. The path is flat but mostly unsurfaced, and walkers on AllTrails reported it under water in November 2024 and in January and February 2026. Walkers report cattle and geese beside the path at times, sometimes loose on it, so keep dogs on a lead or close by. Several also report no pavement where the road crosses St John's Bridge by the Trout, so take care there.

Getting there

The river is a few minutes' walk south of Lechlade's Market Place, down Thames Street to Halfpenny Bridge, where the Thames Path passes under the bridge. Stagecoach West's 77 stops in the Market Place about four times a day each way, Monday to Saturday, with no Sunday service, on its way between Cirencester, Fairford and Highworth. If you drive, park in the town and check the signs for time limits.

On foot, Lechlade and St John's Lock is a flat 3-mile (4.8km) loop from the Market Place, out across the fields to the Round House and back along the Thames Path under Halfpenny Bridge to St John's Lock. The Thames Path itself runs 185 miles from the source near Kemble to Woolwich.

Nearby

The Trout Inn is beside St John's Bridge and The New Inn on the Market Place. Upstream, over the fields, St John the Baptist, Inglesham is the church William Morris saved, and downstream the path reaches Buscot Lock and St Mary's, Buscot. About 3 miles downstream, Kelmscott Manor was Morris's country home, which our story on William Morris and the Cotswolds explains.