Heritage Open Day: Visit the gateway to the South Oxford Canal and learn about the people, culture, and economics that have played an important part in Oxford’s history for the last 200 years. Event organised by the Canal and River Trust. For 228 years Isis Lock has stood as the gateway to the Oxford Canal, allowing boats to access the Thames from as far a field as Manchester and Leeds and brining valuable goods to Oxford itself. Originally designed as the main link from the Warwickshire coal fields to West London, the Oxford Canal has always been a place of industry, but more than that it was a home. Boaters lived alongside their cargo on the narrowboats and developed a rich culture that survived largely unchanged until the mid-20th Century.