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How it started
How it started
The love locker started out as an idea from Emma Harrison, after I, Richard Young contacted her and she agreed rehome the Bakewell love locks which were in danger of being melted down, she then put pen to paper and the Thornbridge Love Locker was born.
The bridge at Bakewell was made up of 36 bays with 4 wires on each bay and the love locker is so designed to replicate the bays and wires from the bridge.
A system had to be designed so people could easily find their love locks, the locks were taken off the bridge at Bakewell and placed into numbered bags, each bag corresponded to a position on the bridge. Each wire on the bridge contained at least 300 love locks but they were getting quite cramped therefore it was decided to split the locks from each wire onto two, making it easier to see the locks once they were attached to the love locker.
With the generous support of Markovitz, Gripple, the Metal Store, TDP and generous donations from members of the public, Thornbridge has been able to construct on a new, permanent structure to house and protect the Bakewell Bridge Love Locks forever.
The love locker is made up of 288 separate wires- all of which represent the original bays on the bridge. This means that people will be able to find their locks on the Love Locker, there was a team of over 100 incredible volunteers who re-threaded the locks onto the new structure.
The Love Locker sits alongside Quackers Cafe at Thornbridge Hall, easily accessible and free to visit. It has been designed not only to store these precious memories but also there will be space for new locks to be added alongside the existing ones.
Here are some fun facts to illustrate the scale of what has been achieved:
Emma Harrison agreed to display them at Thornbridge Hall.
Derbyshire County Council handed over the love locks to the Save The Love Locks Campaign Group which saved them from being melted down.
There were approximately 5-7 tons of love locks removed from the Bakewell Weir Bridge and these were threaded back on one by one and all by hand by a team of 120 volunteers working in shifts.
There were 36 bays on the bridge with 4 wires on each bay and around 275 padlocks on each wire equalling 40,000 padlocks.
When these locks were all attached to to the Love Locker, a new estimate of up to 60,000 was recorded.
Each wire was emptied into a bag then tied and tagged to record their original location. That is 144 bags, each weighing around 30kg or 30 bags of sugar. All lifted, carried, loaded onto a lorry, driven to Thornbridge Hall, unloaded, stored then eventually placed back on a new wire with their neighbours from the bridge.
For historic, archaeological and research reasons, we are going to attempt to record the Love Locks for posterity and to offer a search facility so the people can be re-united with their Love Lock and historians can use the data in their research, this will be an enormous task in itself.
Behind all of this there has been untold hours spent getting the love locks saved and a new home found, hours of phone calls, e-mails, press releases, interviews, miles driven all to get us to where we are now.
Going forward, the web presence needs to be designed so that an interactive information portal can run into the future so that the tradition can be not only continued but kept alive digitally for the wider audience.
The Love Locker was opened on 14th February 2025, Valentines day.
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