Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Report upon Penarth Dock - 1984 . . .

The sluicing arrangements at the sea entrance present something of a problem since little information about them appears to still exist. However, as far as the sluicing at the inner gates is concerned it seems likely that the same arrangement as the lock sluicing would have been used. This would have meant the positioning of sluice inlets at the base of the inner gate recesses and the resultant sluice outlets would have been near the apron at the extreme outer end of the entrance.

Sluicing arrangements at the outer gates still presents a problem since here the arrangements at the lock are not applicable due to the way in which the gates were used. In fact it is impossible to imagine an arrangement whereby sluice inlets could be positioned at the base of the outer gate recesses. Therefore, sluice outlets were probably built at the base recesses and water from the basin used to clear silt from these recesses and the outer apron. It is unlikely that an entirely separate set of sluiceways was provided linking the basin with the outer gates and so instead inlets to these sluiceways were probably taken from the main sluiceway and separate sets of sluice gates provided to direct the flow of water wherever it was required.

Figure 19 shows a plan of what the sea entrance looked like and figure 20 shows one of the chain paths associated with the entrance gates.

	Figure 19 - Possible sluicing arrangements for sea entrance.
	Figure 20 - Details of chain path.