TREASURES from the deep will be on display during a weekend celebration of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal at Bingley Three Rise Locks next month.

As part of a major repair project currently under way, the Canal & River Trust is inviting members of the public to a special showcase event.

From now until Sunday, March 6, people are invited to watch specialist craftsmen replace 25-year-old lock gates and repair the 200-year-old canal wall, from a temporary viewing platform installed at the site.

Staff from the Trust will be on hand daily to speak to visitors about the heritage restoration work and to give insight into this important canal maintenance.

The weekend starting on Saturday, March 5 will see the grand finale of the Bingley showcase when there will be children's activities, refreshments and a display of items found in the canal.

This year, the Leeds and Liverpool Canal celebrates its 200th anniversary after being completed on October 22, 1816 to become Britain’s longest single man-made waterway.

Cotton, coal, wool, limestone, sugar and other vital cargo all travelled its length through rapidly expanding industrial areas in Lancashire and Yorkshire.

The Three Rise locks are an 18th century engineering masterpiece built by John Longbotham as a 'staircase' flight – in which the lower gate of one lock forms the upper gate of the next.

Its sister lock flight, the Five Rise, is one of the Seven Wonders of the Waterways and the only Grade I Listed lock flight on the 127-mile canal.

Chantelle Seaborn, waterway manager for the Canal & River Trust, said: "This is skilled work today so it’s simply incredible how the original canal builders created the Leeds and Liverpool Canal."

The new lock gates have been made in the Trust’s specialist workshop at Stanley Ferry in Wakefield. Each individual lock gate is unique to its canal and has to be hand crafted by a skilled team of carpenters to achieve a water-tight fit in its chamber.

Lock gates are made from sustainably-sourced British oak and have a working life of 25 to 30 years.

In addition to this year’s winter maintenance programme, the Trust is launching a three month survey to uncover what lurks beneath the canals.

Across the country hundreds of shopping trolleys, traffic cones, car tyres, bottles and plastic bags are hauled out of the canals by the Trust and its volunteers at a cost of nearly £1 million each year. The Trust, which is calling for an end to rubbish being dumped in its waterways, will be announcing the results in spring 2016.

Richard Parry, chief executive of the Canal & River Trust, said: "The Trust cares for a remarkable network of historic waterways which are still working just as they were designed to 200 years ago. Keeping them open and safe requires a huge amount of planning and investment and involves a wide range of experts."