SANTA'S elves eat your hearts out:

In the lead-up to Christmas, the craftsmen at this gated workshop in Oxford worked tirelessly chiselling, sanding and hammering out a ten-tonne Christmas present for the whole city.

The Environment Agency (EA) team at the Osney Island depot have spent weeks repairing and refurbishing all four lock gates from Kings Lock at Wolvercote.

Each gate weighs two-and-a-half tonnes and is made of a tropical hardwood frame and softwood sheeting.

Over time the softwood rots and needs to be replaced, so that was the main job for the team, but they also replaced ageing parts of the frame and carried out extra repairs.

The massive gates, made about 30 years ago, were hauled out of the river in November and each one took about two hours.

They were then brought into the depot in West Oxford where engineers including Richard Wicks and Michael Yearwood, pictured here, gave them some tender loving care.

EA spokesman Dan Taylor said: "When they are in the depot they get a full inspection and any other work that needs doing to ensure they reach their operational lifespan.

"Part of the frame was replaced and they got a full service as well."

The tail gates, which are the downstream set in the lock, were treated first and are already back in the river.

Oxford Mail:

The ones pictured here are the head gates – the ones that are upstream – and they will be replaced in the lock in the next few weeks.

The Kings Lock repairs are just one set out of eight that are being repaired along the Thames upstream of London by the EA in a £1.25m program this winter.

The agency is also repairing the gates at Buscot Lock near Faringdon; Shifford near Bampton; Clifton near Abingdon; Day’s Lock at Little Wittenham; Goring, Marlow and Penton Hook Lock at Staines in Surrey.

Funding for the work comes from boat registration fees and the government, and the annual investment ensures locks are in good working order for boat users.

Most of the hardwood lock gates along the Thames were made decades ago out of Greenheart – a tropical hardwood from South America no longer considered sustainable.

These days the EA uses Ekki wood from West Africa, considered more sustainable and extremely resistant to water rot.

A single lock gate weighs on average 3.6 tonnes – they get bigger as they go downriver and have more water to hold back.

Gates can take up to 20 days to make and have a working life of 25 to 30 years.

New lock gates have also been installed this December on the Oxford Canal.

Engineers from the Canal and River Trust – the charity that cares for the waterway – replaced a worn-out set at lock 40 near Thrupp.

The gates, which were around 25 years old, had come to the end of their working life and needed replacing as they were no longer water tight.

The new gates, handmade from oak, hold a whopping 162,000 litres of water – the equivalent of around 2,000 bath tubs.