Iffley Lock Boat Rollers

Iffley Lock lies between Sandford Lock 2.7 km downstream and Osney Lock 3.73 km upstream. The lock area is split into three channels: the lock cut, the weir stream, and a channel further east that was once the Mill Stream. Immediately upstream, the river passes under Donnington Bridge before the Oxford college boathouses line the north bank ahead of Christ Church Meadow.

A boat slide here was first proposed in 1885, when the Thames Conservancy also considered removing the lock altogether; petitions to retain it succeeded, and the lock chamber standing today was rebuilt in 1927 on the site of the 1631 Oxford-Burcot Commission lock, itself rebuilt in 1793. Two footbridges cross the rollers' channel beside it: a 1923 timber footbridge built by the Thames Conservancy as a smaller-scale replica of Cambridge's Mathematical Bridge, and a stone bridge built in 1924 to mark the official reopening of the rebuilt lock.

The lock sits on Iffley Island, between two arms of the Thames; the island's meadows form Iffley Meadows, a 36.1-hectare Site of Special Scientific Interest owned by Oxford City Council and managed by the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, and one of fewer than 30 sites in the country where the snake's-head fritillary still flowers wild each April. Species recorded there include Cetti's warbler, sedge warbler and reed bunting, with red kites and sparrowhawks seen overhead.