Banavie Locks Smithy, Caledonian Canal

A group of single-storey rubble industrial buildings situated on the Caledonian Canal at Neptune's Staircase, Banavie. The group comprises an early 19th-century gabled former smithy and sawpit, together with a workshop of circa 1880–90 with a piended roof.

The smithy and workshop are constructed of white-painted rubble. The sawpit is timber-clad with external Y-shaped timber supports on its west side. Windows throughout are predominantly timber-framed, including lying-pane casement windows to the sawmill and timber shutters to the former smithy.

The interiors, visited in 2013, are unadorned rubble-walled spaces. The former smithy was in use as a shop at that time. All buildings have open single-space interiors typical of their original industrial function.

The smithy and sawpit appear on the 1st Edition Ordnance Survey Map and are likely to date from the construction of the Caledonian Canal itself. The workshop appears on the 2nd Edition Map of 1899 and was likely built when the locks required repair work. All three structures were originally constructed to store materials, provide stabling for horses, and enable wood to be cut for the construction of Neptune's Staircase. The former smithy probably also functioned as stables.

The buildings are externally little altered, with an unbroken roofline and no additions or extensions—a rarity for buildings of this date. Their immediate proximity to the canal and the lock series, and their location across from the listed Lock Keeper's Cottage, emphasises their integral relationship to the canal's operation and infrastructure. The whole of the Caledonian Canal is a Scheduled Monument (Scheduled Monument No 3530), recognised as being of national importance to Scotland.

This grade changed from C to B as part of the Scottish Canals estate review in 2013–14.