Banavie Locks Sawpit, Caledonian Canal

A group of single-storey rubble industrial buildings positioned on the Caledonian Canal at Neptune's Staircase in Banavie. The group comprises an early 19th-century gabled former smithy and sawpit, and a piended-roofed workshop dating from circa 1880-90.

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

When visited in 2013, all three buildings displayed unadorned rubble walls internally. The former smithy was in use as a shop at that time, and all buildings retain open single spaces typical of their original industrial function. The buildings are externally little altered, retaining an unbroken roofline with no additions or extensions — a rare survival in structures of this date.

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

The buildings stand immediately alongside the canal, next to Neptune's Staircase and directly across from the listed Lock Keeper's Cottage. This positioning emphasises their relationship to the canal infrastructure, although subsequent new building to the rear has altered some context. The group survives as a relatively externally unaltered ensemble of structures associated with both the original construction and subsequent repair of the Caledonian Canal, and remains significant to the character and understanding of this engineering achievement.

The whole Caledonian Canal is a Scheduled Monument (No 3530), identified as being of national importance to Scotland.