Valentine’s day and the not so romantic view of the ‘Love Lock’ trend

This week people all over the world will celebrate their love for each other with cards, flowers and chocolates. Some couples, however, choose a more public show of their commitment in the form of the Love Lock. Padlocks are inscribed with their initials, locked on a bridge and the key thrown into the river below. It is believed that the tradition goes back to the Great War when a Serbian Schoolmistress had her heart broken by an Officer who fell in love with another woman whilst fighting in Greece. Other local women began placing locks on the bridge where the ill-fated couple used to meet, in the hope that their own loves would endure. 

In the early 2000’s padlocks began to appear on bridges all over Europe and as the practice grew, concerns were raised about the damage they might be doing. It was felt that the padlocks detracted from the beauty of the bridge’s architecture and engineers warned that corrosion could damage the structure or that the weight of so many padlocks could overload the bridge and cause it to collapse; indeed, this is what happened in 2014 when part of a parapet of the Pont des Arts in Paris fell into the Seine.  

Closer to home, Love Locks started to appear on the Weir Bridge in Bakewell, Derbyshire, in 2012. It was estimated that by 2024, 40,000 locks had been attached weighing around 5 tonnes. In 2021 a campaign was launched to save them after concerns arose they might be sold as scrap. In 2024, Derbyshire County Council announced that essential repairs required the removal of the locks. However, thanks to the efforts of the Save The Love Locks group and the media attention it attracted, the Council acknowledged the deep personal significance of the locks shared through countless stories and agreed that any locks that were not reclaimed by their owners, would be carefully removed and handed over to the group for safe keeping. The group has estimated that there are in fact around 60,000 locks weighing around 7.5 tonnes and this Valentine’s day the purpose built structure holding all the locks will be unveiled by the group.