Thornbridge Hall love locks officially opens

Thornbridge Hall love locker officially opens with the rescued Love locks from Bakewell love locks bridge

Transcript

00:00Hi there, I'm Richard Young. I was the founder of the Facebook group Save the Love Locks

00:04campaign at Bakewell, and I just couldn't see them melted down, so I rang Emeril. The

00:12rest is history, and today you're witnessing the biggest love lock rescue in the world.

00:19And here they are, 40, 50, 60,000 love locks rehung from Bakewell Bridge to Thornbridge

00:25Central. How long has it taken to put it all together? What, the actual structure? Yeah.

00:32The planning permission went in before Christmas, and so seriously, people have worked their

00:38socks off. 120 volunteers, 140 I think, the firms have given the metal to it and the wires.

00:48It's been all, it's been full on, full on. How many locks have you put on it? There's

00:55between 50,000, 60,000 locks on right now. What do you reckon to the display? I think

01:02the display was, sorry, the display is absolutely fantastic. It almost brought a tear to my

01:08eye. We've seen the love locks saved, and people, if you just look what's happened inside

01:12there today, people are finding their love locks again. It's magic, it's absolutely magic.

01:18And you've put one on yourself? I've put, one was donated to me today, which I didn't

01:23know about, as a, like a saviour, saving the love locks, so my name's on there. My name's

01:30Mike Hall, I'm the partner in crime with Richard and Emma, and my involvement with this was

01:36to remove the locks on cold September evenings, and days back in 2024, get them all bagged

01:44up and moved over to Thornbridge, and passed over to Emma to create this wonderful display

01:50behind us, so that the love locks carry on from here on in, and the story continues with

01:55them. If it hadn't been for Richard, we wouldn't have done this, and if it hadn't been for

01:59Emma, we couldn't have completed it. So it's a team effort, and I'm glad to be involved

02:04in that. I have a personal lock on here from my wife that I placed in 2014, sadly lost

02:10her in 2020, so my lock becomes very important to me now, because it's a marker in time,

02:16a marker in time when we were together, and now it's a marker in time where I can just

02:20remember her, but at least it's been remembered with all the other locks that were on that

02:25bridge, and yeah, I'm pleased they're here. And it's a very emotional day for many reasons,

02:32for many of us, and the important thing behind all this is that we did it for 40,000 other

02:37stories that cover all things from births, marriages, engagements, all sorts of things,

02:43but the important thing is that we got 40,000 of those memories saved from the scrap bang,

02:48and they can all be now visited, and the memories can continue from here on in.

02:53We've come here today, obviously Valentine's Day and the opening of the love lock here,

02:58come to find our lock. Found it, obviously, and yeah, it's the first time we've seen it

03:04since we put it on. Yes, it got lost in the, we put it on in 2019 roughly, obviously before

03:13the bridge expanded and the locks overtook everything, and nobody else can find it since.

03:20Come here today and we're really elated to have found it.