Built by the Thames Navigation Commission in 1773, the lock is named after the village of Hambleden, a mile (1.5 km) to the north.

The great weir is impressive and there are walkways over it from the lock to the small village of Mill End on the Buckinghamshire bank.

This eccentric, who baked bread for bargemen, ate a dish of onion porridge every night, wore a long coat with many buttons and walked daily to Hambleden marking a cross on the ground where he reached, was in post at the lock for 59 years and was succeeded by his son.

The river curves round to the south, passing, on the Buckinghamshire bank, Greenlands, a large country house built in the nineteenth century which is now the home of the Henley Management College.

After a small wooded island is the larger Rod Eyot, and Mill Meadows provides public open space on the Henley side of the river.

On the Berkshire bank the land rises steeply with a wooded escarpment hanging over Marsh Lock.

The Thames Path stays on the Berkshire bank to Henley Bridge, and is here in better condition for the benefit of the rowing coaches who cycle along it.

[6] In the book, Jerome also mentions the nearby Greenlands, describing it as "the rather uninteresting river residence of my newsagent - a quiet unassuming old gentleman, who may be met with about these regions, during the summer months, sculling himself along in easy vigorous style, or chatting genially to some old lock-keeper, as he passes through".