Crossness pumping station- setting up the site

 

A couple of weeks ago I did an article about Crossness  pumping station down in the Erith marshes and described how in the 1860s  it was decided to install a sewage system for the whole of London in the 1860s - and the process to set it up.  The final  building at the end of a network of new sewers on the south side of the River was this vast big pumping station at what was called ‘Crossness Point'.  Then the week after I did another article which was about Crossness Point and the lighthouse there - but also all the other light houses up and down the Thames in the Greenwich area.

So I thought perhaps I had better move on now and try and look at why and how the Crossness pumping station was built where it is and I’ve been going back through lots of old records to see what I could find.

The pumping station itself is pretty well documented and there is a regular newsletter produced  by   the Trust, which runs the museum there and demonstrates the old steam engines.  However I haven’t got or seen copies of most of them so I don’t know what is in them and whether what I am about to write has been published by them in the past. So, unless some kind person wants to send me  a file of all the back ones, I have no way of finding out. That’s one of the problems, I think, with newsletters.

The land on which the Crossness pumping station and sewage works is built was bought by the Metropolitan Board of Works from a Sir Richard Tufton. He was an aristocrat from a family with holdings of land in various parts of the country, including Kent, although I can find no details. I stand to be corrected, but my guess is that this was once part of the lands of Lesnes Abbey - which is the Abbey after which Abbey Wood is named - and the ruins are near the Abbey Wood Station.  In the mediaeval period monastic houses  often worked to drain marshland by’ inning’-. This means building river ‘walls’  to keep the water off the land and to drain so it  could be used for sheep grazing and other agricultural uses.  So, was this done here?

I’ve searched  to  find when the Metropolitan Board of Works decided to build this new sewage works – which meant sending all the sewage of South London to Crossness. But I found that it wasn’t the first place they thought of. In 1846 the inhabitants of Greenwich learned that a Bill had been put to Parliament by a body called the London Sewage Company to build an ‘immense Reservoir in the Greenwich Marshes’, to process all the waste of South London there!

Trying to get information about the London Sewage Company is not helped by the fact that it seems to be the name of a current rock band.  I think that in 1846 it was the name of a private company which hoped to make money out of the solids in sewage which they could sell to agricultureas fertiliser. It seemed to be felt that this should be done by a public body but in the 1840s official bodies had relatively limited powers.   throughout the Metropolitan area  there were several small sewage commissions and there  was an attempt to consolidate their activities. This work was taken over by the Metropolitan Board of Works which was set up in 1856 with a definite remit to sort things out.

The plans to use Greenwich did not go away and it also included the most extraordinary maze of pipe work and sewers to be built throughout London. Most of them seem to end up either taking  the sewage to the Greenwich marshes or discharging it into the river somewhere in the Greenwich area.  I don’t know exactly where on the Greenwich marshes it was proposed to put this ‘immense reservoir’. A century later there were plans for a sewage works near Bay Wharf and on the site where the Greenwich Counck Works Department had their Tunnel Avenue Depot  until relatively recently.  But in the 1849s the texts read more as if it is planned for somewhere near the current site of the Dome. As you can imagine there was considerable consternation about this in Greenwich, Woolwich and Deptford

A Royal Commission was set up which inquired into the London sewage system. John Phillips who was the Surveyor to the Westminster Sewers Commission issued a detailed report which was later submitted to the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers.  Interestingly, this recommended, among many other things, that there should be two separate water disposal systems – one for clean water which meant street run off from rainwater and the other one for the foul sewage. Eventually the system was set up by Joseph Bazalgette, who was Philip's successor. He went for a combined system - something which has been much criticised in recent years is seen as a problem.

The report also retained the complicated set up network of pipes and drains including many river crossings but it did suggest that the final pumping station for the combined foul sewage should be down somewhere in the marshes at Erith. Clearly there was another set of arguments about the site for north London -but I'm only describing s the South here.

Various plans continued to be considered - but the idea of a huge reservoir in Greenwich remained.  Greenwich and Woolwich politicians began to talk about the ‘Greenwich Calamity’.   Kentish Mercury,  as ever,  reported  at length on the evils which would result  “In Greenwich stands the Royal Hospital, the proudest palace on the earth, with its two thousand inmates. Receding from the river a little are the Royal Naval Schools at New Cross, the Royal Asylum Schools at Greenwich, and Union House, with its thousand inmates right opposite the outfall; and in Woolwich, the Barracks with its thousands of soldiers and the Academy for the cadets, all, with the rest of them to be blasted by the pestiferous exhalations of the reeking river and the poisonous reservoir”.  But already Crossness Point’ was being discussed and clearly seen as a better option – but the Mercury felt that it wasn’t far away enough.

By 1859 the Metropolitan Board of Works had been set up and taken over the work of the Commission of Sewers.  They reported that work was to start at Crossness. The report describes a long succession of roads under which the sewer pipes from the Deptford pumping station would pass to their termination on the bank of the River Thames below Crossness Point.  It was “adjacent to the Artillery practice-grounds, opposite to Dagenham Breach on the north bank of the river. The reservoir and pumping station, with the necessary engines and machinery, will be constructed and erected on land in the occupation of Mr. Thomas Flint. The ground required ...  by the Metropolitan Board of Works, under the Act, intend to purchase of Sir Richard Tufton, the owner”.

There was a vote at the next meeting of the Board that the outfall should be at Crossness Point, which was carried by a majority of 35 to 2. 

Almost immediately the Board officers were advertising for contractors to tender for various bits of the works; who should contact them at once. The main work to be started was for the Southern outfall sewer and was the subject of many advertisements for tenders but other parts of the system ‘must include the Crossness engine site and outfall’.  It should be remembered of course that all of this area was then in the county of Kent and not in London – although the river itself and the riverbank were control by the City of London.

The contract for the Southern outfall itself was let to Mr. Roland  Brotherhood  ‘ the well known railway contractor, of Chippenham, Wilshire ....Six millions of bricks will be required for the formation of the tunnel, which terminates in the Plumstead Road, and  will be continued thence through the marsh to Crossness Point, terminating at a depth  below the surface of the marsh. Six shafts will be dug in the town of Woolwich ....  for the more speedy completion of the tunnel; and .....  work is to be executed within two years. “

It was reported that Messrs. Webster and Co., was the contractor “for constructing the Southern Metropolitan main-drainage, from Greenwich to the outlet in Erith Marshes.... they  have commenced operations on an extensive scale at Woolwich. A number of workmen on Saturday last sinking a shaft in Beresford Square, opposite the main entrance to the Royal Arsenal, and five similar shafts are to be sunk forth with. Leaving Woolwich, the sewer will diverge to the left, and be carried to the outlet at  Crossness Point, .... Depositing and disinfecting reservoirs are to be constructed near the outfall, in order to disinfect the sewage prior discharge into the River.”

Webster was a local Blackheath firm, and Webster himself lived locally.   I can remember an interesting talk on him given by the late and very much lamented  Neil Rhind.  I would recommend  the blogger ‘Running past’s’  article n hum https://runner500.wordpress.com/2016/10/13/william-webster-a-victorian-building-civil-engineering-contractor/

There was a long way to go before the system was developed as we know it  today.  Another episode soon!