I am approaching this week’s article on the wharves on Deptford Creek with trepidation and alarm!! I have now got to the south side of the railway bridge and I note that in my internal coding system for articles I‘ve written this is ‘Creek no.13’. Which isn’t a good sign. So – I’ve reached Greenwich Sewage Pumping station, and whatever can I say about it here? I‘m afraid this article is going to be a bit of a bleat about how complex the site is and how everyone knows more than me.
One thing is that I have already written about it for Weekender in an article about the engineer, Joseph Bazalgette, back in April 2019 – and I might quote some of that article here further down. But the real problem is that there are loads and loads of people who know all about the pumping station and they know much, much more about it than I ever could. It was built in the 1860s as the first bit of the London wide sewage system but over the past few years it has been a major construction site for the Tideway Tunnel – so there are all sorts of people writing about it, making videos, arranging tours, talking to schools and much more. For a start there is a 66 page heritage report – and I’ll come back to that in a moment too.
The Tideway tunnel is a massive project – which is designed to take sewage and ‘run off’, which at the moment goes into the River off to somewhere safer. The project uses a wharf north of the railway as well as the massive site to the south. This site to the north is called Phoenix Wharf and from there lighters full of spoil are taken off down river. Meanwhile massive buildings are going up fronting on Norman Road and there is a lot of information about all of this on line. They include a number of chatty videos on YouTube in which you will be shown round the site by friendly young construction workers and taken on privilege rides down huge lifts to find a vast underground complex of vehicles and busy busy people. I can’t compete with that
Just put ‘Greenwich Pumping Station’ or ‘Greenwich Tideway site’ or into Google and you will get enough information to last you for weeks –with some wonderful pictures of all the works. There are web sites directed at toddlers and at elderly foreign visitors and everyone else in between. They describe the site and all its wonders, as well as all the work going on to make the Creek generally a better place. There are minutes of local consultation meetings attended by people I know. All of it has vast amounts of detail of what is being built, what will be saved and generally what is going on. I can’t compete with that either.
So – here are a couple of paragraphs from my earlier article with enough historical background to give you a basis in what the pumping station is about:
“There had been a Royal Commission in 1847 into sewage disposal in London and it was concluded that a London wide body was needed to deal with the problem ………… the Metropolitan Board of Works was set up in 1855 and Joseph Bazalgette was appointed as their Chief Engineer …. London’s sewage system was designed and built and Bazalgette oversaw the whole process.
Deptford, usually now called Greenwich Pumping Station, is in Greenwich High Road backing on to Norman Road. It was opened as the first part of the system in 1865 and is described as a ‘lift pumping station’. What happens is that a number of sewers meet here and the waste is pumped up into the Southern Outfall which takes it down to Crossness to be processed and cleaned. Greenwich originally had four beam engines to do the pumping – lifting 123 million gallons a day. The station has obviously been modernised - extended in 1905 and in one wing are electric and diesel pumps which were installed in 1934. Behind it – and visible from the DLR trains – is an ornate cast iron coal shed.”
So what else is there? As I read my way through the 66 pages of the Heritage Report one thing did catch my eye. It mentions a ‘brick chimney’ and it says ‘the exact function and date of this chimney are unclear’. Nothing like a mystery to get me looking – and asking. This mystery chimney is not shown on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of the site, but it is on ones from the 1900s onwards. On the 1952 map it is marked as a ‘vent’. Now a vent is different to a chimney – and what we really need to know is what is under there and if it something that creates fumes – like a sewer.
There were a number of these ‘vent’ chimneys around but they tend to get mistaken for something else. There was a good one over in Violet Road in Bow but it seems to have gone now and been replaced by more flats. It’s a pity because it didn’t take up much space and for an only very slightly smaller block of flats you could have something distinctive which made the neighbourhood a bit special.
But back to Deptford - In 1862 before it was opened a party of dignitaries went on a tour of the new system site, doing north London in the morning by midday they were where on the Plumstead marshes where Crossness Pumping Station was to be built. They had got there from Barking by boat where they had inspected work on the newly built Northern Outfall sewer. At Crossness they sat down in a large tent to a ‘cold collation’ and Mr. Tite, M. P., Chairman of the Board of Works proposed a toast" Her Majesty the Queen," and then one to " The Houses of Lords and Commons". Lord Redesdale responded for the House of Lords. Then they toasted “The Health of Mr. Bazalgette, the Engineer" and "The Committee of the Metropolitan Board of Works". After several other toasts ‘the party proceeded to Greenwich in order to inspect the Deptford pumping station’. ’m always impressed by the number of toasts at these 19th century official visits and that the party could still manage to walk round the rest of the site afterwards.
At Greenwich they entered the southern outfall sewer - although it doesn't say where they did this. They walked through it for about a quarter of a mile to the Deptford pumping station, “having each been compelled on their way to drink "a glass* of champagne in a sewer." And so “the works of this sewer were greatly admired, especially the ingenious method by which the back water from the main sewer was prevented from returning to the branches”.
When the party arrived at the pumping station ‘the workmen employed gave three hearty cheers, which echoed through the tunnel in a singular manner’. The visitors were shown the “two iron pipes which pass under Deptford Creek, and convey the sewage from the High Level Sewer into the outfall”. They continued to see the engine house, and boilers, the Penstock Chamber, and ‘a pair of ponderous iron gates … to prevent large substances finding their way into. the pumping apparatus’ and they also saw the half built chimney. I
On another less happy occasion a distinguished visitor to Greenwich is recorded as Mr John Burns MP – as many people will remember we had a Woolwich ferry which was named after him. He was the Liberal MP for Battersea in the days before the formation of the Labour Party and said to be the first member of the Cabinet from a working class background
In May 1905 it appeared that a man had died in an accident down in the sewer between Deptford and Rotherhithe. It was reported that John Burns, heard of the accident and ‘organised a rescue party at the Deptford pumping station’. He is said to have been ‘clad in the working costume of the sewer man’ and ‘took command himself’. At midnight they found the body of the missing man .. thirty feet below the surface… almost beneath St. Paul’s Church in. Deptford. … under Mr. Burns’s direction the body was secured with ropes and drawn up through a manhole’.
Burns said “There is no need for prominence in the matter,” … it was simply my duty to try and find the poor fellow…. as a member of the Main Drainage Committee of the London County Council .. I ought to do my best for the unfortunate victim’. The dead man was 40 year old William Freak who had complained of his eyes smarting, and then passed out. Clearly the cause was sewer gas which, happily, must have dispersed by the time John Burns got there. It was said to be the first case of the kind and John Burns said that as rule the Council was very generous in matters of compensation.
I was taken on a visit to Deptford Pumping Station at some time in the 1980s and the site Engineer told us that the system below our feet was a ‘structure like a great cathedral’ but no-one invited us to go and look at it. After all 120 years’ worth of sewage had passed through it by then – now its 160 years’ worth – so it was probably just as well..
As I said at the beginning of this piece I feel pretty useless at saying anything meaningful about this site. So many other people are so closely involved. It is a very very important site for the history of London and its growth – in being part of the Metropolitan Board of Works sewage system which more or less conquered many water borne diseases and allowed the population to expand and to stay well. We all, rightly, applaud doctors and nurses and all the medicines and treatments which fight disease – but the great unsung subject is Public Heath with quiet people in back offices who work to keep everyone safe.
Bazalgette’s great sewage system was one of the key construction projects of the nineteenth century and Greenwich pumping station was the first part of it to get working. Now its role is being expanded with the Tideway Tunnel, which, hopefully, is a demonstration of how things can be done on a massive scale for the environment and for everybody’s health and welfare.
All I can do is hope I am able to encourage you to look at the many web pages and videos which will tell you so much about this important site and the project which is being run from it.
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