I had been wondering for some time whether to do something about Crossness Engines but I rather thought everybody would know about it and in any case it’s a very complex subject - but then I thought I keep mentioning it and probably lots of people don’t know what I’m talking about so perhaps I’d better do something. I really don’t know where to start. I could give a short history of the works at Crossness and why they’re important and lots of detail about them- although all of that will be very done much better on the Crossness Engines website. https://crossness.org.uk
I see that the first page of the website describes it as the ‘Cathedral in the Marshes’ which probably just about sums up where we are with it. The history is complex in that there are lots of different aspects to it beyond what we see today - and which the Trust very ably shows us. We have to look at its later history -how it became a site of such interest, how the old disused engines were taken over by what became the Trust, and how the Trust has continued to run the site since. Of course it isn’t just the Trust, there’s also whole lot of issues about Thames Water and its predecessors, so where to start? Probably why it was built at all and what the problem was that it was built to deal with.
We all know that in the past sewage was just got rid of by sticking it in the nearest stream or river or –we are told throwing it out of the upstairs window. Neither of which was particularly good idea. In a big city like London it became a real problem -and it’s linked In with water supply. Ultimately everything went in the Thames and it wasn’t very nice to put it mildly! As the city spread out and grew it took in lots of little towns and villages and most of them had just stuck it all into the nearest stream and then it flowed down into the Thames. Something had to be done.
As time went on many local areas in what we now know as Greater London had their own ‘Commissions of Sewers’ to see that something was done. You’ll be glad to know that Greenwich had one! Then in 1848 when, obviously, there was a lot of public concern about cholera, the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers was set up. This amalgamated all these local bodies in order to look at the whole of what was rapidly becoming a ‘conurbation; as a whole. In 1856 this Commission was replaced by the Metropolitan Board of Works which had elected members from all the various areas which were seen as part of the conurbation – like. For, example: Woolwich.
The Commission of Sewers had begun by insisting that all of the 200,000 cesspits in the area were removed and the properties were connected to the drainage system which of course meant more sewage in the Thames.
So we come to Joseph Bazalgette who worked for the Commissionin1849 and was their engineer from the 1850s. He’s become a bit of a hero in many people’s eyes because of the work he did on public buildings and public utilities in the latter part of the 19th century - and in particular because of the work which he did on the sewage problem.
So he designed a system with huge sewers parallel with the river North and South Thames picking up along the route all the little streams which brought the sewage down to the Thames. This was massive project sand seen as a stroke of genius because it was relatively simple and built on the existing system. It was about the intercepting sewers. It still obviously still what we rely on today although it clearly needs to be maintained. It included public works like the Victoria Embankment where the sewer going alongside the Thames is accompanied by the gas mains, and the District Line underground railway and various other facilities. so it was all thought through as a as package which would serve the public in more than one way
These big main sewers were (and are) fed by a huge network of smaller sewers covering North and South London and picking up sewage from all the little communities and gathering up into a the main system. The whole thing needs to flow downward by gravity but sometimes they reached a low point, where it needed to be lifted so it could flow downwards (if you see what I mean!) to Crossness – They built pumping stations to lift it. We have one of these in Greenwich. This is the pumping station which is in Greenwich High Road - and is now a big works site for the new Thames Subway Sewer. It was actually the first part of the whole scheme opened,
The big main sewers north and south go down parallel to the river. They are both very big and have foot and cycle paths along the top of them. By this point the sewage is not in little pipes below the path. They are carrying huge great rivers of sewage flowing along under our feet. You can see the Southern outfall any day. It starts opposite Plumstead station above ground and you can walk along the top of it all the way t Crossness. It’s quite a pleasant walk - there’s grass and wild flowers. They are things n either side to look at or it really isn’t too bad. You can dam at Christmas ire not just Plumstead station, but various industrial sites on the way. In particular I would recommend the old White Hart Road Plumstead generating station which you can see quite close up . In fact I used to say that we should run that as a public utilities walk down the southern out full past the White Hart generating station and .... Well, here we are at Crossness!
I’m almost over my allocation of words for one of these articles and I’ve only just got to Crossness itself. Perhaps I should say too that technically it is in the London Borough of Bexley – but only just and the road into the site is in Greenwich.
So the end point for all the sewage of London was this pumping station right out of the middle of the marshes. On the north bank it went down to a site on the West Ham marshes called Abbey Mills and here in South London to this very remote spot on the Riverside called Crossness. Now there are lots and lots of things I could say about this I could tell you what Crossness is about today, I could talk about what they built and I could talk about the process by which the Trust was set up and about how you can visit and lots of other things. But I don’t think I’ve got the space for that now so you can expect a few sequels in coming weeks!
A Crossness and at Abbey Mills Bazalgette built huge great monumental pumping stations with extremely fancy insides. They were builr in areas which hardly anyone ever went to and the only people who would see them would probably be the workers! Anyway I’ll come back to that later.
So, what happened to the sewage when it got to Crossness? In this very fancy building they had installed vast great pumping engines-and there is a whole history of them as time went on and bigger and bigger systems were needed. And what did it do?? It pumped sewage out into the river - so it was just as bad down river as it had always been upriver. At least I suppose they thought to themselves they had got it away from the City of London.
Eventually the sewage was cleaned up at and all taken out to somewhere called the Black Deep by a series of boats. I can talk about them in another article because the boats themselves quite interesting but in the short term it all went in the river
I’ve been looking all the various people that write about this and I remember one article recently asked - what did the people living in places like Gravesend think about all the sewage going into the river? Did they make a fuss? I suppose to a certain extent all of us downriver of London expect the Thames to be not too nice by the stage it gets to us - and it’s a pretty big river by the time it gets down to places like Dartford and Gravesend. However some 36 years ago I picked up a magazine with an article about Barking Creek and I’ve been saving it up all this time - so I could tell you what it says about the horrors of the sewage in Barking creek in the 19th century. There are lots and lots of details about it. There are a lot of details which I would like to quote but I have nothing like enough space. It says for instance that in May 1869 there was a petition from the inhabitants of Barking describing how in the Creek was ‘the filth and refuse of the largest city in the world .... the foreshore is a mass of pestilential mud and valuable fishing grounds are now spawning beds of fever and cholera. The y says that there were no longer any flounders or shrimps and ships which used to moor in Creekmouth now go further up the river.
A Coast Guard station is said to have been moved because of the smell - it was hoped it might be the smell from the Lawes Chemical Works instead or the Esparto Grass works at Ilford. In 1887 the Essex field club noted Manila piled in massive banks at the side of the road from barking to Ilford.
Cool police officer said that it was particularly bad on hot days on the foreshore you could find Bullock slights an fat of all descriptions the mud was black greasy slimy stuff and he preferred did the bodies from the Princess Alice disaster in 1878 where the bodies 'were in a beastly state'. However you can’t keep East Londoners down - they will always find a way to get things to their advantage! Seven men got a living by taking fat from the surface of the river and melting it down. They had a boat with a well in it which skimmed the fat off and it was sold as a lubricant. I'll leave you with that thought
But I also ought to have told you why you should go to Crossness and visit the exhibitions and see the great engines I’ll tell you about that later.
There are lots of descriptions of Crossness Engines and the engine house on the net and elsewhere. But – remember it is local to us here in South London and the Trust has given us the nearest we have to an industrial history museum. The article I’m quoting is by a JE Oxley I dictated Essex channel winter 1987 volume 22 #3 r
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