Sir Joseph Bazalgette

 It was a note from Crossness Engines which reminded me that Joseph Bazalgette would be 200 years old on 28th March.  They say they are going to have a party!

I don’t know how many people recognise the name – Bazalgette – because he is considerably more famous than many of the ‘great engineers’.  He was of course the man who built the London sewage system –and the Thames Embankment.  He is closely associated with the setting up of London wide Government.  We have various original structures of his in Greenwich, most of them still functioning. 

Joseph Bazalgette –like Brunel – came from a family of immigrants, from France.  He was born in Enfield and trained as an engineer, working on railways and drainage projects.  In 1849 he began work for the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers – which covered a great deal of what is now Greater London.  It had been set up because there were very real and urgent public health issues, not the least of them successive outbreaks of deadly cholera.

This article is about Bazalgette work in what is now the Borough of Greenwich – so we need to focus more on our area than London as a whole.  In most places sewage just went into streams flowing down to the Thames, which is where it ended up.  Greenwich itself was probably not as bad as some other places. The Palace and later the Royal Hospital did have some proper drainage systems from the buildings – but of course they just took all the effluent down to the River.  There was also a Greenwich Commission of Sewers – and I have spent a lot of time looking at their records in the London Metropolitan Archive – but they were really mainly concerned with drainage of the marshland areas, the marshes along Deptford Creek and Greenwich Peninsula (then called Greenwich Marsh of course).  

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 and as a result a London wide Commission was set up – which included the Greenwich based body. They undertook various surveys and in due course, and following a lot of political wrangling, the Metropolitan Board of Works was set up in 1855. Joseph Bazalgette was appointed as their Chief Engineer and remained in post until 1889 when the Board was abolished and the London County Council set up.  In this period London’s sewage system was designed and built and Bazalgette oversaw the whole process.  Much as we grumble today about unhealthy London and all the pollution Bazalgette’s system of sewers immediately prevented the cholera epidemics and left our environment a lot cleaner.

 

There is of course a long story about how Bazelgette got to the stage of building London’s sewage system – all the committees, and the enquiries and the arguments.  But basically what he built – and it was much more complicated than this really – was to build two huge sewers parallel to the river, north and south which picked up all the little local sewers flowing down into the river.  At the end of the sewers – north and south – were grand pumping stations, amazing great buildings full of ornament and flourishes which only the workers there would ever see.

So what have we got in Greenwich left from all this important work?  Of course our grand pumping station is at Crossness, which is technically in Bexley (just).   If you haven’t seen it – just go first chance you get. It is totally and utterly amazing.  There were four massive steam engines – and one of them is now sometimes set to work for visitors to see. Look at the web site of the volunteer group who run the historic bit of the site and it will tell you when it is open – and they have just built a new railway. They also do a really good newsletter packed with information – and lots of articles about the works, the community which grew up there and much else. http://www.crossness.org.uk/

The rest of the Crossness site – which still deals with London’s sewage – is very interesting too with lots of added wildlife as well. In the distance, down in Bexley Borough there is a building with a curly roof which incinerates all the dry waste which used to go to the Black Deep in the Sludge Boats.  I guess many older residents will remember the Sludge Boats and wonderful vessels they were too and something else that has gone from London River.

So –how did the sewage get there?? Most of the pipework is of course now underground in the built up area but not all.  If you go to Plumstead Station – cross the main road and follow a sign to the Ridgeway which you will find is on a raised bank with a green pathway and a cycle track alongside. This is the Southern Outfall sewer going down to Crossness – and also a great green walk with all sorts of things to see on the way.  The sewer is actually huge - if you go over the River to Abbey Lane in Newham the Northern Outfall passes overhead and you can look up and see above you the big pipes which carry the liquid waste down to Abbey Mills, and get some idea of the size. 

Now – we have to come to the really important Greenwich building. Confusingly Deptford Pumping Station is in Greenwich High Road backing on to Norman Road.  It is different from the other Deptford Pumping Station which is for fresh water and is partly Brookmill Park.   The Greenwich High Road site is also now a building site – and more about that in a moment.   It was opened in 1865 and is described as a ‘lift pumping station’.  What happens is that a number of sewers meet here and are pumped up into the Southern Outfall - the high-level sewer starts from Herne Hill via Peckham and New Cross, the middle-level sever from Balham via Brixton, Stockwell and Camberwell and a sewer from Bermondsey.    The system is now, of course, more complicated than that now and has been altered and added to over the years – including a vast great structure in Charlton.

I was taken on a visit to Deptford Pumping Station at some time in the 1980s and I remember the site Engineer saying that the system below our feet was a ‘structure like a great cathedral’.  It 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 were installed in 1934. Behind it – and visible from the DLR trains – is an ornate  cast iron coal shed.  The site is now partly in use as a construction site for the Tideway Tunnel  - in itself a piece of public health engineering which in some senses continues Bazalgette’s  work

Joseph Bazalgette undertook far more work than this for the Metropolitan Board of Works.  His most famous work is the Embankment in Central London but he also had great influence on the five free river crossings down river of the Tower  – in particular I regard to the Blackwall Tunnel.  They were however built after his death by the London County Council – as a way of ensuring the principle that south east Londoners could cross the river without having to pay tolls.

Bazalgette died in 1891 but his work lives on.  His Greenwich High Road buildings are all ‘listed’ –but they are hidden away behind a high wall and I guess many people never notice them. Perhaps that’s how it should be, hiding pumps which undertake everyday necessary work and part of the infrastructure which makes out live comfortable, and which we never think about.