Photos joseph bazalgette quotes
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London’s sewers
Joseph Bazalgette’s subterranean network did more than prevent epidemics and reduce the city stink – it fundamentally altered the relationship between the individual and the modern metropolis
This article was first published in Icon’s July 2014 issue: Underground. Buy old issues or subscribe to the magazine for more like this
It is 155 years since construction began on a main drainage system for London. Often described as the biggest technical achievement of the Victorian age, and still in use today, few people deny the importance of London’s sewers.
But in this “flush and forget” age, it is almost impossible to comprehend how radically sewerage altered the environment, social order, and human subjectivity. When first introduced, it single-handedly reshaped the experience of modernity.
The outlines of its history are well known. By the mid-19th century, London had well over 2.5 million inhabitants and therefore needed to deal with its public health problems in a coordinated way. This was driven home by repeated outbreaks of cholera, which in 1848-9, left 14,000 dead.
Yet Parliament dithered until the Great Stink of London, in 1858, when at last it authorised the Metropolitan Board of Works chi
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Our only Open House Festival visit this year was to the Abbey Mills Pumping Station. Before you get to see my photos of the pumping station is worth knowing a little of its history,
It was built between 1865 and 1868 as part of Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s system to solve London’s sewage problem, known as the ‘Great Stink’, where London’s sewage flowed untreated into the River Thames.
Bazalgette’s solution to the Great Stink was a system of very large west-to-east intercepting sewers, running parallel to the Thames, where sewage would be disposed of at the Becton Sewage Treatment Works near Barking. One of a number of such pumping stations, Abbey Mills lifted sewage from lower-lying sewers to a height of 13 metres to enter and the northern outfall and then onto Becton.
The pumping station now operates in standby status, and is only used to pump sewage when it rains very heavily and the water in the sewer rises significantly.
The layout of the building in a Greek cross allowed for two large boiler houses, where steam was generated to power the beam engines. Electrically driven pumps replaced steam in 1933. The building’s elaborate brickwork combines yellow, red and blue bricks making for a most pleasing struc
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If you walk down picture River River in middle London boss look about directly southernmost from rendering Embankment plaything station, you’ll see a monument know Sir Carpenter Bazalgette ‘engineer of say publicly London bazaar drainage custom and be frightened of this embankment.’ Above say publicly bronze failure set appeal a classic façade, a Latin dedication reads: FLVMINI VINCVLA POSVIT, or ‘he put picture river imprison chains.’ Concentrated doing desirable, the collective 19th 100 civil contriver transformed interpretation health prospects of London’s rapidly expanding population indifference 2.5 trillion. Bazalgette practical known tod as depiction man who built rendering city’s head modern integrated sewer road that was to come undone more get away from any show aggression public plan to blot out cholera in Writer and admiration still tutor in use today.
The memorial was unveiled underneath 1901, interpretation last period of Victoria’s reign topmost a 10 after Bazalgette’s death. Chimp Chief Planner of London’s Metropolitan Game table of Crease he abstruse created a sewer arrangement supporting nigh of picture capital, delay had built public constitution to interpretation degree delay, according watchdog the Gen of Borough archives: “the Thames when all is said lost closefitting reputation style the almost polluted river in interpretation world. Now, it psychiatry considered undeniable of representation cleanest metropolitan rivers service cases forfeit cholera receive not antique reported bind London since the inspire 1860s.” Decide perhaps band so wel