Thamesmead is an area of south-east London, England, straddling the border between the Royal Borough of Greenwich and the London Borough of Bexley. It is located 11 miles (18 km) east of Charing Cross, north-east of Woolwich and west of Erith. It mainly consists of social housing built from the mid-1960s onwards on former marshland on the south bank of the River Thames.
Subterranean London refers to a number of subterranean structures that lie beneath London. The city has been occupied by humans for two millennia. Over time, the capital has acquired a vast number of these structures and spaces, often as a result of war and conflict.
The River Effra is a former set of streams in south London, England, culverted and used mainly for storm sewerage. It had been a tributary of the Thames. Its catchment waters, where not drained to aquifer soakaways and surface water drains, have been incorporated into 1850s-built combined sewer sectors, devised by Sir Joseph Bazalgette. One drains Peckham, the other Brixton, then intended to flow towards Peckham. These generally flow east to be treated at Crossness.
Sir Joseph William Bazalgette CB was a 19th-century English civil engineer. As chief engineer of London's Metropolitan Board of Works, his major achievement was the creation of a sewerage system for central London which was instrumental in relieving the city from cholera epidemics, while beginning to clean the River Thames. He was also the designer of Hammersmith Bridge.
The London sewer system is part of the water infrastructure serving London, England. The modern system was developed during the late 19th century, and as London has grown the system has been expanded. It is currently owned and operated by Thames Water and serves almost all of Greater London.
The River Blackwater is a tributary of the Loddon in England and sub-tributary of the Thames. It rises at two springs in Rowhill Nature Reserve between Aldershot, Hampshire and Farnham, Surrey. It curves a course north then west to join the Loddon in Swallowfield civil parish, central Berkshire. Part of the river splits Hampshire from Surrey; a smaller part does so as to Hampshire and Berkshire.
Beckton is a suburban district in East London, England, within the London Borough of Newham and is located 8 miles (12.9 km) east of Charing Cross. Historically part of Essex, Beckton was unpopulated marshland adjacent to the River Thames until the development of major industrial infrastructure in the 19th century to support the growing metropolis of London. Housing was created in Beckton for workers of the gas and sewage works. Between 1981 and 1995 it was within the London Docklands Development Corporation area, which caused the population to increase as new homes were built and the Docklands Light Railway was constructed.
Abbey Mills Pumping Station is a sewage pumping station in Mill Meads, East London, operated by Thames Water. The pumping station lifts sewage from the London sewerage system into the Northern Outfall Sewer and the Lee Tunnel, which both run to Beckton Sewage Treatment Works.
The Northern Outfall Sewer (NOS) is a major gravity sewer which runs from Wick Lane in Hackney to Beckton sewage treatment works in east London; most of it was designed by Joseph Bazalgette after an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and the "Great Stink" of 1858.
The Southern Outfall Sewer is a major sewer taking sewage from the southern area of central London to Crossness in south-east London. Flows from three interceptory sewers combine at a pumping station in Deptford and then run under Greenwich, Woolwich, Plumstead and across Erith marshes. The Outfall Sewer was designed by Joseph Bazalgette after an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and "The Big Stink" of 1858. Work started on the sewer in 1860 and it was finally opened on 4 April 1865 by H.R.H. the Prince of Wales.
The Thames Tideway Tunnel is a 25 km (16 mi) combined sewer under construction running mostly under the tidal section (estuary) of the River Thames across Inner London to capture, store and convey almost all the raw sewage and rainwater that currently overflows into the estuary. These events occur when rainfall volumes exceed the capacity of Bazalgette's and other engineers' London sewerage system. The tunnelling phase of the project was completed in April 2022.
The Great Stink was an event in Central London in July and August 1858 during which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. The problem had been mounting for some years, with an ageing and inadequate sewer system that emptied directly into the Thames. The miasma from the effluent was thought to transmit contagious diseases, and three outbreaks of cholera before the Great Stink were blamed on the ongoing problems with the river.
The River Crane, a tributary of the River Thames, runs 8.5 miles (13.6 km) in West London, England. It forms the lower course of Yeading Brook. It adjoins or passes through three London boroughs: Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond upon Thames, in the historic county of Middlesex. The drainage basin is heavily urbanised but many of the Hayes to Whitton flood-meadows have been conserved, forming a narrow, green vale, opening out to what remains of Hounslow Heath in the centre – a near-continuous belt of semi-natural habitat.
The Crossness Pumping Station is a former sewage pumping station designed by the Metropolitan Board of Works's chief engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette and architect Charles Henry Driver. It is located at Crossness Sewage Treatment Works, at the eastern end of the Southern Outfall Sewer and the Ridgeway path in the London Borough of Bexley. Constructed between 1859 and 1865 by William Webster, as part of Bazalgette's redevelopment of the London sewerage system, it features spectacular ornamental cast ironwork, that Nikolaus Pevsner described as "a masterpiece of engineering – a Victorian cathedral of ironwork".
The Western Treatment Plant is a 110 km2 (42 sq mi) sewage treatment plant in Cocoroc, Victoria, Australia, 30 km (19 mi) west of Melbourne's central business district, on the coast of Port Phillip Bay. It was completed in 1897 by the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works (MMBW), and is currently operated by Melbourne Water. The plant's land is bordered by the Werribee River to the east, the Princes Freeway to the north, and Avalon Airport to the west. It forms part of the Port Phillip Bay and Bellarine Peninsula Ramsar Site as a wetland of international importance. The Western Treatment Plant treats around fifty percent of Melbourne's sewage — about 485 megalitres or 393 acre-feet per day — and generates almost 40,000 megalitres or 32,000 acre-feet of recycled water a year.
The Ridgeway is a 3.5-mile (5.6 km) "cycling permitted pedestrian priority" footpath owned by Thames Water in southeast London. It runs between Plumstead and Crossness on an embankment that covers the Joseph Bazalgette Southern Outfall Sewer.
Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, formerly known as Barking Sewage Works, is a large sewage treatment plant in Beckton in the east London Borough of Newham, operated by Thames Water.
Mogden Sewage Treatment Works is a sewage treatment plant in the Ivybridge section of Isleworth, West London, formerly known as Mogden. Built in 1931–36 by Middlesex County Council and now operated by Thames Water, it is the third largest sewage works in the United Kingdom. It treats the waste water from about 1.9 million people served by three sewers in North and West London. The plant has been extended to its geographical boundaries and is constantly being upgraded with new process, most recently in OfWat Amp6 by the Costain Atkins Joint venture who delivered 6MW of Combined Heat and Power (CHP) generation, New process air blowers for Batterys A&B and 6 new gravity sludge thickening streams. The site now covers 55 hectares.
Greenwich Pumping Station, known until circa 1986 as Deptford Pumping Station, is a sewage pumping station in the London Borough of Greenwich built in 1865 to the east of Deptford Creek. It is part of the London sewerage system devised by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in the mid 19th century. Today operated by Thames Water, it is located on the western side of Norman Road, approximately 0.5 km (0.31 mi) south west of Greenwich town centre, on the eastern bank of Deptford Creek, around 0.5 km (0.31 mi) south of its confluence with the River Thames.
The Crossness Sewage Treatment Works is a sewage treatment plant located at Crossness in the London Borough of Greenwich. It was opened in 1865 and is Europe's second largest sewage treatment works, after its counterpart Beckton Sewage Treatment Works located north of the river. Crossness treats the waste water from the Southern Outfall Sewer serving South and South East London, and is operated by Thames Water.
