Sir Joseph William BazalgetteCB was an 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, in response to the Great Stink of 1858, which was instrumental in relieving the city of cholera epidemics, while beginning to clean the River Thames. He later designed 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.
Beckton is a suburb in east London, England, located 8 miles (12.9 km) east of Charing Cross and part of the London Borough of Newham. Adjacent to the River Thames, the area consisted of unpopulated marshland known as the East Ham Levels in the parishes of Barking, East Ham, West Ham and Woolwich. The development of major industrial infrastructure in the 19th century to support the growing metropolis of London caused an increase in population with housing built in the area for workers of the Beckton Gas Works and Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. The area has a convoluted local government history and has formed part of Greater London since 1965. 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 Greenway is a 7-kilometre (4.3 mi) long footpath and cycleway in London, mostly in the London Borough of Newham, on the embankment containing the Joseph Bazalgette Northern Outfall Sewer.
Stamford Brook was a tributary of the Tideway stretch of the River Thames in west London supplied by three headwaters. Historically used as an irrigation ditch or dyke, the network of small watercourses had four lower courses and mouths.
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.
The Thames Tideway Tunnel is a deep-level sewer along the tidal section of the River Thames in London, running 25 kilometres from Acton in the west to Abbey Mills in the east, where it joins the Lee Tunnel which connects to Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. The tunnel is designed to capture almost all the raw sewage and rainwater from combined sewers which would otherwise overflow into the river during heavy rain. The sewage can be stored in the tunnel until it can be treated at Beckton.
The Great Stink was an event in Central London during July and August 1858 in 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.
Chelsea Embankment is part of the Thames Embankment, a road and walkway along the north bank of the River Thames in central London, England.
Crossness is a location in the London Borough of Bexley, close to the southern bank of the River Thames, to the east of Thamesmead, west of Belvedere and north-west of Erith. The place takes its name from Cross Ness, a specific promontory on the southern bank of the River Thames. In maritime terms, the tip of Cross Ness, in the past referred to as 'Leather Bottle Point', marks the boundary between Barking Reach and Halfway Reach. An unmanned lighthouse on Crossness is a navigational aid to shipping.
The London Borough of Newham, in spite of being one of the more crowded areas of London, has over 20 parks within its boundaries, as well as smaller recreation grounds. The larger parks in the Borough include:
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".
Bovril boats, also known formally as sludge vessels, were specially designed sewage dumping vessels that operated on the River Thames from 1887 to 1998. Their task was to remove London's human solid waste from Beckton and Crossness for disposal on the ebb tide at sea, at Black Deep, an extremely deep part of the North Sea fifteen miles off Foulness, on one of the main approaches to the Thames Estuary. Similar boats operated on the Manchester Ship Canal, the Tyne, and elsewhere.
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.
The Lee Tunnel, also known as the Stratford to East Ham deep tunnel, is an overflow sewer in East London for storage and conveyance of foul sewage mixed with rainwater. It was built as part of the Thames Tideway Scheme and runs from Abbey Mills Pumping Station down to pumps and storage tanks at Jenkins Lane, Beckton Sewage Treatment Works. It is wholly under the London Borough of Newham.
William Webster was a British builder who worked with architects and engineers such as Gilbert Scott and Joseph Bazalgette and is especially associated with several embankments of the River Thames.
The Double Bay Compressed Air Ejector Station is a heritage-listed former sewage pumping station (SPS87) and now decommissioned sewerage infrastructure in Jamberoo Lane, Double Bay, adjacent to the rear boundary of 63 William Street, in the Municipality of Woollahra local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The site of the pumping station and the State Heritage Register curtilage is shown on SHR:01324–Plan 2019, reproduced on the internet page referenced here.
Greenwich Pumping Station, known until c. 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 Long Reach sewage treatment works is located in Dartford, Kent adjacent to the River Thames. It treats the sewage from a population of 837,000 in a catchment area of 518 km2 (200 sq mi) in south and south east London and west Kent. The treatment capacity of the works is 346 million litres per day (Ml/d).
