Crossness Pumping Station
On a blustery day when the sun and the rain battled for supremacy a group from London Studies 1 visited the Crossness Pumping Station in Abbey Wood.
Our visit started with an introductory talk on the background to the station coming into existence. This was the rapid growth in the population of Victorian London and the pressure put on the City's rather basic sewage facilities. This resulted in two major issues. An outbreak of Cholera and the Great Sink of 1859. The cause of Cholera was originally believed to be the quality of the air and it was some time before it was proven to be water borne with raw sewerage mingling with the supply of drinking water. The accumulation of sewage (and I hope that you are not eating whilst reading this!) heavily polluted the river Thames. However, it was only when the smell from the river discomforted those sitting in the Houses of Parliament that anything was done. After this happened an Act was rapidly passed to resolve the issue and Joseph Bazalgette was commissioned to design a vast new sewage system that is still in operation today. This took the waste from heavily populated London to the more isolated areas of Essex and Kent. In Kent the system ended at Crossness where four magnificent rotative beam engines were used to pump the sewage into a reservoir before it was discharged into the Thames on the ebbing tide. Good for London. Not so good for the rural communities on the receiving end! Much later the sewage was processed before being discharged.
After the talk we were shown models demonstrating how the system worked. This was followed by a light lunch - none of us having been deterred from eating by the subject of the recent talk and demonstration.
There then followed a guided tour around the remaining Victorian buildings whilst we heard about the life and duties of the workforce and their families. We discovered that they were effectively a self-contained community with its own schooling for the workers' children. In fact, much of the community housing surrounded a park built over the reservoir where family events took place. We then moved on to the magnificent Victorian pumping house and were shown how it operated. Although this is no longer in use the volunteers of the Crossness Engines Trust are gradually restoring it to its former glory and this was evident from what we saw in the building. All of us were impressed by the amount of decorative art in a building that was designed to deal with such a basic requirement and never intended to be a tourist attraction. That was the end of the official visit but a number of us then went on to the Valve House where one of the volunteers put on a demonstration of a number of pumps. And that was it. A fascinating insight into how Victorian ingenuity tackled a deadly disease and, in the process, produced a fine example of classic architecture. The basic reason for its existence may not be appetising but the tour was certainly to the taste of those came on the visit. Our thanks to our excellent guide Petra and the volunteers of the Crossness Engines Trust.