Crossness Pumping Station, London’s Sistine Chapel in sewage that demonstrates the strength of Victorian engineering

Stated to do things, Better to do them in a big way, right? Something similar must have been thought by the team of engineers and architects who in the mid-nineteenth century assumed the task of building a sewage pumping station that would help once and for all to clean up London, control the plague emanating from the River Thames and stop his outbreaks of anger.

More than one architect would have dispatched the commission without frills or great aspirations – Why be exquisite with a building that, after all, was destined to take care of the filth of Londoners? -; but that was not the case of the “parents” of Crosness Pumping Station. So thoroughly were they used, so much effort did they put into their trade, so high they aspired and with such care they took care of the details, that even today, more than a century and a half later, the station is known as “the Cathedral of the swamp” or even “The Sistine Chapel” of the residential waters.

There is nothing.

Objective: end the pestilence

Towards the middle of the 19th century, caring for the sewage of the burgeoning and growing — especially growing — City was becoming a pressing task. More than a question of good taste, comfort or urban planning, the theme was already a public health priority.

Despite the fact that in 1848 the authorities had approved a bill that established that all cesspools and drains should be connected to the sewers, the truth is that the amount and conditions in which detritus was dumped into the River Thames were alarming. Y favored frequent outbreaks of cholera. Between 1853 and 1854 the disease killed more than 10,500 people, less in any case than the 14,000 of the outbreak from 1848 to 1849.

When a particularly sweltering summer in 1858 caused a foul odor to rise from the river, so nauseating that even today it is remembered as “Great Stink” (Great Stink) and ended up affecting the activity of Parliament, the authorities decided to take action on the matter. The situation simply threatened to make the riverbank an unbearable area. Before the end of the year, an amendment was approved giving carte blanche to Joseph Bazalgette, an engineer from the Metropolitan Works Board, to extend a comprehensive sanitation system.

Joseph Bazalgette’s ambitious project contemplated more than 130 kilometers of covered tunnels designed for intercept smaller sewers before they dumped their dire cocktail of human, animal and industrial waste into the waters of the Thames, a vast network of sewers and pumping stations, including Crossness in the London Borough of Bexley. In addition to Bazalgette’s ingenuity, the project also involved architect Charles Henry Drive and William Webster, in charge of shaping the works.

Work on the new sanitation started shortly after the “Great Stink”, in 1859, and by 1865 they had already been completed on the south side of the Thamesincluding the brand new Crossness Pump Station. The center, inaugurated by the Prince of Wales himself, included a machine room and a boiler room, assembly workshop, valve, fireplace and covered cistern. In the upper part of the reservoir, the houses that housed the plant operators were also distributed.

Beyond its impressive wrought and iron ornaments, its painted interiors, its Victorian lines or its decoration, it cares to the millimeter and with such care that it makes Crosness –in the words of Nikolaus Pevsner– in “a masterpiece of engineering: a victorian cathedral of ironwork”, The station stands out for its equipment for pumping wastewater.

Among the most surprising pieces that would be endowed with the passage of time stands out its system of four steam engines, responsible for pumping the water and raise it several meters. Manufactured by James Watt & Co. Following Bazalgette’s own instructions, they were baptized with winks to the British Crown: “Victoria”, “Albert Edward”, “Prince Consort” and “Alexandra”.

At 11 revolutions per minute, the station pumped approximately 6,800 liters of wastewater for each engine stroke to a tank with a capacity of about 122,700 cubic meters. To generate the necessary steam the station numbered a dozen Cornish kettles which required a considerable contribution of Welsh coal: 5,000 tons per year.

As more pumping capacity was required – a need directly linked to London’s own growth -, Crossness facilities were reinforced. So did his own performance, which was adapted to the times. The pumping and dumping of raw water, for example, continued until 1880, when after the disaster of SS Princess Alice —A shipwreck in the Thames that resulted in hundreds of deaths, much of it from inhaling toxic waste from sewage — was passed to a system of settlement and separation that distinguished between liquids, which continued to be thrown into the river, and solids, which were transported in boats to the sea.

Bazalgette’s work survived the turn of the century and it continued to update to the rhythm of a city of unstoppable growth that demanded more modern and powerful facilities. With the passage of time – at the beginning of the 20th – the authorities came to replace triple expansion steam engines with diesel engines. The decades, however, ended up taking their toll on the “Victorian cathedral” and in the 50s the pumping station was dismantled. In the 1970s, the building ended up in the Register of Heritage at Risk, awaiting its restoration.

Today, more than a century and a half after its regal inauguration, with the improved urban sanitation system and the Thames giving even signs of recovery, Crosness can be visited as Museum and homage to the Victorian genius. Its engine rooms, stairways, gears and atriums, already recovered, offer one of the best examples of the grandeur of 19th century English engineering … Also that the detritus they can boast of having their own cathedral.

Images | Loz Pycock (Flickr) Y Neil Turner (Flickr) Y Steve Cadman (Flickr)