It was a truly amazing experience. We were winched down into the great cavernous tunnels built over 150 years ago to help alleviate the great stench of 1856 – when Parliament had to close because the odour from the polluted Thames became unbearable. You may have an image of crawling along narrow pipes but these are like underground cathedrals: they would fit a tube train and the brickwork is some of the best you will ever see. Almost unblemished after all this time, they are a testament to one of the greatest engineering feats of the 19th Century:
We learnt a lot about the history of London's sewer system, all the way back to the middle ages when a new application of gunpowder technology enabled the engineers of the time to hollow out elm trunks, which were then joined together to provide elementary water mains.
Over the ensuing centuries there were successive modifications as the city’s population grew, resulting in new public health challenges and the familiar struggle of expediency and budget over innovation and lasting solutions.
Above ground the old pumping station at Abbey Mills is a magnificent Grade 2* Listed Building, tucked away in a quiet corner of the Lower Lea Valley. Externally its finely detailed architecture makes you wonder at the craftsmanship and pride devoted to what is in fact a functional and unglamorous piece of infrastructure – not to mention the budget they must have had in those days:
Inside it is a film buff's paradise: part tardis, part Frankenstein's laboratory and part Gotham City, not to mention the amazing archive room with musty rows of drawings detailing every drain and manhole cover in the city.
This brief insight into a vital but hidden feature of our city is of course all the more relevant because the Greenway which links West Ham to the Olympic Park site, is in fact along the line of the Northern Outfall Sewer. So think of that when you come to the Games and wonder at the mix of science, design, artistry and environmental management which goes into to dealing with our effluent and storm water. Even where there's muck there's culture.
