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Authors: Peter Ackroyd
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of sewage,” again connecting the sacred and the underground worlds. Its sister station atCrossness was also described as a “perfect shrine of machinery,” with its interior resembling a Byzantine church. Abbey Mills was seen as a magical space, “poetical” and “fairy-like” according to a journalist from the
Daily Telegraph
, in the spring of 1865, thus confirming the underworld as a place of gleaming treasure. Yet the same journalist, entering the empty subterranean reservoir, also believed himself to be “in the very jaws of peril, in the gorge of the valley of the shadow of death”; he was close to “the filthiest mess in Europe, pent up and bridled in, panting and ready to leap out like a black panther.” The two images of the underworld, the magical and the demonic, are here conflated.
Building techniques: a view from Wick Lane in Bow, 1860s (illustration credit Ill.16)
Bazalgette’s Thames Embankment, 1867 (illustration credit Ill.17)
In the spring of 1861, the
Observer
described Bazalgette’s enterprise as “the most extensive and wonderful work of modern times.” It was compared to the seven wonders of the ancient world. It encompassed 82 miles of main sewers, and over 1,000 miles of smaller sewers. It utilised 318 million bricks and 880,000 cubic yards of concrete. This is the system that, with improvements and extensions, is still in use. The brick, known as Staffordshire Blue, is intact within its bed of Portland cement. Bazalgette also realised that the flow of the river would be much increased if it were more narrowly embanked;so the Albert andVictoria Embankments were created. With Nash and Wren, Bazalgette enters the pantheon of London heroes.
It has been said thatsewers exercise a curious fascination upon otherwise healthy and happy people. Many have undertaken the journey into Bazalgette’s sewers in the role of tourists seeking sensations. They must be prepared for the descent, however, with the ritual of changing clothes; they wear waders that come up to the waist, woollen socks that reach the thigh, and white protective paper coveralls. A hard hat and a miner’s lamp are also part of the equipment. They listen in silence to a recitation of rules and regulations. Their progress is equivalent to the journeys of classical mythology, where a living person travelled downwards into the realm of the dead before returning to the upper world with the tale of his or her descent. They are entering what is in a literal sense the wasteland.
A recent traveller went beneath Piccadilly in 1960 where “down below it was like crossing the Styx. The fog had followed us down from the streets and swirled above the discoloured and strongly smelling river like the stream of Hades.” Another traveller described theFleet sewer when seen fitfully by the light of the lanterns as “one of the prisons designed by Piranesi.” That is one of the fears of walking under the ground; you may be trapped and imprisoned by the weight of the darkness. Sewers might induce fear and even hysteria.
The reports of the world beneath are written in a generally breathless tone, compounded of fear and awe. The underground chambers are compared to cathedrals, complete with pillars and buttresses, arches andcrypts. One visitor, discovering an archway through which a cataract tumbled, remarked that it was as fantastic a scene as “a dream of a subterranean monastery.” The travellers walk along tunnels that may reach a height of 17 feet, the cool tainted water lapping at about knee-height around their waders. Many are disconcerted by the pull of the water, and feel disoriented; they lose their equilibrium. They feel the sediment beneath their feet, as if they were walking on a beach at low tide. Great iron doors loom up at intervals, acting as valves. The noise of roaring water, somewhere in the distance, can generally be heard. It is the sound of cataracts and waterfalls. Yet the sounds of the outer world—the general
Daily Telegraph
, in the spring of 1865, thus confirming the underworld as a place of gleaming treasure. Yet the same journalist, entering the empty subterranean reservoir, also believed himself to be “in the very jaws of peril, in the gorge of the valley of the shadow of death”; he was close to “the filthiest mess in Europe, pent up and bridled in, panting and ready to leap out like a black panther.” The two images of the underworld, the magical and the demonic, are here conflated.
Building techniques: a view from Wick Lane in Bow, 1860s (illustration credit Ill.16)
Bazalgette’s Thames Embankment, 1867 (illustration credit Ill.17)
In the spring of 1861, the
Observer
described Bazalgette’s enterprise as “the most extensive and wonderful work of modern times.” It was compared to the seven wonders of the ancient world. It encompassed 82 miles of main sewers, and over 1,000 miles of smaller sewers. It utilised 318 million bricks and 880,000 cubic yards of concrete. This is the system that, with improvements and extensions, is still in use. The brick, known as Staffordshire Blue, is intact within its bed of Portland cement. Bazalgette also realised that the flow of the river would be much increased if it were more narrowly embanked;so the Albert andVictoria Embankments were created. With Nash and Wren, Bazalgette enters the pantheon of London heroes.
It has been said thatsewers exercise a curious fascination upon otherwise healthy and happy people. Many have undertaken the journey into Bazalgette’s sewers in the role of tourists seeking sensations. They must be prepared for the descent, however, with the ritual of changing clothes; they wear waders that come up to the waist, woollen socks that reach the thigh, and white protective paper coveralls. A hard hat and a miner’s lamp are also part of the equipment. They listen in silence to a recitation of rules and regulations. Their progress is equivalent to the journeys of classical mythology, where a living person travelled downwards into the realm of the dead before returning to the upper world with the tale of his or her descent. They are entering what is in a literal sense the wasteland.
A recent traveller went beneath Piccadilly in 1960 where “down below it was like crossing the Styx. The fog had followed us down from the streets and swirled above the discoloured and strongly smelling river like the stream of Hades.” Another traveller described theFleet sewer when seen fitfully by the light of the lanterns as “one of the prisons designed by Piranesi.” That is one of the fears of walking under the ground; you may be trapped and imprisoned by the weight of the darkness. Sewers might induce fear and even hysteria.
The reports of the world beneath are written in a generally breathless tone, compounded of fear and awe. The underground chambers are compared to cathedrals, complete with pillars and buttresses, arches andcrypts. One visitor, discovering an archway through which a cataract tumbled, remarked that it was as fantastic a scene as “a dream of a subterranean monastery.” The travellers walk along tunnels that may reach a height of 17 feet, the cool tainted water lapping at about knee-height around their waders. Many are disconcerted by the pull of the water, and feel disoriented; they lose their equilibrium. They feel the sediment beneath their feet, as if they were walking on a beach at low tide. Great iron doors loom up at intervals, acting as valves. The noise of roaring water, somewhere in the distance, can generally be heard. It is the sound of cataracts and waterfalls. Yet the sounds of the outer world—the general
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