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Authors: Peter Ackroyd
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roar and tumult of London—can also clearly be heard from the ventilator gratings in the roads above.
The travellers journey through great brick vaults where the various sewers join together. If they are unfortunate they might pass great deposits of fat fastened to the sides of the tunnels, some of them 30 or 40 inches thick; they have accrued from the ingestion of deposits of “fast food.”Rats can occasionally be seen. They were more plentiful in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in what were known as blood sewers; these were the sewers under slaughter-houses and meat-markets.
The smell is sometimes offensive but often simply musty, with the odours of damp and stone; the atmosphere is close and clammy. A mist may hover over the turbid liquid. The vistas of brick in these curiously egg-shaped tunnels stretch ever onward. It would be easy to get lost. It would be easy to remain concealed. Some of the sewers have not been visited in the last fifteen years.
One nineteenth-century traveller reported that he saw, in an old sewer underBlackfriars Bridge, “a cluster of mushrooms on the roof that were almost as large as ordinary soup-tureens.” On 28 July 1840, the first visitor to the newly brickedFleet sewer descended at Fleet Bridge. “I suspended my argand lamp on the breakwater of the sewer, and with my lanthorn light we proceeded towards the Thames.” It might be a narrative from the swamps of Borneo rather than the City of London. The sewer turned and twisted when suddenly, at a quarter to midday, they realised that the tide had come in to a depth of 2½ feet. He and his companions were in fear for their lives and “holding our Lamps aloft, dashed up the Sewer, which we had to get up one half before out of danger. The air was close, and made us faint. However we got safe to Holborn Bridge.…”
In
A Traveller’s Life
Eric Newby reflected on a journey within theTyburn sewer in the early 1960s. He was told to be alert to the presence of acetylene, petrol, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with “a nice smell of almonds, the faintest suspicion of which sent any gangof sewermen” straight back to the surface at a very fast pace. Yet what caught his nostrils was the odour of coal gas, from leaking pipes, mixed with the unmistakable smell of untreated sewage. He noticed in the course of his journey families ofrats nestling in broken brickwork. They were known to the sewer-men of the time as “bunnies.” Newby was then taken into the Fleet sewer, where he was confronted by a warm and steamy darkness “rather like a Turkish bath with something wrong with it.”
A visionary work of modern times, in the spirit of Bazalgette, is now being undertaken. TheThames Tideway Tunnel will run fromChiswick in West London toBeckton in East London, a distance of some 20 miles. It will carry away the sewage and excess waste that accumulates after heavy rain, catching it before it reaches the river. It is being built 200 feet beneath the surface, following the sinuous course of the river, and must rank as one of the largest engineering projects of recent times. It is hoped to be completed by 2020. Yet, as in all matters of the underworld, it is not widely known or discussed.
Two other tunnels of water pass beneath London. A canal runs for three-quarters of a mile underneath the streets of Islington, snaking below Muriel Street, Barns-bury Road, Tolpuddle Street and Upper Street before coming out beside Noel Road. The second tunnel under London, theMaida Hill tunnel, runs under EdgwareRoad and proceeds beneathAberdeen Place for 370 yards. The work on the tunnel was done by candlelight, and was constantly bedevilled by the discovery of undergroundsprings; the excavated earth was taken to “Mr. Lord’s field,” that later becameLord’s Cricket Ground.
The Islington tunnel was opened in 1820, and the first boats were propelled by “legging,” whereby men lay on planks and guided their craft with their feet and legs
The travellers journey through great brick vaults where the various sewers join together. If they are unfortunate they might pass great deposits of fat fastened to the sides of the tunnels, some of them 30 or 40 inches thick; they have accrued from the ingestion of deposits of “fast food.”Rats can occasionally be seen. They were more plentiful in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, in what were known as blood sewers; these were the sewers under slaughter-houses and meat-markets.
The smell is sometimes offensive but often simply musty, with the odours of damp and stone; the atmosphere is close and clammy. A mist may hover over the turbid liquid. The vistas of brick in these curiously egg-shaped tunnels stretch ever onward. It would be easy to get lost. It would be easy to remain concealed. Some of the sewers have not been visited in the last fifteen years.
One nineteenth-century traveller reported that he saw, in an old sewer underBlackfriars Bridge, “a cluster of mushrooms on the roof that were almost as large as ordinary soup-tureens.” On 28 July 1840, the first visitor to the newly brickedFleet sewer descended at Fleet Bridge. “I suspended my argand lamp on the breakwater of the sewer, and with my lanthorn light we proceeded towards the Thames.” It might be a narrative from the swamps of Borneo rather than the City of London. The sewer turned and twisted when suddenly, at a quarter to midday, they realised that the tide had come in to a depth of 2½ feet. He and his companions were in fear for their lives and “holding our Lamps aloft, dashed up the Sewer, which we had to get up one half before out of danger. The air was close, and made us faint. However we got safe to Holborn Bridge.…”
In
A Traveller’s Life
Eric Newby reflected on a journey within theTyburn sewer in the early 1960s. He was told to be alert to the presence of acetylene, petrol, carbon dioxide and hydrogen cyanide with “a nice smell of almonds, the faintest suspicion of which sent any gangof sewermen” straight back to the surface at a very fast pace. Yet what caught his nostrils was the odour of coal gas, from leaking pipes, mixed with the unmistakable smell of untreated sewage. He noticed in the course of his journey families ofrats nestling in broken brickwork. They were known to the sewer-men of the time as “bunnies.” Newby was then taken into the Fleet sewer, where he was confronted by a warm and steamy darkness “rather like a Turkish bath with something wrong with it.”
A visionary work of modern times, in the spirit of Bazalgette, is now being undertaken. TheThames Tideway Tunnel will run fromChiswick in West London toBeckton in East London, a distance of some 20 miles. It will carry away the sewage and excess waste that accumulates after heavy rain, catching it before it reaches the river. It is being built 200 feet beneath the surface, following the sinuous course of the river, and must rank as one of the largest engineering projects of recent times. It is hoped to be completed by 2020. Yet, as in all matters of the underworld, it is not widely known or discussed.
Two other tunnels of water pass beneath London. A canal runs for three-quarters of a mile underneath the streets of Islington, snaking below Muriel Street, Barns-bury Road, Tolpuddle Street and Upper Street before coming out beside Noel Road. The second tunnel under London, theMaida Hill tunnel, runs under EdgwareRoad and proceeds beneathAberdeen Place for 370 yards. The work on the tunnel was done by candlelight, and was constantly bedevilled by the discovery of undergroundsprings; the excavated earth was taken to “Mr. Lord’s field,” that later becameLord’s Cricket Ground.
The Islington tunnel was opened in 1820, and the first boats were propelled by “legging,” whereby men lay on planks and guided their craft with their feet and legs
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