Where there's muck, there's polychrome ironwork
I spent lunchtime in a lecture on the history of sewerage. The author of The Great Stink of London made a spirited and entertaining case for Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Victorian engineer of London's sewers, as a Great Briton. Inspired by this hero-worship, I walked back along the Victoria Embankment that he built (containing the Circle and District underground lines) and later flushed the toilet as a tribute.
The effluvia would have been whisked away to the modern replacement for the Crossness Pumping Station on the south bank of the Thames. In July 2001,
huskyteer and I made a pilgrimage to the original building (organized by Greenwich Cyclists).
The unprepossessing exterior hides ...
... this jolly colour scheme.
huskyteer discovering that romance is not dead.
The equally unusual building for Thames Water's new works, on the same site.
[This was the first in a series of talks on Subterranean London, which are convenient for precisely no one but me, but apparently streamed online. Next Monday: 'How underground fibre enables communications'; on 8 March, 'Lost and forgotten stations', which will be packed; and the following Monday, 'Roman London: The Temple of Mithras'.]
The effluvia would have been whisked away to the modern replacement for the Crossness Pumping Station on the south bank of the Thames. In July 2001,
The unprepossessing exterior hides ...
... this jolly colour scheme.
The equally unusual building for Thames Water's new works, on the same site.
[This was the first in a series of talks on Subterranean London, which are convenient for precisely no one but me, but apparently streamed online. Next Monday: 'How underground fibre enables communications'; on 8 March, 'Lost and forgotten stations', which will be packed; and the following Monday, 'Roman London: The Temple of Mithras'.]