3-003-961 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

London Main Drainage: Pumping-station at Deptford Creek, 1861. 'The southern low-level sewer is intended to extend from Wandsworth to Deptford, passing through Battersea-fields to the Brixton-road, and along the low-level districts to its junction with the outfall at Deptford, into which it has to be raised by pumping. The drainage area of this sewer is about twenty-two square miles. Two other branch sewers are necessary to complete the drainage of the southern district - one from Bermondsey to Deptford, the other to intercept the drainage of the River Effra. The southern outfall sewer will convey the sewage that is pumped into it from the low-level sewer, and that which enters it by gravitation from the higher level through the town of Greenwich and under Woolwich by a deep tunnel one mile long; it will pass through the Woolwich and Erith Marshes to a pumping-station at its outlet to the river. Great difficulties have been experienced in executing this latter portion of the contract by reason of the volumes of water which deluged the works - ebbing and flowing with the tide, and requiring the constant working of four very powerful steam-engines to prevent the workmen being flooded out'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.