3-003-963 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

London Main Drainage: bottom of a shaft in the southern high-level sewer at Peckham, 1861. 'The southern high-level sewer consists of two lines, one commencing at Clapham and ending at New Cross, the other extending from Dulwich to the latter place, from which point they are carried in the same trench, but at different levels, under the Brighton, North Kent, and North Woolwich Railways, and along the New Cross road to the Broadway at Deptford; from this point they pass down Church-street to Deptford Creek, and, as the trench in which they are to be constructed will be the entire width of this street, the whole of the houses on either side will have to be underpinned - that is, they must have entirely new foundations put to them...At Deptford Creek these two sewers discharge their storm-waters through two culverts eleven feet in diameter; but the ordinary sewage will be conveyed by four iron pipes under the Creek by gravitation into the outfall sewer. The southern highlevel sewer drains an area of about twenty square miles, embracing Clapham, Dulwich, Camberwell, and Peckham'. From "Illustrated London News", 1861.