3-016-957 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Metropolitan Main-drainage works at Crossness, [Bexley], 1864. View of '...the works at this important outlet for the whole of the sewage drained from the area on the south side of the Thames. The large building in the centre...will have a good appearance from the river. It has considerable architectural pretensions...The block of buildings...contains the engines, boilers, and other machinery connected with the great pumping establishment...The numerous lines of walls, some arched over, in the foreground...are the works of the great reservoir, in which the sewage is accumulated during the flow of the tide...The reservoir into which the sewage is lifted extends over 6½ acres, and is capable of holding 1,000,000 cubic feet in each of its four compartments...The sewage will be stored therein between the tidal periods of high water, near which time only a discharge into the river is intended...the works are very extensive, covering...an area of about fifteen acres. They embrace, in addition to the above, a complicated network of sewers and three outlets, furnished with a number of very large cast-iron sluices, with all requisite machinery for regulating and distributing the sewage into the several channels, as circumstances may demand'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.