Uploaded November 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
It was a lovely day visiting this Cathedral to the gods of poo. We were here 10 years ago and lots has changed, but not all for the better, as public access is more limited, with no access to the lower parts of the pumps any more. The massive steam powered beam engines are the largest rotative engine of their type in the world with 47 ton beams, and 52 ton flywheels. The narrow gauge railway is a nice little touch to save walking from the car park outside the gates, because you cant drive in and park up anymore. This was an over the top and very ingenious way to solve the infamous "Great Stink" of 1858. It wasn't so much a solution to the plight of the ordinary Londoners, but more because the Members Of Parliament didn't want to work while suffocated by the smell of the raw sewage that was being discharged into the River Thames right outside their windows. Joseph Bazalgette's clever solution was to build a new sewage system that held the waste in an enormous underground sewage reservoir 13 miles down river, until at high tide it was dumped into the River to be carried away and dumped outside someone else's doorstep. Over 100 years later a new system, the "Thames Tideway Tunnel" has been constructed, that pumps it even further down river outside someone else's doorstep yet again.
It was a lovely day visiting this Cathedral to the gods of poo. We were here 10 years ago and lots has changed, but not all for the better, as public access is more limited, with no access to the lower parts of the pumps any more. The massive steam powered beam engines are the largest rotative engine of their type in the world with 47 ton beams, and 52 ton flywheels. The narrow gauge railway is a nice little touch to save walking from the car park outside the gates, because you cant drive in and park up anymore. This was an over the top and very ingenious way to solve the infamous "Great Stink" of 1858. It wasn't so much a solution to the plight of the ordinary Londoners, but more because the Members Of Parliament didn't want to work while suffocated by the smell of the raw sewage that was being discharged into the River Thames right outside their windows. Joseph Bazalgette's clever solution was to build a new sewage system that held the waste in an enormous underground sewage reservoir 13 miles down river, until at high tide it was dumped into the River to be carried away and dumped outside someone else's doorstep. Over 100 years later a new system, the "Thames Tideway Tunnel" has been constructed, that pumps it even further down river outside someone else's doorstep yet again.
