Deptford Creek Pumping Station

Deptford Creek Pumping Station

On Wednesday Diana Rimel was kind enough to come to the GIHS meeting to talk to us about Sir Joseph Bazalgette - the Metropolitan Board of Works Engineer who transformed London's drainage/

Diana gave us the picture, copied above,  which comes from an 1861 edition of Illustrated London News.  It shows a temporary pumping station on Deptford Creek while the construction of the sewer is carried on in the foreground.  In the back ground are the arches of the Greenwich Railway and masts and chimneys of riverside activity and industry.

I have also been sent this extract from one of Bazalgette's reports on the subject - I also understand this has been reproduced in a book on the subject, and this is to acknowledge that author.


Mr. Bazalgette said in his Report : — "last year this Board fearing that further delays might arise before they were enabletd to carry out the main drainage, had determined upon and taken steps for the execution of temporary works, at a very large pecuniary sacrifice, in order to afford those districts immediate relief.    ..... I therefore recommend that the order of the Board, for the erection of a  temporary pumping-station at the mouth of the Earl sewer, be rescinded ; and that in lieu thereof, the first permanent pumping station at Deptford Creek, intended to raise the sewage of the low-level sewer into the main outfall channel, be at once constructed."


- the pumping station of course being the one which now stands in Greenwich High Road - and which Diana spoke at length about in her report