How many sewer manholes are there in London? Giant 'fat iceberg' recovered from London sewers

Great Britain, London

The Great Stench The Great Stink is an event that took place in London in the summer of 1858. Hot summers and the lack of a centralized sewage system then led to the pollution of the Thames and surrounding areas with feces and waste. Diseases were rampant, and citizens fled London en masse. Parliament resigned.

Water supply and sanitation before the Great Stench

Until the end of the 16th century, Londoners took water from wells, from the River Thames and its tributaries, as well as from large cisterns; for example, from a spring at Tyburn, water was carried through a lead pipe into a reservoir: Cheapside's Great Conduit. You had to pay for the use of water from the tanks, and overseers were appointed to ensure that traders and bakers would not use the water for free for commercial purposes.

Wealthy Londoners who lived near the pipelines that filled the tanks could obtain permission to pay to connect their homes to the water supply, but unauthorized connections were also common. Those who could not pay for connection received water from water tankers. In 1496, the latter created their own guild called the “Brotherhood of Water Carriers named after. St. Christopher."

In 1582, the Dutchman Pieter Maurice rented the north arch of London Bridge and installed it there. water wheel for a pump that pumped water to several areas of London. In 1584 and 1701, 2 more wheels were added, operating until 1822.

In 1815, it was allowed to drain the sewer into the Thames, where the sewage of the entire city was discharged for 7 years. At the same time, they continued to take water from there for washing and cooking. In London there were more than 200 thousand sewage pits that were supposed to be cleaned regularly, but due to high prices this was done irregularly, which added a stench to the already not fragrant air of London.

Cholera was widespread throughout the 1840s. The reasons were not known; It was generally accepted that the disease was a consequence of inhaling air containing “miasmas.” Due to the prevalence of the airborne theory among Italian scientists, Philip Pacini's discovery of the causative agent of cholera in 1854 was completely ignored, and the bacteria were rediscovered thirty years later by Robert Koch. In 1854, London physician John Snow, while studying the causes of the Soho epidemic, discovered that the disease was transmitted through drinking water contaminated with sewage. This idea, however, was not supported in society. In 1848, several local sewer authorities were merged into the Metropolitan Sewerage Commission. The commission began cleaning out the old cesspools, which ultimately also led to the Great Stench.

Events before the Great Stench

The situation became worse with the replacement of potties with flush toilets, which increased the number of Wastewater. Sewage pits overflowed and their contents ended up in rainwater ditches. Mixing with the wastewater from factories and slaughterhouses, it ended up in the Thames.

In 1858 the weather was particularly hot. The Thames and its tributaries were overflowing with sewage, and the warm weather had caused it to bloom, creating such an odor that it affected the work of the House of Commons: curtains soaked in bleach had to be used, and its members decided to move to Hampton, the ships were about to be evacuated to Oxford. After heavy rains, the heat and summer humidity ended, which solved the problem. However, the House of Commons appointed a committee to report on the circumstances of the disaster and recommended that a plan be drawn up to prevent such problems in the future.

New sewer system

At the end of 1859, the Metropolitan Board of Works was created, which, despite numerous schemes to combat the epidemic, accepted the scheme proposed in 1859 by its own chief engineer, Joseph Bazalget. Over the next six years, they created key elements London's sewer system, and the "Great Stench" became a distant memory.

Although the new sewerage system was in place and water supplies gradually improved, it did not prevent epidemics in the 1860s in east London. However, a forensic investigation showed that the contaminated River Lee was filling the reservoirs of the Eastern Water Company. The measures taken resulted in this being the last case of cholera in London.

For centuries, sewage in major European cities formed an important part of the artificial ecosystem - fertilizing the surrounding fields. In London, in the mid-19th century, a sewerage system 850 km long was first built, carrying sewage into the sea.

How London's sewers were made is described in the book by architect Carolyn Steele, Hungry City. How food determines our lives"" (Strelka Press, 2014, pp. 333-340).

"By the early 19th century, London's population had quadrupled and its horticulture farms, now extending as far as the River Lea, continued to regularly receive fertilizer through the Dung Wharf, the city's main waste collection point. Supply roughly matched demand (more population, more excrement, more fields to fertilize with it, more food for the townspeople) - until the water closet, invented by Joseph Bramah in 1778, came along. Having solved the problem at home with one press of the release lever, the water closet created a real nightmare on a city scale. The volume of wastewater has increased sharply. Old latrines overflowed, clogging and overflowing street drainage ditches intended only for rainwater. Excrement began to seep from underground drains between floorboards in low-lying homes.

Since the 1830s, cholera epidemics have raged in London one after another. In 1842, socialist Edwin Chadick published An Inquiry into the Sanitary Conditions of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, which painted a grim picture of life during the early years of Queen Victoria's reign. Chadwick concluded there: “Various forms of epidemics, endemics and other diseases caused by unclean air, generated by the decomposition of animal and vegetable substances, dampness and dirt, as well as crowded dwellings, plague the population in every corner of the kingdom.”

In 1848, the government responded to the situation by creating a body called the Joint Sewerage Commission. Her first step, according to Chadwick's proposals, was the flushing of 369 underground drains in London. This operation, undertaken with the best intentions, turned into a disaster - its result was the discharge of centuries of accumulated sewage into the Thames. Many Londoners took their drinking water from the Thames, and the result was a new outbreak of cholera. Now this disease occurred every year, claiming up to 10 thousand lives.

London's "sewage crisis" has sparked debate across the Western world about urban waste. For example, the “father of mineral fertilizers,” the German Justus von Liebig, spoke about the extreme value of excrement - more precisely, about the nutrients contained in it. "They must be returned to the earth, otherwise the outskirts of the cities will turn into a barren desert." He even wrote a letter to British Prime Minister Robert Peel:

""The reason for soil depletion should be sought in the habits of city dwellers. Thus, water closets do not allow the collection and storage of liquid and solid feces. In Britain they do not return to the fields, but are carried away by rivers to the sea."

Chadwick also agreed with Liebig's arguments. He himself became a devotee of the use of sewage after visiting Edinburgh and noting how fertile the area irrigated by the waters of one of the main sewer channels called "Stinky Brook" was. And two English chemists Hoffman and Will calculated that the contents of the excrement of Londoners in a year is equal to the volume of all guano imported into Britain (guano is compacted bird droppings). British high society began to lean towards leaving it as it was, as was customary in all European cities - collecting excrement and taking it to the fields.

However, the hot summer of 1858 made theoretical discussions about the benefits of sewage unacceptable. That year, a “Great Stench” arose from the poisonous waters of the Thames: the stench was so strong that the windows of the House of Commons had to be draped with cloth soaked in bleach. A cholera epidemic began again in the city.

Politicians, who have been talking about sewage for centuries, are finally convinced that something needs to be done. A new body created to replace the Joint Sewerage Commission, the Metropolitan Utilities Authority, was tasked with solving the problem once and for all. Was announced open competition, to which 140 projects of varying degrees of fantasy were presented. One of them involved transporting London's sewage to the countryside via radial canals. According to another, waste should be collected in floating tanks and then taken out to sea by tugboats.

In 1859, the Authority, having reviewed and rejected all 140 designs, settled on a plan developed by its own engineer, Joseph Bazalgette. The scheme was based on a proposal made 25 years ago by biblical artist John Martin. He was obsessed with apocalyptic visions, but in a rare moment of lucidity, in 1834 Martin published a pamphlet (with masterfully executed illustrations) in which he proposed to clean up the Thames by laying two intercepting sewers on both banks of the river, over which galleries could be built, "" so that the working population can indulge in such a useful activity as walking."

At Limehouse and Rotherhithe, the sewers would end in huge tanks where their contents would be turned into compost and sold to farmers "'like they do in China'." The idea was brilliant, but Martin didn't have the engineering knowledge to work it out practical use. But engineer Bazalgette got down to business. He proposed constructing five interceptor sewers, laying them at a slight slope to take advantage of the natural drainage system of the Thames basin. They had to intersect with existing sewer channels and river tributaries. The end points of the system would be two huge reservoirs, at Beckton in the north and at Crossner in the south, where wastewater would accumulate in anticipation of the high tide, which would carry it straight out to sea.

Bazalgette's project finally buried plans for excrement recycling. After the “Great Stench,” the government wanted only one thing - to get rid of them, and as quickly and efficiently as possible. Bazalgette coped with this task brilliantly.

Construction new system London's sewer system was completed in the shortest possible time for those times - in six years. A total of 2.7 million cubic meters of soil were excavated, and 318 million bricks were required for cladding (their price in England increased 1.5 times during this period). The total length of the intercepting collectors was 137 km, and each of them was an inclined channel of an oval cross-section, which was supposed to maximize flow speed. The system, which connected 720 km of main sewer drains (making the total length of this system exceeded 850 km), was capable of moving more than 2 million cubic meters of wastewater per day, almost exclusively due to its own weight.

This “almost” was the reason for the construction of a pumping station in Krossner. Although Bazalgette used every possible trick to harness gravity, he still needed four pumping stations (one on the north and three on the south, low-lying bank of the Thames) to pump the sewage. Crosness Station, at the lowest point of the system, has the biggest job: lifting half of London's wastewater up to 12 meters into a giant underground reservoir.

The system built by Bazalgette still operates in London today. The Krossnes station is still operating, pumping 700 thousand cubic meters of sewage per day. From the 1860s until the 1990s, solid waste was loaded onto barges and then dumped into the North Sea. For a long time such an operation was even considered beneficial for the marine ecosystem, because the excrement contributed to the explosive growth of protozoa and plankton, the beginning of a food chain at the top of which were herring, cod or haddock.

However, starting in 1998, the Crossness plant began pressing and drying the solid sludge. It turned out that this is an excellent fuel (like dung, used since ancient times by the steppe people). These briquettes are used as fuel for its own power plant, and provide the sewerage complex with about 70% of the energy it consumes.

Today, sewage flowing through the streets equals communal collapse, but 150 years ago in any large city it was perceived as just an annoying nuisance. The first urban sewerage system, in the form in which we are accustomed to seeing it, appeared in London only in the 19th century. The project was so revolutionary and grandiose that the London city sewerage system rightfully became one of the industrial wonders of the world.

The problem of cleaning and destroying fetid waste was relevant not only for the inhabitants of London, but also for residents of any large city. However, for Londoners at the beginning of the 19th century, an ill-conceived drainage system turned into a real disaster.

Back in the 15th century, for a number of historical reasons, the population of London began to grow rapidly. Most residents from villages moved to the city, where there was an opportunity to find work and feed their families, and, under good circumstances, lead a decent, comfortable life. The constantly growing population of the city needed a huge number of horses, which then served as the main means of transportation. A sewage disposal system that could cleanse the city of sewage became vital.

At that time the main source drinking water served the waters of the Thames. Wealthy Londoners ordered water supplies for themselves from the water carriers' guild, and even wealthier ones even installed water pipes to their own homes. Back in 1582, construction began on a water wheel that pumped water from the river. Over the years, the design was improved, the water supply system was improved, and by the 19th century several similar structures were already supplying water to Londoners.

Since water was supplied directly to houses, Londoners not only built pit cesspools under their houses, but also used flush toilets. Throughout the existence of London, sewage was dumped into the Thames, but their quantity was not large and the river dissolved it in a short period of time and carried it away from the city. But in 1815, the population increased so much that the situation became critical: many flush toilets appeared, they did not have time to clean cesspools and remove sewage, and the authorities made, as historians say, one of the most “stupid” and “ill-considered” decisions - to send absolutely all wastewater goes straight into the Thames, and not downstream, but within the city limits.

One can only imagine what happened to the river, into which a stream poured immediately from 200,000 toilets, slaughterhouses and stables. It should be noted that most toilets were used by entire neighborhoods where the poor lived - there was only one toilet per block or street. Sewage rushed like a stormy river into the Thames, from which the townspeople took water for drinking and washing clothes. A terrifying stench spread over the Thames and throughout London. The authorities, unable to find a way out, urgently issued a decree prohibiting the discharge of sewage into the Thames. This decree was not taken seriously by anyone, the cesspools were constantly overflowing, and it was impossible to walk along the street due to the abundance of horse manure. It was washed away with dirty water, which returned to the long-suffering Thames.

When the famous scientist Michael Faraday decided to take a pleasure steamer along the Thames in the middle of the century, he was amazed at how polluted the water was. Here is what he wrote in an article for the respected London newspaper The Times, published on July 7, 1855: “I tore some white cards into pieces, wet them so that they would sink easily, and at each place where the steamer landed, I lowered them into the water It was so cloudy that when the cards were immersed to the thickness of a finger in bright light, sunny day they were completely indistinguishable. The smell from the river was such that it seemed as if we were floating through an open sewer."

In the summer of 1855, the Thames overflowed its banks, and after the waters of the majestic river ebbed, all the sewage remained on the shore, as if nature itself had decided to punish the inhabitants of the huge city for their irresponsible attitude towards environment. That summer went down in history as the time of the Great Stench. Naturally, such a quantity of sewage contributed to outbreaks of epidemics of cholera and typhoid. Many Londoners died from disease right on the streets of the capital. The number of victims of the Great Stench could not be counted, since the corpses were buried outside the city limits in mass graves in order to somehow contain the epidemic. A mass exodus began from London. Everyone fled - the poor, wealthy citizens and even government officials.

Most indicative of all is the flight of parliament from the newly built famous building on the banks of the Thames to Hampton Court, and of the courts to Oxford. True, in the first days they tried to combat the stench in parliament by impregnating all the curtains with chlorine and disinfectants. However, soon the author of the building ventilation project wrote to the speaker that in such conditions he disclaims all responsibility for the newly implemented system. Escaping the smell and not taking handkerchiefs with rose water from their noses, members of the House of Commons decided to urgently allocate money for the construction of a new sewer system. They passed a law obliging them to implement the project as soon as possible. In the history of England, this was perhaps the only case when only 18 days passed from the decision to the adoption of the law.

After some time, heavy rains, which thoroughly washed the Thames and its banks, alleviated the severity of the problem, but even the most short-sighted politicians realized that it was impossible to delay the construction of the sewer system. In addition, in 1854, the London doctor John Snow managed to convince his contemporaries that cholera epidemics, which had periodically decimated the population of large English cities since the 1840s, were directly related to water pollution, and not at all to the mythical miasma of the air, as was previously believed . The intrepid doctor investigated the cholera scene in Soho and quickly discovered that the source of the infection was a drinking water pump at an intersection, the water in which was poisoned by a nearby leak from a damaged sewer pipe.

So, at the end of 1855, a special council was created, which selected a project from among the many schemes proposed for the competition Italian architect Joseph Bazalgetti. He decided to build five main interception systems, three on the left (northern) bank of the Thames and two on the right. They had to prevent wastewater from entering the river and ensure its discharge into the sea, located very close to the eastern outskirts of London. To reduce the cost of construction, intercepting collectors were built directly in the Thames bed, having previously fenced off part of it with caissons. In addition to savings, this had two more positive effects. Firstly, solid stone embankments were formed, and secondly, some straightening and narrowing of the river bed made the waters of the Thames run faster. Thus, the bottom was well cleared of the impurities that had accumulated over the centuries.

When installing caissons along coastlines Bazalgetti used bricklaying with cement mortar, becoming an innovator in this method of construction. Before this, bricks were laid on lime mortar, which hardened extremely slowly and could not be applied to a wet surface. Therefore, the architect decided to use Portland cement, invented in 1824 by a mason from Yorkshire. This type of cement was used only for finishing works, but Bazalgetti was convinced that it was perfect for sewer construction because it hardened even under water. The engineer ordered the masons to mix it with coarse sand, instead of the usual fine sand, and even use gravel for these purposes, essentially inventing concrete. Gravel is still visible in the joints between the bricks, and by strengthening the river bank from time to time, modern builders claim that it is very difficult to destroy the old masonry, cracks have not yet appeared in it.

However, all this work pales in comparison to the construction of the sewer tunnels themselves, which not only ran deeper than the river bottom, but also ran along it for 82 miles. Majority construction work was carried out completely unnoticed by the population, but when Bazalgetti built something on the surface, it attracted everyone's interest, such as the Crossness, a pumping station decorated with elegant cast-iron stairs and equipped with four huge steam engines. Or the Abbey Mills station, very interesting from an architectural and engineering point of view, with eight steam engines that raised wastewater to a height of 42 feet. Both of these stations have been recently restored and are open to the public to admire the beauty of 19th century industrial design.

The contents of the sewer were collected in huge tanks east of London. For example, the reservoir serving the southern part of the system reached 6.5 acres with a depth of 17 feet. It could hold 27 million gallons of waste, which was discharged into the sea daily at low tide. This accumulative-pulsating principle of sewerage operation made it possible for a long time to do without treatment facilities at all, the construction of which began only in the 20th century.

Key facilities in London's sewerage system were completed within six years. Its official commissioning took place on April 4, 1865. This became one of the most significant events of that time, which the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, did not disdain to attend. The project was fully implemented by 1870, and it was since then that the Great Stench of London became part of history. The cost of the work amounted to an absolutely fantastic sum of three million pounds. But it was worth it - the sewer not only gave the British capital clean air, but also showed the whole world what Portland cement was capable of, which immediately after that found wide application in construction.

Through two tunnels, each of which is lined with brickwork, and even in compliance with the style inherent in the Victorian era, sewage and sewage are still sent to two treatment stations - in Plumstead and in Beckton. The system is striking in its simplicity, but despite its simple design it has been functioning without failure for 150 years. At the very beginning of the tunnels, their height is approximately 1.25 meters, but as the stormy flows of sewage increase in volume, the diameter of the tunnels becomes larger. For example, in the east part of London, the ceiling height of the tunnel is three and a half meters, which prevents even the most powerful flows from escaping.

London's sewers are inaccessible for inspection; even experienced diggers are not allowed to go down into the tunnels. This is due to the fact that there are no special elevations in the system and the likelihood of falling into polluted streams is very high here. By the way, the sewerage system of the French capital Paris is accessible to tourists. In London, you can learn about the sewerage system and the struggle of citizens for their lives and the cleanliness of the Thames only at the treatment facilities, which, according to the architects' plans, were built in the form of Catholic cathedrals. The reason for this decision is not known for certain. Although historians are almost unanimous in their opinion - this is a kind of tribute to God, who rained heavy rains on London at the beginning of the construction of the sewer system. This natural phenomenon temporarily cleared the Thames and London of sewage and stopped the high mortality rate.

London's sewer system is not just an industrial wonder of the world, it is a kind of monument to the heroism of the people who were able to save the majestic city of Europe. In addition, the story of the Great Stench is a reminder to our descendants of how an irresponsible attitude towards the environment can wipe out all of humanity from the face of the planet in a matter of years.

p get acquainted with most interesting story about how sewerage systems were created in the capital of Great Britain, also covering the history of the supply of drinking water to the population.

This interesting article tells the story of the history of the water supply and sanitation system of the city of London, starting from the end of the 16th century, when water carriers and tanks were still operating in the London capital, and many residents used water from the River Thames...

At the same time, the main story is, of course, about the sewers of London, which at one time polluted the River Thames so much that the scientist Mark Faraday, sailing on a steamboat along it, wrote: “The river was so muddy and polluted... and such a fetid odor emanated from it, it felt like we were floating through an open sewer..."

Before, London residents used wells, large cisterns, as well as the waters of the Thames and its tributaries as water supply facilities. The tanks were filled with canal water.

At the same time, rich townspeople could install pipes in their homes for a special fee. In addition, water was delivered to many by water carriers, who created their own guild back in 1496. In principle, this is a fairly familiar picture for large cities in that period of history...

In 1582, Peter Maurice, a citizen, rented the north arch of London Bridge and installed a water wheel, which drove a pump that supplied water to several blocks. This design stuck for a long time - until 1822. It was modernized twice, adding new water wheels.

Before early XIX centuries of sewage, although, of course, fell into the Thames, but on the whole the river dealt with them, dissolving and carrying them away. However, everything changed in 1815, when the city authorities, in light of the expansion of the city and the increase in its population, decided to allow sewer discharge(not centralized, it didn’t exist then, but separate pipes) into the river.

The sanitation situation quickly became critical. A sharp increase in the number of residents, as well as an increase in the number of horses without the proper development of what is now called infrastructure, led not only to a shortage of “conveniences” (often there was one toilet for several houses), but also to the constant overflow of cesspools (they were then in the city there were already more than two hundred thousand). The contents of the latter simply did not have time to be cleaned, and sometimes the owners of rental houses simply skimped on this.

Flush toilets, common in our era, soon became common, which only increased the daily volume of wastewater.
The sewerage, mixing with the drains of factories and slaughterhouses, picking up numerous garbage along the way, was already flowing openly through rain ditches and any lowlands into the Thames. In the same river from where many townspeople still took water, including for drinking and washing. After some time, the permit to discharge sewage into the river was canceled, but the situation was already out of control.

When the famous scientist Michael Faraday decided to take a pleasure steamer along the Thames in the middle of the century, he was amazed at how polluted the water was. Here is what he wrote in The Times on July 7, 1855: “I tore some white cards into pieces, wet them so that they would sink easily, and dropped them into the water at each place where the steamer landed. It was so cloudy that when the cards were immersed to the thickness of a finger on a bright, sunny day, they were completely indistinguishable. The smell from the river was such that it seemed as if we were floating through an open sewer.”

In some ways, Faraday's words became prophetic, because three years after their publication in The Times, the sewer flowed into the Thames and, with the tide, headed first up the river towards the city center, and then flowed towards Greenwich with the ebb of the tide. Hot weather aggravated the situation - the water of the Thames and its tributaries began to bloom rapidly. The smell from the river was such that it terrified even the noses of ordinary residents of London in the 19th century, accustomed to strong amber.

The shore, freed after low tide, was completely covered with decomposed sewage. There was absolutely nothing to breathe in the city - the stench in the most harmful way complemented the dense smog, which already gave rise to the suffocating London fogs. IN English literature You can often find a comparison of the summer days of 1858 with a famous epidemic plague XIV century - the Black Death, coupled, however, with cholera brought from new colonies. This crisis went down in history under the name of The Great Stink. Londoners fell dead in the streets, and hospitals, overcrowded with patients, could not save people weakened by exhausting work and poor nutrition, since they themselves were in the affected area. The exact number of victims of those days is unknown and is unlikely to ever be established.

Death in poor families was commonplace back then: according to statistics, in British cities with a population of over 100 thousand people average duration life at the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria did not exceed 29 years.
The bitter humor of the time can be seen in the cartoon above, published in the London press in 1859.

Along with ordinary townspeople, even the mighty of the world Togo. Of course, those who could afford to leave London did so. Most significant, however, is the flight of parliament from the newly built famous building on the banks of the Thames to Hampton Court, and of the courts to Oxford.

At first, however, they tried to combat the stench in parliament by impregnating all the curtains with chlorine and disinfectants. However, soon the author of the building ventilation project wrote to the speaker that in such conditions he disclaims all responsibility for the newly implemented system.

Fleeing the smell and constantly bringing handkerchiefs with rose water to their noses, members of the House of Commons decided to urgently allocate money for the construction of a new sewerage system, as well as a water supply system. They passed a law obliging them to implement the project as soon as possible. In the history of England, this was perhaps the only case when only 18 days passed from the decision to the adoption of the law.

As a result, heavy rains, which thoroughly washed the Thames and its banks, alleviated the severity of the problem, but even the most short-sighted politicians realized that it was impossible to delay the construction of the sewer system. In addition, in 1854, London physician John Snow proved that cholera, which has literally decimated the population of large English cities since the 40s of the 19th century, is directly related to water pollution, and not at all to the mythical miasma of the air, as was previously believed. (Talking about the life of a simple London family at the end victorian era, I have already mentioned that for a long time beer and ale were consumed almost instead of ordinary drinking water due to the low quality of the latter. However, people then thought not about bacteria, but about more noticeable impurities. John Snow, on the other hand, explored the area of ​​cholera in Soho and quickly discovered that the source of the infection was a drinking water pump at the crossroads, the waters of which were poisoned by a nearby leak from a damaged sewer pipe.) However, not everyone took the last discovery seriously, the price for which was epidemics, continued intermittently until the end of the 1860s.

At the end of the same 1855, a special council was created, which chose, among the many schemes proposed for the competition, the design of its own chief engineer, the Italian architect Joseph Bazalgette.

He decided to build five main interception systems, three on the left (northern) bank of the Thames and two on the right. They had to prevent wastewater from entering the river and ensure its discharge into the sea, located very close to the eastern outskirts of London. To reduce the cost of construction, intercepting collectors were built directly in the Thames bed, having previously fenced off part of it with caissons. In addition to savings, this had two more positive effects.

Firstly, solid stone embankments were formed, and secondly, some straightening and narrowing of the river bed made the waters of the Thames run faster. Thus, the bottom was well cleared of the impurities that had accumulated in it for centuries. By the way, the project was not created from scratch; the architect began working in this direction back in 1853, “inspired” by another cholera epidemic.

When constructing caissons along coastlines, Bazalgetti used brickwork and was an innovator in the method of joining bricks. Previously, they were laid on lime mortar. However, it hardens very slowly and cannot be applied to a wet surface. Therefore, the architect decided to use Portland cement, invented in 1824 by a mason from Yorkshire. This type of cement was used only for finishing work, but Bazalgetti was convinced that it was perfect for sewer construction because it hardened even under water. The engineer ordered the masons to mix it with coarse sand, instead of the usual fine sand, and even use gravel for these purposes. In other words, he used concrete for the mortar, which, by the way, made the project cheaper.

Gravel is still visible in the joints between the bricks, and by strengthening the river bank from time to time, modern builders claim that it is very difficult to destroy the old masonry, cracks have not yet appeared in it. After the wall was folded and the border of the new bank began to correspond to Bazalgetti’s idea, the water was pumped out and the resulting space was filled with a colossal amount of earth, thereby expanding the embankment along a significant section of the riverbed.

However, all this work pales in comparison to the construction of the sewer tunnels themselves, which not only ran deeper than the river bottom, but also ran along it for 82 miles. The facility had a capacity of one hundred million gallons per day! One can only imagine the resilience of the builders, who worked under the constant threat of falling from ladders when laying brick walls, or being either covered with earth, or flooded by a river, or crushed by horses in a dark, endless corridor.

This is a rare drawing that simultaneously shows several of the most important signs of London at that time - Railway(looks like Charing Cross station), underground, water and, of course, sewerage. I would like to draw special attention to the fact that here you can see a steam locomotive that was used in the underground before its electrification.

The diagram shows a system of tunnels built according to the Bezalgetti project. Just in case, let me remind you that the Thames in the London region flows from west to east.

Most of the construction work was carried out underground completely unnoticed by the population, but when Bazalgetti built something above, it was worthy of attention. For example, Crossness is a station with elegant cast-iron stairs and four huge steam engines. Or the very interesting Abbey Mills station from an architectural and engineering point of view, with eight steam engines that raised the contents of the sewer to a height of 42 feet. By the way, both stations mentioned were recently restored and are open to those who want to admire the beauty of 19th century industrial design.

The contents of the sewer were collected in huge tanks east of London. For example, the reservoir serving the southern part of the system was 6.5 acres with a depth of 17 feet. It held 27 million gallons of sewage, which was discharged into the sea daily at low tide. By the way, this accumulative-pulsating principle of sewerage operation made it possible for a long time to do without treatment facilities at all, the construction of which began only in the 20th century.

Key facilities in London's sewerage system were completed within six years. The Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII, did not hesitate to take part in the launch ceremony on April 4, 1865.

The project was fully implemented by 1870, and it was from then on that the Great Stench of London truly became
heritage of history. The cost of the work reached an absolutely fantastic amount of three million pounds. The sewer system not only gave clean air to the British capital, but also showed the whole world what Portland cement was capable of, which immediately afterwards found wide application in construction.

In 1999, that is, 140 years after the construction of this grandiose structure began, Adam Hart-Davies, author of the book “What the Victorians Did for Us,” came down inside. According to him, he was delighted with the excellent condition of the brickwork of the walls and the strength of the pipes, which, despite the constant flow of sewage, are still standing surprisingly reliably. However, here we can remember that sewerage still did not save London from cholera in the second half of the 1860s, when the waters of the Thames tributary, poisoned by sewage, filled the reservoirs of the Eastern Water Company. However, this lesson had already been learned, and the measures taken had forever rid the British capital of cholera outbreaks.

In early December 1952, a cold fog descended on London. Because of the cold, citizens began to use coal for heating in larger quantities than usual. Trapped in a heavier layer of cold air, combustion products in the air reached extreme concentrations in a matter of days. The Great Smog enveloped London on December 5, 1952 and only dissipated by December 9 of the same year. The fog was so thick that it prevented the movement of cars. Concerts were canceled and film screenings were stopped because the smog easily penetrated indoors. Spectators sometimes simply did not see the stage or screen due to the thick curtain.

However, this incident in London was just baby talk compared to the “Great Stink of London” of 1858, when after extreme heat the strongest stench emitted by the waste rotting in the Thames covered the city center. It almost came to evacuation.

Issues related to the design of the sewerage system have been of concern to people for more than the first millennium. Wastewater treatment has been relevant for as long as civilization has existed, and problems with it have repeatedly caused people a lot of trouble. One of the most striking stories related to the lack of quality sewerage is The Great Stench in London of the Nineteenth Century.

Sewerage on the Thames

The history of London's sewers spans many centuries. Until the very end of the sixteenth century, Londoners used well water and river water (they took their water directly from the Thames, which, by the way, was already quite dirty then). There were also special tanks for storing water, but you had to pay extra for such water.

Rich people could connect their homes to canals that filled cisterns, while everyone else used the services of water carriers. This profession was so widespread that in 1496 a guild of water carriers was even created.

Almost a century later, in 1582, Peter Maurice took a lease on the north end of London Bridge. A water wheel was installed there, giving energy to a pump that pumped water to several areas of London at once. Two years later there were two wheels, and in 1701 a third one appeared.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, the need for more complex sewer systems intensified. In 1815, the sewer system was drained into the Thames, and now all the wastewater of the big city was discharged there... At the same time, water for washing, bathing and eating was also taken from there. Suffice it to remember that the choice of disinfectants back then was, to put it mildly, limited - and it becomes a little uneasy!

When the cup overflows...

The nineteenth century added joy to all London sewer users with the introduction of flush toilets. And at the same time, the volumes of wastewater that ended up in the cesspools of the British capital increased several times. The pits overflowed, their contents ended up in the gutters (originally designed to collect rainwater)… As a result, everything ended up in the same long-suffering Thames! Needless to say, sooner or later the cup had to overflow.

Great Stench

In 1858, the weather in London was very hot (about the same as in Moscow in 2010!). The water of the Thames and its tributaries began to bloom violently, and considering that it contained a considerable amount of discharge... The smell was such that the House of Commons stopped working and moved to Hampton. The courts moved to Oxford. This event went down in the history of London as the Great Stench, and only heavy rain could save the residents of the capital.

New century sewers

The great stench showed both the government and scientists that sewerage systems and their construction are of the greatest importance in people's lives. Shortly afterwards, work began on organizing a new London sewer system. The sewage system of country houses has also undergone a number of noticeable changes, turning into what we see now. To some extent, both the septic tank for the country house and the central sewer system in the form in which we see them now are the consequences of the Great Stench that shook London some time in the past.