On 15 June 1919, Captain John Alcock (pilot) and Lt. Arthur W. Browne (navigator) successfully completed the first, non-stop, transatlantic, aeroplane flight. They flew from Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland in 16 hours 12 minutes and won the prize offered by the London Daily Mail. Their aircraft was a Vickers Vimy (which was originally designed as a bomber to be used during WW I.) They faced many problems. Their radio broke down shortly after take off. Fog and drizzle prevented the fliers from seeing anything for much of the journey. They aimed to land in a green field but instead it turned out to be a bog. The plane suffered some damage when it hit the ground and sank into the bog. Both Alcock and Brown came away unhurt.

Claigmar Vineyard
The Claigmar Vineyard produced Middlesex grapes – and maybe wine.

Remembered in a few local street names such as Vines Avenue, but otherwise long buried under suburbia, the Claigmar Vineyards was begun by the Kay family in 1874. In 1845, Kay leased an acre in Ballards Lane for flowers and fruit. In 1878 it was owned by Peter and Susan Kay and a second nursery, called Claigmar, had been started in 1874 in Long Lane by Peter Edmund Kay. During the 1890s the Ballards Lane nursery closed and Claigmar was extended until in 1899 Kay had 18½ acres. Equally large nurseries were opened east of Squires Lane until at their greatest extent the Kay nurseries, between Long Lane and the High Barnet railway line, stretched from Duke Street eastward to Green Lane. It not only produced 100 tons of grapes per year but also a quarter of a million cucumbers. Peak production was in the 1890s with 161 greenhouses involved. The site continued as glasshouses into the 1920s before it was finally built over.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

Mansion House Engraving by J Woods based on a work by Hablot Browne and R Garland.

J Woods

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.

Goodman’s Fields Theatre
Two 18th century theatres bearing the name Goodman’s Fields Theatre were located on Alie Street, Whitechapel.

The first opened on 31 October 1727 in a small shop by Thomas Odell, ’Deputy Licenser of Plays’. The first play performed was George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer. Henry Fielding’s second play The Temple Beau premièred here 26 January 1730. Upon retirement, Odell passed the management on to Henry Giffard, after a sermon was preached against the theatre at St Botolph’s, Aldgate. Giffard operated the theatre until 1732. After he left, the theatre was used for a variety of acrobatic performances. Giffard constructed a new theatre down the street designed by Edward Shepherd who also designed the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. The theatre opened with Henry IV, Part I, 2 October 1732 that included actors Thomas Walker, Richard Yates and Harry Woodward. A dispute at the Drury Lane Theatre bought the actress Sarah Thurmond and her husband to the theatre. With the passing of the Licensing Act of 1737, the theatre was forced to close. Giffard rented Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre briefly and then, with various political machinations, was able to reopen Goodman’s Fields in 1740. The Winter’s Tale was produced there in 1741 for the first time in over a century. The same year David Garrick made his successful début as Richard III. He also staged plays of his own including the 1741 farce The Lying Valet. The theatre closed 27 May 1742 and did not re-open. It was pulled down in 1746, and a further theatre built on the site, this briefly showed drama before it was converted to a warehouse and burned down in 1809. During its heyday, the poet Gray noted in a letter to a friend, that there are a dozen dukes of a night at Goodman’s Fields sometimes. The Oxford Companion to the Theatre notes that there may have been an earlier theatre named Goodman’s Fields Theatre in the area around 1703.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

Little Venice (1952) This is one of a large series of London views that Stephen Bone executed from the 1930s to the 1950s. Bone liked to paint water and its reflections, and often combined this with compositions showing people going about their daily business, a combination which is the subject of this picture. A barge, hung with its owner’s washing, travels along the canal. Two children play along the banks, and a man sits on the railings overhead, enjoying the view.

Stephen Bone

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St James Duke’s Place
St James Duke’s Place was an Anglican parish church in the Aldgate ward of the City of London.

The area which was to become Duke’s Place was occupied until its dissolution in 1531 by the Priory of Holy Trinity, Christ Church. Henry VIII then gave the land to Sir Thomas Audley who cleared it and built houses on the site, although fragments of the medieval buildings still survived at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The area was eventually inherited by Audley’s son-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, from whom the name “Duke’s Place” is derived. In the early 17th century the residents of the former priory precinct, finding worship at St Katherine Cree “uncongenial” sought permission from the king, James I to build a parish church for themselves. Permission was granted, and the new church, dedicated to St James in tribute to the king, was consecrated on 2 January 1622. The patronage of the new church belonged to the lord mayor and commonalty of London, and the parish claimed exemption from the Bishop of London in ecclesiastical matters. It was notable in the late 17th century as a “marriage factory”, with multiple ceremonies each day. The church survived the Great Fire of London, but fell into disrepair and was rebuilt in 1727, retaining much of the original woodwork. George Godwin, writing in 1839, called it “a plain warehouse like construction of brick, quite unworthy of description”. It was 65 feet long and 42 feet wide, and divided into nave and aisles by wooden columns supporting entablatures and a flat ceiling. The stained glass in the east window, included the arms of Sir Edward Barkham, the Lord Mayor who had been instrumental in the establishment of the church. There was a tower; Godwin suspected its trefoil openings were survivals from the priory building. An organ (“exceedingly small”, according to Godwin ) was installed in 1815 and the church restored in 1823. The poverty of the area and its increasing Jewish population made it increasingly difficult to raise funds to maintain the church; Godwin described it as being “in a very dirty and dilapidated state”. In 1874, under the 1860 Union of Benefices Act, it was demolished and the parish joined to that of St Katherine Cree. The site of the church is now occupied by the Sir John Cass School.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

The Strand frontage of Northumberland House (1752) The Percy Lion is atop the central façade and the statue of Charles I at right survives to this day The pedestrianised area in the foreground became the site of Trafalgar Square – back then it was the Royal Mews

Giovanni Canaletto

Video: Co-ordinate near to Gardner Close, Wanstead
Jago Hazzard went to the far reaches of the Central Line

Canada Water
Canada Water is a freshwater lake and wildlife refuge in Rotherhithe. Canada Water tube, Overground and bus station is named after the lake.

The area surrounding the station, which constitutes the town centre of Rotherhithe, has increasingly become known as Canada Water, owing to both the transportation interchange and the body of water itself. The lake derives its name from the former Canada Dock, of which Canada Water represents the surviving northern portion. The dock primarily served ships from Canada. Like much of the Docklands, the Surrey Commercial Docks ceased operations in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the London Docklands Development Corporation took charge and invested significantly in the area’s redevelopment. Approximately half of Canada Dock was filled in, and the Surrey Quays Shopping Centre was constructed atop it. The remaining section was transformed into the present lake and wildlife sanctuary. An ornamental canal called Albion Channel was created, connecting Canada Water to Surrey Water, with the excavated soil used to form Stave Hill in the nearby Russia Dock Woodland. After the earlier gentrification of the riverside parts of Rotherhithe, the extension of the Jubilee Line in 1999 shifted the focus to the immediate vicinity of Canada Water. The opening of the new Canada Water tube station provided rapid connections to the rest of London, with Canary Wharf just one stop away, Westminster reachable in under 10 minutes, and Bond Street around 15 minutes away by underground train. The station’s integration with the London Overground network in 2010 further facilitated quick access to the City of London, with a journey of approximately 10 minutes to Shoreditch High Street station. The area experienced a phase of rapid development, including the construction of new residential complexes, the opening of a new library in November 2011, plans for cafes and restaurants around the lake, and proposals to revitalize the shopping mall as an initial step towards establishing a more traditional town centre. Canada Water is the only freshwater body in London Docklands. The lake is now kept replenished with fresh water using a wind pump. This arrangement was implemented following research by Landscape Architect Fraser Borwick, which revealed that groundwater had historically been extracted using wind power to supply various industrial processes. After examining the borehole results from the Jubilee Line construction team, it was determined that significant amounts of potable water were available. An 80-meter borehole was drilled, with 60 meters lined and the remaining 20 meters into chalk. The investigation into how to best maintain a fresh water supply for the lake was prompted by damage to the lining of the old dock during construction in the 1980s. Another considered solution involved sourcing water from the flooded tunnels of the London Underground, but it was deemed too risky. Canada Water station is situated on the Jubilee Line and the London Overground, serving as an interchange point between the two lines. Originally intended to be a stop on the abandoned Fleet Line Extension to Thamesmead, the extension was never realized. However, Canada Water became the only planned Fleet Line Extension station that was ultimately built as part of the Jubilee Line Extension. The station opened on 19 August 1999, initially served by East London line trains. Jubilee Line passenger service from the station commenced on 17 September 1999. London Overground services began on the East London Line on 27 April 2010, as the replacement extension of the historic tube line.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

View of the junction of Howard Street and Norfolk Street (1880)

John Crowther

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St Katharine Cree
St Katharine Cree is a Church of England church on the north side of Leadenhall Street near Leadenhall Market.

The parish served by the church existed by 1108, when it was served by the Augustinian Holy Trinity Priory, Aldgate, also called Christ Church, which was founded by Maud, queen at the time of King Henry I. The parishioners used the priory church but this proved unsatisfactory and disruptive to the priory’s activities. The prior partly resolved the problem in 1280 by founding St Katharine Cree as a separate church for the parishioners. The site of the present church was originally in the priory’s churchyard and it is possible that the church began as a cemetery chapel. It took its name from the priory, “Cree” being a corrupted abbreviation of “Christ Church”. It was initially served by a canon appointed by the prior but this did not prove satisfactory either, so in 1414 the church was established as a parish church in its own right. The present tower was added about 1504. The present church was built in 1628–30, retaining the Tudor tower of its predecessor. It is larger than the previous church, incorporating a piece of ground previously occupied by a cloister on the north side, and the floor level is considerably higher. The rebuilt church was consecrated by William Laud, Bishop of London on 31 January 1631. His vestments and the form of service that he used for the consecration were later held against him in his trial and conviction for heresy, when Puritans accused him of having displayed Catholic sympathies through his “bowings and cringings.” He is commemorated by a chapel in the church. The church escaped the Great Fire of London in 1666 and suffered only minor damage in the London Blitz of the Second World War. However, structural problems required extensive restoration in 1962. It is now one of the City’s Guild churches.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

Wyldes Farm is a Grade II* listed former farmhouse in North End, Hampstead. The Wyldes estate, and the farmhouse, were purchased by Dame Henrietta Barnett and others, with part of the estate becoming an extension to Hampstead Heath with the further area being developed as Hampstead Garden Suburb. The designer of the garden suburb was the architect and town planner Raymond Unwin, who lived in Wyldes until his death in 1940, using the barn as his office. During his time he welcomed to Wyldes many distinguished guests including Edwin Lutyens, Jan Smuts and Paul Robeson.

Helen Allingham

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.

Bevis Marks Synagogue
Bevis Marks Synagogue is the oldest synagogue in the United Kingdom.

The synagogue was built in 1701 and is affiliated to London’s historic Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community. It is the only synagogue in Europe which has held regular services continuously for more than 300 years. Services at a small synagogue in Creechurch Lane date to at least October 1663, when it was visited on the festival of Simchat Torah, by the diarist Samuel Pepys, who recorded his impressions of the service. In 1698 Rabbi David Nieto took spiritual charge of the congregation of Spanish and Portuguese Jews (also called Sephardim). A considerable influx of Jews made it necessary to obtain more commodious quarters. Accordingly, a committee was appointed and on 12 February 1699, signed a contract with Joseph Avis, a Quaker, for the construction of a building to cost £2,650. On 24 June 1699, the committee leased from Sir Thomas and Lady Pointz a tract of land at Plough Yard, in Bevis Marks, for 61 years, with the option of renewal for a further 38 years, at £120 a year. The structure was completed and dedicated in September 1701. The interior decor and furnishing and layout of the synagogue reflect the influence of the great Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam of 1675. The roof was destroyed by fire in 1738 and repaired in 1749. The essential original structure of the building thus remains today. As the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community grew and moved out of the City and East End of London to the West End and the suburbs, members demanded a new synagogue to be built in the West End. When leadership refused this, some members formed a breakaway synagogue in Burton Street, which later became the West London Synagogue. In 1853 a branch synagogue was opened in Wigmore Street; in 1866 this moved to Bryanston Street, Bayswater. In 1896 a new synagogue was built at Lauderdale Road, Maida Vale, as successor to the Bryanston Street synagogue.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

A Friday Evening Discourse at the Royal Institution; Sir James Dewar on Liquid Hydrogen (1904)

Henry Jamyn Brooks

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Aldgate Pump
Aldgate Pump is a historic water pump, located at the junction where Aldgate meets Fenchurch Street and Leadenhall Street.

The pump marks the start of the A11 road towards Norwich and distances to locations in Middlesex, Essex and beyond were measured from here. This contributed to the pump’s status as the symbolic start of the East End of London. The metal wolf head on the pump’s spout is supposed to signify the last wolf shot in the City of London. Aldgate Pump is a Grade II listed structure. As a well, it was mentioned during the reign of King John. As the City of London developed, it is thought to have been taken down and re-erected at its current location in 1876, as a drinking fountain, as streets were widened. Served by one of London’s many underground streams, the water was praised for being “bright, sparkling, and cool, and of an agreeable taste”. These qualities were later found to be derived from decaying organic matter from adjoining graveyards, and the leaching of calcium from the bones of the dead in many new cemeteries in north London through which the stream ran from Hampstead. Several hundred people died during what became known as the Aldgate Pump Epidemic, and on its relocation in 1876, the New River Company changed the supplies to mains water. Fenchurch Street railway station was built in 1841 upon the site of Aldgate Pump Court.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

The Limehouse Barge-Builders (Narrow Street from the river). This painting can be seen in the South Shields Museum and Art Gallery.

Charles Napier Hemy (1841-1917)

Video: Co-ordinate near to Gardner Close, Wanstead
Jago Hazzard went to the far reaches of the Central Line

Boar’s Head Theatre
The Boar’s Head Theatre was an inn-yard theatre in the Whitechapel area.

The Boar’s Head was located on the north side of Whitechapel High Street. Berry notes that “it became a playhouse partly because of where it was — just outside the City of London … a few feet beyond the ordinary jurisdiction of the lord mayor and his aldermen.” The Boar’s Head was originally an inn, which was built in the 1530s; it underwent two renovations for use as a playhouse: first, in 1598, when a simple stage was erected, and a second, more elaborate renovation in 1599. In 1616, the lease of the space to Oliver Woodliffe, one of the men responsible for expanding the theatre, expired, and Charles Sisson surmises that this marked the end of the Boar’s Head’s days as a theatre space. On 28 November 1594, Jane and Henry Poley, who owned the inn, entered a lease agreement with Oliver and Susan Woodliffe. The agreement began on 25 March 1595 and ended on 24 March 1616 and included a promise to spend £100 during the following seven years to build, among other things, a tiring house and a stage. In 1598, a primitive stage was built in the middle of the yard, measuring 39 feet 7 inches by 25 feet. The audience stood mostly in the yard, as the galleries were not big enough to accommodate a large audience. In 1599, Woodliffe and Richard Samwell (who had leased the inn in 1598 from Woodliffe; Woodliffe remained landlord of the theatre) took down the primitive stage setup and built a new playhouse apparently meant to compete with Shakespeare’s Globe, which had just opened on the other side of the Thames. As Leggatt states, “the stage — essentially the same stage — was moved to the west wall so that actors could enter directly on to it from the tiring house, a roof was built over the stage, and the galleries were considerably expanded and roofed with tiles.” During its lifetime as a playhouse, it was home to the Earl of Derby’s Men (summer 1599-summer 1601, summer 1602-March 1603), the Earl of Worcester’s Men (summer 1601-summer 1602, April 1604-1605 or 1606), and Prince Charles’ Men (summer 1609-March 1616); the historian Herbert Berry suggests that many other unidentified companies may have played there, as well. In 1616, the lease agreement between the Woodliffes and the Poleys (now controlled by Mrs. Poley’s heir, Sir John Poley) expired. By this time, the Prince’s Men had merged with Lady Elizabeth’s Men and had entered into an agreement to play in the Hope Theatre on Bankside. Sisson suggests that Poley “found it more profitable to develop the buildings and site of the Boar’s head, or to dispose of it to a speculator, for other purposes than those of an inn and a theatre, in the rapid growth of this residential and industrial suburb of London.”.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

’Under London Bridge’ (1920) Dora Meeson is best known for her many fine pictures of the River Thames. As a student at the Slade under Henry Tonks she studied with a number of well-known names including Ursula Tyrwhitt, Ida Nettleship and Gwen Salmond.

Dora Meeson

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Great Synagogue of London
The Great Synagogue of London was, for centuries, the centre of Ashkenazi synagogue and Jewish life in London. It was destroyed during World War II, in the Blitz.

The earliest Ashkenazi synagogue constructed in London, after the return of Jews to England in the 17th century, was built about 1690 at Duke’s Place, north of Aldgate. In 1696-7, the synagogue also acquired a burial ground, at Alderney Road. The congregation grew, and in 1722 a new building was erected with the cost of £2,000 being borne by businessman and philanthropist, Moses Hart. The building was consecrated on Rosh Hashana (September 18, 1722). An enlarged building, designed by George Dance the Elder, was consecrated on August 29, 1766. The order of prayers for the inauguration was the first printed publication of the synagogue, and also the first publication to name it explicitly as ’The Great Synagogue’. Between 1788 and 1790, the third synagogue was built on the site. Unusually for the times, the principal donor was a woman, Judith Hart Levy, a daughter of Moses Hart, who subscribed £4,000. The architect was James Spiller. The building was in the classical style identified with John Adam. It was redecorated and repaired in 1832 and 1852 by John Walen, and restored again with small renovations in 1899 and 1930. The Royal Dukes of Cambridge, Cumberland, and Essex, sons of George III, visited the Great Synagogue of London in 1809. There they were seated on elegant Egyptian revival chairs as they watched the religious service. The synagogue was also visited around this period, during his schooldays, by the writer Leigh Hunt, who wrote ’I took pleasure in witnessing the semi-Catholic pomp of their service and in hearing their fine singing, not without something of a constant astonishment at their wearing their hats’. The synagogue was destroyed on May 10, 1941.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

Wartime Nocturne,’ (1943) is one of the finest and most proficient works of Claude Barry’s career. Famed for his wartime searchlight pictures, he created a varied body of work that although it differs in style and theme, always remains imbued with an individual poetic vision.

Claude Barry

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.

Northern Outfall Sewer
The Northern Outfall Sewer (NOS) is a major gravity sewer which runs from Wick Lane in Hackney to Beckton sewage treatment works.

Most of the system was designed by Joseph Bazalgette after an outbreak of cholera in 1853 and the “Great Stink” of 1858. Prior to this work, central London’s drains were built primarily to cope with rain water, and the growing use of flush toilets frequently meant that they became overloaded, flushing sewage and industrial effluent into the River Thames. Bazalgette’s London sewerage system project included the construction of intercepting sewers north and south of the Thames; the Southern Outfall Sewer network diverts flows away from the Thames south of the river. In total five interceptor sewers were constructed north of the Thames; three were built by Bazalgette, two were added 30 years later: The northernmost (High Level Sewer) begins on Hampstead Hill and is routed past Kentish Town and Stoke Newington and under Victoria Park to the start of the Northern Outfall Sewer at Wick Lane. Two middle level sewers serve parts of central London and also join the Northern Outfall Sewer at Wick lane: One begins close to Kilburn and runs along Edgware Road, Euston Road and past King’s Cross, through Islington to Wick Lane. The other runs from Kensal Green, under Bayswater and along Oxford Street, then via Clerkenwell and Bethnal Green to Wick lane. Two low-level sewers stretch from west London: One starts from near Ravenscourt Park, passes under Hammersmith and Kensington, Piccadilly, the Strand, Aldwych, the City and Aldgate to Abbey Mills. The second begins in Hammersmith, crosses under Fulham and then runs along the Kings Road and Cheyne Walk from where it becomes an integral part of the Thames Embankment. Western pumping station near Chelsea Bridge helps maintain the necessary gravity flow, taking sewage on along Millbank, the Victoria Embankment and Tower Hill, then north-east under Whitechapel, Stepney and Bow to Abbey Mills. The flows from the two low level sewers are raised by some 40 feet (12 m) into the Northern Outfall Sewer at Abbey Mills Pumping Station to join the flows from the High and Middle Level sewers. The remaining sections of the NOS carry the sewage from Abbey Mills to the treatment plant at Beckton. The creation of the NOS was a massive undertaking, and involved the construction of both huge embankments and several bridges. Today, the eastern end of the Northern Outfall Sewer, running some 7 km from Wick Lane, Bow to Beckton has been landscaped to form a public footpath/cycleway called The Greenway with access points along its length. Signage is made from old sewerage pipes.

TUM Book Club: Old Covent Garden
The magic of the old Covent Garden Market is evoked through Clive Boursnell’s photographs, taken over the course of numerous visits to Covent Garden in the 1960s and 1970s.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s Clive Boursnell, then a young photographer, shot thousands of photographs of the old Covent Garden, documenting the end of an era before the markets moved out of central London. Boursnell captured these last days of the market over a period of six years, from 1968 until the market’s closure, in a series of beautiful portraits of the feisty life of a city institution.

’The Thames at Westminster’ Colin Burns grew up in a Norfolk seaside town. From the age of seven, he began to paint landscapes and sunsets and, as a nine year old, started winning art prizes at school. At the age of sixteen he left school and qualified as an accountant, painting in his spare time.

Colin W Burns (born 1944)

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