Your saves are on this device only.
Your browser may clear them at any time. You won't be able to see them on other devices. Create a free account or sign in to keep them safe in the cloud.
We've included every museum in London. Use the filters to find something for you.
Bazalgette's sewage pumping station on the Erith marshes, the most ornate ironwork in London, with its great beam engine back in steam.
Best small museums
Also in Science & Engineering.
When cholera and the Great Stink of 1858 forced London to build sewers, Joseph Bazalgette's system carried the south of the city's waste to the marshes at Crossness, and this is where the engines lifted it into a reservoir to be let out on the ebb tide. The Prince of Wales opened it on 4 April 1865, turning the wheel that set the beams moving while two archbishops and the Lord Mayor watched. Nobody expected a sewage works to look like this: Charles Henry Driver's engine house is Romanesque brick outside and, inside, an octagon of cast iron painted in reds, greens and golds, which Pevsner called a Victorian cathedral of ironwork. The four engines, Victoria, Prince Consort, Albert Edward and Alexandra, are among the largest beam engines ever built, and after the station was shut in 1956 and left to rot, volunteers spent years bringing Prince Consort back to steam. The trust that runs it, about a hundred volunteers, opens the works on set days and fires the engine on steaming days.
Opening hours, as recorded in OpenStreetMap: "by appointment"
Open days only; check before travelling.
Submit a correction for this listing.
Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.