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The museums, the machines and the men and women who worked it out: laboratories kept as they were, beam engines under steam, the tunnel, the barrier, the roofs, and the plaques on the houses where the ideas came.
The engine house of the Thames Tunnel, the first under a river anywhere, and the great shaft the Brunels sank to dig it, in Rotherhithe.
Engines & pumpingEngineering landmarksGo inside
Also in Museums.
Marc Brunel began the Thames Tunnel in 1825 by building a brick tower fifty feet across on the Rotherhithe bank and letting it sink under its own weight into the ground, the first caisson in the world, and from the bottom of it his miners dug towards Wapping inside the iron shield he had patented after watching a shipworm bore through timber. His son Isambard, resident engineer at twenty, was nearly killed when the river broke in in 1828 and six men drowned; the money ran out for seven years, and the tunnel finally opened in 1843 as a foot passage with an underground fair in it, a wonder of the age that never carried the carriages it was built for. Since 1869 trains have run through it, and they still do, the Overground between Rotherhithe and Wapping. The museum is in the engine house of 1842 that pumped the tunnel dry, with the story told in models and pictures, and the shaft itself, the Grand Entrance Hall, blackened and vast, can be descended by a staircase to the floor where the fair was held; concerts are sometimes held in it, and there is a garden on its roof. Tours run at the weekend.
| Monday | 10:30 – 15:30 |
|---|---|
| Tuesday | Closed |
| Wednesday | Closed |
| Thursday | Closed |
| Friday | 10:30 – 15:30 |
| Saturday | 10:30 – 15:30 |
| Sunday | 10:30 – 15:30 |
Hours from the page that lists them, checked 5 September 2026.
Last entry 15:00; £10, under-16s free, £2.50 for SE16 and SE8 postcodes. Thirty-five steps down into the shaft.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.