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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 Rotherhithe station of the company that ran London on water pressure, 1902: its chimney and accumulator tower now stand over flats.
Engines & pumpingEngineering landmarksFree
For ninety years, until 1977, much of London ran on water under pressure. The London Hydraulic Power Company pumped it through 180 miles of mains beneath the streets, and customers plugged in: lifts, dock cranes, the safety curtains of theatres, Tower Bridge if its own engines failed. This was the company's station south of the river, on Renforth Street, built in 1902 and pumping from 1903 into the same mains, which crossed under the Thames through the old Tower Subway, to power the docks and warehouses of Rotherhithe. It is yellow stock and Suffolk brick with red dressings, a run of tall arched windows, an octagonal chimney that tapers as it rises, and an accumulator tower, the square tower with blind arcading in which a great weight rode up and down to keep the pressure steady. It pumped until 1968.
The buildings were an engineering works after that and have been flats since the 1980s, behind a gate, so the visit is from the pavement, and the chimney and the tower are what you come for. The company's last station, Wapping Hydraulic Power Station, stands across the river with its pumps still inside.
Private flats: seen from Renforth Street.
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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.