Science & Engineering

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.

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Thames Barrier

The steel gates that have shut against the tide 221 times since 1982, seen from the riverside path and explained in the small information centre.

Engineering landmarksGo inside

Photo by Rob Oo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ten gates between nine concrete piers, the four main ones each the height of a five-storey building and turned by hydraulic arms from open to shut in an hour and a half, built after the 1953 flood and finished in 1982 to keep the tide out of central London; it has closed more and more often as the decades have gone on, and the count is on a board outside. The riverside path passes the piers with their timber-and-steel hoods, and the information centre on the south bank has the model and the film, on Saturdays in the warmer months.

Where
1 Unity Way, Woolwich, SE18 5NJ
Nearest station
Charlton · 12 min walk

Information Centre Saturdays only, 10:30–15:30, April to October; £6 adults

The riverside path and the view of the gates are there at any hour.

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Data is compiled from public sources including OpenStreetMap, under the ODbL. Hours change often, so check before making a journey.

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