PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
This article was downloaded by: [University of Oxford]On: 20 September 2010Access details: Access Details: [subscription number 773573598]Publisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
The Journal of ArchitecturePublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713703437
Architecture, ornament and excrement: the Crossness and Abbey Millspumping stationsPaul Dobraszczykaa Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, University of Reading, Reading, UK
To cite this Article Dobraszczyk, Paul(2007) 'Architecture, ornament and excrement: the Crossness and Abbey Millspumping stations', The Journal of Architecture, 12: 4, 353 365To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/13602360701614631URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13602360701614631
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf
This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Architecture, ornament andexcrement: the Crossness andAbbey Mills pumping stations
Paul Dobraszczyk Department of Typography and GraphicCommunication, University of Reading, Reading, UK
Introduction
In Ornament and Crime (1908), one of the most
powerful early manifestos of architectural modern-
ism, Adolf Loos directly equates ornament with all
manner of filth. With insistent repetition, his denun-
ciation of ornament is dramatised through its
equation with dirt, the negative meanings of the
term, in all its semantic contexts, being used to
force home his argument: ornament equals sickness,
disease, degeneracy, decay, waste, sterility and
ruin.1 Such images were to become common
tropes for future spokesmen of modernism. When
in 1928 Siegfried Giedion looked back at nine-
teenth-century historicised industrial buildings, he
condemned the contaminating air of their orna-
mentation, which he regarded as infecting them
with a decorative sludge.2 In this paper I will look
back to the nineteenth-century, at two buildings
that serve to contextualise very precisely the
relationship between historicised ornament and
dirt: Londons Crossness (Fig. 1; 186265) and
Abbey Mills (Fig. 2; 186568) pumping stations.3
Both performed important engineering functions
within Londons main drainage system the
worlds first city-wide sewerage network con-
structed in the 1860s and both were key symbolic
sites for public awareness of that system, and the
setting of public ceremonies to mark its com-
pletion.4 I explore how these buildings became a
focus for sustained reflection on the relationship
between architecture and dirt. In their design, the
architect put forward a redemptive vision of
excrement in the city, purified by technological
development and enshrined as a valuable resource
in itself; visitors saw wonder in their noble function
but also expressed disquiet at the monstrous quan-
tities of sewage concentrated in their subterranean
spaces. Within the focus of this paper, I will not
address the undeniable social, cultural and architec-
tural differences between London in the 1860s and
Loos and Giedion in Vienna and Germany half a
century later; rather, through these pertinent histori-
cal case-studies, I question the latters tendency to
universalise conceptions of dirt, arguing instead
that the experience of filth is one that is individual,
rooted in a specific time, place and in specific
spatial, material and architectural contexts.
Architecture and sewage
The Crossness and Abbey Mills pumping stations
the largest of the four connected with Londons
main drainage system were, and still are, vital
components of that system, largely built in the
1860s (Fig. 3) and masterminded by the engineer
Joseph Bazalgette (181991). Located at strategic
points within the new system of sewers that inter-
cepted Londons waste before it reached and pol-
luted the river Thames, these pumping stations
raised sewage from low-lying areas of London in
order that it would drain by gravitation into outfalls
located outside the city limits at Barking, on the
north side of the river, and Crossness, on the south.
Compared to the restrained classicism seen in the
smaller pumping stations at Deptford (185962)
353
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 12
Number 4
# 2007 The Journal of Architecture 13602365 DOI: 10.1080/13602360701614631
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
and Pimlico (187074), the architectural extrava-
gance of Crossness and Abbey Mills is significant.
Crossness (Fig. 4) is a stylistically eclectic building,
combining Norman, mediaeval Italian and Flemish
motifs. Clearly designed to impress, the engine-
house included a cathedral-like main entrance, a
striking campanile-like chimney (see Fig. 1; now
demolished), and elaborate interior decorative iron-
work, the centrepiece of which is the central octag-
onal structure in a mixture of wrought and cast
iron (see Fig. 4; upper right-hand side). The design
features seen at Crossness are continued and devel-
oped at Abbey Mills. Here, the decorative octagon is
the buildings most striking architectural feature (see
Fig. 2; upper image) and the internal ironwork is both
more unified and more lavishly ornate than at Cross-
ness (see Fig. 2; lower image). The original twin ven-
tilation chimneys, richly ornamented and standing
212 feet high, gave this building a prominence that
has consistently attracted public attention; today it
still provides a focus for introducing the public to
Bazalgettes system.5
To mark the completion of both buildings and the
formal opening of the new sewers, the Illustrated
London News depicted Crossness in 1865 (see
Fig. 4) and Abbey Mills in 1868 (see Fig. 2) in the
form of wood-engraved views of the contrasting
exterior and interior spaces of both buildings.6 Like
other industrial building types in the Victorian
period railway stations, markets, factories and
warehouses pumping stations required large,
undivided interior spaces that were only achievable
through a structural use of iron, which was much
stronger in compression than any traditional build-
ing material; by contrast, because iron provided
the main internal structural support, the exterior of
these buildings allowed for a more conventional sty-
listic treatment in traditional building materials that
often gave no visual indication of the buildings func-
tion. In the case of Abbey Mills, this contrast is
emphasised by the composition of the engravings
354
Architecture, ornament
and excrement
Paul Dobraszczyk
Figure 1. Anon.,
Engine-house,
Crossness: outfall of the
southern metropolitan
sewerage.: wood-
engraved print, Builder,
19th August, 1865,
p. 591 (authors
collection).
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
355
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 12
Number 4
Figure 2. Page layout,
Illustrated London
News, 15th August,
1868, p. 161 (authors
collection).
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
in the Illustrated London News: one shows the flam-
boyant exterior (see Fig. 2; upper image), with its
polychromatic facades in a mediaeval Venetian
style, Mansard roof, striking central lantern, and
Moorish chimneys; the other the interior (see
Fig. 2; lower image) with its extraordinary decorative
ironwork and parts of the enormous steam engines
housed inside (seen in the left and right fore-
ground).7 As I have argued elsewhere, the design
of both Crossness and Abbey Mills was a result of
a partnership between Bazalgette the engineer
of the main drainage system as a whole and an
architect, Charles Henry Driver (18321900), their
input being focused on the functional and decora-
tive aspects respectively.8 However, despite the
apparent disjunction between the exterior and
interior of the buildings highlighted by the Illustrated
London News, both, in fact, demonstrate a con-
certed attempt, on the part of Driver, to achieve
an overarching synthesis of contrasting elements:
the historical and the modern, decoration and func-
tion; and outside and inside.
What is clear from Drivers architectural works as a
whole, his publications, and from his treatment of
356
Architecture, ornament
and excrement
Paul Dobraszczyk
Figure 3. Main
drainage plan shewing
main, intercepting,
storm relief, and outfall
sewers, pumping
stations and outfall
works.; London County
Council, 1939:
reproduction from
original in Thames
Water Archive, London
with annotations by the
author indicating the
locations of the
pumping stations at 1
Deptford; 2 Crossness;
3 Abbey Mills; 4
Western (reproduced by
permission of Thames
Water plc.).
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
357
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 12
Number 4
Figure 4. Page layout,
Illustrated London
News, 15th April, 1865,
p. 341, frontispiece
(authors collection):
interior of Crossnesss
engine-house showing
the Prince of Wales
turning the engines on.
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
the interior ironwork at Crossness and Abbey Mills
specifically, is that he viewed utility as a primary
problem in relation to architecture, and its decora-
tion as the solution.9 For Driver, and many others
in his field, utility possessed no meaning in itself:
that is, it lacked any aesthetic value required to
make it architectural.10 For Driver, a synthesis
by contrast or otherwise of utility and decoration
was an important part of his theoretical and
practical approach to architecture.11 In effect, at
Crossness and Abbey Mills, Driver creates a hybrid
style that synthesises a host of contrasting elements:
historical architectural forms (Italian, English,
French, Moorish) and his own (seen most clearly in
the forms that make up the exterior lantern); tra-
ditional building materials (York stone and Suffolk
brick) and new ones (wrought- and cast-iron). Para-
doxically, such hybridism also breaks down any sense
of a dichotomous relationship between decoration
and utility that was later so vehemently stressed by
Giedion. In particular, the elements of the interior
ironwork at Abbey Mills seen in the Illustrated
London News (see Fig. 2; lower image) the
columns, spandrels, brackets and railings
possess both a utilitarian and symbolic function;
form and function are fused together in a controlled,
if eccentric, form of synthesis. Indeed, for Driver,
such synthesis represented a self-consciously
modern treatment of iron, one that attempted to
naturalise its artificial basis, and to give aesthetic
meaning to utility.
Architecture and experience
One important feature of the depictions of Cross-
ness and Abbey Mills in the Illustrated London
News are the figures seen scattered throughout
the images: smartly-dressed male figures in the fore-
ground of the interior of Crossness (see Fig. 4),
diminutive working men outside Abbey Mills (see
Fig. 2; upper image, lower background) or an
equally inconspicuous woman perambulating its
interior spaces (see Fig. 2; lower image, lower-
centre background). In fact, all cross-sections of
society, including Royalty, archbishops and parlia-
mentarians, were present at the lavish opening cer-
emonies held in Crossness and Abbey Mills on 4th
April, 1865 and 31st July, 1868 respectively.12
These events were designed to highlight the import-
ance of subterranean technological development to
dignitaries, sponsors and the wider London popu-
lation who would eventually pay for the project.
The presence of the press at these ceremonies rep-
resented an important interface between those
who conceived the project and those upon whom
it impacted, whether in social, economic or psycho-
logical terms.
The voluminous press accounts of these cer-
emonies gave expression to a range of responses
to the new main drainage system: rationalised
accounts of its technical details, drawn from
Bazalgettes own descriptions; paeans of wonder
at its unprecedented scale and noble function; and
disquiet at the monstrous quantities of sewage
now discharged into the Thames.13 One aspect
that many of these depictions stress is the relation-
ship between the architectural style of the buildings
and their function: that is, the pumping of sewage.
The ceremony at Crossness in 1865 in particular pro-
voked strong reaction from the press. If, according
to the Standard, an enchanters wand had
358
Architecture, ornament
and excrement
Paul Dobraszczyk
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
touched the whole site at Crossness, the interior of
the engine-house (see Fig. 4) with its elaborate,
brightly-painted decorative ironwork and giant
steam engines was described as a perfect
shrine of machinery.14 According to the Daily
News, the beautiful octagon in the centre of the
engine-house resembled the interior of a Byzantine
church, with the shafts of the steam engines
acting as church galleries the pulpit being sup-
plied by the cylinder.15 Accounts of the Abbey
Mills engine-house lacked such direct religious
associations, but some of the articles did refer to
the tremendous engines,16 the wonderful machin-
ery,17 and a sense of deep wonder and admiration
at the sight of the lavish decorative ironwork.18 The
sense in which, according to the Daily Telegraph, the
factory becomes poetical and the furnace, fairy-
like strongly relates to the perceived reconciliation
of the artistic and the useful in these spaces; put
another way, the imbuing of the purely functional
with symbolism normally reserved for religious build-
ings made the prosaic seem magical.
Such responses can also be situated within long-
established notions of the sublime. First popularised
in the mid-eighteenth century by writers and theor-
ists such as Edmund Burke (172997), the sublime
was defined as a strong emotional response, made
up of a mixture of awe and terror, to vast or over-
whelming natural or man-made objects.19 In the
nineteenth century, industrial spectacles were
increasingly subject to sublime responses, whether
seen in J. M. W. Turners painting Rain, Steam and
Speed The Great Western Railway (1844) or in
responses to the Crystal Palace in 1851.20 The cer-
emonies at Crossness and Abbey Mills followed
the established precedent of public events designed
to highlight the sublimity of subterranean techno-
logical projects, examples of which include the
opening of the Thames Tunnel in 1827, a vast under-
ground water reservoir at Croydon in 1851, and the
Metropolitan Railway in 1863.21 As David Pike has
observed, the sense of the sublime in responses to
subterranean technology represented a dual rep-
resentation of the new underground during the
waning of the age of heroic engineering that
is, a mixture of a new idealised rational underground
and an established sublime mode.22 At Crossness
and Abbey Mills, the press responses celebrated
both rationalised technology and dream-like archi-
tectural ornamentation; both are assimilated as
sublime.
However, other responses suggest a more complex
interplay between the lavish architectural display and
the sewage concealed in enormous cast-iron pipes
beneath the sublime and wonderful machinery. As
part of the ceremony at Crossness, visitors were
invited to descend into the crypt-like space of part
of its vast subterranean sewage reservoir (Fig. 5).
Despite the temporary exclusion of the sewage and
the dazzling lighting, some visitors felt distinct
unease at the thought of being in such close proxi-
mity to what the writer for the Daily Telegraph
termed the filthiest mess in Europe ready to leap
out like a black panther after the guests had left.23
In the particular space of the subterranean reservoir,
where even if the sewage was not visible it was
however present in the imagination, monstrous
associations were expressed. Indeed, the very
magical quality of the architecture experienced in
both the interior of the pumping station and in the
359
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 12
Number 4
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
reservoir only served to heighten monstrous counter-
associations. In the subterranean reservoir, some
experienced a temporary conflation of the normally
polarised spatial categories of outside and inside,
invaded by an unseen danger and placed in the
very jaws of peril, in the gorge of the valley of the
shadow of death, separated only by bolted iron
gates from the pent up and bridled in sewage.24
Such a sense of monstrosity might, like the
sublime, equally be part of an old mode of represen-
tation of the underground that is, as an organic
space intimately, yet grossly, connected to the
body.25 The attraction of repulsion experienced so
strongly by this visitor was, like the sublime,
another common trope in descriptions of nineteenth
century industrial spectacles.26 Yet, this ambivalent
mode of experience did eventually give way to the
new rationalising discourse. Three years after the
ceremony at Crossness, at the similar event at
Abbey Mills, visitors also wondered at the lavish dec-
oration and vast machinery but in this case did not
refer to any monstrous associations. Indeed, even
360
Architecture, ornament
and excrement
Paul Dobraszczyk
Figure 5. Page layout,
Illustrated London
News, 15th April, 1865,
p. 348 (authors
collection): interior of
Crossnesss
subterranean sewage
reservoir.
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
when presented with the opportunity of inspecting
the sewage pumps below ground, most of the visi-
tors declined;27 even the Daily Telegraph, whose cor-
respondent had, three years earlier, been so rampant
in his imaginative prose, gave little attention to these
noisome chambers far below the buildings lavish
interior.28 The dramatic experience of architecture
and dirt at Crossness simultaneously rational,
sublime and monstrous was not re-enacted in
these spaces; instead, the majority of press accounts
focused their attention on the technical detail of the
building, often borrowing directly from Bazalgettes
own descriptive account of Abbey Mills that was dis-
tributed to the visitors at the ceremony.29 Providing
no wonder equivalent to Crossnesss subterranean
reservoir, Bazalgettes account instead directed visi-
tors thoughts solely to the new vision of sewers
that grounded them firmly within a rationalised con-
ception. Indeed, Bazalgette made no mention at all
of the lavish decoration provided by Driver, giving no
clues to the visitors of its symbolic content.
Ornament and excrement
Despite Bazalgettes rationalised account of Abbey
Mills and visitors lack of interest in its noisome
chambers, many still hoped for the realisation of
one particular organic connection with sewage:
that is, its possible recycling as an agricultural fertili-
ser. In both 1865 and 1868, anticipating the cer-
emonies at Crossness and Abbey Mills, Londons
leading newspapers the Times, Standard and
Daily News published articles explaining
Bazalgettes main drainage system to their readers,
contrasting it with the old sewers and cesspools it
superseded. All praised the effectiveness of the
new system in purifying the river Thames, transform-
ing it from effectively a giant sewer into the
pleasant and silver stream of a former age.30
However, in 1868, the local newspapers of Barking
the location where the entire sewage of north
London was discharged into the river not surpris-
ingly highlighted the fact that the main drainage
system had not fully purified the river; it had only
transferred a colossal nuisance further downstream
and thrust it under [the] noses of others. For
these unfortunate Barking residents, there was
only one proper function for the sewage, that is
to irrigate the land with it.31 Enthusiasm for
sewage utilisation was common in mid-Victorian
Britain and was consistently put forward as a sol-
ution to the problem of human waste disposal,
bringing together economics and natural theology
in a kind of cosmic circulatory ideal.32 However,
despite the presence of a 250-acre farm at Barking
that experimented in utilising a small part of
Londons sewage for the growing of grass, crops
and fruit, plans for doing the same for all of the
sewage came to nothing.33 Nevertheless, visitors
to Crossness and Abbey Mills still dreamed of its
eventual transformation into sweet milk and
butter, or wholesome bread or beef rather than its
wasteful flushing into the Thames.34
If Bazalgettes rationalised accounts of Crossness
and Abbey Mills give no explanation for these associ-
ations, it is not surprising if we, unlike Bazalgette,
place them in their architectural context. Both the
exteriors and interiors of the pumping stations
feature superabundant decoration provided
by Driver, with the conventionalised forms seen at
Crossness (see Fig. 4, upper right), developed,
361
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 12
Number 4
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
at Abbey Mills, into an all-compassing naturalistic
tour-de-force, comprising both horticultural
symbols of purity, such as the extravagant cast-iron
lilies in the interior (Fig. 6), and also agricultural
motifs, such as hops and berries seen in the exterior
frieze (Fig. 7). The presence of agricultural motifs in
particular suggests the possibility that here Driver
might be positing a more direct correlation
between sewage and natural abundance. As sup-
porting evidence, in a lecture given to the Society
of Mechanical and Civil Engineers in 1878, Driver
surprisingly calls into question the design of Bazal-
gettes main drainage system, which he viewed as
making impossible the recycling of the London
sewage as an agricultural fertiliser.35 The fact that
Driver continued to assert the recycling imperative
at this moment long after most had given up
hope of this ever being achieved for Londons
sewage suggests that for him this was a strongly
held view. Consequently, those visitors to Abbey
Mills who made connections between sewage and
natural abundance may have done so partly as a
result of the architects direct intentions. It might
even be suggested that Drivers decorative scheme
at Abbey Mills proposes not only a new style for
architecture, uniting the fragmentary disciplines of
engineering and art, but also a new way of living
for a new civilisation, based on the transformation
of man and his wastes.
Conclusion
Alongside the cases of Abbey Mills and Crossness
pumping stations, Looss and Giedions equating of
ornament with excrement, outlined in the Introduc-
tion, seems crudely reductive. Both employ negative
associations of dirt to exclude whatever they regard
as antithetical to a new and clean vision of architec-
ture, stripped of historical associations and universal
in its form and meaning. This highlights not only that
architecture and dirt can be configured in a positive
relationship, but also the essential fiction of univer-
salising meanings of dirt. As the responses of those
who visited Crossness and Abbey Mills demonstrate,
the experience of filth is one that is individual:
rooted in a specific time, place and in specific
362
Architecture, ornament
and excrement
Paul Dobraszczyk
Figure 6. Abbey Mills
pumping station,
186568, engine-
house, interior, railings
in first-floor gallery
(authors photograph).
Figure 7. Abbey Mills
pumping station,
186568, engine-
house, exterior, part of
carved frieze in east
porch (photograph
reproduced by
permission of Quintin
Lake).
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
spatial, material and architectural contexts. If one
consequence of this understanding is to prevent
any systematisation of the meanings of dirt, then
another is to open up of the multiplicity of personal
encounters with it in time and space. The Crossness
and Abbey Mills pumping stations are buildings
where the relationship between architecture and
filth is explicitly articulated: whether from the engin-
eers, architects or visitors perspectives.
Notes and references1. A. Loos, Ornament and Crime, in, A. Opel, ed., Adolf
Loos, Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (Riverside,
California, Ariadne Press, 1998), pp. 16776.
2. S. Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Build-
ing in Ferro-Concrete (Santa Monica, Getty Center
for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1928),
pp. 99, 132.
3. I have analysed the architectural significance of
Abbey Mills in extensive detail in Historicizing iron:
Charles Driver and the Abbey Mills pumping station
(186568), Architectural History, 49 (2006), pp.
22356.
4. On the engineering function of the pumping stations,
see J. Bazalgette, On the main drainage of London:
and the interception of the sewage from the River
Thames, Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of
Civil Engineers, 24 (1865), pp. 280314. I examine
press responses to the pumping stations in my forth-
coming chapter, Monster sewers: experiencing
Londons main drainage system, in, N. Scott, ed., At
the Interface/Probing the Boundaries (Amsterdam
and New York, Rodopi, 2007).
5. The chimneys were removed in 1940, reputedly to
prevent their use as navigation aids by German
bombers, but more likely for the safety of the
pumping station in the event of an air attack.
Thames Water plcs annual Open Sewers Week uses
Abbey Mills as a focal point for both a sewer visit
and a lecture on the history (and future) of Londons
sanitary development.
6. Illustrated London News, 15th April, 1865, p. 341 and
15th August, 1868, p. 161.
7. The Builder also depicted the exterior of Crossness on
19th August, 1865, p. 591.
8. P. A. Dobraszczyk, Historicizing iron, op. cit.,
pp. 23436.
9. For a comprehensive listing of Drivers architectural
projects see Obituary: Mr. C. H. Driver, Journal of
the Royal Institute of British Architects, 7 (1900),
p. 22; Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of
Civil Engineers, 143 (1900), pp. 42324; and Builder,
10th November, 1900, pp. 42324.
10. K. Carls and J. Schmeichen, The British Market Hall: a
Social and Architectural History (London and New
Haven, Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 5153.
11. Important examples of Drivers theoretical approach
can be found in C. Driver, Engineering, its effects
upon Art, Transactions of the Civil and Mechanical
Engineers Society (1874), pp. 312; and C. Driver,
On iron as a constructive material, RIBA Transactions
First Series, 25 (1875), pp. 16583.
12. The Prince of Wales attended the ceremony at Cross-
ness and the Duke of Edinburgh was invited to
Abbey Mills, as well as many Members of Parliament
and other important dignitaries. In the event, Cross-
ness was the higher-profile event, due to the Parlia-
mentary recess and the unavailability of the Duke of
Edinburgh in 1868. Six hundred guests attended the
ceremony at Crossness; that at Abbey Mills took
place on the same day as the opening of the Victoria
Embankment, a project concurrent with and con-
nected to the main drainage system. Visits to Abbey
Mills also continued after the main ceremony: during
the following fortnight, representatives from
363
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 12
Number 4
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
Londons vestries visited the pumping station in a suc-
cession of organised tours.
13. I explore these responses in greater detail in my forth-
coming paper Monster sewers: experiencing
Londons main drainage system, op. cit.
14. Times, 5th April, 1865, p. 5: Opening of the main drai-
nage.
15. Daily News, 5th April, 1865, p. 5: Opening of the
metropolitan main drainage works by the Prince of
Wales.
16. Times, 31st July, 1868, p. 12: The Thames Embank-
ment.
17. Observer, 2nd August, 1868, p. 3: Thames Embank-
ment and Abbey Mills pumping station.
18. Standard, 31st July, 1868, p. 3: Opening of the
Thames Embankment footway.
19. Burkes influential essay, A Philosophical Enquiry into the
Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, first
published in 1757, set out in a series of categories the
characteristics of the sublime and what might induce
it. Subsequent literature on the sublime is enormous in
its scope: for introductions to the sublime and aesthetics
see W. J. Hipple, The Beautiful, the Sublime and the Pic-
turesque in Eighteenth-Century British Aesthetic Theory
(Carbondale, Illinois, Southern Illinois University Press,
1957) and A. Ashfield and P. de Bolla, eds, The
Sublime: a Reader in British Eighteenth-Century Aes-
thetic Theory (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,
1996). For a contemporary assessment of the sublime
see, for example, C. McMahon, Reframing the Theory
of the Sublime: Pillars and Modes (Lewiston, Edwin
Mellen, 2004).
20. On Turner and the sublime, see A. Wilton, Turner and
the Sublime (London, British Museum, 1980). For an
exemplary reading of the Crystal Palace as sublime,
see the Illustrated London News, 3rd May, 1851,
pp. 34344: The Great Exhibition and pp. 34849:
The opening of the Great Exhibition.
21. On the opening of the Thames Tunnel, see R. Trench
and E. Hillman, London under London: a Subterranean
Guide (London, John Murray, 1984), p. 111; on the
Croydon reservoir and the Metropolitan Railway, see
the Illustrated London News, 20th December, 1851,
pp. 72526: Opening of the Croydon water works
and 17th January, 1863, pp. 7374: Opening of the
Metropolitan Railway.
22. D. Pike, Subterranean Cities: the World Beneath
London and Paris, 18001945 (Ithaca and London,
Cornell University Press, 2005), pp. 21920.
23. Daily Telegraph, 5th April, 1865, p. 2: Opening of the
main drainage by the Prince of Wales.
24. Ibid.
25. Pike, Subterranean Cities, op. cit., pp. 812.
26. A collection of accounts that exemplify the attraction
of repulsion can be found in R. Allen, The Moving
Pageant: A Literary Sourcebook on London Street-
Life, 17001914 (London and New York, Routledge,
1998), pp. 10563.
27. East London Observer, 8th August, 1868, p. 5: Visita-
tion of Abbey Mills pumping station.
28. Daily Telegraph, 31st July, 1868, p. 2: Opening of the
Thames Embankment footway.
29. J. Bazalgette, A Short Descriptive Account of the
Thames Embankment and of the Abbey Mills
Pumping Station (London, Metropolitan Board of
Works, 1868). Much of the long article published
in the Times after the ceremony on 31st July, 1868
(p. 12, The Thames Embankment) was directly
copied from Bazalgettes account; this article
formed the basis for most of the other press cover-
age of the event.
30. Standard, 4th April, 1865, p. 5: The southern outfall;
and 31st July, 1868, p. 3.
31. Essex Times and Romford Telegraph, 12th August,
1868, p. 4: leader; and Stratford Express, 1st August,
1868, p. 4: leader.
364
Architecture, ornament
and excrement
Paul Dobraszczyk
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
32. C. Hamlin, Providence and Putrefaction: Victorian
Sanitarians and the Natural Theology of Health and
Disease, in, P. Brantlinger, ed., Energy & Entropy:
Science and Culture in Victorian Britain (Bloomington,
Indiana, Indiana University Press, 1989), pp. 92123.
33. On the proposals for the utilisation of Londons
sewage, see S. Halliday, The Great Stink of London:
Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the
Victorian Metropolis (Stroud, Sutton, 1999),
pp. 10823.
34. Daily News, 4th April, 1865, p. 4: leader.
35. C. Driver, Presidential address, Minutes of Proceed-
ings of the Civil and Mechanical Engineers Society,
522 (1879), pp. 67.
365
The Journal
of Architecture
Volume 12
Number 4
Downlo
aded
By:
[Un
iver
sity
of
Oxfo
rd]
At:
09:4
9 20
Sep
temb
er 2
010
Top Related