From Hiding to Civic Presence: How Wastewater Plants Entered the City

When London's main drainage was completed north of the Thames in 1868, the Metropolitan Board of Works marked the occasion with a banquet held inside a sewage pumping station. Abbey Mills had been built over the previous three years by the engineer Joseph Bazalgette , working with the architect Charles Driver, laid out on a cruciform plan with eight beam engines, two on each arm. Its style has bee