As one of the older stretches of London's sewer network, c.1830, the London Bridge
Sewer was somewhere we'd wanted to take a look at for sometime. Its explorable section at the time of our visit was
fairly short, shorter so than we'd initially expected but we'll get onto that later. From its
Thames outfall heading upstream is approx 1.2 Km of explorable height
tunnel. We planned to access this at a point nearer to the upstream end, which indeed we did.
Following a short stoop through a section of branch sewer we hit the main tunnel at
about a quarter Km from its upstream shrinking point. We decided to head upstream first
with it being so close and then head back downstream to the outfall, taking pics as we went,
photography did not win out that evening.
Photo Guide (950Kb) - view a pdf map detailing shooting locations of pics (opens in new window)
It is a really fascinating stretch of sewer, majorly interesting as far as shape changes go,
the main pipe chopping and changing amongst circular, egg, balloon, horseshoe and oval(lozenge).
Unlike other places we've explored it doesn't feature elaborate junctions,
great rusting hulks of machinery or cavernous chambers of swirling masonry, it's a simple short
stretch of sewer of interesting construction and noteable age. The brick work in most places is much
less pristine than Bazalgette's Victorian offerings, which gives the place something of a
forgotten/neglected feel, different to anything else we've explored under London.
Even the technicolour broadband cables didn't make the place feel any less neglected,
more abused if anything.
On our route downstream we passed several adjoining branch sewers and a couple of tall circular
chambers that went up almost to street level. As we travelled on downstream the water
level got significantly higher, although it wasn't especially fast flowing, which turned out not
to be such a great thing! It was around about this time that we started to notice that the floor
was getting more and more silted up, but the silt also contained bigger debris which caused you
to stumble and lunge for the wall to steady yourself.
The main pipe went on for a while like this, getting even more silted, and then very suddenly
the silt stopped and you stepped off its edge into mid thigh deep water. Just up ahead around a 45
degree corner we could hear crashing water, more side pipes no doubt. Rounding the corner we were
surprised, yes there were more side pipes, but also the walls were spouting water. It seems
that a major amount of ground water is forcing its way in through the brick work at this point,
it was quite an impressive sight.
The whole time we'd been underground we'd been very aware that this was a pretty nasty sanitary sewer.
Lots of solid content in the water, lots of cling-ons when you lifted your tripod from the waters.
But it was tolerable, until what happened next. We packed up our kit to pass the ground
water spouts, the water was getting close to crotch deep as you waded into the spouts and the floor
was again very silted. I lead, slowly as it was a bit of a struggle to pull your feet back up out of
the sinking silt. From behind me I heard st00p shout "You do not want to see what you have just stirred up",
he was right, I didn't want to see and so I didn't look. But I guess he thought perhaps I should see and
so from behind me he hit the big beam torch on the water, I still didn't properly look but saw enough
to realise that there wasn't a inch sq area of the surface of the water that wasn't glowing with golden
nuggets and other various trophies! It was not goodah!!
We VERY quickly decided we'd have to end our downstream explore at this point. st00p is a resilient chap,
he isn't fazed by much when it comes to exploring, so to hear him describe the scenario as "The thing
of nightmares" and "The worst thing I have seen in a drain ever" was enough to convince me that it was
time to leave. We headed back upstream and quickly out, feeling 100 times more dirty than 3 hours earlier.
Having forgotten a change of clothes I had to drive home in a Beastie Boys styley wearing my newly laundered
boiler suit which I had in the car.
