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REPORTS OP MEETINGS 1970
February 21st. General Meeting No. 1158. The Abbey Mills
Pumping Station, West Ham. On the 21 st February the Club
held a meeting to examine the heart of London's drainage
system, namely, the Abbey Mills Pumping Station. Constructed
between 1865 and 1868, the station was part of Sir Joseph
Bazalgette's scheme for the main drainage of London. The
central building reflects the splendour of the architecture
of Victorian municipal engineering, being built by Bazalgette
and Cooper in the Venetian Gothic style and showing strong
Ruskinian influences. It was within this cruciform building
under the octagonal Lantern at the crossing, that the eight
massive steam-driven beam engines laboured to keep London
free from flooding. Originally, the station had its own
reservoir to keep the boilers supplied with water, and a
direct access to the railway so that the millions of tons
of coal required over the years could be delivered directly
into the massive cellars under the building. The Beam
engines were removed between 1931 and 1933, but we were
fortunate to see two beam engines in the West Ham pumping
station nearby. However, we were not so fortunate in that
both were being serviced, which the station superintendent
informed us, happened all too frequently.
The pumping at the Abbey Mills station is now done by
eight, electrically-driven centrifugal pumps with a gross
capacity of 224,000 gallons a minute, compared with 112,000
gallons a minute originally attained by the beam engines.
To augment these, there are three diesel-driven pumps, one
electrically-driven and seven gas-engined centrifugal pumps,
which in all have a gross capacity of 206,000 gallons a
minute. The gas engines are started with the use of
compressed air and use town gas supplied from a nearby gas-
holder. Members were given a demonstration of one of these
pumps in action, it being specially started up for our
inspection. The total capacity of the station is thus