The Crossness Pumping Station was built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette as part of Victorian London’s urgently needed main sewerage system. It pumps sewage from a low intercepting sewer up to the level of the tidal Thames. The Beam Engine House is a Grade 1 Listed Industrial Building constructed in the Romanesque style and features some of the most spectacular ornamental Victorian cast ironwork to be found today. It also contains the four original pumping engines (although the cylinders were upgraded in 1901), which are possibly the largest remaining rotative beam engines in the world, with 52 ton flywheels and 47 ton beams.
The journey there underlinined the advisability of getting up early if one wants to visit Cross Ness. It was a chapter of delays. I left the house at 7.30 AM, but the first train had a fault so got the next half an hour later, which was late at Euston because of speed restrictions. Got to Abbey Wood station at 10.40am, but found a long queue waiting for the courtesy minibus and could not get on one till over half an hour later. At the site there was a long queue to get into the buildings, then another queue to pick up a hard hat and enter the Pump Engine House, so didn’t get in there till 12.30.
The interior is impressive, with four huge engines in place and accessible from three levels. The octagon of painted ironwork only encloses a small part of the floor area, by the way. One engine is completely restored and running on steam, another in bits and the other two untouched. Some ironwork is re-painted in bright colours, while some sections have been left dull and rusty. The beam floor runs the whole length and width of the building and allows access to all the engine beams and the top of the Octagon. There are views out over the site and the Thames. There isn’t so much to see in the basements asides from some very rusty pipes and some shiny parts of the restored engine, Prince Consort. To one side is the Triple Expansion Engine House, which now is mostly empty. From the Beam Engine floor level and old entrance, it looks like an alarmingly big and deep hole with some rusting pipes and machinery in the bottom. Apparently two old diesel pumps are down there.
I came out after an hour, having seen and tried to photograph everything, and to let someone else in. I had a coffee and roll in the unusually cheap cafe, before visiting the workshop building and the former valve house, and taking some more photos. The brick architecture of the whole complex is quite worth seeing, with its arches and milticoloured bricks.
There are/were a few steaming days in 2011 when the site was open to the public. I visited Cross Ness pumping station on Open House London day, 18 Sept 2011. The engine house is on the far side of the large Thames Water site, 2Km from Abbey Wood railway station. A courtesy minibus is laid on, or you can drive there. Adequate car parking is provided. Watch the website http://www.crossness.org.uk/
Done here and wondering what else you could do? There are some abbey ruins near the railway station, or you could take a B11 bus to the NT’s “Red House” in Bexleyheath.
