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Headline: Photographer Captures The Unexpected Beauty Of Former London Sewage Station

Caption: IN PHOTO: The Octagon A photographer has captured the unexpected beauty of a former London Sewage Station. Matt Emmett took a trip to Crossness Pumping Station in Abbey Wood, a hidden gem in east London. Built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette, Crossness Pumping Station is a Grade 1 Listed building and features some of the most spectacular ornamental Victorian cast ironwork found in the world today. Known as the ‘Cathedral of Sewage’, Crossness Pumping Station first opened after The Great Stink of 1858 in which the hot weather exacerbated the smell of untreated human waste and industrial effluent that was present on the banks of the River Thames. Bazalgette's solution was to take sewage as far as possible from the city through gravity flow and steam-powered pumping engines, and then dump it untreated into the Thames far to the south-east of the city. When the tide was coming in, the sewage was held in a tank covering 2.6 hectares (6.5 acres), with rows of workers’ cottages and a cricket pitch on top: the workers apparently grew magnificent tomatoes. The plant and its four enormous steam-driven pumps — named after royals including Queen Victoria — were decommissioned in the Fifties and left abandoned. Starting in the Eighties with the help of Thames Water and the Lottery, volunteers have restored the Grade I-listed site and got one pump working. The station recently underwent a £500,000 restoration project to remove asbestos from the building. It now holds open days to the public after reopening.

Keywords: photo feature,photo story,architecture,design,decor,building,factory,photography,former sewage pumping station

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