Amazing & Extraordinary Facts: London (6 page)

In the following half century two developments ensured that the Thames would not freeze again, but they were the work of engineers rather than global warming. The replacement of the 19-arch medieval London Bridge by the 5-arch structure of John Rennie in the 1820s enabled the river to flow faster. And the construction of the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in the 1860s reclaimed 52 acres from the river, narrowing it so that it flowed faster through the City. To build the three embankments Bazalgette used the spoil which he had excavated during the construction of London’s sewer system and from the construction of the Metropolitan Underground Railway. This is seen most clearly at York Gate, situated at the bottom of Buckingham Street, off the Strand. York Gate was once the point from which the owners of the houses of the nobility (Essex House, the Savoy, etc) stepped into their boats moored on the river. York Gate is now about 100 yards from the Thames, firmly placed in Victoria Embankment Gardens. And the Strand itself is so called because it used to run close to the river. The Thames doesn’t freeze any more, because it simply runs too fast.

York Gate

Sir Joseph Bazalgette

I
n the summer of 1858 the smell from the River Thames was so foul that Members of Parliament were unable to use rooms which overlooked the river. The reason? The sewage of two and a half million citizens was flowing into the river and not only causing the phenomenon which the press dubbed ‘The Great Stink’ but also polluting water supplies with poisonous bacteria. Cholera alone had killed almost 40,000 in the capital while typhoid killed Prince Albert and struck down Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, though both survived. And since the Thames is a tidal river the sewage never went away, being borne back and forth on the tides.

The MPs were so worried by the threat to their health that they authorised Joseph Bazalgette (1819-91) to begin work on a plan which he had been advocating for years: a scheme which would intercept the sewage and conduct it to treatment works in the Thames Estuary. From 1859-75 Bazalgette built 82 miles of main sewers, some of them larger than the Underground train tunnels, and 1,100 miles of street sewers. To accommodate the sewers and to prevent the Thames from flooding he also built the Victoria, Albert and Chelsea Embankments besides creating many streets, bridges and parks. By the time he had finished his work the Thames was once again a clean river where salmon could be found and cholera and other waterborne diseases never again threatened the capital. Bazalgette was knighted by a grateful Queen Victoria in 1874.

A
careful examination of a map of London reveals that London’s main line railway stations are built in a ring, with those north of the river being located at some distance from the main centres of business, finance and entertainment where most commuters work. Starting in the north-west with Paddington we can follow the line east through the stations north of the Marylebone Road – Euston Road – Pentonville Road – City Road. These comprise Marylebone Station, Euston, St Pancras and King’s Cross, leading on to Liverpool Street and Fenchurch Street which are both just within the City. To the south of the Thames we have London Bridge and Waterloo though southern commuters were able to penetrate the area north of the river by taking trains to Cannon Street, Charing Cross and Victoria. Why did the railway companies not build their main termini within the City itself and within Westminster for the convenience of their passengers?

121 Westminster

There are two reasons. First, the considerable areas of land required for railway termini could be purchased much more cheaply on the northern edge of the metropolis which was still largely undeveloped. Despite the prohibitive cost of land Robert Stephenson proposed to locate the terminus of the London-Birmingham Railway at the Strand (near the site now occupied by the Savoy Hotel), while Brunel wanted the Great Western Terminus to be at Pimlico rather than Paddington. Wiser counsels prevailed and were reinforced when Parliament forbade railway works south of the Marylebone-Euston-Pentonville Roads because of the disruption caused by the proposed building works. It was for this reason that the first Underground railway was built, the Metropolitan Railway, to take passengers from Paddington, Euston, King’s Cross and later St Pancras to Farringdon, additional Underground lines being added as the years passed.

The largest and busiest railway station in London is Waterloo. Opened in 1848 as the London terminus of the London and South-Western Railway it handles 90 million passengers a year on its 19 platforms (plus the two which, until 2007, were the terminus of the Eurostar Channel Tunnel trains). Clapham Junction Station, 4 miles to the south, has more trains since it is the point at which trains from Waterloo and Victoria meet. The most extraordinary feature of Waterloo however is the now forgotten London Necropolis Station which lay adjacent to the main station and was operated by the London Necropolis Company which ran funeral trains, each carrying up to 48 coffins (first, second or third class) to one of two Woking Necropolis stations at Brookwood in Surrey. Brookwood cemetery, the largest in the British Empire, opened in 1854 to provide a burial place for Londoners, the two stations being necessary to provide separate accommodation for Anglicans and others. The last train ran in April 1941 when bombs damaged the funeral train but the elegant façade of the Necropolis station may still be seen at Westminster House, 121, Westminster Bridge Road, SE1. The cemetery at Brookwood contains a separate burial ground for Muslims, the nearby town of Woking having Britain’s oldest mosque.

The Euston Arch

Great Scott

The Euston Arch is another feature of railway history that has almost disappeared from the records. This massive arch, in the Doric style, was built as an imposing entrance to Euston station in 1837 and demolished in 1961 when the station was redeveloped, This caused much controversy, with criticism led by the poet John Betjeman. The remains of the arch were discovered, well preserved, by the architectural historian Dan Cruickshank in 1994, in the bed of the River Lea. There is a proposal to have it re-erected close to its original site.

John Betjeman was more successful in his attempts to preserve the Midland Grand Hotel, built by George Gilbert Scott (1811–78) in the Victorian Gothic style which he also employed in the Albert Memorial. This has now been refurbished and brought back into use as a luxury hotel adjacent to St Pancras International, the terminus for Eurostar trains since 2007. At the same time the main train shed was restored. Completed in 1868 by the engineer William Henry Barlow, it was the largest single-span structure ever designed at that time and its magnificent glass roof has been returned to its former glory, a fine testimony to its Victorian origins, providing an impressive entrance to London for passengers arriving from the Continent.

The Midland Grand Hotel

B
y the 1840s London’s transport problem was dire. Streets were so congested by horse-drawn traffic that it was usually quicker to walk than ride anywhere. The situation was made worse when the ring of mainline stations began to decant their commuters to the north of the present Marylebone Road-Euston Road-Pentonville Road highway, leaving them to find their own way to the City and Westminster where they wanted to go. A proposal to build a railway beneath the streets from Paddington to Farringdon, linking mainline stations, was frustrated by difficulties in raising the money, partly because of the activities of Leopold Redpath, an officer of the Great Northern railway, who misappropriated £170,000 set aside by the Great Northern to invest in the new railway. He spent the money on ‘magnificent houses and objects of vertu’ and was one of the last convicts to be transported to Australia. Despite this, and the warnings of a Dr Cuming that ‘The forthcoming end of the world would be hastened by the construction of underground railways burrowing into the infernal regions and thereby disturbing the devil’, construction went ahead and the world’s first Underground railway, the Metropolitan, was opened in January 1863.