Covent Garden Westminster Walks London Theatres Dickens and London
This eventful walk begins with a stroll from Westminster to Embankment where the horror of the River Thames before Sir Joseph Bazalgette built his remarkable sewer system is evoked. It then turns into the area where Dickens, as a young boy, had worked overlooking that stinking river, in a period that traumatized him for the rest of his days. Via a sequence of delightful streets, the walk ventures into Theatreland, passing landmarks that Dickens would recognize today. It follows Dickens through his final years as a successful magazine proprietor and finishes near a churchyard that he described vividly and gruesomely in Bleak House.
Start: Westminster Station (Circle and District Underground lines).
Finish: Holborn Station (Piccadilly and Central Underground lines).
Length: 21/4 miles (3.6km).
Duration: 2 hours.
Best of times: Anytime.
Worst of times: None.
DIRECTIONS
Leave Westminster Station via exit 1 marked Westminster Pier. Turn left and keep walking ahead along Victoria Embankment.
The road along which you are walking is little short of a testimony to Victorian determination, confidence and ingenuity. It was the work of Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1819–91), a largely forgotten figure to whom London owes an eternal debt of gratitude.
Between the late-18th and the mid-19th century, the capital’s population increased from around half a million to in excess of 2.5 million. The increased housing that sprang up to accommodate the citizens depended largely on an antiquated system of waste disposal that had changed little in 400 years. The effluent from the populace went into cesspools and privies, which invariably overflowed, sending reeking streams of raw sewage onto the streets, to pollute the wells and springs, en route to the River Thames.
When the first cholera epidemic struck in 1831, medical opinion believed that the disease was caused by the smells that the capital’s residents lived with on a day-to-day basis. In 1848, in an ill-conceived attempt to combat the stench from the sewage in the streets, Parliament passed an act instructing that all cesspits, privies and drains must be connected to a sewer that flowed into the Thames. Thanks to the Great Exhibition of 1851, people were introduced to flushing toilets. They began installing them in their homes, and the river, never pleasant at the best of times, became a fetid swamp, producing a stench which could, on occasions, be smelt from 30 miles (48.3 km) away. Newspapers such as The Times campaigned for Parliament to do something, but its members remained silent.
Then, in 1858, one of the hottest summers on record caused the Thames to dry up and a stinking flat of slime was left behind. ‘The Great Stink’, as it became known, proved a highly efficient lobbyist. When Parliament, unable to halt the stench with curtains dipped in chloride of lime, was forced to rise early on several occasions, action was demanded. Benjamin Disraeli brought in an act giving the Metropolitan Board of Works the funds to resolve the problem.
DIRECTIONS
Continue along Victoria Embankment and, just before you arrive at the Hungerford Suspension Bridge, pause on the right by the memorial to:-
Sir Joseph Bazalgette. He was the Chief Engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works, and thanks to his ingenuity, you are able to stand here without being violently sick! Bazalgette undertook what was, without doubt, the largest civil engineering project of the 19th Century. Twenty-two thousand labourers brought chaos to the horse-powered streets of the Victorian metropolis, laying out Bazalgette’s network of over 1200 miles (1,931 km) of brick sewers. These criss-crossed London connecting with a further 82 miles (132 km) of main intercepting sewers that carried the effluent into the Thames far to the east of the city. Finally completed in 1875, the effect on the health of Londoners was immediate and dramatic. The cholera epidemics were brought to an end, and for the first time in centuries, the air at the heart of London ceased to be tainted with the fragrant aroma of human waste.
The Victoria Embankment, on which you stand, was designed by Bazalgette to carry the main west–east sewer, and was built between 1864 and 1870. It reclaimed 37 acres (15 ha) from the river Thames and connects Westminster with Blackfriars. Given his remarkable achievement and lasting contribution to the quality of life in London, it is a pity that Sir Joseph Bazalgette remains a neglected figure, and that only this dust-caked memorial remembers him.
|
