A visit to the Crossness Engines

Yes, on Sunday Hastings Battleaxe was off again, this time to the Crossness Engines in Abbey Wood, down towards the Thames estuary. Described as  ‘A Cathedral on the Marsh’, the Crossness Pumping Station, built in 1865, housed four enormous beam engines to pump London’s effluent into the Thames. The Joseph Bazelgette solution to The Great Stink was innovative, but merely moved the sewage disposal issue down-stream. Battleaxe has seen Crossness on many TV programmes, where it looks wonderful, but the reality did not quite match our expectations… don’t get me wrong, it was a very interesting day out, but not one of our most amazing experiences. We chose to visit on one of the infrequent steaming days. And of course, Thames Water still discharges untreated sewage into the Thames Estuary… approximately once a week.

Getting to Crossness was a bit of a palaver… first, the train from Hastings to London Bridge, then change onto another train which trundled down to Abbey Wood via Greenwich, Woolwich Arsenal and Plumstead. Then, a vintage Routemaster bus took people from Abbey Wood station to the outskirts of the site. Battleaxe is well old enough to remember when Routemaster buses were taken for granted on her daily commute to work…  After that, yet another form of transport was provided – a narrow-gauge train run by the RANG railway. However, our entry time started at 12.30 and we were there at 12.32!

Now, when you see Crossness on TV, or read a newspaper article – like this one from the Guardian – you’d think the whole place was a riot of gloriously painted iron and wonderful working engines. Here are a couple more typically lovely photos of what is actually a small part of the building.

The reality is slightly different. It is very much a work in progress. Only one of the four massive engines, the Prince Consort, is in working order, and another, Victoria, is in the process of restoration. The other two are huge inert masses of rusty iron. The task to restore them is truly daunting – their beams are 13 metres long and weigh 47 tons, and the flywheels are each 8.23 metres in diameter and weigh 52 tons. Only a small section of the iron decoration has been restored, including the central octagon, and the rest of the building, dark, dusty and damaged, awaits attention.

I do think publicity about Crossness should make much more of this reality – that it is a restoration work in progress. Battleaxe would have like to have learned much more about the progress of current restoration projects, how the massive task of restoring such huge beam engines is undertaken, and the plans and challenges around progress in the future. There was a talk on offer when we were there, but it seemed to be all about the past – we know all about Bazelgette etc.

The one working engine is so enormous (apparently the largest working rotative beam engine in the world), it was quite hard to get a comprehensive view of its workings – the vast flywheel disappeared down into the floor, and you had to climb steep iron stairs up to a much higher level to see the beam doing its business.  The stately, rhythmic hissing and rumbling of the huge thing was hypnotic. Obviously, it was going far more slowly than it would have done when it was at work – imagine the vibration and racket in that engine house when all four engines were busy.

Now, Battleaxe loves a steam engine, and I hate to sound parochial, but you get a better feel of big engines at work if you visit our local ‘Brede Giants’, just a few miles from Hastings.  See this past blog post of mine. Engineering buffs will say they are a different type of engine altogether, but still… In addition, when the Crossness Pumping Station was abandoned in the 1950s, much of the innards and brasswork of the engines was stolen, while at Brede the engines are totally intact. Restoration at Crossness did not begin until 1985.

The Brede engines were made by Tangye of Birmingham, and the Crossness engines by James Watt, also of Birmingham.

The Beam Engine House is still apparently dangerous. It is a  hard-hat zone – didn’t seem that dangerous to me though. Here are Battleaxe and Philosopher in their finery.

Anyway, there is a cafe, and a shop, and an interesting exhibition about London’s age-old sewage problem. The modern Crossness Sewage Treatment works is operated by the dreaded Thames Water – the exhibition tells us that raw sewage is still discharged into the Thames Estuary approximately once a week, when the system is ‘overwhelmed.’ Apparently this overwhelming happens when there is as little as 2mm of rain – oh, how fantastic is that, not. Bazelgette would not be impressed.

We caught the little train back – it is a part remnant of the railway that used to bring coal to the engine house…A bit shambolic, run by elderly beardy volunteers – but nice…

… and the old bus again… but then we stopped at a pub, the Abbey Arms, right by the station. It looked a bit dodgy but actually was a perfectly nice place with an excellent range of beers and food. Trains again, and back to Hastings. So, would Battleaxe recommend Crossness? Probably, if one lived in London, but I felt for us,  it didn’t quite justify the long trip from Hastings.

I’ve got such a lot still to write about – apart from local things, the wider political scene is as hectic as ever.. Yesterday, Joe Biden finally pulled out of the US Presidential race. Who will replace him with a hope of defeating the evil Trump? Money seems so far to be on Kamala Harris – but so many of those Americans are sexist and racist – would enough of them vote for a black woman?