Bazalgette Embankment: a new park and sewer, the Great Stink and a visionary Victorian engineer
- London On The Ground
- Aug 1
- 6 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
The River Thames near Blackfriars Bridge is narrower than it has ever been, thanks to a new embankment, which also means the City of London has grown!
Named after the Victorian engineer who built central London’s sewerage system, the Bazalgette Embankment is part of the Thames Tideway Tunnel super sewer and includes a public park.
The Thames Tideway Tunnel is London’s first major new sewerage infrastructure, and the Bazalgette Embankment its first new embankment, since 1875. The tunnel was opened in May 2025 and the new embankment was officially opened in January 2026.
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The new 16 mile (25 km) long tunnel intercepts almost all the raw sewage and rainwater that would otherwise run into the Thames during heavy rain. It took nine years to build and cost £4.9 billion (including £1.1 billion for preparatory works).
Before Sir Joseph Bazalgette constructed the original sewerage system between 1859 and 1875, the River Thames and its many tributary rivers running through London were effectively an open sewer. This led to major pubic health problems, with frequent outbreaks of cholera and other diseases. The issue was always most severe during the summer.
The catalyst for change was the so-called Great Stink of 1858. During a very hot and dry summer, when the flow of the Thames fell to one third of its normal level, human and industrial waste gathered on the banks of the river to an unprecedented extent. Raw sewage piled up six feet deep on parts of the fore-shore at low tide.
Charles Dickens wrote that the “offensive smells, even in that short whiff, have been of a most head and stomach distending nature". Queen Victoria and Price Albert were forced to return from a pleasure cruise on the Thames after only a few minutes because of the unbearable stench.
The Illustrated London News wrote:
“We can colonise the remotest ends of the earth; we can conquer India; we can pay the interest of the most enormous debt ever contracted; we can spread our name, and our fame, and our fructifying wealth to every part of the world; but we cannot clean the River Thames.”
It was only after the reek started to affect business in Parliament - next to the river in Westminster - that action was taken to tackle the problem. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Benjamin Disraeli, had to cover his mouth and nose with a handkerchief, while MPs debated a move to Oxford to escape the pong.
Parliament gave responsibility for clearing the Thames to the Metropolitan Board of Works, formed in 1855 to take charge of public infrastructure in London. The Board was allowed to borrow £3million, to be repaid by a threepenny levy on all households in London for forty years, and asked to ensure that sewerage outlets were not within the boundaries of London.
Joseph Bazalgette, chief engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works, had already drawn up a plan for an epic sewerage system in 1856. This entailed 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of new street sewers, which would feed sewage and rainwater into 82 miles (132 km) of interconnecting sewers. The system was designed to intercept waste before it reached the river in London, piping it to the east to flow into the Thames further downstream.
In order to accommodate low level intercepting sewers running parallel to the Thames, Bazalgette’s plan included constructing the Victoria and Chelsea Embankments north of the river and the Albert Embankment on the south bank.
These embankments had a dramatic and lasting impact on the river banks in central London. They reclaimed land from the Thames and built walls along the foreshore. They also allowed for new underground railway lines, water and gas mains and telegraph cables below ground and new roads above ground.
When Bazalgette built his sewer system the population of London was approaching three million people, having grown from close to one million at the start of the 19th century. He designed the system for a population of 4.5 million plus rainwater, but, on the basis that “We’re only going to do this once and there’s always the unforeseen”, he doubled the diameter of the pipes in the sewers.
The population of London was more than six million by the end of the 19th century, but Bazalgette’s sewer coped. Now supplemented by the new Thames Tideway Tunnel, it is still serving Londoners in the 21st century, all nine million of us.
His visionary system went a long way towards ending cholera, typhoid and other waterborne diseases in London and the deaths that had habitually resulted from these infections.
The new 1.5 acre space now bearing Bazalgette’s name, on the north bank of the Thames immediately upstream of Blackfriars Bridge, is the newest public park in the City of London. It further bulids out into the river from the Victoria Embankment.
Beneath it, a section of the Thames Tideway Tunnel connects to the outfall point of the subterranean River Fleet, which has long been buried and is part of the sewer network.
Sewage passes through a drop shaft 174 feet (53 metres) deep and 72 ft (22 metres) wide, from where it flows into the main tunnel underneath the Thames. Only in extreme cases of heavy rainfall would the shaft fill up and overflow into the river.
The new park includes a set of massive sculpted artworks, The Stages by Nathan Coley, which “provide spaces for people to sit, view, play, meet and gather”. According to an information board at the site, they make reference to “the invisible heroic engineering of Bazalgette’s Victorian sewer as well as his vision to make public spaces”.
There are also lines of poetry, part of Hidden Rivers, Hidden Times by Dorothea Smartt, inscribed on the ventilation columns. Together with others at eight locations on the Thames Tideway Tunnel, they “reveal human stories relating to London’s lost rivers and offer ‘snippets’ of life in the capital across the centuries”.
The three at the Bazalgette Embankment refer to the lost River Fleet, St Barbara (patron saint of tunnellers, miners and engineers) and Bazalgette’s workers. They read as follows:
The furious Fleet flows red with Roman blood, Boudica battles bravely.
The stillness of refuge seeps from old St Pancras Church, soothing this troubled mind to recovery, a tranquility sourced from the buried river.
St. Barbara’s defended, lost. Buried beneath you Bazalgette’s workers, tunnelling mudlarks swathed by the forgotten rivers of this town.
Although the park is paved, it includes newly planted trees, shrubs and other plants. When I visited (on a Saturday in April 2026), there were people walking around the space, relaxing on a built-in sun lounger and enjoying the views over the river.
There was also a group of skateboarders, who had repurposed a terrace of stone steps to practise their skills.
Any new public space is welcome in the City London, where only 10% of the land area is open spaces. This one is spacious and provides wonderful views over the Thames and new public artworks and poetry.
It is also a direct link to Joseph Bazalgette, one of London’s greatest figures, who, it has been estimated, saved more London lives than anyone else in history. I agree with historian and author Peter Ackroyd’s view that Bazalgette should be considered a hero of London.
If you are interested in Victorian sanitation, you may also like to read Flushing out the truth: Jennings, Crapper and the public convenience.
Walks available for booking
For a schedule of forthcoming London On The Ground guided walks and tours, please click here.