It is the Charles Dickens bicentenary in 2012 (7/2/1812 - 9/6/1872) and there is a build up of things being written about Dickens, including this excellent website Dickens Journal Online with the article of when Dickens visited the Grand Junction Waterworks Company, now the Kew Bridge Steam Museum.
Charles Dickens’s visit to Brentford helped to influence decisions about London’s water supply discussed at a Great Water Supply Congress. He recorded details of his visit in his campaigning journal Household Words, in an article published in April 1850 entitled "The Troubled Water Question", Household Words, vol. 1, magazine No 3, 13 April 1850. You can read the original article in Dickens Journals Online - pages 49-54.
In this article there is a fascinating, detailed description of how the Brentford waterworks operated and together with the other waterworks companies, how they supplied London’s population of 2,326,000 people, in 300,000 houses, an average of 24 gallons of water per day totalling 56,500,00 gallons per day.
Dickens wanted his journal Household Words to introduce the vast machinery of the industrial age to the people, by presenting scientific and statistical information informally, to lead the reader “into new associations with the Power that bears him onward.” In this article the journal discusses the question of the purity of London’s water in detail about the water’s composition, the machinery involved in purification, and a description of the route the water takes from factory to home. He presents the material as a dialogue between himself and his friend the barrister Mr. Lyttleton, who decide to approach the subject by means of “ocular demonstration”: a visit to the waterworks.
The article first describes how the water is taken from the Thames “In the bed of the river is an enormous culvert pipe laid parallel to this path. Its mouth—open towards Richmond—is barred across with a grating, to intercept stray fish, murdered kittens, or vegetable impurities..... The culvert then takes a bend round the edge of the islet opposite to us; burrows beneath the Brentford road, and delivers its contents into a well under that tall chimney and taller iron stand-pipe which you see on the other side of the river.”
The two friends then follow the pipe and “...at the beginning of Old Brentford, a little beyond where they turn over Kew Bridge, an immensely tall thin column that shoots up into the air like an iron mast unable to support itself, and seems to require four smaller, thinner, and not much shorter props to keep it upright. This, with the engine and engine-houses, is all they can see of the Grand Junction Waterworks from the road.”
They entered the waterworks and were shown the state of the original impure water how it is pumped by steam power into 3 1/2 acres of reservoirs, where it is filtered. They are impressed by the machinery, which is still there today, “...the great engine. What a monster! Imagine an enormous see-saw, with a steam engine at one end, and a pump at the other. Fancy this ' beam,' some ten yards long, and twenty-eight tons in weight, moving on a pivot in the middle, the ends of which show a circumference greater than the crown of the biggest hat ever worn. See, with what earnest deliberation the ' see,' or engine, pulls up the ' saw,' or balance-box of the pump, which then comes down upon the water-trap with the ferocious aplomb of 49 tons, sending 400 gallons of water in one tremendous squirt nearly the twentieth part of a mile high;—that is to the top of the stand-pipe.”
The Kew Bridge Pumping Station was originally opened in 1838 and the brick standpipe tower was built in 1867 to protect the five cast iron water pipes to provide the pressure in the water pipes.
We are fortunate to still be able to see the original machinery and buildings of this great Victorian waterworks, it is well worth a visit to the Kew Bridge Steam Museum.
