Abbey Mills Pumping Station, in the London Borough of Newham, was designed by Jospeph Bazalgette to pump sewage up from the lower level interceptor sewers up to the Northern Outfall Sewer which feeds the treatment works in Beckton by gravity. The architects for the scheme were Edmund Cooper and Charles Driver and it was constructed between 1865 and 1868. The vertical rise is about 40 feet (12 metres).
The plan of the main buidling is cruciform and each bay houses two steam engines built by Rothwell of Bolton. The fine interior and exterior design in the Byzantine style has earned the structure the sobriquet of the Cathedral of Steam and the main building is listed at Grade II*. Although the steam engines are no longer operational, electric pumps are still on site, to supplement the modern pumping station which opened in 1997 about 200 metres away from the original building.
Occasional tours of the site are hosted by Thames Water and reports of a Sub Brit trip to the pumping station and then into part of the sewer network itself in May 2012 are published in Subterranea issue 30.
