Wanstead Sewage Works, also known as Redbridge (Southern) Sewage Works or Empress Sewage Works, was a municipal

sewage treatment Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding e ...

works located on a site bounded by the

River Roding The River Roding () rises at Molehill Green, Essex, England, then flows south through Essex and London and forms Barking Creek as it reaches the River Thames. Course The river leaves Molehill Green and passes through or near a group of eight ...

to the east and

Wanstead Park Wanstead Park is a municipal park covering an area of about 140 acres (57 hectares), in Wanstead, in the London Borough of Redbridge. It is also a district of the London Borough of Redbridge, which was in Essex until 1965. It is administered as p ...

to the north, in the south eastern corner of the parish of Wanstead, in the London Borough of Redbridge, historically within the county of

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

, England. It was in operation from 1 March 1884 to December 1977.

Establishment

Before the nineteenth century, water supplies in Wanstead were from wells and pumps, but in 1857 The

East London Waterworks Company The East London Waterworks Company was one of eight private water companies in London absorbed by the Metropolitan Water Board in 1904. The company was founded by Act of Parliament in 1806, and in 1845 the limits of supply were described as ''" ...

extended its water main to Wanstead, though the supply was far from adequate in the early years. Increasing pollution and awareness of its supposed connection with disease, notably

typhoid fever Typhoid fever, also known as typhoid, is a disease caused by '' Salmonella'' serotype Typhi bacteria. Symptoms vary from mild to severe, and usually begin six to 30 days after exposure. Often there is a gradual onset of a high fever over several ...

and

diphtheria Diphtheria is an infection caused by the bacterium '' Corynebacterium diphtheriae''. Most infections are asymptomatic or have a mild clinical course, but in some outbreaks more than 10% of those diagnosed with the disease may die. Signs and s ...

, led to public pressure for the establishment of sewage treatment facilities. Two hundred acres of the land belonging to Aldersbrook Manor and farm had already been sold in 1853 to become the City of London Cemetery, and the local board bought an area to the north of this for the establishment of Wanstead Sewage Works. Access to the sewage works site was from the west, via a road that became Empress Avenue in the early twentieth century when houses were built. The original works were shown on an 1894

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

map as a "sewage farm".

The treatment process

The original sewage treatment process, described in some detail in October 1884 (a few months after the works opened), was as follows. Incoming sewage was screened and then held in settlement tanks. From here the liquid was passed onto the surface of land which had been specially prepared with under-drainage at an average depth of eight feet. The sewage gradually percolated through the soil into the under drains, and from these the purified liquid, described as "clear and bright", was released into the River Roding. The sludge from the tanks was run into a sludge bed, and periodically this was dug out and ploughed as manure into land more than a quarter of a mile from the river, in order to minimise the risk of it causing river pollution.

Closure and subsequent changes

The works operated until December 1977, after which it became derelict, controlled by the

Thames Water Authority The Thames Water Authority was one of ten regional water authorities created in the UK on 1 April 1974 under the provisions of the Water Act 1973 to bring together all the water management functions of the region in one public body. Predece ...

, and then the site passed to the

Department of Transport The Department for Transport (DfT) is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for the English transport network and a limited number of transport matters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland that have not been devolved. The d ...

in the 1980s for use as "exchange" land for road building and improvement which would affect

Epping Forest Epping Forest is a area of ancient woodland, and other established habitats, which straddles the border between Greater London and Essex. The main body of the forest stretches from Epping in the north, to Chingford on the edge of the London ...

. In July 1993 they offered two areas totalling about twenty acres to Epping Forest and some landscaping work was undertaken; eleven acres of this was in exchange for forest land used for the M11 link road. In 2007, a

borehole A borehole is a narrow shaft bored in the ground, either vertically or horizontally. A borehole may be constructed for many different purposes, including the extraction of water ( drilled water well and tube well), other liquids (such as petrol ...

was drilled in the remaining portion of the site to extract water from an

aquifer An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials ( gravel, sand, or silt). Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characteris ...

about 80 metres underground. Cycle paths and horse riding have also been facilitated through the area.

References

{{reflist, refs= *{{cite web, url=https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol6/pp317-322#fnn97, title=Wanstead: Introduction – British History Online, website=british-history.ac.uk, accessdate=2018-10-08 *{{cite web, url=http://edithsstreets.blogspot.com/2011/09/thames-tributary-river-roding-cranbrook.html, title=Edith's Streets: Thames Tributary River Roding - Cranbrook, website=edithsstreets.blogspot.com, accessdate=2018-10-07 *{{cite web, url=https://maps.nls.uk/view/101456021, title=View: Essex LXXIII.NE (includes: Cann Hall; East Ham; Ilford; Wanstead; West Ham.) - Ordnance Survey Six-inch England and Wales, 1842-1952, website=maps.nls.uk, year=1898, accessdate=2018-10-07 *{{cite web, url=https://maps.nls.uk/view/102345849, title=View: London Sheet H (includes: Ilford; Wanstead; Woodford.) - Ordnance Survey Six-inch England and Wales, 1842-1952, website=maps.nls.uk, year=1914, accessdate=2018-10-07 *{{cite newspaper The Times, url=http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=hamlib&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=&docId=CS52217685&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0, title=The Pollution Of Our Rivers, author=Jabez Hogg, department=Letters to the Editor, date=21 October 1884, page=3, issue=31270, accessdate=2018-10-07 *{{cite newspaper The Times, url=http://find.galegroup.com/ttda/infomark.do?&source=gale&prodId=TTDA&userGroupName=hamlib&tabID=T003&docPage=article&searchType=&docId=CS67422044&type=multipage&contentSet=LTO&version=1.0, title=The Pollution Of Our Rivers, author=John T. Bressey, Surveyor. Local Board Offices, Wanstead, E, department=Letters to the Editor, date=28 October 1884, page=4, issue=31276, accessdate=2018-10-07 *{{cite web, url=http://www.wansteadpark.org.uk/hist/wanstead-park-a-chronicle/, title=Wanstead Park – a Chronicle – The Friends of Wanstead Parklands, website=wansteadpark.org.uk, accessdate=2018-10-08 *{{cite web, url=https://www.wansteadwildlife.org.uk/index.php/en/sewage-works-history, title=History of the Site, website=wansteadwildlife.org.uk, author=Paul Ferris, accessdate=2018-10-07 *{{cite web, url=https://www.wansteadwildlife.org.uk/index.php/en/the-study-area112/sewage-works-site103, title=Sewage Works Site, website=wansteadwildlife.org.uk, author=Paul Ferris, accessdate=2018-10-06 Sewage treatment plants in the United Kingdom Infrastructure completed in 1884 History of the London Borough of Redbridge