I wasn’t aware of Crossness until someone that had been showed me some pictures of it and I decided to add it to my bucket list of places to visit.
Crossness Pumping Station is a former sewage pumping station that played an important part in the eradication of cholera in London in the 19th century. The building and its contents are Grade I listed and really beautiful, given that its primary function was pumping poo!
The travel makes you feel like a proper explorer
Crossness is on the eastern side of London in Abbey Wood, and so quite the schlep from Reading. However, since the opening of the Elizabeth Line, there are now direct trains from Reading all the way through London and on to Abbey Wood. You do need the patience of a saint though, as it takes an hour and a half and stops everywhere, but it is direct, so there’s no faffing around with changes in London, which is a bonus.
I’m never really sure whether the Elizabeth Line is a tube or an overground train. It appears on the TfL website and looks like a tube train, the seats are certainly as hard as an underground train, but the vast majority of the journey is overground. It’s apparently the UK’s busiest line and has been a boon for Reading.
That was a bit of a digression, but just to point out that in order to reach Crossness, it required a bus to Reading station, the Elizabeth Line to Abbey Wood, a classic Route Master bus to Crossness, and finally an optional narrow-gauge railway to the building itself. Having been sat down for the best part of two hours at that point, we elected to skip the latter and walk the short distance from the bus stop to the entrance.
The early bird captures the beam engine
There were about 30 people waiting for the bus at Abbey Wood and there were some sewage fans who had travelled even further than us – Vancouver, Canada and Chicago, USA.
Darling, shall we go on holiday to England? There’s a sewage works I’d like to visit…
Crossness was opened in 1865 after several cholera outbreaks had killed thousands in London. Parliament took action once the smell from the Thames became so bad that it affected them. In a show of what can be achieved when they put their minds to it and just how bad things were, they passed an act of Parliament in 24 days to build the necessary sewage tunnels.
While it is mainly downhill from the city to the mouth of the Thames there were a couple of places where the sewage needed pumping to change the level – Crossness was one of those pumping stations.
Of the four original steam-powered beam engines, only one is now working, beautifully restored by volunteers, and fired up once a month for the benefit of visitors. In order to make it a more pleasant experience, entry to the engine room is limited through the issue of timed tickets. Being there at opening time meant that we were able to see the stunning interior without many others in there too.
Given that very few people would ever have seen the interior of the place and that, as I said previously, its purpose in life was to move poo, it is incredibly ornate inside. The central area is painted in greens, reds, and creams, matching the colours of the big wheel, which is also painted.
You could walk through to the beam engine, where volunteers in period costumes were running the engine and talking to visitors about the history. You could also go up to a level above and look down onto proceedings and see the other wheels sitting rusted over. It looks as if they may be looking at restoring a second of the beam engines, “Victoria,” but I suspect time and money will affect how quickly or whether that is completed.
It was a worthwhile visit and showed not only how ingenious the Victorians were but also how they were happy to build beautiful engineering projects that very people would have seen at the time.
Can you list the inside of a building?
While I realised that Crossness had Grade I listed status, what I didn’t know was whether that covered the beam engines inside. It would be daft if not, but that didn’t necessarily make it the case, so I turned to AI for the answer, and this is what it said…
The “Fixtures and Fittings” Rule
Under UK planning law (specifically the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990), a listing usually covers the entirety of the building, both inside and out. This automatically includes:
- Fixed structures: Anything physically attached to the building.
- Object/Structure in the curtilage: Anything that has formed part of the land since before 1948.
The Crossness Engines
Regarding the Crossness Pumping Station, the four massive rotative beam engines (Prince Consort, Victoria, Albert Edward, and Alexandra) are integral to the Grade I status.
Because they are bolted to the foundations and integrated into the very fabric of the building’s cast-iron internal structure, they are legally considered part of the “listed building.” You cannot remove or significantly alter them without Listed Building Consent, just as you couldn’t tear down a wall.
Beyond the “Shell”
While most listings focus on the architecture, Historic England (and equivalent bodies) can specifically mention internal features in the List Description. For industrial sites, this often includes:
- Stationary engines and boilers.
- Ornate ironwork and staircases.
- Original control panels or gauges.
Can “Loose” Items be Listed?
This is where it gets tricky. Generally, “chattels” (moveable items like chairs or paintings) are not covered by a building’s listing. However, there are exceptions:
- Designed specifically for the space: If an item was designed as a bespoke part of the architectural scheme (like a specifically commissioned altar in a church), it is often protected.
- Integration: If the item cannot be removed without causing damage to the historic fabric, it is usually treated as a fixture.
Fun Fact: The Crossness engines are the largest remaining rotary beam engines in the world. Because they are “Grade I,” they enjoy the highest level of protection available, reserved for buildings of “exceptional interest.”
