Explored with @cattos mc budget
Whilst browsing Google Maps a few weeks back, I remembered an area which had 2 circular concrete pads and a small building in some fields to the East of Basingstoke. Lo and behold after a bit of research I found out it's a disused sewage works. My mum used to keep her horse nearby at Lodge Farm and we used to cycle / ride past the entrance to the old sewage works a fair bit (That makes me sound old
). I always pondered about what it was at the time but I always dismissed it for some kind of old horse riding arena or a place for the farming machinery to be parked.
I can't find much information online about this place, other than it served a population max of 36,000 at the time and it shut down sometime in the 1960s. But this was part of a group of three sewage works which existed before the current modern one being built in Chineham. The first and no doubt original was located in the town centre, approximately where Matrix House is now and the second one being located in Daneshill near to where Daneshill Roundabout is now. There's nothing left of the first two works unfortunately as they would now be situated in very busy / built up areas.
I don't think any of the sewage works were in operation simultaneously though, most likely they would've decommissioned the previous works as the flows increased and the areas were getting developed, constructing a new one elsewhere to cope with heavier flows and to be out of the way of development. This appears to have happened a couple times with each works being built further away from the last the and further from the town centre, before they found a good area for the current works with enough land nearby and not much development that it can be expanded rather than becoming disused and being replaced by another some where else. The works in this report (3rd works) most likely just couldn't keep up with increasing flows as well as the technology becoming more and more advanced that they left it in favour for a more modern, larger works nearby.
There's not really much to the place nowadays, a lot has been removed or filled in and it's seriously overgrown and is difficult to get to anything without getting a free acupuncture and a side effect of Blackthorn infection.
Sewer map for Basingstoke, the red lines are the foul sewers. As you can see, one of the trunk sewers used to head towards the old sewage works, but has since been diverted to join a trunk sewer which serves the Chineham area before meeting the current works. The former sewer takes flows from the town centre and rest of Basingstoke.
Access was easy and found the way in by memory of when I used to go past this, the main access road into the works is completely taken over by vegetation. There were a couple of these metal cylinders around the place, I'm not sure of their purpose but they were probably situated inside the little pump house in the works, and were removed to be taken away but just got left and forgotten about.
It's really difficult to make out some of the things in the pictures due to the dense vegetation and brambles. This is looking at what I think are aeration tanks, there were 14 in total but most of them are now filled in.
A concrete channel ran in between the tanks in the middle, this would have distributed the sewage into each tank. Along it were the remains of various sluice gate mechanisms which would've been used restrict or completely shut off certain tanks.
Outer wall of the filter beds, 2 of them in total. Quite nice looking tilework even after about 60 years of no operation.
Inside the filter bed is the remains of the rotating arm. This entire area would have been filled with water to probably the top of the concrete podium in the middle. The rocks on the floor are coke (No, not the naughty kind), which would have allowed biofilm to grow which removes contaminants / pollutants from the sewage. The other filter bed was impossible to get to as the vegetation was that dense. I tried but got torn to shreds and stung all over.
Whilst trying to find the other filter bed I found this, I don't know what it is but looks like some kind of tank.
The old pump house, the only surviving building in the works. Just in front of the building was what looked like another smaller tank and a collapsed chimney or vent stack.
Inside the pump house, this was a swine to get to as I had to literally climb into a half filled in tank and climb over brambles and nettles to get in. Anyways the concrete pad with the bolts sticking out was probably a mount for a pump, the pipe in the wall seemed to connect to the small tank outside and just below the window behind the wall was another similar pipe going into the floor. Possibly a wet well underneath where the sewage got pumped up and into the works? Looks like someone's been practicing with stencils as well.
A load of rubbish in here but this looks like a water closet.
This probably would have been in the pump house at some point, think its some transformer / electrical box thing.
Once we left we walked to the outfall for the active Basingstoke Sewage Works to get a quick whiff.
Smelled lovely and "fresh". Above where we were standing is a crawlable sized pipe which drops off into the River Loddon by the outfall. I know where the other end is and it's relatively easy to get in (Apart from the welly breaching pit at the infall). Future explore maybe?
Good day out, apart from the heat. BBC Weather said it was supposed to be a cool day with a slight chance of rain, nope! Was boiling hot and we were so dehydrated by the end of the day we went to Tesco and bought ourselves each a 1.5L Tropicana, mine was completely empty in less than 15 minutes!
Was hesitating to put the pics up as most of the photos you could barely see the subject through the vegetation and they were all handheld, but most turned out decent.
Thanks for reading. 👍
Whilst browsing Google Maps a few weeks back, I remembered an area which had 2 circular concrete pads and a small building in some fields to the East of Basingstoke. Lo and behold after a bit of research I found out it's a disused sewage works. My mum used to keep her horse nearby at Lodge Farm and we used to cycle / ride past the entrance to the old sewage works a fair bit (That makes me sound old
). I always pondered about what it was at the time but I always dismissed it for some kind of old horse riding arena or a place for the farming machinery to be parked.I can't find much information online about this place, other than it served a population max of 36,000 at the time and it shut down sometime in the 1960s. But this was part of a group of three sewage works which existed before the current modern one being built in Chineham. The first and no doubt original was located in the town centre, approximately where Matrix House is now and the second one being located in Daneshill near to where Daneshill Roundabout is now. There's nothing left of the first two works unfortunately as they would now be situated in very busy / built up areas.
I don't think any of the sewage works were in operation simultaneously though, most likely they would've decommissioned the previous works as the flows increased and the areas were getting developed, constructing a new one elsewhere to cope with heavier flows and to be out of the way of development. This appears to have happened a couple times with each works being built further away from the last the and further from the town centre, before they found a good area for the current works with enough land nearby and not much development that it can be expanded rather than becoming disused and being replaced by another some where else. The works in this report (3rd works) most likely just couldn't keep up with increasing flows as well as the technology becoming more and more advanced that they left it in favour for a more modern, larger works nearby.
There's not really much to the place nowadays, a lot has been removed or filled in and it's seriously overgrown and is difficult to get to anything without getting a free acupuncture and a side effect of Blackthorn infection.
Sewer map for Basingstoke, the red lines are the foul sewers. As you can see, one of the trunk sewers used to head towards the old sewage works, but has since been diverted to join a trunk sewer which serves the Chineham area before meeting the current works. The former sewer takes flows from the town centre and rest of Basingstoke.
Access was easy and found the way in by memory of when I used to go past this, the main access road into the works is completely taken over by vegetation. There were a couple of these metal cylinders around the place, I'm not sure of their purpose but they were probably situated inside the little pump house in the works, and were removed to be taken away but just got left and forgotten about.
It's really difficult to make out some of the things in the pictures due to the dense vegetation and brambles. This is looking at what I think are aeration tanks, there were 14 in total but most of them are now filled in.
A concrete channel ran in between the tanks in the middle, this would have distributed the sewage into each tank. Along it were the remains of various sluice gate mechanisms which would've been used restrict or completely shut off certain tanks.
Outer wall of the filter beds, 2 of them in total. Quite nice looking tilework even after about 60 years of no operation.
Inside the filter bed is the remains of the rotating arm. This entire area would have been filled with water to probably the top of the concrete podium in the middle. The rocks on the floor are coke (No, not the naughty kind), which would have allowed biofilm to grow which removes contaminants / pollutants from the sewage. The other filter bed was impossible to get to as the vegetation was that dense. I tried but got torn to shreds and stung all over.
Whilst trying to find the other filter bed I found this, I don't know what it is but looks like some kind of tank.
The old pump house, the only surviving building in the works. Just in front of the building was what looked like another smaller tank and a collapsed chimney or vent stack.
Inside the pump house, this was a swine to get to as I had to literally climb into a half filled in tank and climb over brambles and nettles to get in. Anyways the concrete pad with the bolts sticking out was probably a mount for a pump, the pipe in the wall seemed to connect to the small tank outside and just below the window behind the wall was another similar pipe going into the floor. Possibly a wet well underneath where the sewage got pumped up and into the works? Looks like someone's been practicing with stencils as well.
A load of rubbish in here but this looks like a water closet.
This probably would have been in the pump house at some point, think its some transformer / electrical box thing.
Once we left we walked to the outfall for the active Basingstoke Sewage Works to get a quick whiff.
Smelled lovely and "fresh". Above where we were standing is a crawlable sized pipe which drops off into the River Loddon by the outfall. I know where the other end is and it's relatively easy to get in (Apart from the welly breaching pit at the infall). Future explore maybe?
Good day out, apart from the heat. BBC Weather said it was supposed to be a cool day with a slight chance of rain, nope! Was boiling hot and we were so dehydrated by the end of the day we went to Tesco and bought ourselves each a 1.5L Tropicana, mine was completely empty in less than 15 minutes!
Was hesitating to put the pics up as most of the photos you could barely see the subject through the vegetation and they were all handheld, but most turned out decent.
Thanks for reading. 👍
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