Ranelagh Sewer
(formally the River Westbourne)
The Ranelagh has taken me longer to complete than any of London’s other “lost rivers”. As you’d expect, the sewer roughly follows the course of the old river and it is the western-most of the three rivers that rise from Hampstead Heath, the other two being the Tyburn and the Fleet. Like all the lost rivers, which eventually became sewers, it was ‘maintained’, often haphazardly, by the Commissioners of Sewers as described in the account below from Joseph Bazelgette’s book ‘On the Main Drainage of London”
It’s the old brickwork and ever-changing styles that justifiably make the lost rivers the most appealing in terms of exploring and the Ranelagh has some unique features not seen elsewhere at such a good size. They’re not the cleanest, though.
There’s over a hundred photo’s below, split into seven groups. For a change I’ve not captioned them individually, instead I’ve just written a paragraph or two about each section, letting you’s work out what’s going on from the pics – they’re fairly self-explanatory. If you prefer, you can just look at the nice pictures, they’re in order from upstream to downstream
We’ll start just upstream from the Ranelagh’s first interaction with the North West Storm Relief (NWSR). It was one of the last parts of the sewer @TheVicar and I visited. Being about the furthest upstream as you can realistically walk, the pipe diameter is reduced to a mere 5’ and can overflow into a similar sized brick pipe, which runs parallel to the sewer and about 8’ below it.
@Ojay showed me this chamber, junction, dropshaft and tumbling bay last year. I’d seen it in his and adders’ report but hadn’t understood the complexity of it and even when walking about inside, it took a few minutes to fathom. I remember getting into it in the first place was tricky. Some bag-head lass had seen us pull up, in the early hours and didn’t leave the vicinity of the lid for ages even after we pretended to leave. Basically, the two parallel pipes, described above, arrive at the chamber at different levels. The sewer drops down a steep tumbling bay (middle of three pipes) and joins another branch of the Ranelagh Sewer (the pipe on the left), while the storm relief, which used to enter via the opening on the right, now drops down a large concrete shaft into what is the modern day start of the North West Storm Relief – it’s concrete extension if you like. When I re-visited this section with TheVicar I went off up the curving 6’ pipe on the left and found another tumbling bay. The flow coming down this comes from two 4’ pipes - a pill and an egg. I thought I’d surprise TheVicar by returning above ground to the other chamber he was photographing but I got lost in a housing estate! After spending 5 minutes trying to find the lid again from above ground, I accepted defeat and conceded that it’s easier, straighter and probably quicker anyway to take the drain. The flow leaving the chamber TheVicar was in is fast and powerful and the brickwork slippery. We found other lids to explore the connections a short distance downstream, one of which I am fairly sure is a branch of the river and takes the flow diverted away from the 4’ pipe and tumbling bay further upstream. The extract below from an article in ‘The Builder’, which announces that the NWSR will be built, sheds some light on this possible diversion (I think). The last pic is Shelf Life, accessed by the NWSR
If the flow was lower, we could’ve walked down to Shelf Life junction, the original start of the NWSR, but like the flow going out of it, it’s too deep, so we picked up the Ranelagh from its connection with the Mid Level No.2 near Little Venice on the Regent’s Canal. At the start of our pilgrimage, TheVicar said goodbye (or something not from the bible) to his tripod here, just days after Ojay had his mishap in the Effra. I decided not to walk under any ladders for a while.....Having just researched the area a bit more thoroughly I’ve discovered there’s more drains 2c up the small egg-shaped middle pipe shown in the first two pictures below – I might post a link eventually. Leaving the ML2 junction the sewer passes easily under the canal in a concrete pipe (the Tyburn and Fleet both have to split into two smaller pipes to pass) and after a slippery but interesting old section it arrives at the top of a large slide.
The purpose of the slide and the double decker section beyond the slide baffled me for ages. I just would not believe what I was being told! So, here’s my understanding of what happens hereabouts - clear as muck. In the early 1860’s a now abandoned branch of the Metropolitan railway needed to be built but its level clashed with that of the existing sewer, so the sewer needed to be lowered. At a similar time to the railway being built JB was designing (building) the Mid Level Interceptor No.1 which the Ranelagh Sewer would flow into at a point near to Lancaster Gate tube station. When the top (original) deck of the sewer was built (pre 1815 when the ‘sewers’ carried rainwater only and every house had a cesspit) it wasn’t actually a sewer, rather it provided a clean water supply for the Serpentine in Hyde Park. When the waters became too mucky (and the sewers became actual sewers as we now know them) the Ranelagh was diverted around the park’s perimeter (sort of). This kept the Serpentine completely separate from the sewer (for a period while it was still a river, carrying surface water, it could’ve overflowed to the Serpentine) and 50 years or so later the Mid Level Interceptor No.1 replaced a section of the diverted Ranelagh Sewer, running along the Northern edge of Hyde Park. So why didn’t they do away with the upper deck when they built the lower one? And how do you construct 300m of sewer directly beneath another one. Answering the first question – because it was a live sewer with a lot of flow in it and when it rained a lot it caused a problem and couldn’t be diverted because none of the interceptors had yet been built. The second question – they slowly but very surely underpinned the whole lot.
I was amazed when I read this extract from The Builder ‘proving’ the Metropolitan Board of Works had gone to those lengths to connect the Ranelagh to their new Interceptor. Under-pinning a sewer that size for that distance is not standard practice!
(formally the River Westbourne)
The Ranelagh has taken me longer to complete than any of London’s other “lost rivers”. As you’d expect, the sewer roughly follows the course of the old river and it is the western-most of the three rivers that rise from Hampstead Heath, the other two being the Tyburn and the Fleet. Like all the lost rivers, which eventually became sewers, it was ‘maintained’, often haphazardly, by the Commissioners of Sewers as described in the account below from Joseph Bazelgette’s book ‘On the Main Drainage of London”
It’s the old brickwork and ever-changing styles that justifiably make the lost rivers the most appealing in terms of exploring and the Ranelagh has some unique features not seen elsewhere at such a good size. They’re not the cleanest, though.
There’s over a hundred photo’s below, split into seven groups. For a change I’ve not captioned them individually, instead I’ve just written a paragraph or two about each section, letting you’s work out what’s going on from the pics – they’re fairly self-explanatory. If you prefer, you can just look at the nice pictures, they’re in order from upstream to downstream
We’ll start just upstream from the Ranelagh’s first interaction with the North West Storm Relief (NWSR). It was one of the last parts of the sewer @TheVicar and I visited. Being about the furthest upstream as you can realistically walk, the pipe diameter is reduced to a mere 5’ and can overflow into a similar sized brick pipe, which runs parallel to the sewer and about 8’ below it.
@Ojay showed me this chamber, junction, dropshaft and tumbling bay last year. I’d seen it in his and adders’ report but hadn’t understood the complexity of it and even when walking about inside, it took a few minutes to fathom. I remember getting into it in the first place was tricky. Some bag-head lass had seen us pull up, in the early hours and didn’t leave the vicinity of the lid for ages even after we pretended to leave. Basically, the two parallel pipes, described above, arrive at the chamber at different levels. The sewer drops down a steep tumbling bay (middle of three pipes) and joins another branch of the Ranelagh Sewer (the pipe on the left), while the storm relief, which used to enter via the opening on the right, now drops down a large concrete shaft into what is the modern day start of the North West Storm Relief – it’s concrete extension if you like. When I re-visited this section with TheVicar I went off up the curving 6’ pipe on the left and found another tumbling bay. The flow coming down this comes from two 4’ pipes - a pill and an egg. I thought I’d surprise TheVicar by returning above ground to the other chamber he was photographing but I got lost in a housing estate! After spending 5 minutes trying to find the lid again from above ground, I accepted defeat and conceded that it’s easier, straighter and probably quicker anyway to take the drain. The flow leaving the chamber TheVicar was in is fast and powerful and the brickwork slippery. We found other lids to explore the connections a short distance downstream, one of which I am fairly sure is a branch of the river and takes the flow diverted away from the 4’ pipe and tumbling bay further upstream. The extract below from an article in ‘The Builder’, which announces that the NWSR will be built, sheds some light on this possible diversion (I think). The last pic is Shelf Life, accessed by the NWSR
If the flow was lower, we could’ve walked down to Shelf Life junction, the original start of the NWSR, but like the flow going out of it, it’s too deep, so we picked up the Ranelagh from its connection with the Mid Level No.2 near Little Venice on the Regent’s Canal. At the start of our pilgrimage, TheVicar said goodbye (or something not from the bible) to his tripod here, just days after Ojay had his mishap in the Effra. I decided not to walk under any ladders for a while.....Having just researched the area a bit more thoroughly I’ve discovered there’s more drains 2c up the small egg-shaped middle pipe shown in the first two pictures below – I might post a link eventually. Leaving the ML2 junction the sewer passes easily under the canal in a concrete pipe (the Tyburn and Fleet both have to split into two smaller pipes to pass) and after a slippery but interesting old section it arrives at the top of a large slide.
The purpose of the slide and the double decker section beyond the slide baffled me for ages. I just would not believe what I was being told! So, here’s my understanding of what happens hereabouts - clear as muck. In the early 1860’s a now abandoned branch of the Metropolitan railway needed to be built but its level clashed with that of the existing sewer, so the sewer needed to be lowered. At a similar time to the railway being built JB was designing (building) the Mid Level Interceptor No.1 which the Ranelagh Sewer would flow into at a point near to Lancaster Gate tube station. When the top (original) deck of the sewer was built (pre 1815 when the ‘sewers’ carried rainwater only and every house had a cesspit) it wasn’t actually a sewer, rather it provided a clean water supply for the Serpentine in Hyde Park. When the waters became too mucky (and the sewers became actual sewers as we now know them) the Ranelagh was diverted around the park’s perimeter (sort of). This kept the Serpentine completely separate from the sewer (for a period while it was still a river, carrying surface water, it could’ve overflowed to the Serpentine) and 50 years or so later the Mid Level Interceptor No.1 replaced a section of the diverted Ranelagh Sewer, running along the Northern edge of Hyde Park. So why didn’t they do away with the upper deck when they built the lower one? And how do you construct 300m of sewer directly beneath another one. Answering the first question – because it was a live sewer with a lot of flow in it and when it rained a lot it caused a problem and couldn’t be diverted because none of the interceptors had yet been built. The second question – they slowly but very surely underpinned the whole lot.
I was amazed when I read this extract from The Builder ‘proving’ the Metropolitan Board of Works had gone to those lengths to connect the Ranelagh to their new Interceptor. Under-pinning a sewer that size for that distance is not standard practice!
Not much else to do except reminisce over old pics, walk the dogs and hang about on me hang board. Could be worse i suppose. Yeah lots of pics - not much new though. Thanks 
