Reports and correspondence respecting the drainage of the new palace at Westminster : January, 1849.

  • London (England). Metropolitan Commission of Sewers.
Date:
[1849]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Reports and correspondence respecting the drainage of the new palace at Westminster : January, 1849. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    12/32 (page 12)
    $ Mr Austin's Report. 16. Two of the communications are wooden troughs, no doubt for temporary purposes; another is a five-inch iron pipe, carried through the vaults on brick piers. On raising one of the iron flaps of the lower communications before referred to (which two men could only accomplish with difficulty, it was so stiff), a square cesspool, four feet long by two feet wide, was discovered on the other side, full of foul liquid. On looking through, this was found to be open to the vaults of the building, as before explained. Others were of similar construction ; one being, however, filled with dry rubbish instead of liquid. They would appear to be intended for water-traps. FLAP SEWER. Mr Barry's Reply. 16. The tanks for water traps adjoining the main sewer, and occurring at intervals along its entire length, (one of which is represented in the opposite diagram, and improperly termed a 44 cesspool,”) have not at present any drains connected with them. The particular tank to which Mr Austin alludes is evidently in this con¬ dition, and as the protection flap has not been in use since it was fixed some years since, it is not to be wondered at that it should have become stiff, as here reported. The alleged foul liquid which it contains, resulting alone from land and surface drain¬ age, has been examined and found to be clear and wholly free from noxious effluvia. There are five egg-shaped communica¬ tions : one of them, two feet six inches high by eighteen inches wide, forms the outlet only to a four-inch pipe, as here shown. The whole of the junc¬ tions with the main sewer appear to be at right an¬ gles. f s ■