Pump Alley TW8 0AP

Built in 1883 as a sewage pumping station it is now offices.

Locally listed.

In St Paul’s Conservation Area and the Thames Policy Area.

History

Brentford Sewage Pumping Station; engine shed and house, designed by FW Lacy, surveyor, 1883. Cotto & Beasley were the engineers for the engine shed, but there is no machinery left inside. Base of chimney & associated buildings – shed, supervisor’s and engineers’ cottages, all of the 1880s.

Nowell Parr added new tanks, and a ‘destructor’ opposite the engine house, as well as the wall piers and gates at the entrance to the works in 1897.

Frederick William Lacey (d.1916) lived at 62 High Street Brentford in the 1880s. He later moved to Bournemouth in 1889 where he became borough architect & surveyor, and designed many public buildings there. Became a fellow of the RIBA in 1898; and was highly respected at his death in 1916 in Bournemouth (RIBA Journal obituary, vol.23 1916 p.215).

The decorated base of the chimney adjacent to the engine shed is a reminder of the many chimneys that dominated the area in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The station was built at a time when there was a desperate need to improve the sewage system in metropolitan areas of London, and is of some historic as well as architectural interest.

Originally built as a Council Depot at different times housing the sewage pumping works, stables, refuse destructor, dog pound and mortuary.

The Sewage Pumping Station was one of the first public buildings erected by the Brentford Local Board in 1883. Restored c2010.

Pumping Station

Town Meadow Cottage

Commemorative Plaque

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