The most striking aspect of this building is the chimney
that rises high and proud above everything around it.
The round, black plaque on the engine house wall, at the
eastern side of the chimney base, reads:
Brunel's Engine House
The tunnel shaft and pumping house
for
Marc Brunel's tunnel was constructed
between 1825 and 1843. This was
the
first thoroughfare under a navigable
river in the
world
The plaque on the west wall of the boiler house
reads:
Boiler House
This building was originally
used as a
boiler house during
the construction of Marc
Isambard Brunel's
Thames
Tunnel between 1825 and 1843
It has since had many
alterations
and changes of use.
It was restored in 1979
The Engine House is Grade II listed and ite entry, at the
English Heritage website (visit
link) reads:
"Engine house. c1842, possibly enlarged 1865;
altered several times and restored 1976. Stock brick with later pantiled roof of
fairly low pitch, kneelers to gable ends. 2 storeys. Blind west return has flat
buttresses to 1st floor. East return mainly blind with various filled in
openings; parapet corbelled out. North end has part of a curved wall to right
and, to left, an attached, taller, square battered chimney with stone cornice
and blocking course above a brick corbel table; round-arched window at 1st floor
with brick string above. South return has opening to interior. Replica steel
plate chimney stack reinstated in 1993.
INTERIOR: restored as exhibition space for Brunel's
machinery. Built to house pumping machinery for Marc Brunel's tunnel under the
Thames. Included for its historical associations with the Brunels and the first
Thames tunnel (1825-1853)."
The Brunel Museum website (visit
link) gives some background:
"Like Vazie before him, Marc’s first requirement was a
shaft on the Rotherhithe side of the river to provide access to the place where
the tunnel would start. The traditional method was to dig a shaft and line the
walls with bricks. This meant holding up the digging while underpinnings were
driven into the sides of the shaft in order to keep the lining in place. But
Marc’s ingenious idea was to build a brick tower and then simply allow it to
sink it into the soft river-bank through the downward force of its own weight,
thereby saving both time and money.
William Smith, M.P., now Chairman of the Thames Tunnel
Company, performed the opening ceremony, Marc laid the first brick and his son
Isambard laid the second.
Afterwards, the important guests sat down to lunch and
to listen to earnest and optimistic speeches about the tunnel, to admire the
model of it made for the occasion out of icing sugar and to drink a toast to its
success. Twelve bottles of Bordeaux were purposely put aside to be drunk at the
celebration on the far side of the river on a day, it was then thought, about
three years in the future.
In three weeks, the circular shaft—or tower as it
appeared at first—had been built: its strong wall consisted of an inner and an
outer surface of bricks a yard apart, the cavity between them filled with cement
and rubble. It was 42 ft high and 50 ft across, built on top of a 25-ton iron
hoop and was strengthened with another hoop at the top, the two of them tied by
iron rods running vertically between the shaft’s two brick walls. A
superstructure was then set on top of the tower on which a steam-engine was
assembled to pump away the water which the shaft encountered as it sank and to
bring up buckets of earth from the bottom.
Thus, the excavation began and the enormous
construction, weighing nearly 1,000 tons, was carefully sunk into the ground
under its own weight at the rate of a few inches a day. Very soon, the downwards
progress of the shaft at Rotherhithe became one of the most popular and
fashionable sights of London. The Duke of Wellington was among the first to
inspect it.
On 3rd June 1825, the shaft had just two feet more to
sink but would go no further under its own weight. So Marc ordered another 8,000
bricks to be added to the top rim. When this failed to have an effect, he
ordered more… and more … until 50,000 had been added. With still no movement, he
ordered the steam pumping engine to be turned off. The cylinder began to fill
with water from underground springs, softening the earth and slowly the shaft
began its downward journey again. By 6th June 1825 the top of the brick
tower was below ground level. The shaft was not yet complete, however: it had to
be given a foundation. The diggers continued downward below the bottom of the
pre-fabricated brickwork for another 20 ft or so, and bricklayers were employed
again to finish the walls, leaving an opening 36 ft wide facing north for the
tunnelling shield.
At the very bottom of the shaft a reservoir was dug and
covered, which would hold the water drained from the tunnel workings. Above the
shaft Marc installed a new, more powerful steam-engine of his own design, with a
boiler house beside it, to drive the tunnel pumps and bring up the earth in
buckets. Finally, the great shield, built for Marc by Henry Maudslay, was
lowered into place 63 ft below the ground and on about 25th November 1825
the boring of the tunnel began."