The Thames Tunnel is a tunnel beneath the

River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, s ...

in London, connecting

Rotherhithe Rotherhithe ( ) is a district of South London, England, and part of the London Borough of Southwark. It is on a peninsula on the south bank of the Thames, facing Wapping, Shadwell and Limehouse on the north bank, with the Isle of Dogs to the ea ...

and

Wapping Wapping () is an area in the borough of Tower Hamlets in London, England. It is in East London and part of the East End. Wapping is on the north bank of the River Thames between Tower Bridge to the west, and Shadwell to the east. This posit ...

. It measures wide by high and is long, running at a depth of below the river surface measured at high tide. It is the first tunnel known to have been constructed successfully underneath a navigable river. It was built between 1825 and 1843 by

Marc Brunel Sir Marc Isambard Brunel (, ; 25 April 1769 – 12 December 1849) was a French-American engineer active in the United States and Britain, most famous for the civil engineering work he did in the latter. He is known for having overseen the pr ...

, and his son,

Isambard Isambard is a given name. It is Norman, of Germanic origin, meaning either "iron-bright" or "iron-axe". The first element comes from ''isarn'' meaning iron (or steel). The second element comes from either ''biart-r'' (bright, glorious) or from ''b ...

, using the

tunnelling shield A tunnelling shield is a protective structure used during the excavation of large, human-made tunnels. When excavating through ground that is soft, liquid, or otherwise unstable, there is a potential health and safety hazard to workers and the pr ...

newly invented by the elder Brunel and Thomas Cochrane. The tunnel was originally designed for horse-drawn carriages, but was mainly used by pedestrians and became a tourist attraction. In 1869 it was converted into a railway tunnel for use by the East London line which, since 2010, is part of the

London Overground London Overground (also known simply as the Overground) is a Urban rail in the United Kingdom, suburban rail network serving London and its environs. Established in 2007 to take over Silverlink Metro routes, it now serves a large part of Greate ...

railway network under the ownership of

Transport for London Transport for London (TfL) is a local government body responsible for most of the transport network in London, United Kingdom. TfL is the successor organization of the London Passenger Transport Board, which was established in 1933, and His ...

History and development

Construction

At the start of the 19th century, there was a pressing need for a new land connection between the north and south banks of the Thames to link the expanding docks on each side of the river. The engineer Ralph Dodd tried, but failed, to build a tunnel between

Gravesend Gravesend is a town in northwest Kent, England, situated 21 miles (35 km) east-southeast of Charing Cross (central London) on the Bank (geography), south bank of the River Thames, opposite Tilbury in Essex. Located in the diocese of Roche ...

and

Tilbury Tilbury is a port town in the borough of Thurrock, Essex, England. The present town was established as separate settlement in the late 19th century, on land that was mainly part of Chadwell St Mary. It contains a Tilbury Fort, 16th century fort ...

in 1799.John Timbs, ''Stories of Inventors and Discoverers in Science and the Useful Arts'', p. 287, Kent, 1860 Between 1805 and 1809, a group of Cornish miners, including

Richard Trevithick Richard Trevithick (13 April 1771 – 22 April 1833) was a British inventor and mining engineer. The son of a mining captain, and born in the mining heartland of Cornwall, Trevithick was immersed in mining and engineering from an early age. He ...

, tried to dig a tunnel further upriver between

and

Limehouse Limehouse is a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London. It is east of Charing Cross, on the northern bank of the River Thames. Its proximity to the river has given it a strong maritime character, which it retains throu ...

, but failed because of the difficult conditions of the ground. The Cornish miners were used to hard rock and did not modify their methods for soft clay and

quicksand Quicksand (also known as sinking sand) is a colloid consisting of fine granular material (such as sand, silt or clay) and water. It forms in saturated loose sand when the sand is suddenly agitated. When water in the sand cannot escape, it crea ...

. This Thames Archway project was abandoned after the initial pilot tunnel (a 'driftway') flooded twice when of a total of had been dug.Denis Smith, "London and the Thames Valley", p. 17, Thomas Telford, 2001 It only measured by , and was intended as a drain for a larger tunnel for passenger use. The failure of the Thames Archway project led engineers to conclude that "an underground tunnel is impracticable". The Anglo-French engineer Marc Brunel refused to accept this conclusion. In 1814 he proposed to Emperor Alexander I of Russia a plan to build a tunnel under the river

Neva The Neva ( , ; , ) is a river in northwestern Russia flowing from Lake Ladoga through the western part of Leningrad Oblast (historical region of Ingria) to the Neva Bay of the Gulf of Finland. Despite its modest length of , it is the fourth- ...

St Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

. This scheme was turned down (a bridge was built instead) and Brunel continued to develop ideas for new methods of tunnelling. Brunel patented the

, a revolutionary advance in tunnelling technology, in January 1818. In 1823 Brunel produced a plan for a tunnel between Rotherhithe and Wapping, which would be dug using his new shield. Financing was soon found from private investors, including the

Duke of Wellington Duke is a male title either of a monarch ruling over a duchy, or of a member of royalty, or nobility. As rulers, dukes are ranked below emperors, kings, grand princes, grand dukes, and above sovereign princes. As royalty or nobility, they ar ...

, and a Thames Tunnel Company was formed by the ( 5 Geo. 4. c. clvi), the project beginning in February 1825. The first step was the construction of a large shaft on the south bank at Rotherhithe, back from the river bank. It was dug by assembling an iron ring in diameter above ground. A brick wall high and thick was built on top of this, with a powerful steam engine surmounting it to drive the excavation's pumps. The whole apparatus was estimated to weigh . The soil below the ring's sharp lower edge was removed manually by Brunel's workers. The whole shaft thus gradually sank under its own weight, slicing through the soft ground like a pastry cutter. The shaft became stuck at one point during its sinking, as the pressure of the earth around it held it firmly in position. Extra weight was required to make it continue its descent. 50,000 bricks were added as temporary weights. It was realised that the problem was caused because the shaft's sides were parallel. Years later when the Wapping shaft was built, it was slightly wider at the bottom than the top. This non-cylindrical tapering design ensured it did not get stuck. By November 1825 the Rotherhithe shaft was in place and tunnelling work could begin. Thames tunnel shield

The tunnelling shield, built at

Henry Maudslay Henry Maudslay ( pronunciation and spelling) (22 August 1771 – 14 February 1831) was an English machine tool innovator, tool and die maker, and inventor. He is considered a founding father of machine tool technology. His inventions were a ...

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, which today also gives its name to the (much larger) London Borough of Lambeth. Lambeth itself was an ancient parish in the county of Surrey. It is situated 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Charin ...

works and assembled in the Rotherhithe shaft, was the key to Brunel's construction of the Thames Tunnel. The ''Illustrated London News'' described how it worked: Each of the twelve frames of the shield weighed over . The key innovation of the tunnelling shield was its support for the unlined ground in front and around it to reduce the risk of collapses. However, many workers, including Brunel himself, soon fell ill from the poor conditions caused by filthy sewage-laden water seeping through from the river above. This sewage gave off methane gas which was ignited by the miners' oil lamps. When the resident engineer, John Armstrong, fell ill in April 1826, Marc's son Isambard Kingdom Brunel took over at the age of 20. Work was slow, progressing at only a week. To earn income from the tunnel, the company directors allowed sightseers to view the shield in operation. They charged a shilling for the adventure and an estimated 600–800 visitors took advantage of the opportunity every day. The excavation was hazardous. The tunnel flooded suddenly on 18 May 1827 after had been dug. Isambard Kingdom Brunel lowered a

diving bell A diving bell is a rigid chamber used to transport divers from the surface to depth and back in open water, usually for the purpose of performing underwater work. The most common types are the open-bottomed wet bell and the closed bell, which c ...

from a boat to repair the hole at the bottom of the river, throwing bags filled with clay into the breach in the tunnel's roof. Following the repairs and the drainage of the tunnel, he held a banquet inside it.

Closure

Six men died when the tunnel flooded again the following year, on 12 January 1828, just four days after a visit by Don Miguel, soon to become Regent of Portugal. Isambard himself was extremely lucky to survive the flooding. The six men had made their way to the main stairwell, as the emergency exit was known to be locked. Isambard instead made for the locked exit. A contractor named Beamish heard him there and broke the door down, and an unconscious Isambard was pulled out and revived. He was sent to Brislington, near Bristol, to recuperate. There he heard about the competition to build what became the

Clifton Suspension Bridge The Clifton Suspension Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Avon Gorge and the River Avon, Bristol, River Avon, linking Clifton, Bristol, Clifton in Bristol to Leigh Woods, Somerset, Leigh Woods in North Somerset. Since opening in 1864, ...

Completion

In December 1834 Marc Brunel succeeded in raising enough money, including a loan of £247,000 from the Treasury, to continue construction. Starting in August 1835 the old rusted shield was dismantled and removed. By March 1836 the new shield, improved and heavier, was assembled in place and boring resumed."The Brunels' Tunnel" 2006, In 1835, the Italian poet

Giacomo Leopardi Count Giacomo Taldegardo Francesco di Sales Saverio Pietro Leopardi (29 June 1798 – 14 June 1837) was an Italian philosopher, poet, essayist, and philologist. Considered the greatest Italian poet of the 19th century and one of the greatest a ...

parodied the construction of the Thames Tunnel in lines 126–129 of the poem . Impeded by further floods (23 August and 3 November 1837, 20 March 1838, 3 April 1840) fires and leaks of

methane Methane ( , ) is a chemical compound with the chemical formula (one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). It is a group-14 hydride, the simplest alkane, and the main constituent of natural gas. The abundance of methane on Earth makes ...

and

hydrogen sulphide Hydrogen sulfide is a chemical compound with the formula . It is a colorless chalcogen-hydride gas, and is toxic, corrosive, and flammable. Trace amounts in ambient atmosphere have a characteristic foul odor of rotten eggs. Swedish chemist Ca ...

gas, the remainder of the tunnelling was completed in November 1841, after another five and a half years. The extensive delays and repeated flooding made the tunnel the butt of metropolitan humour: The Thames Tunnel was fitted out with lighting, roadways and spiral staircases during 1841–1842. An engine house on the Rotherhithe side, which now houses the Brunel Museum, was also constructed to house machinery for draining the tunnel. The tunnel was finally opened to the public on 25 March 1843.

Pedestrian usage

Although it was a triumph of civil engineering, the Thames Tunnel was not a financial success. It had cost £454,000 to dig and another £180,000 to fit out – far exceeding its initial cost estimates. Proposals to extend the entrance to accommodate wheeled vehicles failed owing to cost, and it was used only by pedestrians. It became a major tourist attraction, attracting about two million people a year, each paying a penny to pass through,William Allen Drew, ''Glimpses and Gatherings During a Voyage and Visit to London and the Great Exhibition in the Summer of 1851'', pp. 242–249. Homan & Manley, 1852 and became the subject of popular songs. The American traveller William Allen Drew commented that "No one goes to London without visiting the Tunnel" and described it as the " eighth wonder of the world". When he saw it for himself in 1851, he pronounced himself "somewhat disappointed in it" but still left a vivid description of its interior, which was more like an underground marketplace than a transport artery: Other opinions of the tunnel were more negative; some regarded it as the haunt of prostitutes and "tunnel thieves" who lurked under its arches and mugged passers-by. The American writer

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne (né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associat ...

visited it a few years after Drew, and wrote in 1855 that the tunnel:

Conversion into a railway tunnel

The tunnel was purchased in September 1865 at a cost of £800,000 (equivalent to £ million in ) by the East London Railway Company, a consortium of six mainline railways which sought to use the tunnel to provide a rail link for goods and passengers between Wapping (and later Liverpool Street) and the South London line. The tunnel's generous headroom, resulting from the architects' original intention of accommodating horse-drawn carriages, also provided a sufficient

loading gauge A loading gauge is a diagram or physical structure that defines the maximum height and width dimensions in railway vehicles and their loads. Their purpose is to ensure that rail vehicles can pass safely through tunnels and under bridges, and k ...

for trains. The line's engineer was Sir John Hawkshaw who was also noted, with W. H. Barlow, for the major re-design and completion of Isambard Brunel's long-abandoned

at Bristol, which was completed in 1864. The first train ran through the tunnel on 7 December 1869. In 1884, the tunnel's disused construction shaft to the north of the river was repurposed to serve as Wapping station. The East London Railway was later absorbed into the

London Underground The London Underground (also known simply as the Underground or as the Tube) is a rapid transit system serving Greater London and some parts of the adjacent home counties of Buckinghamshire, Essex and Hertfordshire in England. The Undergro ...

, where it became the East London line. It continued to be used for goods services as late as 1962. During the Underground days, the Thames Tunnel was the oldest underground piece of the Tube's infrastructure. It was planned to construct a junction between the East London Line and the Jubilee Line extension at Canada Water station. As construction would require the temporary closure of the East London Line, it was decided to take this opportunity to perform long-term maintenance on the tunnel and so in 1995 the East London Line was closed to allow construction and maintenance to take place. The proposed repair method for the tunnel was to seal it against leaks by " shotcreting" it with concrete, obliterating its original appearance, causing a controversy that led to a bitter conflict between London Underground, who wished to complete the work as quickly and cheaply as possible, and architectural interests wishing to preserve the tunnel's appearance. The architectural interests won, with the Grade II* listing of the tunnel on 24 March 1995, the day London Underground had scheduled the start of the long-term maintenance work. Following an agreement to leave a short section at one end of the tunnel untreated, and more sympathetic treatment of the rest of the tunnel, the work went ahead and the route reopened – much later than originally anticipated – in 1998. The tunnel closed again from 23 December 2007 to permit tracklaying and resignalling for the East London Line extension. The extension work resulted in the tunnel becoming part of the new

. After its reopening on 27 April 2010, it was used by mainline trains again.

Influence

The construction of the Thames Tunnel showed that it was indeed possible to build underwater tunnels, despite the previous scepticism of many engineers. Several new underwater tunnels were built in the UK in the following decades: the Tower Subway in London; the

Severn Tunnel The Severn Tunnel () is a railway tunnel in the United Kingdom, linking South Gloucestershire in the west of England to Monmouthshire in south Wales under the estuary of the River Severn. It was constructed by the Great Western Railway (GWR) be ...

under the

River Severn The River Severn (, ), at long, is the longest river in Great Britain. It is also the river with the most voluminous flow of water by far in all of England and Wales, with an average flow rate of at Apperley, Gloucestershire. It rises in t ...

; and the Mersey Railway Tunnel under the

River Mersey The River Mersey () is a major river in North West England. Its name derives from Old English and means "boundary river", possibly referring to its having been a border between the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. For centuries it h ...

. Brunel's tunnelling shield was later refined, with James Henry Greathead playing a particularly important role in developing the technology. In 1991, the Thames Tunnel was designated as an International Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the

American Society of Civil Engineers The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) is a tax-exempt professional body founded in 1852 to represent members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. Headquartered in Reston, Virginia, it is the oldest national engineering soci ...

and the

Institution of Civil Engineers The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent professional association for civil engineers and a Charitable organization, charitable body in the United Kingdom. Based in London, ICE has over 92,000 members, of whom three-quarters ar ...

. In 1995 the tunnel was listed at Grade II* in recognition of its architectural importance.

Visiting

Nearby in Rotherhithe, Brunel's engine house (built to house drainage pumps) is open to visitors as the Brunel Museum. In the 1860s, when trains started running through the tunnel, the entrance shaft at Rotherhithe was used for ventilation. The staircase was removed to reduce the risk of fire. In 2011, a concrete raft was built near the bottom of the shaft, above the tracks, when the tunnel was upgraded for the London Overground network. This space, with walls blackened with smoke from steam trains, forms part of the museum and functions at times as a concert venue and occasional bar. A rooftop garden has been built on top of the shaft. In 2016 the entrance hall opened as an exhibition space, with a staircase providing access to the shaft for the first time in over 150 years.

Notes

References

External links

"Brief history during the Snow era"
UCLA School of Public Health
The Brunel Museum
– Based in Rotherhithe, London, the museum is housed in the building that contained the pumps to keep the Thames Tunnel dry
Brunel's Thames Tunnel
BBC News – Slideshow of Thames Tunnel images
London's Oldest Underwater Tunnel
– slideshow by ''

Life magazine ''Life'' (stylized as ''LIFE'') is an American magazine launched in 1883 as a weekly publication. In 1972, it transitioned to publishing "special" issues before running as a monthly from 1978 to 2000. Since then, ''Life'' has irregularly publi ...

''
The Thames Tunnel: a tunnel book
Flickr, 23 May 2006 – Photos of a promotional book commemorating the opening of the tunnel
Thames Tunnel
Brunel portal
Thames Tunnel photoset
Flickr, 12–13 March 2010
Photos of the East London Line and Thames Tunnel
while still London Underground
Thames Tunnel: Rare access to 'eighth wonder of world'
– BBC News (26 May 2014) – A brief 'potted history' (a 2-minute video filmed in the tunnel) *Thames Tunnel Company (1836
''An explanation of the works of the tunnel under the Thames from Rotherhithe to Wapping''
– digital facsimile from the

Linda Hall Library The Linda Hall Library is a privately endowed American library of science, engineering and technology located in Kansas City, Missouri, on the grounds of a urban arboretum. It claims to be the "largest independently funded public library of sc ...

{{Coord, 51, 30, 11, N, 00, 03, 16, W, region:GB_type:landmark, display=title Tunnels completed in 1843 Railway tunnels in London Transport in the London Borough of Southwark Transport in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Tunnels underneath the River Thames Works of Isambard Kingdom Brunel London Overground Grade II* listed tunnels Historic Civil Engineering Landmarks Rotherhithe Wapping 1843 establishments in England Grade II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Southwark Grade II* listed buildings in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets Pedestrian tunnels in the United Kingdom