North Eastern Storm Relief
a.k.a Deep Ochre
The North Eastern Storm Relief (N.E.S.R) is an 8km long Storm Relief drain starting at the Northern High Level Interceptor near Arsenal Station, flowing south east and entering the Thames near the Rotherhithe Tunnel. It was built by London County Council some time after 1889 and connects to four of the five Interceptors north of the Thames.
Being a storm drain (and one of the furthest east) its deep. At the Orly junction where it interacts with the Holloway Storm Relief (Heavy Mettle) its over 80ft deep. It sits below the Northern High Level Sewer, and the Mid Level Sewers no.s 1&2, waiting to take excess flows from all of them down to the Low Level no. 2. If that gets overwhelmed it spills over the diversion weir and untreated sewage ends up in the Thames. It crosses over but does not connect with the Low Level No.1 Interceptor
I had a look round here, solo, back in the spring to take a look at Orly. I opted for a lid that I knew to be upstream of the junction, which seemed pretty quiet. Upon entering, a long corridor led to a spiral staircase that went down for ages. Now I knew Orly was downstream from here but the standing water at the bottom of a long spiral staircase disorientated me. Having heard about some serious flows in this area even in dry weather I walked towards the noise, quickly but somewhat nervously. I soon walked past the standing water and a trickle flowed towards me, so I knew I was walking upstream, northwards and away from Orly – oops! Never mind. This trickle came from a fairly new, large concrete pipe entering from the left. Further ahead, after a couple of bends, the pipe stopped at the bottom of a concrete drop shaft. A long set of ladders went up through two metal grills covered in all sorts of rankness that gets collected in them during storm flows. I thought I took photos of this lot but can’t find them any more. Lifting the two hatches up from underneath was never going to be pleasant. I just stuck my gloves on and my hood up and tried to look down as I climbed up the ladders as everything showered down on me
Below is the Northern High Level Interceptor and the overflow chamber
This is looking downstream
The overflow drop shaft complete with grill, hatch, ladders and lots and lots of jam rags
a.k.a Deep Ochre
The North Eastern Storm Relief (N.E.S.R) is an 8km long Storm Relief drain starting at the Northern High Level Interceptor near Arsenal Station, flowing south east and entering the Thames near the Rotherhithe Tunnel. It was built by London County Council some time after 1889 and connects to four of the five Interceptors north of the Thames.
Being a storm drain (and one of the furthest east) its deep. At the Orly junction where it interacts with the Holloway Storm Relief (Heavy Mettle) its over 80ft deep. It sits below the Northern High Level Sewer, and the Mid Level Sewers no.s 1&2, waiting to take excess flows from all of them down to the Low Level no. 2. If that gets overwhelmed it spills over the diversion weir and untreated sewage ends up in the Thames. It crosses over but does not connect with the Low Level No.1 Interceptor
I had a look round here, solo, back in the spring to take a look at Orly. I opted for a lid that I knew to be upstream of the junction, which seemed pretty quiet. Upon entering, a long corridor led to a spiral staircase that went down for ages. Now I knew Orly was downstream from here but the standing water at the bottom of a long spiral staircase disorientated me. Having heard about some serious flows in this area even in dry weather I walked towards the noise, quickly but somewhat nervously. I soon walked past the standing water and a trickle flowed towards me, so I knew I was walking upstream, northwards and away from Orly – oops! Never mind. This trickle came from a fairly new, large concrete pipe entering from the left. Further ahead, after a couple of bends, the pipe stopped at the bottom of a concrete drop shaft. A long set of ladders went up through two metal grills covered in all sorts of rankness that gets collected in them during storm flows. I thought I took photos of this lot but can’t find them any more. Lifting the two hatches up from underneath was never going to be pleasant. I just stuck my gloves on and my hood up and tried to look down as I climbed up the ladders as everything showered down on me
Below is the Northern High Level Interceptor and the overflow chamber
This is looking downstream
The overflow drop shaft complete with grill, hatch, ladders and lots and lots of jam rags
I was pleased to see all the flow levels were normal, so when I’d done I walked back downstream, past my lid to the very photogenic Orly junction. It’s a good’n and I’ve uploaded a short video of it, in case yer can’t make it out from the pics. The good thing about videos in drains is it reminds you it’s pitch black down there, other than your torchlight, something that’s easy to forget when you see a load of bright, light painted photographs!
This first pic seems strangely distorted but shows how the N.E.S.R enters the Orly junction. Ahead is a set of stairs and there’s another longer set beyond them. The older Holloway Storm Relief crosses the N.E.S.R at 90° and at the same level. Some storm flows would continue down the Holloway Storm Relief (from right to left) but most excess flows are dragged away down an adjacent set of steps seen in the second pic below
The two short sets of stairs meet in a large chamber to form one main pipe (the N.E.S.R) that outfalls down the longer tumbling bay. This chamber is best seen on the video. You can just make out the upstream infall of N.E.S.R in the right hand pipe. The whole thing is pretty impressive from an engineering point of view
I headed out from here back the way I came in. I’d love to go back and have a look at the Holloway Storm Relief one day but there’s plenty of other drains that need finishing first.
My next visit was with theVicar. He’d walked up to Orly with Concrete Jungle before and informed me that it’s at least a mile away from where we were going to be dropping into this time. I’m told its only features include an impressive drop shaft in the soffit of the pipe, which is an overflow for the Mid Level No.2, stoopin under The Regents Canal and slippy as fook plastic pipes that are a nightmare to traverse. I was happy to give this section a miss so we walked from Shoreditch area downstream in search of the new work that had taken place around cross rail. He explained that several years ago there were two fairly low weirs, which built up a head of water for pumps to remove thus keeping the main pipe dry to work in. He’d hoped that those weirs would’ve gone by now as they weren’t needed but they’ve kept them there and it was too much for my leaky chesties and his thigh wad0rz so we retreated. I did get to see the overflow chamber for the Mid Level Sewer No.1, though, which more than made up for the long walk back above ground with a sewer soaked foot
As we walked downstream the pipe increased from 10 to 12 foot and a junction appeared on the right with a tumbling bay above it. Beyond that was the overflow chamber for the ML1
Looking back
ML1
TheVicar, here trying not to breach, it was too late for me! This one was just about passable but the next one was deeper and we turned back. The majority of the main pipe downstream of here had been shotcreted over.
On our most recent visit we dropped in further down from the Crossrail works so we made our way upstream to see them. So far as we could make out the only changes included a few hundred meters of new concrete pipe, some new cabling and an opening in the soffit of the pipe for the cables to enter a massive new shaft above. I would’ve liked to see in this shaft properly but the ladders were well beyond even jumping reach. There were no signs of any realignment work having taken place
Further upstream was this bigger dam, which had prevented us going any further last time
We turned back here and headed towards the Thames, aware that it would soon be low tide. We passed these two local sewers on the way
The 5 ft incoming pipe on the right of the pic above drops down these three large steps. You could probably access the Ratcliff Storm Relief from here
On the left another 5 ft pipe drops down yet another tumbling bay. Further up this pipe I could see two smaller pipes and an entrance on the right. In this was one of the longest staircases I’ve seen in a drain. It didn’t carry sewage though, as I was hoping, it just led up to a smaller laddered access
The Low Level No.2 interceptor and weir (thanks for these three theVicar)
Just before we reached the outfall was this pretty little s bend. The Thames mud telling us we were close. As we left we noticed some cut marks and a crack around the whole pipe (seen in this pic). I think the cut was made deliberately to weaken that part of the pipe as they’ll be digging nearby. It’s a way of measuring how much their work is affecting the ground around the outfall or to prevent a crack inevitably occurring somewhere else, potentially over a greater length.
And then there they were, the two double hinged flaps. But what lay beyond them? Unfortunately, the nearest lid wasn’t shifting so we had to improvise. Using bits of rubble we got the flaps open enough to let most of the standing water drain away. When the water was low enough I could crouch down and hold on to the middle part of the frame and push it open with my foot while theVicar wedged it with whatever he could find. Unfortunately it wasn’t really enough so we went to leave having only had a sneaky peek through the gap. Luckily theVicar spotted an old concrete coping stone that had been lobbed down a 12” pipe nearby. It was solid enough (hopefully) and just long enough to hold the flap open enough for someone to squeeze through the gap.
Looking back at the flap
The lid at the top of this stairway was also stuck. Probably not the best place to hang around then! Should’ve checked this first really, not that it would’ve made much difference. It would have been a right sod to get out if that flap had closed behind me!
The three outfalls
And the new Thamesway works. Not much to see really. Essentially it’ll be a 7.2m diameter tunnel, running the length of the tidal part of the Thames, crossing over the river several times, connecting to 34 cso’s on the way to Abbey Mills Pumping Station. It’ll be deeper than pretty much anything else under London so there’ll be some big shafts there over the coming years!
As we left we kicked the prop away that had been holding the flap open. It closed with the biggest bang that echoed for ages, and could probably be heard at Orly!
Thanks to theVicar for your research into finding our lids, it was good to know the other useable ones were where you expected them to be, should we have needed them and great to have some drain0r company! Bring on 2018
Thanks for lookin….
The two short sets of stairs meet in a large chamber to form one main pipe (the N.E.S.R) that outfalls down the longer tumbling bay. This chamber is best seen on the video. You can just make out the upstream infall of N.E.S.R in the right hand pipe. The whole thing is pretty impressive from an engineering point of view
I headed out from here back the way I came in. I’d love to go back and have a look at the Holloway Storm Relief one day but there’s plenty of other drains that need finishing first.
My next visit was with theVicar. He’d walked up to Orly with Concrete Jungle before and informed me that it’s at least a mile away from where we were going to be dropping into this time. I’m told its only features include an impressive drop shaft in the soffit of the pipe, which is an overflow for the Mid Level No.2, stoopin under The Regents Canal and slippy as fook plastic pipes that are a nightmare to traverse. I was happy to give this section a miss so we walked from Shoreditch area downstream in search of the new work that had taken place around cross rail. He explained that several years ago there were two fairly low weirs, which built up a head of water for pumps to remove thus keeping the main pipe dry to work in. He’d hoped that those weirs would’ve gone by now as they weren’t needed but they’ve kept them there and it was too much for my leaky chesties and his thigh wad0rz so we retreated. I did get to see the overflow chamber for the Mid Level Sewer No.1, though, which more than made up for the long walk back above ground with a sewer soaked foot
As we walked downstream the pipe increased from 10 to 12 foot and a junction appeared on the right with a tumbling bay above it. Beyond that was the overflow chamber for the ML1
Looking back
ML1
TheVicar, here trying not to breach, it was too late for me! This one was just about passable but the next one was deeper and we turned back. The majority of the main pipe downstream of here had been shotcreted over.
On our most recent visit we dropped in further down from the Crossrail works so we made our way upstream to see them. So far as we could make out the only changes included a few hundred meters of new concrete pipe, some new cabling and an opening in the soffit of the pipe for the cables to enter a massive new shaft above. I would’ve liked to see in this shaft properly but the ladders were well beyond even jumping reach. There were no signs of any realignment work having taken place
Further upstream was this bigger dam, which had prevented us going any further last time
We turned back here and headed towards the Thames, aware that it would soon be low tide. We passed these two local sewers on the way
The 5 ft incoming pipe on the right of the pic above drops down these three large steps. You could probably access the Ratcliff Storm Relief from here
On the left another 5 ft pipe drops down yet another tumbling bay. Further up this pipe I could see two smaller pipes and an entrance on the right. In this was one of the longest staircases I’ve seen in a drain. It didn’t carry sewage though, as I was hoping, it just led up to a smaller laddered access
The Low Level No.2 interceptor and weir (thanks for these three theVicar)
Just before we reached the outfall was this pretty little s bend. The Thames mud telling us we were close. As we left we noticed some cut marks and a crack around the whole pipe (seen in this pic). I think the cut was made deliberately to weaken that part of the pipe as they’ll be digging nearby. It’s a way of measuring how much their work is affecting the ground around the outfall or to prevent a crack inevitably occurring somewhere else, potentially over a greater length.
And then there they were, the two double hinged flaps. But what lay beyond them? Unfortunately, the nearest lid wasn’t shifting so we had to improvise. Using bits of rubble we got the flaps open enough to let most of the standing water drain away. When the water was low enough I could crouch down and hold on to the middle part of the frame and push it open with my foot while theVicar wedged it with whatever he could find. Unfortunately it wasn’t really enough so we went to leave having only had a sneaky peek through the gap. Luckily theVicar spotted an old concrete coping stone that had been lobbed down a 12” pipe nearby. It was solid enough (hopefully) and just long enough to hold the flap open enough for someone to squeeze through the gap.
Looking back at the flap
The lid at the top of this stairway was also stuck. Probably not the best place to hang around then! Should’ve checked this first really, not that it would’ve made much difference. It would have been a right sod to get out if that flap had closed behind me!
The three outfalls
And the new Thamesway works. Not much to see really. Essentially it’ll be a 7.2m diameter tunnel, running the length of the tidal part of the Thames, crossing over the river several times, connecting to 34 cso’s on the way to Abbey Mills Pumping Station. It’ll be deeper than pretty much anything else under London so there’ll be some big shafts there over the coming years!
As we left we kicked the prop away that had been holding the flap open. It closed with the biggest bang that echoed for ages, and could probably be heard at Orly!
Thanks to theVicar for your research into finding our lids, it was good to know the other useable ones were where you expected them to be, should we have needed them and great to have some drain0r company! Bring on 2018
Thanks for lookin….
