You would never imagine it was down there, and man is it deep down there. Serving a massive area
Deep Ochre is approx 4.5miles long, running North - South through Hackney and Tower Hamlets. It crosses, or
has connections with, all five northern intercepting sewers. Constructed between 1921 -1928 by L.C.C. it was designed to further alleviate
the Metropolitan Board of Works' over burdened northern system during instances of heavy rainfall. It also receives
overflow from the High-level & Ratcliff storm reliefs, built some forty years previous by the
M.B.W.
Covering such a long distance, an end to end explore sees alot of long featureless stretches, even worse, one of
these has recently been concrete lined so you don't even have the red brick to keep you company.
When you do run into features though, goodness they're good stuff! Mostly the connections with the interceptors
and other storm reliefs make for many weird and varied junction chambers and rooms. Toward its upper reaches a junction with the
Holloway storm relief has the pipe split into two with curved brick built steps up to the Holloway tunnel which
cuts across horizontally. At its other end, by the time it reaches the Thames it is no deeper than 20ft underground
with it's outfall set back and hidden from view under the embankment.
There's much that we have yet to photograph here and so we hope to get back soon, soon, soon.
