Giant bronze ventilation columns have been installed for the first time on the central section of the super sewer project.

These huge, 5m-high columns at Victoria Embankment will serve as an exhaust system, removing air displaced by flows into London’s new super sewer. This air will be filtered through air treatment chambers.

Nineteen of these ventilation columns are required across the Tideway project to regulate the gases within the super sewer, with a number already in place.

And each column is inscribed with newly commissioned poetry celebrating the local area’s heritage, often with reference to London’s ‘lost rivers’.  

At Victoria, the two poems each refer to the River Tyburn, one of the capital's lost rivers that stretches from Hampstead through central London and into the Thames.

Today, the Tyburn is used as part of London’s existing sewer network, designed and built by Sir Joseph Bazalgette.

The columns at Victoria Embankment will be complemented by the bronze-finish balustrade around the edge of the foreshore structure, which is partially completed.

Earlier this year, the first riverside columns were installed at Tideway’s site along Putney Embankment.