A new riverside public space, complete with stunning permanent artworks, has been opened in Fulham after work on London’s super sewer was completed.

The artist behind two bronze heron sculptures joined staff and other locals for a celebratory opening event following nine years of construction at Tideway’s Carnwath Road site.

Sir Peter Bazalgette, great-great grandson of the Victorian engineer who designed London's existing sewerage system in the Victorian era, made a short speech to mark the celebration, while Chelsea & Fulham MP Ben Coleman cut the ribbon. 

With the work now substantially complete at Carnwath Road, part of the Thames Path west of Wandsworth Bridge is also now open once again.

Patricia Sanchez, Senior Project Manager, said: “Carnwath Road has been a key part of the Tideway project – a site from which we launched one tunnelling machine, and received two others.

“With all that vital new infrastructure complete and operating deep underground, this is a fantastic moment for us to celebrate the completion of the above-ground work, too.

“And with the unveiling of two beautiful new sculptures, I’m sure that this public space will be enjoyed by many for years to come.”

The artist Sarah Staton, who has also created artworks for the Tideway project at Acton and Hammersmith, was commissioned to create two bronze sculptures for the site, responding to the area’s history.

In 1824, twenty acres of land at Sands End, a little to the east of Carnwath Road, was bought by the Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company, the first public utility enterprise in the world.

It initiated almost two centuries of industrialisation and manufacturing in the area. Craftspeople and artists were attracted to its fringes, most notably, William De Morgan, a friend of William Morris and a member of the Arts and Crafts movement. 

Sarah was delighted to discover that the heron features as a recurring motif on 19th-century de Morgan ceramics – and conceived the two-part artwork Standing Heron and Heron in Flight in celebration of the beautiful herons that can be seen flying upstream or wandering here on the foreshore.

Sarah Staton said: “The water-loving heron, with its enticing prehistoric origins, feels like the perfect sculptural celebratory motif for the new Thames-side public park at Carnwath Road.

“The park sits directly above up the western Tideway drive site where tunnelling extended west and east – I am excited to have echoed this directionality with a bronze heron flying upstream, a pair to the standing heron, at the streetside gateway to the park.”

Carnwath Road was a key site for the super sewer project – serving as one of three ‘main drive sites’ from which a tunnel boring machine (TBM Rachel) was launched.

Work involved creating a deep, wide shaft that was required to launch the TBM Rachel, as well as to receive two other TBMs, one from Battersea (Millicent), and another from Wandsworth (Charlotte).

The tunnel was switched on earlier this year and has already stopped over six million tonnes of sewage spills from entering the Thames

The River Thames is entering a new era of health, with flora, fauna and recreational river users to benefit for generations to come.