Stories from the Sewer
A mural created in collaboration with sixteen pupils from Riverside Primary School
Chambers Wharf, Bermondsey
Commissioned by Tideway
2016-17

History, direct observation, fantasy and mythology all find a place within this epic collage of images, which plots the narrative of an imaginary sewer - a deep and mysterious realm beneath Bermondsey. Here, Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mister Fox brushes shoulders with Old Father Thames, London’s very own River God; here a family of gigantic fatbergs (masses of solid fat and unmentionable household waste that conglomerate in sewers) and various superheroes play beside Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the engineer of the Victorian sewer built after the Great Stink of 1858. Alongside their imagined characters you can also find the children’s self-portraits, and forms based on the rubbings they took from the street’s manhole covers. The mural also features a drawing of the CEO of the Thames Tideway Tunnel, creator of London’s new super sewer.









Photos: Jonathan Bassett