
Emerging Panel Designs
This shows the latest design work for the Panels. The image shown is the latest draft with the text and photos shown in a more digital friendly format below.
Ha'Penny Bridge
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Designs to come in 2025 as part of phase 1.

Draft design as at 10 Feb 2025
Ha'Penny Bridge Panel
The CreekLink Heritage Trail brings the forgotten story of London’s Deptford Creek alive - and especially its remarkable burst of industrial activity in the 19th Century, as London’s population grew from 1 to 4 million.

Here by the Ha’Penny Hatch Bridge you can see where London’s first passenger railway crossed the Creek. The Ha'Penny Hatch footbridge was first built in 1836. At that time the just opened London Bridge to Greenwich Railway stopped at Deptford. The railway (London’s first) didn’t cross the Creek and reach Greenwich until 1838. For those two years it was the Ha'Penny Hatch footbridge that allowed passengers to complete their journey - on foot! If you didn't have a ticket, it cost you a halfpenny to walk across.
Beside the C10 pathway you can also see the listed buildings of the 19th century Greenwich Pumping Station. It was built to help South London’s sewage reach the Crossness treatment works. The Greenwich Pumping Station has been They have been modernised for the 21st century. As part of the Super Sewer works, Thames Tideway Tunnel have completed the new Greenwich Connection Tunnel, to back up the old, still functioning Bazalgette sewers. The Greenwich Pumping Station is managed by Thames Water, and its sewers and the new tunnels of Thames Tideway’s Super Sewer continue to help keep London healthy.
This shows the [proposed] location of the panel (i) with the key points of interest described below.

(1) The railway still runs to London Bridge on the original viaduct. It is the longest run of arches in Britain and took 60 million bricks to build. The Railway Bridge was built with a lifting span that allowed barges carrying coal for the Pumping Station steam engines to come in from the Thames on high tides. The barges also served the many steam-powered industries along the Upper Creek. In 1999 the DLR extension to Lewisham joined the London Bridge line alongside the Creek.


Greenwich Pumping Station started pumping London's sewage in1865. By the 1850’s there were over 2 million Londoners and no sewers. The raw sewage in the Thames had created such a smell that in1857 The GREAT STINK forced Parliament to close. But not before it instructed the new Metropolitan Board of Works, under its chief engineer Joseph Bazalgette, to do something about it. By 1865 Bazalgette had designed and built 82 miles of brick sewers and pumping stations. His sewage system gave London’s growing population proper sewage disposal and uncontaminated drinking water for the first time.
(2) The Greenwich Pumping Station (called the Deptford Pumping Station back then) led the way. And still does.

(3) Thames Tideway Tunnel’s new Super Sewer: Tunnel Boring Machine ‘Annie’, building the 4.5 km tunnel that is now carrying overflow sewage from the Greenwich Pumping Station to Chambers Wharf. Before Thames Tideway built the Connection Tunnel, outbreaks of heavy rain meant the Greenwich Pumping Station had to allow billions of litres of raw sewage to overflow directly into the Thames near the Cutty Sark each year.
CREEK HABITAT
Creekside Discovery Centre is committed to maintaining Deptford Creek for people and wildlife and promoting ways we can all connect with

Two nationally rare species of wasps have been found on the site; the spider-hunting wasp Auplopus carbonarius and the mason wasp Microdynerus exilis.
