On Thursday morning the footway of the Thames Embankment between Westminster-bridge and the Temple was thrown open to the public. There was an absence of all ceremony, and the opening of this important work was accomplished simply by a few noblemen and gentlemen walking over it. The footway is 20 feet in width, and the road, when completed, will be 100 feet wide. By the carrying out of this great work 37 acres of land have been reclaimed from the banks of the river, and this will be laid out in approaches, ornamental grounds and gardens, as soon as the Metropolitan District Railway works shall have been sufficiently advanced. Mr. Bazalgette estimates that the embankment, as well as the railway, will be completed within a year from the present time. As far as it has gone, however, the Thames Embankment is a very beautiful piece of work, and as a great link in the promised chain, it is deserving of all praise. Only those who inspect it from an engineering and architectural point of view can appreciate the difficulties that had to be overcome in its construction, and the exquisite finish with which the works have been perfected. In the opinion of all engineers, both English and foreign, there never has been so colossal a work in granite put together with the same completeness. It all literally fits with the neatness of cabinet-work, and some of the landing-stages and piers will remain for centuries as models of what the perfect finish of such works should be. Some idea may be formed of the magnitude and importance of the undertaking when we say that a river wall in granite eight feet in thickness has been built so as to dam out nearly 30 acres of the river; that this wall is nearly 7,000 feet long; that it averages more than 40 feet high, and its foundations go from 16 to 30 feet below the bed of the river. In the formation of this wall and the auxiliary works of drainage, subways, and filling in with earth behind it, there have been used nearly 700,000 cubic feet of granite, about 30,000 000 bricks, over 300,000 bushels of cement, nearly a million cubic feet of concrete; 125,000 cubic yards of earth have had to be dug out, and no less than 1,200,000 cubic yards of earth filled in. Such stupendous quantities of materials, expended over so short a space of ground, have never been heard of till now, and would, if so employed, have been equal to building half-a-dozen structures like the great Pyramid.
Reynold’s Newspaper, London, England, August 2, 1868
