In 2020, after a severe thunderstorm, the modern system nearly failed. The city centre’s low-lying railway tunnel flooded, and for six hours, treated sewage backed up towards residential streets. The cause? Not the Victorians’ work, but our own: “fatbergs” (solidified cooking oil and wet wipes) and the relentless paving-over of gardens, which reduced the ground’s ability to soak up rain.
Beneath the bustling streets of Wolverhampton, where trams once clattered and shoppers now bustle, a hidden river runs. It has no name on modern maps, but its story is the story of the city itself. drains wolverhampton
Before Wolverhampton was a city of brick and asphalt, it was a city of seven brooks. The largest, the Lady Brook, wound its way from the Penn Hills, past the coal seams and through the marshy grounds where monks from the St. Peter’s Collegiate Church once fished. For centuries, these brooks were the city’s lifeblood—and its open sewer. In 2020, after a severe thunderstorm, the modern
Once a decade, a guided inspection is made of the Lady Brook’s tomb. Using remote cameras on tracks, they film stalactites of fat and grit, the ghostly white blind shrimp that evolved in the darkness, and the graffiti left by Victorian workmen—names and dates scratched into the mortar. Not the Victorians’ work, but our own: “fatbergs”