These pieces of Victorian engineering are still in use today and can be spotted all across the city
Most people pay little attention to the street furniture surrounding us as we go about our daily lives, except of course to follow signs while driving. However, if you are more observant than most, you may have noticed some unusual objects dotted around Cambridge and wondered what they are for.
The cast iron pipes look a lot like lampposts, but they don’t have lights on them. Instead of improving the city with regards to vision, as lampposts do, these were dedicated to making it more pleasant for another sense – smell.
The aptly-named ‘stink pipes’ were designed to channel gases from the sewers upwards into the air, so that offensive smells of the city didn’t trouble the noses of its inhabitants. As such, the stink pipes that remain in their full glory are at typically at least six metres tall, towering above the average human.
The pipes were often painted a greyish green, though many now look somewhat rusted from decades of exposure to the elements. Dating back to around the 1860s, they represented great leaps in Victorian engineering and hygiene management, for which we should all be grateful.
The stink pipes are often decorated with flower-like crowns at the top, as if to evoke more pleasant scents than the ones they actually emit. Among their many nicknames are ‘stench pipes’ and ‘poo pipes’.
Though they may seem like a relic of times gone by, the stink pipes in fact continue to serve a purpose for our sewer system today. They are now maintained by Anglian Water, who, among other things, check to make sure that birds do not nest in the top of the pipes.
They are dotted around the city and into the suburbs, although some have been truncated – like one in Union Lane – and are now much shorter than they used to be. In years gone by, residents have even kicked up a stink of their own, having become oddly attached to the ‘poo pipes’.
