This donation will fill gaps in key collections of government mapping, including parish plans and Melbourne &
Metropolitan Board of Works drainage plans.
LEGACY: Bazalgette is perhaps best known for his work with the Metropolitan Board of Works on the Thames Embankment, which allowed some 52 acres of land along three-and-a-half miles of the river to be reclaimed.
In 1889, the Metropolitan Board of Works was dissolved and Sir Joseph Bazalgette retired.
They appear limited to Parliamentary publications, the records of the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers, and
Metropolitan Board of Works, and Bazalgette's own papers at the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Bazalgette was the chief engineer to the Metropolitan Board of Works, London's first Metropolitan government, a post he held for 33 years.
In 1853, the Royal Commission of the Corporation of the City of London recommended the creation of a Metropolitan Board of Works. Parliament created the Metropolitan Board of Works and used the 1851 census to define London as a statistical area encompassing 36 metropolitan registration districts.
It would be useful to learn why such a businesslike body as the
Metropolitan Board of Works felt compelled to glorify its sewage system with such a Venetian Gothic extravaganza as the pumping station at Abbey Mills.
In March 1986, Prime Minister Thatcher eliminated the Greater London Council, successor to the London County Council, successor to the Metropolitan Board of Works.(1) Unlike the City Fathers, the rulers of the Greater London Council, as well as the rulers of the London County Council and their predecessors of the Metropolitan Board of Works, had failed to cloak their governing body with the mystical aura of costume, ritual, symbolism, and ceremony.
Administrative changes were effected from above, not below, and from 1855 to 1888 most inter-parish or inter-borough affairs were administered by the Metropolitan Board of Works, established in 1855 by the Metropolis Local Management Act.
Harcourt would have abolished the Metropolitan Board of Works and the Vestries and retained a democratized Lord Mayor's office.