text: History The pumping station was built at the site of an earlier watermill owned by the former Stratford Langthorne Abbey, from which it gained the name "Abbey Mills". It was first recorded as Wiggemulne in 1312, i.e., "the mill of a man called Wicga", an Old English personal name, and subsequently became associated with the abbey. The abbey lay between the Channelsea River and Marsh Lane (Manor Road). It was dissolved in 1538. By 1840, the North Woolwich Railway ran through the site, and it began to be used to establish factories, and ultimately the sewage pumping stations.
  Purpose
  Abbey Mills Pumping Station was constructed to lift sewage between the two Low Level Sewers and the Northern Outfall Sewer, which was built in the 1860s to carry the increasing amount of sewage produced in London away from the centre of the city to the sewage treatment plant at Beckton.
  Details of the pumps in the year 1912/13 were as follows:
  The pumping capability was increased with the addition of gas engine driven pumps. Details of the operation of the pumps in the year 1919/20 were as follows:
  Two Moorish styled chimneys – unused since steam power had been replaced by electric motors in 1933 – were demolished in 1941, as it was feared that a strike from German bombs might topple them onto the pumping station.
  The building still houses electric pumps – to be used to assist the new facility next door when required.