Story of London's last ‘Fart Lamp': How the English capital once lit its streets with sewage

Time of India

10-05-2025

Behind London's luxurious Savoy Hotel burns a bizarre piece of Victorian innovation—the city's last 'fart lamp.' This sewer-powered streetlamp once used human waste to light the streets and ventilate toxic gases. Ingenious, grim, and oddly green, it's a relic of a time when necessity turned filth into flame. Discover how London once lit its nights from below.
Tucked away behind London's Savoy Hotel stands the city's last surviving 'fart lamp'—a Victorian marvel that turned sewer gas into streetlight. Fueled by methane from human waste, these lamps once lit the city while ventilating dangerous fumes.
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Down a discreet alley just behind the opulent Savoy Hotel, where celebrities sip cocktails and guests enjoy five-star comfort, stands a solitary streetlamp with a surprisingly stinky past. This unassuming lamp on Carting Lane—cheekily nicknamed Farting Lane by some—is no ordinary light source. It is the last of its kind in London: a Webb Patent Sewer Gas Lamp , a piece of Victorian-era ingenuity designed to turn the city's waste into fire and light.While it may sound like satire from a Dickensian novel, this lamp truly was powered in part by the methane gas rising from London's extensive sewer system. Its purpose was twofold: not just to illuminate the streets, but also to siphon off and burn the foul gases festering below the surface—gases that were once feared to cause both disease and deadly explosions.Invented in the 1890s by Birmingham engineer Joseph Edmund Webb, these lamps were as much about public health as public light. Cities were growing, sewage systems were expanding, and so too were the smells and hazards. Webb's innovation offered a uniquely efficient solution: let the waste light the way.Here's how it worked: A small dome-shaped chamber within the sewer system collected methane and other combustible gases produced by organic waste. These gases were piped into the lamp above street level, where a constant flame helped draw them up and burn them off. The flame, however, wasn't entirely dependent on sewer gas. The lamps were 'dual-powered,' using municipal gas supplies to maintain a heat of around 700 degrees Fahrenheit. This intense heat created an upward draft, ventilating up to three-quarters of a mile of sewer line.In short, Londoners didn't just walk past pretty gas lamps—they unknowingly passed a safety mechanism, a silent guardian against sewer explosions, and a rather poetic symbol of waste turned into light.At their peak, these lamps dotted areas like Westminster, Hampstead, and Shoreditch. Unfortunately, a fire at the Webb Lamp Company in 1925 destroyed most production records, so no one knows exactly how many were installed across London and beyond. But they were once common enough to light entire neighborhoods—and even cities abroad.Some hospitals, including the famed London Hospital in Whitechapel, installed them to ventilate post-mortem rooms and septic tanks. In other towns, they stood along public walkways, quietly burning off the gasses that would otherwise bubble ominously beneath Victorian boots.Their use wasn't limited to Britain either. These peculiar devices found homes in Canada, where engineers adapted them for harsh winters by adding internal burners to prevent freezing. In towns like Sheffield and Durham, a few remain functional, still silently serving their original purpose.Today, the lone survivor in central London—tucked away on Carting Lane—has endured quite the journey. Years ago, it was knocked over by a reversing lorry. Thankfully, engineers from Thames Gas stepped in to restore it, and Westminster Council placed it under protection. It now stands proudly once more, a marvel of forgotten engineering in one of the city's most elite districts.What adds to the poetry is the knowledge that guests at the Savoy Hotel, some of the most pampered visitors in the capital, are unknowingly contributing to the flame above with every flush.The rise of electric lighting and modern sewer ventilation eventually rendered these lamps obsolete. Many were dismantled, destroyed, or simply forgotten as the city modernized. Yet their legacy lingers—quietly burning in scattered corners of the UK, quietly celebrated by those who know where to look.In a world where green energy and recycling are buzzwords of the future, London's sewer gas lamps seem oddly prophetic—Victorian sustainability before the term even existed. They remind us that even in the filthiest places, light can find a way.