London’s five billion pound Super Sewer is now fully connected and promises a cleaner, healthier River Thames. The 150-year-old sewer network has struggled to cope with the twin challenges of an increase in the population it serves in the capital (from four million people when it was built to over nine million today) together with climate change. With rainfall overwhelming the system, it sometimes discharges into the Thames. With the Super Sewer fully connected, 95% of those spills are stopped.

Working as a Blue Badge Tourist Guide in I often show my guests – especially if they have young children - the bust of the William Buckland in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey. He may hardly be a household name but Buckland is memorialised for his appointment as Dean of the Abbey in 1845 and his work as an early palaeontologist and undergroundologist (geologist). He excelled at two of the new sciences that would enthral Britain in the nineteenth century.