Two engines on each arm of a cruciform plan, with an elaborate Byzantine style, described as The Cathedral of Sewage.

[3] 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.

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.

Details of the operation of the pumps in the year 1919/20 were as follows:[7] Two Moorish styled chimneys – unused since steam power had been replaced by electric motors in 1933 – were demolished in 1941, as it was feared that a strike from German bombs might topple them onto the pumping station.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 Lee Tunnel is a sewage tunnel that runs from Abbey Mills to Beckton Sewage Treatment Works and is designed to handle the 16 million tons of overflow sewage that was previously discharged into the River Lea each year at Abbey Mills, as well as the additional wastewater brought to Abbey Mills by the Thames Tideway tunnel.