Romola Garai as Sugar inThe Crimson Petal and the White. BBC and Origin Pictures.

A lavish BBC period drama peppered with passion and intrigue was shot at an historic beam engine house in Abbey Wood.

Romola Garai (Sugar) and Chris ODowd (Rackham). BBC and Origin Pictures.

BBC2’s The Crimson Petal and the White, aims to reveal the darker side of Victorian London, so the director chose unusual locations that were not regularly seen on our screens.

The Crossness buildings which make up the sewage works, were created by Sir Joseph Bazalgette in the 1860s. During the filming it was used as both a cosmetics factory filled with freshly cut lavender and boxes of scented soaps and as a backdrop for a London train station for the four-part series.

The historic buildings recently underwent a £3 million transformation into an industrial museum which opened last year.

Crossness’ librarian Peter Kelsey revealed that it was also being used currently for two feature films but could not disclose anymore information.

The filming at Crossness

He said: “It was quite a transformation. They shot inside and outside of the building which is very good. The filming work we get is very lucrative. The money all goes back to maintaining the engines. It is a charity and nobody gets paid. It is completely run by volunteers. Last year was a particularly busy year. It was used as for a music video by a band called Encore and a fashion shoot for Lipsy’s Christmas campaign. We get a lot of requests but we cannot entertain them all.”

The drama was shot at the Grade 1 Listed Industrial Building over two weeks beginning on September 14 last year.

And only this month it hosted a Dirt Banquet for 60 diners. On the menu was roast pork of and vegetables hidden in a clay pot of earth and bacterial jelly canapes. It was funded by the charitable foundation The Welcome Trust. It aimed to provoke people’s curiosity and get them to reconsider their relationship to dirt and overcome their reflex responses, so that they could enjoy the meal.