Another picture from the archives of my grandad.
Battersea Power Station has stood on its current site, on the south bank of the river Thames for nearly 100 years. The building was started in 1929 and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott joined the team who were designing and building the power station. The first set of chimneys were finished by 1935 with the Western Chimneys being 101 metres tall. Both the RAF and the Luftwaffe used the plumes of white vapour emanating from the chimneys to guide them through foggy and misty London on and after 1941. The fourth and final chimney was finished in 1955 and the power was subsequently generated at full speed.
The main boiler house is so large that St Paul Cathedral would fit within it. For the purposes of scale St Pauls is 515 feet (157 metres) long and 227 feet (69 metres) wide across the transepts, with two 212 foot (64 metres) high towers and a magnificent 365 foot (111 metres) dome.
In 1977 there occurred probably the most famous incident which made Battersea famous throughout the world. Pink Floyd tethered a giant floating pig to one of the southern chimney for the cover of their Animals album. The inflatable pig came loose and floated into the flightpath for London Heathrow airport until it floated away and eventually landed on a beach in Kent.
Then, in 1983, it stopped generating power and was sold off to leisure company. At its height it was generating a fifth of the power required for London. The power station used over 1,000,000 tonnes of coal each year with the coal coming predominantly from mines in South Wales and North East England. It arrived on coastal Collier ships which used the Thames to discharge their cargo directly to the cranes fitted to the quayside. Some of the coal was delivered by train from the Brighton and South Coast Railway which runs alongside the power station.
It is now being renovated and refitted into housing and a social and entertainment.
The photo was taken around the early 1970’s when the power station was in full operation. It would have been snapped from the north side of the Thames, likely to have been on Grosvenor Road which follows the path of the river from east to west.
You may also recognise some other work of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. If you ever stepped into an old London red telephone boxes, you have entered his realm. Equally he is the designer of Liverpool Cathedral as well as Waterloo Bridge which crosses the Thames further downstream from Battersea. The Bankside Power Station along the edge of the Thames from Battersea is also one of his visions. It is best known now for being the Tate Modern.
Recycling old buildings for future use seems to me to be a sensible thing.
Dexter 