London, on the overground, southbound

Scene with cranes

Back in October 2008 I wrote a post about Battersea Power Station, then in sore need of care, which I spotted as I passed it on a train. I began my post with these words:

It would take a Piranesi to do justice to the shell of London’s Battersea Power Station, vast, roofless, and decaying by the side of Chelsea Bridge. I was reminded of it recently as I crossed the bridge in a train from Victoria on my way to a meeting, and I photographed it hastily through the dirty window of the carriage. Hence this picture, as far a cry from Piranesi as possible.

After lamenting the building’s condition, I described it and its history very briefly, dwelling on the huge size of its brick structure, the role of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott in designing its Art Deco details, its influence on later power stations, and the various schemes that had been hatched to restore it.* The other day I passed it again on the overground and aimed the camera of my mobile through the window. This time my photograph was a little brighter, even though the weather that day was far from sunny and I had just missed being drenched in a downpour.† As I looked at the building with the various bright new structures appearing around it, all surrounded by a forest of cranes, I wondered if its prospects were similarly bright.

What I could make out as the train accelerated towards Clapham Junction was the power station’s four fluted chimneys, made of pre-cast concrete blocks, and one stretch of brick wall, recessed in a pattern of verticals. Everything else is hidden by scaffolding and other buildings, completed or under construction. I was glimpsing a work in progress then, which will see the power station as the heart of new ‘mixed-use neighbourhood’ incorporating shops, offices, and apartments, a mega-scheme that is clearly proceeding apace. The power station itself is being redeveloped by architects WilkinsonEyre (no relation) to provide some of the most prestigious apartments in the complex. Many of the essential elements of the building will be preserved, others will go, but the new work will, we are told, “pay homage to its history”. A lot will be different – there’ll be a bit poking out at the top, for a start§ – but the corner towers and chimneys will remain, at least, and buyers are promised interiors that “resonate with [the original building’s] irrepressible character”.

Well, I hope the character won’t be repressed. We’ll see. But looking at the plans and the buildings that are already up, it seems unlikely that I’ll be seeing much of it from the train, though I might from a river boat. In the meantime I’m crossing my fingers that the noble structure is not totally subsumed by new build, and that the resulting flats are bought by people who actually live in them.

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* There had been a clutch of such schemes, involving everything from flats to a theme park.

† At least some of the brightness is due to the better quality of smartphone cameras these days.

§ There is so often a bit poking out at the top. Sometimes, aesthetically, it is a disaster.

Hoxton, London

Out of dust…

Drifting around the area north of Old Street the other day I was impressed by how spruced up the area was: quite different from the interesting but run-down district I remembered from when I occasionally crossed it in – when could it have been – ah, yes, the 1980s. Of course, I knew how it had changed, how the old Hoxtonites and young artists of the 1980s had in part given way to an influx of entertainment venues and hi-tech industries, and how some buildings had been converted to upmarket flats. In the process quite a bit of the architecture has been spruced up, but the arts have not gone away: witness this building, the home of the National Centre of Circus Arts.

That’s not all it is. This appealing bit of reed brick and terracotta started life in 1896 as the Shoreditch Electric Light Station and Refuse Destructor. Its job was to burn rubbish to produce steam that was used to drive turbines and generate electricity. The terracotta panels above the entrance tell this story – the name under the shallow arch reminds us that the building was erected by the Vestry of St Leonard, Shoreditch, the forerunner of the local council; above that is the date, 1896, in large ornate numerals; higher still is the motto: ‘E Pulvere, Lux et Vis’: from dust, light and life.

This was early in the history of electric lighting, but not the very beginning. London’s Electric Avenue, Brixton, was the first street in the country to be lit electrically, in 1880. Deptford Power Station, the heart of the UK’s first AC power system, opened in 1891. But the Shoreditch building was the first to combine the functions of refuse disposal and power generation in this way made the Shoreditch Vestry a pioneer; in the next 8 years another 15 (out of 28) Metropolitan local authorities were supplying electricity – mainly for street lighting intitially. Shoreditch also led the way in other fields, opening a workers’ institute across the square from this building and putting up much social housing.

The generating station was due to be phased out in 1940, but was retained as a back-up during the Blitz and immediately post-war. The building became a circus centre in the 1990s and its combination of large internal spaces (the former combustion chamber and generating chamber) together with smaller rooms that can be used as studios, makes it a successful venue, both for circus training and for special events. Light and life continue to illuminate the streets of revamped and scrubbed-up Shoreditch.

Woolwich, London

Big sheds

In the early 1900s London’s transport was starting to turn to electricity for its power. The early underground trains had been hauled by steam locomotives, but few people liked the clouds of steam and sooty smuts that plagued the station platforms and the need for ventilation meant that underground lines had to be built near to the surface. Using electric power meant that deeper lines could be constructed, beneath parts of the city where sub-surface lines were impossible to build. So as the underground (and the tram network) began to hook up to electricity, power stations were required, and one was built in Greenwich.

The Greenwich Power Station was originally fitted with four large steam engines driving alternators. The engines were huge and so required the vast big-windowed sheds that can still be seen poking up above the urban low-rise of Greenwich and Woolwich. The building was put up in two phases, in 1902 and 1910, and the design was the work of the London Country Council architect’s department – they must have been proud of the pair of enormous Diocletian windows that light the cavernous engine rooms.

When the 1910 phase of building was completed, turbines – the latest generating technology – were installed in the new part of the building, and eventually the steam engines were removed and more turbines were installed. There are still turbines in the power station, and the equipment is kept in working order and occasionally run as the power station stands by as a back-up facility for the Underground.

Compared to some power stations, such as Bristol’s Tramways GeneratingStation, this is a plain and simple building, but imposing nonetheless. The chimneys and windows can hold their own against the background of the towers of Docklands. The Power Station has a small tower of its own, the small octagonal turret on the right of my photograph, but no source I have found can explain what it is for.

Bristol

Bristol brickwork (1)

Passing through Bristol last week, I thought I’d take a look at a favourite building I’d not seen for a while. When I last went past, one side of the structure was covered in scaffolding. Maybe this time the poles would be gone. But to my surprise, the building, the Tramways Generating Station, on Counterslip near the river, was covered in even more scaffolding and netting than before, so the photograph I show above is actually from my previous visit.

In 1895, having had horse-drawn trams for some twenty years, Bristol became the first city in the United Kingdom to build an electric tram service and in 1898–99 this new power station was constructed to supply electricity for the quickly expanding tramways network. This power station was designed by a young architect, William Curtis Green, who later became better known as the creator of buildings such as London’s Dorchester Hotel. The Bristol power station contained four steam engines coupled to four generators, and supplied power to the tramway system until 1941, when one of the many bombs dropped on the centre of the city struck a nearby bridge and severed the power lines.

To house the power plant, Curtis Green created a building of neoclassical grandeur. The details – columns, windows, arches, and doorways – are picked out in Bath stone and stand out beautifully from the red brick walls. The façade on Counterslip, shown in the photograph, is rather narrow, and this emphasizes the height of the structure, making it seem even larger than it is. In a way, the effect is rather pompous. The very grand Venetian window on the ground floor, the row of four Ionic columns at second floor level, the triangular pediment at the top with the tiny window in the middle – it’s a busy, unbalanced, and over-the-top composition.

But it makes you look, and it makes you think: the Bristolians were clearly proud of their tramway and their electrification scheme, and it’s not such a bad thing to build a public transport system to be proud of. Not for the first time, I came away impressed by the swagger and confidence of the buildings in England’s southwestern metropolis.

South Bank, London

It would take a Piranesi to do justice to the shell of London’s Battersea Power Station, vast, roofless, and decaying by the side of Chelsea Bridge. I was reminded of it recently as I crossed the bridge in a train from Victoria on my way to a meeting, and I photographed it hastily through the dirty window of the carriage. Hence this picture, as far a cry from Piranesi as possible. Perhaps this sorry gap between ideal and actuality is appropriate in this case. Battersea Power Station, which came into service in 1939 on the back of the establishment of the National Grid, is said to be Britain’s biggest brick building. It’s a towering masterpiece designed by J Theo Halliday with Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (the latter also architect of Bankside Power Station, now Tate Modern, and the red telephone box) and represented something of a great hope for power generation in the mid-20th century – a hope fulfilled until 1983, when the enormous power plant was decommissioned. Scott was responsible for many of the most creative design touches, and the building set the style for power stations – and sundry other kinds of industrial building – for a couple of decades.

Since then the glory – the citadel-like walls, the Art Deco interior, the four great chimneys – has been in decline. The roof has gone (taken off to remove some of the building’s contents) and much of the structure is propped up with scaffolding. Meanwhile, several ambitious plans for the place (a theme park, a mixed development) have come and gone. Another scheme, featuring a large and controversial ‘eco-dome’, is being worked up and presented to the planners. Further controversy surrounds the state of the chimneys, with different authorities agreeing that they are in need of work, but disagreeing about whether this should involve a rebuild or a repair.

Much as I like the gaunt, desolate quality of the power station as it is now, I know that this structure needs looking after if its condition is not to get seriously worse. So whatever in the way of renovation, restoration, or conservation is needed, I hope it’s done soon, before the whole lot collapses on to the surrounding wasteland, leaving still more work for the modern-day Piranesi to come.