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.