Battersea Power Station is a preserved coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames in Nine Elms, Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It was built by the London Power Company (LPC) to the design of Leonard Pearce, Engineer in Chief to the LPC, and CS Allott & Son Engineers. The architects were J. Theo Halliday and Giles Gilbert Scott. The station is one of the world's largest brick buildings and notable for its original, Art Deco interior fittings and decor.
The building comprises two power stations, built in two stages, in a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built between 1929 and 1935 and Battersea B Power Station, to its east, between 1937 and 1941, when construction was paused owing to the worsening effects of the Second World War. The building was completed in 1955. Battersea B was built to a design nearly identical to that of Battersea A, creating the iconic four-chimney structure.
Battersea A was decommissioned in 1975. In 1980 the whole structure was given Grade II listed status; Battersea B shut three years later. In 2007 its listed status was upgraded to Grade II*. The building remained empty until 2014, during which time it fell into near ruin. Various plans were made to make use of the building, but none were successful.
In 2012, administrators Ernst & Young entered into an agreement with Malaysia's S P Setia and Sime Darby to develop the site to include residential, bars, restaurants, office space (occupied by Apple and others), shops and entertainment spaces. The plans were approved and redevelopment commenced a few years later. The main Power Station building was opened to the public in October 2022.
As of 2023, the building and the overall site development is owned by a consortium of Malaysian investors.
The station is also notable for its appearance on the cover of rock band Pink Floyd's 1977 studio album Animals.
History Located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Nine Elms, Battersea, an inner-city district of South West London, the building comprises two power stations, built in two stages in a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built in the 1930s and Battersea B Power Station, to its east, in the 1950s. They were built to a near-identical design, providing the four-chimney structure. The station is one of the world's largest brick buildings, and notable for its original, lavish Art Deco interior fittings and decor.
Until the late 1930s, electricity had been supplied by municipal undertakings. These were small power companies that built power stations dedicated to a single industry or group of factories, and sold any excess electricity to the public. These companies used widely differing standards of voltage and frequency. In 1925, Parliament decided that the power grid should be a single system with uniform standards and under public ownership. Several of the private power companies reacted to the proposal by forming the London Power Company (LPC). They planned to heed Parliament's recommendations and build a small number of very large stations.
The London Power Company's first of these super power stations was planned for the Battersea area, on the south bank of the River Thames in London. The proposal was made in 1927, for a station built in two stages and capable of generating 400megawatts (MW) of electricity when complete. The site chosen was a plot of land which had been the site of the reservoirs for the former Southwark and Vauxhall Waterworks Company. The site was chosen for its proximity to the River Thames for cooling water and coal delivery, and because it was in the heart of London, the station's immediate supply area.
The proposal sparked protests from those who felt that the building would be too large and would be an eyesore, as well as worries about the pollution damaging local buildings, parks and even paintings in the nearby Tate Gallery. The company addressed the former concern by hiring Sir Giles Gilbert Scott to design the building's exterior. He was a distinguished architect and industrial designer, famous for his designs for the red telephone box and Liverpool Anglican Cathedral. He subsequently designed another London power station, Bankside, which now houses Tate Modern art gallery. The pollution issue was resolved by granting permission for the station on the condition that its emissions were to be treated, to ensure they were "clean and smokeless".
Construction of the first phase (the A station) began in March 1929. The main building work was carried out by John Mowlem & Co,Mowlem 1822–1972, p.6 and the structural steelwork erection carried out by Sir William Arrol & Co. Other contractors were employed for specialist tasks. Most of the electrical equipment, including the steam turbine turbo generators, was produced by Metropolitan-Vickers in Trafford Park, Manchester. The building of the steel frame began in October 1930. Once completed, the construction of the brick cladding began, in March 1931. Until the construction of the B station, the eastern wall of the boiler house was clad in corrugated metal sheeting as a temporary enclosure. The A station first generated electricity in 1933, but was not completed until 1935. The total cost of its construction was £2,141,550. Between construction beginning in 1929 and 1933, there were six fatal and 201 non-fatal accidents on the site.
After the end of the Second World War, construction began on the second phase, the B station. The station came into operation gradually between 1953 and 1955. It was nearly identical to the A station from the outside and was constructed directly to its east as a mirror to it, which gave the power station its now familiar four-chimney layout. The construction of the B station brought the site's generating capacity up to 509MW, making it the third largest generating site in the UK at the time, providing a fifth of London's electricity needs (with the remainder supplied by 28 smaller stations).Battersea Power Station: Electrifying design, BBC, Design Icons, 7 November 2013 It was also the most thermally efficient power station in the world when it opened.
The A station had been operated by the London Power Company, but by the time the B station was completed, the UK's electric supply industry had been nationalised, and ownership of the two stations had passed into the hands of the British Electricity Authority in 1948.
On 20 April 1964, a fire at the power station caused power failures throughout London, including at the BBC Television Centre, which was due to launch BBC2 that night; the launch was delayed until the following morning.
The power station was decommissioned between 1975 and 1983. In 1980, it was designated as a Grade II listed building. The structure remained largely unused for more than 30years after closure. In 2007, its listed status was upgraded to Grade II*. In 2008, its condition was described as "very bad" by English Heritage in its Heritage at Risk Register. The site was also listed on the 2004 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund.
Since the station's closure, redevelopment plans have been drawn up by successive site owners. After a redevelopment project by Parkview International stalled in 2004, the site was sold to the administrators of Irish company Real Estate Opportunities (REO) for £400million in November 2006, with plans to refurbish the station for public use and build 3,400 homes on the site. This plan fell through due to REO's debt being called in by the state-owned banks of the UK and Ireland. In December 2011, the site was again put up for sale through commercial estate agent Knight Frank. The combination of an existing debt burden of £750million, the need to make a £200million contribution to an extension to the London Underground, requirements to fund conservation of the derelict power station shell, and the presence of a waste transfer station and cement plant on the river frontage made commercial development of the site a significant challenge.
Design and specification
Both of the stations were designed by a team of architects and engineers. The team was headed by Leonard Pearce, the chief engineer of the London Power Company, but a number of other notable engineers were also involved, including Henry Newmarch Allott, and T. P. O'Sullivan who was later responsible for the Assembly Hall at Filton. J. Theo Halliday was employed as architect, with Halliday & Agate employed as a sub-consultant. Halliday was responsible for the supervision and execution of the appearance of the exterior and interior of the building. Architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott was involved in the project much later on, consulted to appease public reaction, and referred to in the press as "architect of the exterior". The station was designed in the brick-cathedral style of power station design, which was popular at the time. Battersea is one of a very small number of examples of this style of power station design still in existence in the UK, others being Uskmouth and Bankside. The station's design proved popular straightaway, and was described as a "temple of power", which ranked equal with St Paul's Cathedral as a London landmark. In a 1939 survey by The Architectural Review, a panel of celebrities ranked it as their second favourite modern building."Our Best Buildings: A Poll of Laymen", The Manchester Guardian, 9 June 1939, p. 12
The A station's control room was given many Art Deco fittings by architect Halliday. Italian marble was used in the turbine hall, and polished parquet floors and wrought-iron staircases were used throughout. Owing to a lack of available money following the Second World War, the interior of the B station was not given the same treatment, and instead the fittings were made from stainless steel.
Each of the two connected stations consists of a long boiler house with a chimney at each end and an adjacent turbine hall. This makes a single main building which is of steel frame construction with brick cladding, similar to the skyscrapers built in the United States around the same time. The station is the largest brick structure in Europe. The building's gross dimensions measure by , with the roof of the boiler house standing at over . Each of the four chimneys is made from concrete and stands tall with a base diameter of tapering to at the top. The station also had jetty facilities for unloading coal, a coal sorting and storage area, control rooms and an administration block.
The A station generated electricity using three turbo alternators; two 69MW Metropolitan-Vickers British Thomson-Houston sets, and one 105 MW Metropolitan-Vickers set, totalling 243 MW. At the time of its commissioning, the 105 MW generating set was the largest in Europe. The B station also had three turbo alternators, all made by Metropolitan-Vickers. This consisted of two units which used 16 MW high-pressure units exhausting to a 78 MW and associated with a 6 MW house alternator, giving these units a total rating of 100 MW. The third unit consisted of a 66 MW machine associated with a 6 MW house alternator, giving the unit a rating of 72 MW. Combined, these gave the B station a generating capacity of 260 MW, making the site's generating capacity 503 MW. All of the station's boilers were made by Babcock & Wilcox, fuelled by pulverised coal from pulverisers also built by Babcock & Wilcox. There were nine boilers in the A station and six in the B station. The B station's boilers were the largest ever built in the UK at that time. The B station also had the highest thermal efficiency of any power station in the country for the first 12years of its operation.
Operations Coal transportation