Battersea Power Station
Considered the greatest landmark South of the Thames by the many people who
commute from suburbia towards Waterloo
Colin writes: "I was born in battersea in 1948, me mum used to take me to battersea park all the time.one of my earliest
memories was of the power station,it was so big.there was always lots of smoke coming from the chimneys.at certain times
of the day a siren would go off,my dad told me it was to let the workers know that the icecream van had arrived, and like a
plonker i believed him, still never mind a.when i was at joseph tritton school we had trips to the power station,it was fantastic
.all the brass was so shiny. it was noisy but after a while you didnt notice it. to see what has happened to it now is
heartbreaking.if you saw concorde 500 times you would still watch it every time it went over. thats how i feel about battersea
power station. even now i still stop for a look. what a waste."
Pink Floyd "Animals" album cover
Europe's largest city-centre brownfield site. While almost the entire Thames riverfront has been redeveloped in a huge
London property boom, the four distinctive chimneys of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott's masterpiece remain surrounded by dereliction.
Battersea Power Station was designed in 1930 by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and J. Theo Halliday. The first two chimneys
(Battersea A) were completed in 1939. By 1955 the third and fourth chimneys (Battersea B) were completed making the
Power Station the largest brick building in Europe. On the 31st October 1983 the Power Station was closed and the
Central Electricity Generating Board launched a competition to find a future use for the building. It was decided to convert
it into a Disney style theme park but Costs quickly escalated and work stopped in 1989 leaving the Power Station in its
present semi-derelict and exposed state. Since then, the Power Station has languished without a roof, it's steel work
exposed to the elements and it's foundations prone to flooding.
1983: Battersea Power Station closes.
1984: Competition is held to determine a future use for the iconic building. This is won by a consortium including
Alton Towers Limited which put forward proposals for an indoor theme park.
1986: Planning approval for indoor theme park scheme is secured.
1989: Demolition and decontamination programmes completed but money runs out and project stalls.
1993: Battersea Power Station is sold by Parkview International for £10m to funfare magnate John Broome. Victor
Hwang, Taiwanese property multimillionaire is quickly revealed as the man behind the deal.
1996: First of a series of planning applications by the Hwang family beginning a marathon attempt to get the goahead
for redevelopment.
2006: Hwang sells to Irish developers for £44 million
Battersea Power Station is one of the biggest brick-built buildings in the world
The Hong Kong property developer Victor Hwang sold Battersea Power Station for £400 million in Nov 2006 despite recent claims that he was committed to a lengthy development programme.
Two weeks before , Wandsworth Borough Council approved £900 million plans by Mr Hwang and his family to rebuild the famed white chimneys at the 1930s building and construct houses and offices on adjacent land.
They promised to transform the roofless edifice into an entertainment complex, with proposals including a “turbine garden” to rival the Eden Project in Cornwall, a 35- screen cinema, nightclubs and boutiques. But little has been done at the Art Deco building designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the man who designed the red telephone booth. Its four chimneys are crumbling and visitors complain of leaks from rainwater.
The Hwangs, who paid £10.5 million for the building, have blamed the delays on bureaucracy and the exit of a long-term tenant. They said that they have invested £200 million in the site.
Yesterday, Mr Hwang said that the Irish property developers who purchased Battersea had the “passion, drive and proven expertise” to renovate the derelict power station.
The Battersea Power Station Community Group, said: “How sickening to be proven right about the intention of Victor Hwang. Walking away with £200 million clear profit leaving no jobs, no regeneration, a derelict power station and 13 years of pretence about wanting to save the landmark and bring prosperity to east Battersea.”
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above interior pics courtesy of Graham T
About the Pink Floyd album cover:
"Roger had the idea for this cover and suggested flying a large inflatable pig from the towers of Battersea Power Station. He wanted
to do it for real... no photo-trickery. Although the image of a pig suspended between the stupendous chimneys on a windswept day
possessed a great sense of mood, it was the pig itself which caught the headlines.
The day of the shoot was fantastic with a dramatic sky like a mixture of Turner and Constable. First the pig was inflated, but this took
so long that it was not actually launced all day. The entire complement of eleven photographers and thre film crews stood idle. The
manager, with clever foresight, had hired a marksman with telescopic rifle to shoot down the pig if it escaped its mooring ropes and
sailed off into the skies, where it would become an insuranse risk. He also stood idle.
On the scond day, the manager with not quite such clever foresight had decided to ease the marksman on economic grounds. The
inflated pig was launched into the air and secured by guy-ropes in between the towers. Everybody was very excited: cameras started
clicking, film started rolling.
But then a violent gust of wind suddenly paid to our plans. The pig lurched one way, then the other, and then tore free of its moorings.
It disappeared into the heavens in a trice. But there was no marksman to shoot it down. There was no time even to get a photo.
Instead, there were a lot of people on the ground looking forlornly into the empty sky. The pig ascended into the flight paths of
incoming jets laning at London's Heathrow Airport. Pilots stared in horror. The pig, with a mind of its own, carried on into Kent
and descended upon a rural farmer. One can imagine the disbelief of his wife when the farmer said to her "guess what..."
The redoubtable roadies rescued the pig from the farmer that night, returned it to London, mended the punctures and put the pig
up again so that we could photograph it the next day. The day was cloudless, with a bright blue sky, but it was not very striking. The
pig was therefore stripped into the final artwork from day three into the sky of day one, which is how it could have been done in the
the first place. One could have photographed the pig at a separate venue, or even as a model. This might have saved a great deal
of money, and a great deal of anxiety, but would certainly have prevented a jolly good story unfolding and a jolly good laugh being
had by all, even the manager. And maybe Roger was right in that it actually did look better by being the record of a real event.
from the book coming with the "Shine on" CD-box set.
other appearances:
The power station can be seen on The Orb's "Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld", in the booklet art for The Who's 1973 album
Quadrophenia, as the background art for the cover of a Petula Clark boxset, Meet Me in Battersea Park.
It was a setting in Alfred Hitchcock's 1936 film Sabotageand briefly in The Beatles' 1965 film Help!, and many years later it was
seen in Monty Python's The Meaning Of Life and also in the video to "News of the World" by The Jam.
Ian McKellen's film of Shakespeare's Richard III, the derelict power station surreally stands in for Bosworth Field in Richard's
final battle scene.
In 1964, the power station appeared in an episode of Doctor Who. The Dalek Invasion of Earth saw the station in the 22nd century
as having been converted to nuclear power.
MacGyver: Lost Treasure of Atlantis, it pretends to be a terrorist encampment that is supposedly based in Eastern Europe.
Courtesy of Brian McDonnell
