When was bankside power station built

This equipment first supplied direct current DC electricity to arc lamp street lights in Queen Victoria Street on 25 June Electricity cables were carried over Southwark bridge and Blackfriars bridge.

The power station, later known as Bankside A, was extended several times as the demand for electricity grew.

An engine room, ft 70 m long and 50 ft 15 m wide, was built in with two kW, two kW and two kW alternators driven by Willans engines. The associated boiler house was the same length and had nine Babcock and Wilcox boilers. In the engine room was extended to ft m and the boiler house to ft 91 m containing 22 boilers.

In the boiler house was doubled in width and contained 46 boilers. In the engine room there were ten British Thomson-Houston alternators directly coupled to three-crank Willans engines, eight Brush alternators with a capacity of 3, kW driven by two-cylinder compound Brush engines, and two Ferranti compound engines driving 1, kW alternators at RPM, making an aggregate capacity of 10, kW.

By the capacity of the station was 25, kW with 15, kW being DC machinery. The first 2, kW turbo-alternator was installed in December and a second in January , others followed at nearly yearly intervals. By there were seven turbo-alternators with an aggregate capacity of 19, kW. Over the period a new boiler house was built alongside the east face of the power house.

This had 18 boilers, the coal strike of led to six of the boilers being specified for oil firing, although two of these were later returned to coal firing. The old boiler house and its three ft 46 m chimneys were demolished. In Bankside was connected to London ring of the national grid and became a 'selected' station under the operational control of the Central Electricity Board.

Condenser cooling water was drawn from the river Thames through a pump house located on the river bank at 7,, gallons per hour. Some of the older plant was decommissioned. There were numerous complaints against the power station throughout its operational life. In May an officer of the Public Control Department of the London County Council stated that he had observed black smoke issuing from the centre chimney and "in such volumes as to constitute a nuisance".

This was contested by the company which said the information was inaccurate, since this was after sunset "any vapour or gas would assume a dark appearance […] and the absence of light would not ensure accuracy".

The London County Council undertook tests to measure the deposition of grit in the area during the summer of By the late s Bankside was considered inefficient in the thermal efficiency was On 1 April the British electricity industry was nationalised, Bankside was vested in the British Electricity Authority and the electricity distribution system radiating from the power station was vested in the London Electricity Board.

Bankside A was decommissioned in March and was demolished to allow the eastern end of Bankside B to be built. The redevelopment of Bankside power station, suspended during the war, was started again by the City of London Electric Lighting Company in It developed plans for a new power station with an ultimate capacity of MW and submitted these to the planning authority the London County Council in The Minister further remarked that a bigger power station was necessary at Bankside, and that others would be needed elsewhere, because in the electricity requirements of Greater London would be 67 per cent.

The evidence given by the Central Electricity Board at the inquiry shows that an estimated demand in London of 2,, kilowatts is expected in and The first half of the Bankside station to be completed by that date would supply only , kilowatts, or less than 4 per cent. At the inquiry, London's requirements in were put at about 4,, kilowatts, The Bankside plant, with its full output of , kilowatts, would then be supplying less than 5 per cent. Bankside's contribution can never be more than 4 or 5 per cent.

The Minister then went on to say that since it took about four years to build a power station there was little time to be lost if the demands were to be met. I have told your Lordships that the County Council suggested the site in Rotherhithe in , and it was agreed by all concerned that on this site a power station producing , kilowatts could be erected. As has been pointed out—and I would like to reinforce and emphasize this—if the company had seriously considered this alternative when it was put to them, the station at Rotherhithe might now be well under way to completion.

Moreover, at Bankside the existing station must be taken down when half the new one has been built, whereas if Rotherhithe ultimately replaces Bankside the two stations can operate together until the whole of the new Rotherhithe station is in operation. That is not an unimportant point, especially in relation to the claim that we mint have an expansion of power as quickly as possible.

Furthermore, suggestions have been made within the last fortnight by the County Council which, it is reliably expected, would reduce by four months and if certain other suggestions prove capable of being carried out, may reduce by more than four months the time which until recently it was thought would be necessary for the acquisition and preparation of the site at Rotherhithe.

It has been pointed out that if the alternative alterations at Bankside station, caused by the use of fuel instead of coal, are as extensive as Mr. Randall—representing and writing for the City of London Electric Lighting Company in his letter to The Times of May I—suggests, some months must be occupied in revising the working drawings of the structure before a contract can be let. Thus it seems to us that any saving in time may prove to be as illusory as it is, in any case, questionable on other grounds.

The Minister said that the choice of site was limited because it had to be by a river, near the area of distribution and of about seven or eight acres.

But Rotherhithe, as your Lordships know, is near the river; and this site is on the river. I am not a technical man in these matters of the generation of electricity, but I believe it to carry authority and weight when I say that the generation of electricity by oil firing will, in the present state of development, be much more expensive than the generation of electricity by coal firing, and the increase in cost is considered to be of a substantial order.

The final point I would like to make in connexion with the Minister's statement at the Press interview is in regard to his remark that the County of London Plan was "quite tentative". He did not expect a start to be made on the south bank scheme for at least thirty years, and by then the power station might possibly have been made out of date by the development of atomic energy.

Any proper plan of development must be tentative in detail. Nothing could be more fatal to good planning than rigidity in detail. But that does not mean that the County of London Plan is not positive in conception and intention. There can be little doubt as to what is the intention of the Plan as to the overall pattern of development at Bankside—as the Minister must well know.

It includes as part of the reconstruction of this area, the removal of the Bankside generating station and the erection of blocks of offices, flats, buildings of an educational and cultural character, and the provision of a riverside walk and gardens. The Minister mentions thirty years. That is pure conjecture, and I submit to your Lordships that whatever be the length of time it cannot be used as an argument for permitting a major and determinant development which will prevent the Plan from being realized or carried out.

That would be the effect of this proposal to build a new and larger power station at Bankside. I want to say only this with regard to the City of London Electric Lighting Company—and I hope I say it fairly, without prejudice and without bias, although I confess to feeling very hot at times about this proposal.

The company cannot claim to have been helpful. They took up the attitude from the start that they were at Bankside and they would remain at Bankside—a kind of j'y suis; j'y reste attitude.

I feel bound to say that the consideration which has had to be given inter alia to expanding the generation of electricity in this country as the result of the fuel crisis has been a godsend to the City of London Electric Lighting Company. I do not believe for one moment that, but for the fuel crisis and what has emerged from it, this decision would have been come to. I would not be fair and just if I said that the Company are cashing in on this emergency, but in my view it is in consequence of that emergency that this decision has been made.

We at the County Hall are not—as I am sure your Lordships are not—insensible of the need of expanding generating capacity as quickly as possible; nor are we insensible of the difficulties of various kinds which face the Government. Two years ago we contacted the Ministry as to a comprehensive investigation for siting new generating stations in the London area. We are not opposed to generating stations, but we are opposed to them if they are not in the right places.

It may be that there is a strong case—there is certainly in the minds of some people who are qualified to speak—that at least some of these stations should be erected outside London, down the Thames Estuary. In any case, we submit that Bankside is the wrong place for a generating station. I have the gravest doubts—and these doubts are shared by many others more informed on the technical aspects than I—as to whether any time will be saved at all.

Plant, through the shortage of steel, may well form the bottleneck. I believe it is the case that other projects for new stations, or the enlargement of existing ones, where no difficulties as to site or buildings have arisen, are, nevertheless, being held up for plant because, inter alia, of the shortage of steel.

The Minister says that the people of London need power and warmth as quickly as possible. No one disputes that, and it is, indeed, the case. On a parity reasoning one could justify anything, and indeed in the past that was done. Tomorrow was generally sacrificed to to-day. One might, for instance, having regard to the housing problem, seek to justify building houses without bathrooms, without lavatories, without separate water supplies.

One might justify these things on the grounds of urgency. It would be proposing to do precisely what was done fifty or sixty years ago—and reproducing with a remarkable fidelity precisely the same result. In all humility—which I must confess is a quality strange to me—I beg your Lordships' House and the Government to consider whether the long- term interests of the future are to be sacrificed for a brief and indeed problematical advantage for the present.

If that be so—I do not want to overstate the position—it may well mean an end of planning in any real sense, and we may have to abandon many of our hopes and aspirations of a better London. If this project proceeds I submit that the replanning and redeveloping of London will be just for to-day without a care for the to-morrows that follow. London is littered with non-conforming buildings: that is one of our great problems of replanning and redeveloping London.

If care is not exercised, then bit by bit, by project after project, planning will be submerged in a new ugliness dressed up to appear to be beautiful. That is what we are in danger of doing on this occasion. The issue here is, do we mean to plan or don't we? I do not believe the people of London would wish that this station should be built, with all its harmful results on the planning of London, in order that they have a greater electricity supply a few months earlier.

I believe that they would be willing to accept whatever hardship might be entailed. As in war, so in peace, they will "take it" for the London they love. I am convinced that they do not want the planning of London to be jeopardized for their own brief advantages. For the people who live in the mean streets, the narrow courts, and the slums, who battle day after day with dirt and grime—for them planning means comfort, convenience, cleanliness, and also beauty, which are real things.

They will understand and appreciate. They are behind us, I am convinced, when we beg the Government to think again and to reverse this decision. May I conclude on a personal note? I have played a not inconsiderable part in the formulation of the County of London Plan, and in promoting a number of important comprehensive schemes in token of fulfilment of some of its beckoning conceptions.

I am not a Londoner, but I have lived in London for forty years. I am passionately devoted to London and its people, to the ideal of a convenient, comfortable and dignified London. I believe that there can be no community happiness, physical or spiritual, except in healthy and worthy surroundings. For me and my colleagues at County Hall, the County of London Plan is no book of pictures of agreeable designs: it is a challenge and a faith. I would beseech the Government not to cast down those of us who seek a better and a finer London, those of us who told the people of London in the dark and dangerous days of enemy attack that we would build a better London.

We meant it at that time; at County Hall we mean it now. We wish to keep faith. I ask the Government not to discourage us, and not to destroy the faith of the people in our or their sincerity.

My Lords, you may well wonder why a Bishop from the banks of the Wye should be intervening this afternoon in a question which primarily affects the banks of the Thames. My answer is that for nearly ten years before moving to Hereford I was the Bishop of Southwark, and I should be failing in my duty and affection to my former charges.

I do not propose in any way to go over the same ground that they have so ably covered. I would rather concentrate on one point, and that is the matter of the jeopardizing of the whole development of South London if this scheme goes through and, as a consequence, the probable modifying of the City of London Plan as regards the southern bank of the Thames.

There are two other churches of cathedral rank which are also concerned. I cannot believe that those responsible for Westminster Abbey are wholly unconcerned with what happens on the south side of the Thames; and certainly my former cathedral of Southwark, one of the smallest but one of the most beautiful of our cathedrals, would suffer if this change of Plan were allowed to proceed.

And it would be jeopardized, and might have to be given up altogether, if this Bankside power house were to be erected. It is of incalculable value to people who are now living in such surroundings as the citizens of Southwark and other South London Boroughs are living that they should have free access to open spaces and fresh air, and, in fresh air and plenty of light, to that great glory of our capital, the river. They do not have it at present. When you have the time, if you will try to catch a glimpse of the fine buildings on the north side of the river from the area on the south side, between Waterloo Bridge and London Bridge, you will find that it is only with the greatest difficulty and, possibly, with some ingenuity, that you can obtain such a view.

And then it will be only between the cracks and crevices which separate that strange collection of buildings which occupy—I will not say adorn—the river bank. If this Plan went through, people who now live in crowded and dark habitations would have access to splendid thoroughfares, flanked by gardens, with the river beyond. That would be worthily completed by a series of noble buildings, many of them dedicated to the use of the general public.

What a difference that would be—a difference for which centuries to come would bless the present age. My Lords, I am quite certain that your Lordships will all desire to be associated with me in expressing our appreciation of the sincere speech to which we have just listened from the right reverend Prelate. We shall always listen to him on future occasions, for he speaks with high moral dignity and the full application of his knowledge and experience to the good things in life.

We shall hope to welcome him again and again in your Lordships' House. So far as Southwark is concerned, I, too, know that borough, and it has always been a matter of deep regret to me that that beautiful little Cathedral has been submerged by bridges, breweries, hotels and railways until it can hardly be seen. It is an advantage of the planning scheme that we are going to have, that at least the railway bridges over the Thames which have dwarfed that cathedral will be removed.

With regard to this debate, it is interesting that there has been such unanimity in the attack on private enterprise. Private enterprise, uncontrolled, has been attacked in particular with great broadsides from the Opposition, and I welcome the change of heart on the part of those who, in the past, have supported, with all the eloquence at their command, this unrestricted development of uncontrolled private enterprise.

My Lords, may I interrupt to say that that was never the attitude of the Party to which I belong. I need hardly say that I am delighted to learn that this change of heart was not in the noble Lord, because he never possessed such ideals. However that may be, let me say that we have to live with private enterprise for the time being, and, in consequence, it has been necessary to secure, in the Government plan, the support of private enterprise for these primary needs of the ordinary people of our country.

I do not know whether the Government are going to reconsider this scheme or not; I have no information. But I do feel that in considering the present proposal, or in considering any alternative, there are certain primary factors that ought to be borne in mind. In the first place, it is obviously unwise to assume that a power station need be an ugly project. I would venture to suggest that those of your Lordships who may have visited the Royal Academy will perhaps have seen in the architectural section representations of two of the most beautiful public buildings that this country could have, one of which, the Nottingham power station, is a thing of beauty even though it is also a thing of utility.

There can be, therefore, no reason for turning down a project on the basis that a power station is ugly merely because, in the past, power stations have been ugly, and because the present power station at this place is exceedingly ugly.

Even private enterprise learns that it is unwise to affront public opinion by putting up buildings of such colossal ugliness as that to which London is exposed in the existing small Bankside power station.

I would, however, suggest that it might be wise to put the new design for the shell of the power station—for after all a power station is merely a shell for machinery—out to limited competition, and not to rely only upon one architect, even an architect of the eminence of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott. We want the young architects to have a chance, we want to have nominated by the great architectural schools young men of promise, maybe young men who have been away serving in the war and who have not had much opportunity to develop their ideas.

We want to give young architects a chance to bring out that which is new in the growing and developing architectural ideas of the country. So I put forward, for consideration, the suggestion that we should be prepared to have a change in the contract for the power station, along the line of introducing limited competition. To this, I am perfectly certain, a man of the eminence of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott would willingly give his co-operative assistance.

One other factor, I think, ought to be borne in mind in connexion with this particular place, and that is that a power station is not only a manufacturer of electric current, it is also a manufacturer of heat. I do not refer to heating by means of electric fires or other apparatus but heating by the utilization of residual waste heat. That has already been made use of in the case of another great power station in London, from which hot water for baths and central heating is being carried over the river and is warming to-day, at no cost in fuel at all, some thousands of houses.

It was estimated by a writer in The Times a few days ago that something like 50, tons of coal annually could be saved by the utilization of the residual heat from the new Bank-side station. The residual heat, instead of being wasted, would be utilized to provide heating and hot water for thousands of houses in the immediate neighbourhood of the power station. The right reverend Prelate mentioned the possibility of damage to the development of open spaces in Southwark.

But your Lordships will have seen from the plan in Committee Room C that there is no interference with the Bankside road at all.

The station is set more than two hundred feet back amidst trees and grass, and the road proceeds from bridge to bridge entirely uninterrupted. And, after all, if you are really concerned with beauty, let me remind your Lordships that the Abercrombie Scheme for the south bank has not been accepted by the London County Council; it is under consideration still.

And what is it? Precisely, but not the details, and I can see no reason for assuming that a power station of proper design, a beautiful building, could not fit in with the details of any plan—unless, of course, it were to be held that a beautiful power station can never be so beautiful as a block of flats or business offices.

I could not agree with that. I believe that a beautiful public building can be more beautiful and useful than even the best designed block of flats or business premises. This proposal, I believe, does not interfere with the Abercrombie plan to the extent which has been suggested by my noble friend, Lord Latham. As regards St. Paul's, I understand that the revised City of London Plan still surrounds the Cathedral with blocks of business premises. I may be wrong, but I understand that is the case.

All there will be is a vista cutting from St. Paul's to the river, which will enable those who stand by St. Paul's to see the blocks of flats and business premises on the other side instead of the most beautiful part, at least, of the new power station. A new power station at Bankside would enable the old and ugly contraption we have at the present moment to be cleared away at a much earlier date than would be possible. Because at the present moment we need all the electricity we can have; therefore we cannot afford to suffer even the loss of the relatively small percentage which comes from the old Bankside station.

Within the next eight or ten years, however, it will be possible to eliminate the smaller old station and secure the advantage of a larger, more modern and more cleanly oil-fired station. That is the reason why it would help us to remove this monstrosity at a much earlier date. We have heard a good deal about amenities, but can one enjoy beauty if one is cold? Can one enjoy beauty if one has no hot water? Can one enjoy beauty if one has electric apparatus but is not able to turn it on because of the shortage of generating capacity?

Surely if we are in a position to combine amenity with beauty there is no reason why we should turn down a project which should be persisted in for the good of the people of London as a whole.

What I complain about is the thoroughly bad public relations work of the Government. The public relations department is there to advise the Minister as to whether or not there will be opposition to his plans, and to tell him how to get across what is wanted by the Ministry in the interests of the people.

Do the public relations departments have access to the Ministers? Do they foresee what is going to come about?

Have we, as a matter of fact, enabled certain opponents of the proposal to get well ahead in the influencing of public opinion? I do not know; but I do think there should be always a simple rule for the guidance of those who wish to secure acceptance of a policy. There should be, first of all, an explanation of exactly why the proposals are made.

There should be consultation with all those concerned and the fullest possible information as to the objects and the results of what is proposed, so that, in our democracy, all the people may be in a position to make up their minds whether a proposal is good or bad. That, after all, is the advantage of democratic discussion. I hope that the result of the discussion in your Lordships' House will lead to a decision in the interests of all the people.

My Lords, the case against the Bankside station has been very fully stated by previous speakers this afternoon and by a long list of distinguished letter writers in The Times. I want to speak on only one or two points which add to the formidable accumulation and weight of condemnation which this scheme has received. Monkhouse, one of the few supporters of this scheme in The Times —the only other two apart from him have been, very naturally, the firm who are going to build the station and the architect who is going to design it—in his letter, asserts that an oil burning power station will deposit vastly fewer products of incomplete combustion within the area.

I am informed by experts that if dense or obvious smoke is not present or is "consumed" there will be just as much danger, or more, to the fabric of St. Paul's as if smoke were emitted by the chimney. The products of the combustion of any fuel, solid, liquid or gaseous, are chemically highly injurious to all limestones, particularly in an atmosphere which besides being polluted is infected with continuous damp.

The products of the combustion of liquid fuel are not chemically less productive of decay than those of solid fuel. The agents of decay do not necessarily show. That is to say, if the amateur does not see any smoke coming out of a chimney, that does not remove the danger. If it is decided to make the chimneys of the proposed power station miraculously low, the damage to St. Paul's will be many times greater than we imagine, because there will be a greater concentration of injurious gases in the lower levels of the atmosphere.

No doubt the Government will have observed this afternoon—it has been pointed out by various speakers—how unanimous and widespread is the opinion against them on this point, and that there is no aspect in it of party bias. By not submitting the site to the Fine Arts Commission, the Government have indicated their well-justified anticipation of the verdict it would have received.

Surely the weight of such opinion must raise in the mind even of the most complacent politician some suspicion that for once he may be wrong. We know, of course, the strains and the cleavages that go on within a Cabinet, and how tempting it is to throw overboard the long-term principles in order to ease a short-term emergency.

That fleeting and ephemeral phantom, the Minister of Fuel and Power, has acquired from his winter disasters the panic attitude to life, and he rushes about like a man trying to prevent the breaking of a dyke by filling the gaps with little pieces of sand. But we were given to understand that the Government were so intelligent that they knew there were better and more permanent methods of preventing a flood. I am feeling very much discouraged with the intelligence the Government have shown in this matter.

I feel rather like an American lady I knew, who used to complain [ Surely the whole point of the Government is that they believe in intelligent planning. If not, what on earth is the point of this Government? I am a convinced planner myself.

It seems to me obvious that it is better, both in war and in peace, to have a strategic idea rather than to deal as best you can with every difficulty as it arises. Silkin, of course, thinks so too. He has thought so throughout his career, and that is why he was made the Minister of Planning. It is for that reason the Ministry of Planning was created. The Minister of Planning has been very rightly called by someone the "Minister for Posterity," and he must be aware that posterity will not arise to call him blessed if, in order to tide over a doubtful and possible gap of eighteen months, he destroys for ever the proper construction and design of the next great new London.

The layout of the south bank is the keystone of the new London that was to arise from the devastation of the war. I have heard people ask, "What does it matter about London anyway, an ugly and shabby old city, past praying for? But London was not always ugly, and the fascination of London is that it always reflects the ideas and spirit of the time. Consequently, in more centuries than not, London has been a beautiful city, reflecting the great ages of our history.

The crowded colour and turgid life of medieval London, reflecting in its architecture and layout the fierce and formidable Elizabethan conception of existence, must have made a fascinating city. Very little of it is left; the Great Fire destroyed most of it. But a new London of even greater beauty arose in the eighteenth century, reflecting the noble and stately aristocratic conception of a civilized society.

What the Thames can be like can be seen in Canaletto's famous picture owned by the Duke of Richmond. More of 18th Century London is left than of medieval London, but there is not a great deal of it, and it is rapidly decreasing. The industrial revolution destroyed most of it. We all know what the industrial revolution made of our cities, and London reflects that indifference to ugliness, that concentration upon utility, which was characteristic of the middle-class business men who controlled the 19th Century.

A great deal of the deadly monotony of the residential districts and the insanitary filth of the industrial slums has been destroyed by the Germans. There will be a new London to reflect this eager and ardent young democracy which has pinned its faith upon the Labour Government. The Government are proposing to betray that faith, and to abandon the great Plan for London which was drawn up by Sir Patrick Abercrombie at their request.

If they do, the new Landon will reflect the chaos caused by that betrayal, and I urge them once again to reconsider this disastrous and reactionary step. My Lords, I know no more than I have read in the papers about this proposal, and, therefore, I do not propose to offer any opinion on its merits or demerits. But, as has been said by other speakers, the principles raised go beyond this particular case.

What appears to have happened is that a local authority—the biggest and most important local authority in the world—has been told, in regard to part of its plan, and at a fairly advanced stage in its planning, that it must take a part back and do it again.

That is exactly what other and lesser local authorities are afraid is going to happen to them. They are afraid that, after they have taken considerable trouble and spent a lot of money, some Minister, sometimes after a very little warning, will say that the scheme will not do.

I am wondering whether the noble and learned Viscount the Lord Chancellor can explain whether it is the Government's attitude that the location of electricity undertakings is a matter which falls rather outside the competence of local authorities.

There are matters, such as the military training grounds which we discussed in your Lordships' House not long ago, where local authorities may have views, and do have strong views, but obviously they cannot give a final judgment as to their use.

But, prima facie, this matter appears to be a domestic matter and one which the London County Council could properly decide. If the Government agree that it is a matter within the discretion of the local authority, but contend that the local authority have not used that discretion very well, it seems to me that rather a different position arises; and when the Town and Country Planning Bill comes before your Lordships' House we ought to consider how this kind of frustration and waste of time and money can in future be avoided.

My Lords, in rising to add my small, but very decided, quota to the general chorus of disapproval of the Governmental scheme with regard to this projected blot on the London landscape—a landscape which already contains far too many for it to be able to afford any new ones—there is only one point I want to raise.

It is a point analogous to the first one raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Esher. I find that on May 5 there was an all-Party meeting in another place at which Mrs. Bolton, Chairman of the L. Town Planning Committee, made—among other statements—the following: You, Mr.

Minister, have decided that Bankside should be an oil-fired generating station, but an oil-fired station will mean no less noise and probably more smell than a coal-fired one. Sulphur fumes are most objectionable. Gas washing plant was installed to diminish this nuisance, but the nuisance is not eliminated and the surrounding area is blanketed in sulphur fumes at times. The sulphur content of oil is appreciably greater than that of coal and there is little doubt that a pall of smoke would sometimes hang over the Bankside area … That seems to me to accord very ill with a statement in one of the numerous letters written to The Times on this subject—a letter sent by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, in which he said: But I must point out that the Bankside power station will be unlike any other station in the world; it will emit no smoke or grit.

I trust that the representative of His Majesty's Government who is to reply on their behalf will perhaps enlighten us on this point. I confess that I feel very strongly about this matter. I was born and bred in this city, and, as has already been said, it is a city which at the moment is far from having a prepossessing appearance. It has been beautiful once, and it should be beautiful once again. I would remind your Lordships that at the end of the last century there was a poet—Lionel Johnson, I think—who, in a moment of ecstasy before that incomparable dome, wrote: Afloat upon ethereal tides, St.

Paul's above the city rides. I hope that His Majesty's Government will be able to assure us that these ethereal tides will not, in the near future, be tides principally of sulphur. My Lords, perhaps it may not be inappropriate for the first Chairman of the ad hoc Town Planning Committee of the London County Council to say a few words before the noble and learned Viscount on the Woolsack replies for the Government. I must confess that it seems to me that the noble and learned Viscount, the Lord Chancellor, is always called upon to speak for the Government when they have a very bad case.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for him on that account, but I have no sympathy for anybody who says it is right, almost before a scheme has begun, that it should be vitiated by an important exception at the behest of a Government Department. After all, the London County Council represent London; and, in this connexion, not only London, but Greater London and all interested in proper planning.

Each chimney was connected to an individual boiler and a separate building contained the generator that was driven by the steam from the boilers to produce electricity for distribution in the local area and by cables across the river to the City.

Electricity generation was originally a local activity with no national grid to distribute across the country. The design of the original power station and the equipment used was highly polluting with so many chimneys pouring smoke, ash and grit onto Bankside.

Planning during the war identified the need for a significant number of new power stations across the country with post war consumption of electricity expected to surge.

London would be one of the areas where the old, polluting power stations urgently needed to be replaced with cleaner power stations with higher generation capacity. The County of London Plan proposed the redevelopment of the south bank of the river to remove heavy industry and line the river with offices, flats and public gardens with commercial and light industrial buildings to the rear.

Heavy industry such as power stations were to be relocated out of central London to places such as Poplar, Rotherhithe and east along the river. The following extract from the plans shows the proposals for the south bank:. As always happens with long-term, strategic plans, events take over and problems such as power shortages during the very cold winter of forced different decisions to be made and the go ahead was given in for a new power station to be built at Bankside.

In giving this approval there was one major change. Originally it was planned for the power station to continue using coal, however the level of pollution in the area, the space needed for coal storage and the need to diversify power production away from one signal source Influenced the Government to change plans for the new Bankside Power Station to switch from coal to oil. As well as being slightly less polluting, oil had the advantage that it could be stored in large underground tanks, thereby removing the need for large fuel storage areas above ground.

Although oil was slightly less polluting, the new Bankside Power Station would continue to have an impact on the local area and on the river. Flue gases were washed by water taken from the river. These waters would then be returned to the river with a higher particle content and acidic level. When the go ahead was given for the new power station, as well as concerns about locating such an industry in central London, there were also complaints that the new building would dwarf St.

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott changed the design from dual chimneys to a single chimney and ensured that the overall height of the chimney was lower than the dome of the cathedral. This was helped with the land on which the cathedral is built being higher than the river side location of the power station, however the reduced height of the chimney did contribute to ongoing local pollution problems. Construction of the first half of Bankside Power Station took place between and This saw the completion of the western half of the building and the central chimney with first power being generated in , and this is the status of Bankside Power Station that my father photographed in the photo at the start of this post.

He had also walked around the area a number of years earlier when construction first started. He took the following two photos showing the demolition of the buildings that had been on the site, and the start of construction of the new power station.

In this first photo, he is standing in front of what would become the wall of the building facing to the river, at the western edge. Five chimneys on the rear of the original power station can be seen, and on the far left of the photo are the lower levels of the new chimney.

If I was much closer it would just be looking directly into the building, however it does give a view of the same scene as it is today with the base of the chimney on the left of both photos. In the above photo it is the central core of the chimney which is seen, the brick outer structure is yet to be added. The Britain from Above website has a number of photos taken by Aerofilms which show the Bankside site under development. The first photo is from and shows the site prior to development of the new power station.

The site can be located by the double row of black chimneys of the original power station which is located in the middle of the lower part of the photo. The next photo is from and shows the power station nearing completion.