Tag Archives: Bankside Power Station

A Bankside Panorama In 1949 And 2017

I have covered Bankside a number of times, however in this week’s post I want to show a different perspective of Bankside, as it was in 1949 from the north bank of the River Thames, before any of the developments that would transform the area from industrial to the arts and leisure Bankside that we see today.

For the post, I am covering the area of Bankside from Tate Modern (the old Bankside Power Station) up to Southwark Bridge.

My father took the following photo of part of Bankside in 1949:

Bankside Panorama

And here is my photo of the same area on a grey day in 2017:

Bankside Panorama

In the centre of the 2017 photo, behind the two trees is the Globe Theatre. To the right of this are the only couple of buildings that are the same in the two photos. Just behind the tree to the right of the Globe is 49 Bankside, the three storey white building (I covered 49 Bankside and Cardinal Cap Alley in detail in a post which can be found here).

To the right of 49 Bankside is a short row of houses, which again are the same in both photos. Everything else in the two photos has changed.

The building immediately to the left of 49 Bankside in the 1949 photo was the office and factory of Craig and Rose. Their name can be seen in large white letters along the top of the first floor. Between the ground and first floors are the words “Forth Bridge Brand Paints”.

Craig and Rose were a paint manufacturer who are still in business today and claim to be the UK’s oldest independent paint manufacturer.

The company was established in 1829 by James Craig and Hugh Rose, two Scottish entrepreneurs who set up the business in Edinburgh. The business expanded rapidly and in 1880 won the contract to supply paint for the Forth Bridge, with their Red Oxide paint being supplied to paint the bridge until 1993.

The Bankside building was constructed in 1897 for Craig and Rose, and operated until the early 1950s. Craig and Rose are now based in Scotland.

When I was sorting through my files of scans of my father’s photos I found the following photo which was taken on the same day as the above 1949 photo.

This is of the original Bankside Power Station on the left and the Phoenix Gas Works on the right. I wrote about the original Bankside Power Station in this post where there are photos of the first phase of the new power station built over the site of the gasworks.

Bankside Panorama

On the left of the above photo is a conveyor belt running from almost the top of the power station down to the ground on the extreme left of the photo. I believe this was to transport coal into the power station ready to be burnt.

This conveyor belt is also visible in the photo at the top of the post with 49 Bankside and Craig and Rose, so despite the photos being different orientations I put the two together to produce the following view of the wider Bankside:

Bankside Panorama

And with a bit of cropping and some very amateur joining of photos I present a Bankside Panorama in 1949 and almost seventy years later in 2017.

Bankside Panorama

Only a small part of the Millennium Bridge is shown as for the photo on the left, I had to take this from almost under the bridge to provide a slightly angled view otherwise with a straight on view, 49 Bankside, the key building in both 1949 and 2017 was obscured by the tree.

I am not sure what is the most remarkable – that this stretch of Bankside has changed so much, or that 49 Bankside and the short row of houses to the right have managed to survive when everything else along this stretch of the river has been redeveloped.

The two photos also show how use of the river has changed. In 1949 the river was busy with lighters and barges moored along the river. Today, the river is quiet apart from tourist boats and the Thames Clipper river buses. I believe the moving boat on the left of the 1949 photo is a police launch as it looks identical to photos I have of moored police launches by Waterloo Bridge.

It was interesting to stand on the north bank of the river with the 1949 Bankside panorama in hand, looking at the view of Bankside seventy years later.

I do need to return when the leaves have fallen from the tree in front of number 49, and the lighting is better so I can get an improved 2017 view, with the bridge and avoiding the grey backdrop, however I hope you find the two panoramas of Bankside as interesting as I have.

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Building Bankside Power Station

In 1953, soon after it started operation, my father took the photo below of Bankside Power Station. The photo suffers from a problem I often have when taking a photo of the southern bank of the river from the north on a clear day as the sun is in the south and puts the power station into silhouette.

In the photo, Bankside Power Station also looks only half built, which indeed it was. There is a smaller building on the left with two rows of chimneys receding from the river’s edge. This is the original power station on the site.

Bankside Power Station

Roughly the same view today. The Millennium Bridge now crosses the river in front of the old Bankside Power Station building.

Bankside Power Station

A view from further along the river showing the full size of the former Bankside Power Station building.

Bankside Power Station

This area of Bankside has produced energy for many years before the current Bankside Power Station was built. The following extract from the 1892 Ordnance Survey map shows towards the right of the map an Electric Lighting Works and on the left the Phoenix Gas Works. Both of these industries were located adjacent to the river as they both used coal to generate either electricity or gas.

Bankside Power Station

The original power station was built by the City of London Electric Lighting Company in 1891 and over the years underwent a number of extensions and upgrades to form the building with the two rows of chimneys as seen in may father’s photo.

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. There were power stations located across London, including the Regent’s Park Central Station where my grandfather was superintendent.

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 1943 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 1943 plans shows the proposals for the south bank:

Bankside Power Station

As always happens with long-term, strategic plans, events take over and problems such as power shortages during the very cold winter of 1947 forced different decisions to be made and the go ahead was given in 1947 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. Paul’s Cathedral. 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 1947 and 1953. This saw the completion of the western half of the building and the central chimney with first power being generated in 1953, 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.

Bankside Power Station

I took the following photo further away from the power station than my father’s photo above. 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.

Bankside Power Station

The second photo is looking directly across the construction site towards the south.

Bankside Power Station

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 1946 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.

Bankside Power Station

The next photo is from 1952 and shows the power station nearing completion. The core of the chimney is complete, but it lacks the outer brick facing. The metal framework around the upper part of the chimney is the same structure as shown on the lower part of the chimney in my father’s photo. The original power station can clearly be seen covering the land where the second half of the new Bankside Power Station would later be built.

Bankside Power Station

The next photo is also from 1952 and shows the power station looking from the north. This again shows the original power station to the left of the new Bankside power station.

Bankside Power Station

And the final photo in June 1952, a couple of months after the above photos now shows the main building and chimney almost complete. The photo also shows the structures on the river that allowed oil tankers to dock and unload their cargoes into the underground tanks of the power station.

Bankside Power Station

Both the old and new Bankside Power Stations continued in operation until 1959 when the old power station was finally decommissioned and demolished. The second half of the new power station was built between 1959 and 1963 by when the building we see today was finally in place. In all, around 4.2 million bricks were used on the external walls of the building and chimney.

The oil crisis during the 1970s had a considerable impact on the financial viability of oil fired power stations. The power station was also continuing to pollute the local area and the river. Power stations were also being built out of cities and there were now power stations further down the Thames. The continued operation of Bankside Power Station could no longer be justified and electricity generation finally ended at Bankside in 1981, almost 100 years from the first, small steps in electricity generation on the site.

The building remained unused for a number of years until plans were put in place to transform the building into Tate Modern. A competition was held for a new design which was won by the firm of Herzog & de Meuron. Their design made very few changes to the external structure of the building so the original design of Sir Giles Gilbert Scott is basically the building we see on Bankside today.

Bankside Power Station is a wonderful building. It is from an era when power stations were built as cathedrals of power, Battersea Power Station being another example of the style. The preservation of the external structure of the building and that now through Tate Modern it is fully open is to be appreciated.

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