Battersea rises again: It was once a world-famous symbol of British power - then of our decline. Now Battersea power station is reborn as a place for the super-rich Battersea rises again: It was once a world-famous symbol of British power - then of our decline. Now Battersea power station is reborn as a place for the super-rich Battersea rises again: It was once a world-famous symbol of British power - then of our decline. Now Battersea power station is reborn as a place for the super-rich ==== The walls are lined with huge slabs of the finest Italian marble. The Art Deco ceiling is designed to reflect the light from a row of ornate, overhead lamps, giving the hall a shimmering golden glow. The parquet floor is so delicately embossed that the men who once worked here — tough, blue-collar South Londoners — wore carpet-slippers to avoid tramping across it in their boots. Over the years, this job has taken me into some of the world’s most stunning buildings. But for the sheer unlikeliness of its over-the-top opulence, the vast, redbrick monolith I’m standing in ranks among the best of them. This isn’t a great temple, nor a citadel built to satisfy some potentate’s vanity. It is, or rather was, a humble power station, and back in the days when Britain manufactured its own wealth and its capital teemed with all manner of industry, it produced the volts that kept the cogs and turbines turning. Why was Battersea Power Station built to such extravagant specifications, particularly the first of its two plants, which was constructed in the early Thirties and sits closest to the Thames? Quite simply, the London Power Company, which commissioned it, hired the most brilliant architects and spared no expense. They were determined to offset fears that this first ‘super-station’ would not only be a ghastly eyesore, but pollute the lungs of residents for miles around with the sulphuric fug belching from its four massive chimneys. For almost half a century, it stood as a totem to the nation’s strength and ambition: a palace of power, providing a fifth of London’s electricity. By the late Seventies, however, when dirty, expensive, coal-fired plants were replaced by cheaper and cleaner forms of energy, its output dwindled and, in 1983, the lights went out for good. Battersea Power Station fast became a sadly different sort of symbol. With its 338 ft chimneys visibly cracking and its six million soot-stained bricks crumbling, it was an emblem of Britain’s decline. As years passed, it fell into the hands of a procession of speculators with doomed schemes to save it for posterity (from an Alton Towers-style theme park to a stadium for Chelsea FC) and became the city’s joke. Today, many commuters remember it only as the zany cover photograph for Pink Floyd’s album Animals (with a huge inflatable pig floating above it) and the backdrop to countless films, from Batman to The Beatles’ movie Help! The Daleks even fought Dr Who here. Now, though, this depressing, 30-year chapter in the iconic power plant’s history is coming to an end. From the outside, without its roof and minus half of one chimney, it may still seem a gigantic, post-industrial relic. Inside, however, an army of workmen are building the Battersea Power Station of tomorrow. They are forging ahead at such a rate that, soon, it will be utterly transformed. As I toured the disembowelled building this week, it was strange to think I would be among the last to glimpse its former glory. The new incarnation will be a power station only in name. Finally in the hands of developers with the apparent financial clout to fund their grandiose plans — not a British company, but a powerful Malaysian consortium — it will form the centrepiece of a futuristic, £8 billion village on the South Bank. =============== Battersea rises,Battersea power station,Now Battersea power station is reborn as a place for the super-rich,Battersea rises again: Now Battersea power station is reborn as a place for the super-rich,Battersea (Location)

Comments

1. wow huge! place!
2. How times have changed.