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Report - - Battersea Power Station - April 2012 | Industrial Sites | 28DaysLater.co.uk

Report - Battersea Power Station - April 2012

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Chaos

28DL Full Member
28DL Full Member
Here's a bit of history on the power station robbed from Wiki

Battersea Power Station is a decommissioned coal-fired power station located on the south bank of the River Thames, in Battersea, an inner-city district of South London. It comprises two individual power stations, built in two stages in the form of a single building. Battersea A Power Station was built in the 1930s, with Battersea B Power Station to its east in the 1950s. The two stations were built to an identical design, providing the well known four-chimney layout. The station ceased generating electricity in 1983, but over the past 50 years it has become one of the best known landmarks in London and is Grade II* listed.[1][2] The station's celebrity owes much to numerous cultural appearances, which include a shot in The Beatles' 1965 movie Help!, and being used in the cover art of Pink Floyd's 1977 album Animals. In addition, a photograph of the plant's control room was used as cover art on Hawkwind's 1977 album Quark, Strangeness and Charm.
Since the station's closure the site has remained largely unused, with numerous failed redevelopment plans from successive site owners. The site is currently owned by the administrators of Irish company Real Estate Opportunities (REO), who bought it for £400 million in November 2006.[3] In November 2010, REO was granted permission to refurbish the station for public use and build 3,400 homes across the site.[4] However, this plan fell through due to REO's debt being called in by its creditors, the state-owned banks in the UK and Ireland.
The station is the largest brick building in Europe and is notable for its original, lavish Art Deco interior fittings and decor.[5] However, the building's condition has been described as "very bad" by English Heritage and is included in its Buildings at Risk Register.[6] In 2004, while the redevelopment project was stalled, and the building remained derelict, the site was listed on the 2004 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund.[7] The combination of an existing debt burden of some £750 million, the need to make a £200 million contribution to a proposed 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 make a commercial development of the site a significant challenge.[8][9] In December 2011, the latest plans to develop the site collapsed with the debt called in by the creditors.[10] In February 2012 the site was placed on sale on the open property market through commercial estate agent Knight Frank.[11]

This was a site on my radar since I started with this whole Urbecking malarkey, I had some plans to do a non UE related activity one weekend which was rained off so having not done an explore for a month or so and after seeing Happyshoppers amazing pictures of the place, I decided that now was the time.

Big thanks to a few guys that helped out with info OT, Tommo and Dicky21, thanks for your help guys and thanks also to those guys who responded to my PM's.

Visited with MarkyMark and Innercityrob and to be honest, the day turned out to be a disaster from start to finish and I wasn't really happy with any of my pictures. Rookie mistakes with wrong apertures and ISO's all day, if I could kick myself in the bollocks, I would! We wanted some sunrise shots so wanted to set off at 4am but ended up leaving late after MarkyMark witnessed the results of a hit and run so had to stop on the way to mine.

As soon as we arrived, we dumped the car on the opposite side of the Thames and took some early morning shots.

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We then went for a Maccy D's and a pooh and headed for our entry point.

After a not-so-graceful entrance, jumping down from a fence, landing backwards and tripping over a concrete lip and falling backwards down a flight of concrete stairs, we were in! We made our way over to the grass mounds to watch for security doing their rounds but saw nothing, we took the opportunity to get a shot of the dock cranes.

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We made a run for it across no-man's-land and under the Herras and we were inside. I was amazed at how fucked it was, I mean, for the majority of the building, there's nothing left and it amazes me even more that there are a couple of preserved little gems in there.

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I loved these pictures gracing the beautiful walls under A-side control room

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We looked around A-side for a way up to the control room but couldn't find anything without some proper dangerous climbing, we didn't want to risk it. We found a couple of doors which we think lead to control room A and the white room but both were locked well and we couldn't see any other way in. Maybe we didn't look hard enough, I'm not sure but we spent a long time looking round for access.

We found the spiral staircase and the beautiful art deco lift

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After failing A-side control room, we headed over to B-side. In the middle was a huge function room set up with a carpeted entrance. We later found out that this was used to hold an event for potential buyers of the power station. We think that this is why extra effort was put in to ensure any remaining points of interest were under lock and key.

We headed over to B-side and mooched around for a bit, found a nice old drawing mounted to a board of the power station.

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We looked around for control room B and for some bizarre reason failed to find any trace of it after patrolling up and down the floors on B-side. We decided to hit the roof and enjoy some mid morning sunshine.

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...and up the scaffolding to the chimney stacks

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When we headed back down, we looked around the offices of B-side, there was a lot of junk but an interesting room full of drawings and blueprints, very cool.

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We then decided to try once again to find the elusive control room, we walked round and round and then realised that we'd been completely missing a floor out.... the floor that the control room was on. We made our way up and found our entry point and were in! Finally! It was well worth seeing despite me taking crap photo's. There was even a light switch to give us some light, magical!

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We then decided to have another pop at finding a way into A-side control room, made our way back over there, up some scaffolding and through a window. We still couldn't figure out a way in and upon exiting through aforementioned window, heard "oi, come out lads, we know you're in there". Fucking great!

To cut a long story short, security nabbed us, decided to be total assholes and tried blaming us for damaging some doors, phoned the fuzz and got us banged up for a few hours. When they realised our footprints didn't match the prints found on the damaged doors, they apologised, let us out and gave us a lift back to the car.

What a day! I'll be back, I'm not finished yet Battersea, I still want some night shots, decent dock crane shots, A-side control room and white room shots, not to mention some better shots of the rest of it when my brains in gear.
 

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