Battersea Powerstation
"The Cathedral of Electrons"
Battersea has been one of those iconic sites I had been itching to see over the last 5 years, and it wasn't for lack of effort in that time either before we finally managed to see the good stuff
It's one of those sites you always seem to put on a back burner with the intention of 'one day' bothering to take a look
That and all the talk in recent years of it being developed and nothing actually happening has further given reason to further sit on it
Every man and his dog has done this place to death (except us), and work was starting up on site so I decided we really should pull our collective fingers out and go have another crack before it's too late..
I've had the usual run around with security myself on 2 previous visits; they were always keen here, the place could be easily mistaken for Blackpool Illuminations
Making the way into the power station a mission in it's own right
A previous visit with GAJ & BHG ended up with us spending a good chunk of the night in here (finally) after phase one of pulling our fingers out
I'm not ashamed to admit it, but we failed hard on that trip ^ In a nut shell we saw lock stock the fucking lot except the two control rooms haha
The penultimate visit proved a valuable recce if nothing else and paved the way for the later successful outing
I can laugh now having since returned, but fuck me the place is a maze, made much harder by dead ends, pit's of death, sketch climbs, locked doors and of course security
The only regret I have is not bothering to take pics of much of the internal bits & bobs we saw, however I won't pretend, the place is fucked and I wasn't there for Der-P
(Hand-held running)
A couple of comedy golds that will be well and truly etched in my memory..
When we rocked up on the previous trip, I begun sorting various gear out on the pavement of a quiet street, when a door opened and two blokes emerged having a chat
I didn't pay too much attention initially as I was engrossed in packing kit for 3, but it turned out one of the blokes was once a secca at the power station
As soon as he saw my gear he knew it, chatting away he seemed sound as a pound, even gave us a few tips on 'how to a Power station B'
Another moment was when GAJ & BHG had lost the will to live with 'B' side.. I persisted on and eventually found a potential opening which I was convinced would lead us down to the control room
As GAJ accidentally the door a 50ft drop greeted us, very fortunate he didn't follow through (he possibly did)
In the end we made it up 'B' side roof to the top of the NE wash tower/chimney stack, folk were coming to work and it started to piss down so we decided to bail
Greeted by security doing their rounds on the way out across no man's land (to this day we'll never know if they saw us or not), either way half a job done and I was grinning all the way back to Manchester
The following day I checked my pics and they were gash, droplets of unavoidable water on the lens, I now needed to get back ASAP!
Having returned home I scratched my arse a little more having looked again at old threads/pics of the place..
Trying to suss out where feasibly we could access both of the 2 control rooms having previously seen first hand where they are both situated in relation to the rest of the building was no easy task
>> FFW a couple of weeks and we were back, sans BHG, this time with Adders in tow
'A' side looked to be more of a mission and the harder of the two, but we were very close on the previous trip having since gleaned some snippets from a few people cheers
Our journey to control room 'A' rapidly became a clusterfuck despite having some intel, in the end we made it in so that's all that matters really
Synchoscope 1933 - 2013
'A' Side Directors Hall
'A' Side Roof
"The Cathedral of Electrons"
Battersea has been one of those iconic sites I had been itching to see over the last 5 years, and it wasn't for lack of effort in that time either before we finally managed to see the good stuff
It's one of those sites you always seem to put on a back burner with the intention of 'one day' bothering to take a look
That and all the talk in recent years of it being developed and nothing actually happening has further given reason to further sit on it
Every man and his dog has done this place to death (except us), and work was starting up on site so I decided we really should pull our collective fingers out and go have another crack before it's too late..
I've had the usual run around with security myself on 2 previous visits; they were always keen here, the place could be easily mistaken for Blackpool Illuminations
Making the way into the power station a mission in it's own right
A previous visit with GAJ & BHG ended up with us spending a good chunk of the night in here (finally) after phase one of pulling our fingers out
I'm not ashamed to admit it, but we failed hard on that trip ^ In a nut shell we saw lock stock the fucking lot except the two control rooms haha
The penultimate visit proved a valuable recce if nothing else and paved the way for the later successful outing
I can laugh now having since returned, but fuck me the place is a maze, made much harder by dead ends, pit's of death, sketch climbs, locked doors and of course security
The only regret I have is not bothering to take pics of much of the internal bits & bobs we saw, however I won't pretend, the place is fucked and I wasn't there for Der-P
(Hand-held running)
A couple of comedy golds that will be well and truly etched in my memory..
When we rocked up on the previous trip, I begun sorting various gear out on the pavement of a quiet street, when a door opened and two blokes emerged having a chat
I didn't pay too much attention initially as I was engrossed in packing kit for 3, but it turned out one of the blokes was once a secca at the power station
As soon as he saw my gear he knew it, chatting away he seemed sound as a pound, even gave us a few tips on 'how to a Power station B'
Another moment was when GAJ & BHG had lost the will to live with 'B' side.. I persisted on and eventually found a potential opening which I was convinced would lead us down to the control room
As GAJ accidentally the door a 50ft drop greeted us, very fortunate he didn't follow through (he possibly did)
In the end we made it up 'B' side roof to the top of the NE wash tower/chimney stack, folk were coming to work and it started to piss down so we decided to bail
Greeted by security doing their rounds on the way out across no man's land (to this day we'll never know if they saw us or not), either way half a job done and I was grinning all the way back to Manchester
The following day I checked my pics and they were gash, droplets of unavoidable water on the lens, I now needed to get back ASAP!
Having returned home I scratched my arse a little more having looked again at old threads/pics of the place..
Trying to suss out where feasibly we could access both of the 2 control rooms having previously seen first hand where they are both situated in relation to the rest of the building was no easy task
>> FFW a couple of weeks and we were back, sans BHG, this time with Adders in tow
'A' side looked to be more of a mission and the harder of the two, but we were very close on the previous trip having since gleaned some snippets from a few people cheers
Our journey to control room 'A' rapidly became a clusterfuck despite having some intel, in the end we made it in so that's all that matters really
Synchoscope 1933 - 2013
'A' Side Directors Hall
'A' Side Roof
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