Battersea Power Station

About Battersea Power Station

Decommissioned coal-fired power station in London, now in use as a premium shopping centre

Battersea Power Station is one of London's great industrial icons, a preserved coal-fired power station on the south bank of the Thames in Nine Elms, Battersea, in the Borough of Wandsworth. It was built by the London Power Company to the design of its chief engineer Leonard Pearce and CS Allott & Son, with J. Theo Halliday and Giles Gilbert Scott, designer of the red telephone box, as architects. It is one of the world's largest brick buildings and is notable for its original Art Deco interior fittings and decor. The building comprises two power stations built in two stages in a single structure: Battersea A between 1929 and 1935 and Battersea B, to its east, between 1937 and 1941, when construction paused because of the Second World War; it was completed in 1955 to a nearly identical design, creating the iconic four-chimney silhouette. Battersea A was decommissioned in 1975, the whole structure was Grade II listed in 1980, Battersea B shut in 1983, the listing was upgraded to Grade II* in 2007, and the building stood empty until 2014, falling into near ruin after a string of failed schemes. In 2012 administrators agreed with the Malaysian companies S P Setia and Sime Darby to develop the site with apartments, offices largely occupied by Apple, shops, restaurants and entertainment spaces, and it has opened to the public as an upmarket shopping and leisure destination, with a glass lift rising inside one chimney to a viewing platform. Wikivoyage suggests it is in many ways best viewed from a distance on the north bank at Chelsea.

Where:

London, United Kingdom