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Will the reimagined Battersea Power Station lure tourists to this unloved corner of London?
The redevelopment of this landmark has irked our writer for years – but all was not what he expected on opening weekend
A woman, head to toe in chainmail, shoots five million volt lightning bolts from her fingertips while dancing on a podium to thudding electric music. ‘The Lords of Lightning’ is a high energy circus act performed against the backdrop of floodlit Battersea Power Station, newly opened to the public. Energy crisis? What energy crisis?
After a decade’s long restoration, the 90-year old London landmark finally opened its doors on Friday. It has been reinvented as multi-million pound flats, offices and a shopping mall with high end retailers selling diamond encrusted watches. Cost of living crisis? What’s that?
Perhaps I’m just a country bumpkin having a sense of fun crisis but Battersea Power Station’s redevelopment has irked me for years. I used to enjoy seeing the hulking ruin from trains chugging out of London Victoria but despite the defunct coal-powered station’s Grade II* listing, the 1930s Art Deco landmark has been hidden from view by expensive overly glazed flats of no architectural merit, many displaying their occupants’ laundry.
To me, the four slim, white-fluted chimneys and massive brick structure looked like an upturned bureau dropped on the banks of the Thames from a gigantic otherworld. It has always had an air of the surreal and is certainly a landmark. It featured on the cover of a record album in my youth (Pink Floyd/Animals), with a pink pig floating in the sky.
In the Second World War, RAF pilots navigated through blackout London by the plumes of exhaust gases from the world’s largest coal-fired power station that provided Londoners with 20 per cent of their electricity. Since decommissioning in 1983 there have been many zany ideas of what to do with it – theme park, football stadium, permanent home for Cirque du Soleil – but the one that has finally arisen from the ashes is more pedestrian: a temple to consumerism.
I had expected to be outraged but the beautifully restored brickwork and remnants of its original interior – rusted gantries and girders, tiled pillars and Art Deco windows – offer a glimpse of the building’s past while the scent of cement dust still hangs in the air, a reminder of its newly completed renovation. At least a shopping mall is better than it being demolished isn’t it? One view of the building, designed by architect Giles Gilbert Scott, remains unobscured: the view from the Thames. Arriving by river bus or walking along the north side of the Thames Path before crossing Chelsea bridge offer the best first impressions.
Once inside, there are shops selling everything from Genesis cars costing almost £100,000 to £100 perfumed candles. Two exhibition spaces – one inside, one outside – detail the historic construction, operation and demise of the six-million-brick behemoth and the various plans to revive it.
One visitor from north London, Reg Ford, 82, told me how he worked in the power station as a lad of 17. “The American Embassy used to send all its documents to be burnt here,” he said. “And the Bank of England sent its old ten shilling notes to be disposed of.” It seems having money to burn here is nothing new. Reg approved of the makeover though. “It’s fantastic,” he said. “Amazing work by the architects [WilkinsonEyre].” His one reservation? “There isn’t enough affordable housing.”
The power station refurbishment went seriously over-budget, costing billions instead of the initial £500million estimate. A Malaysian consortium has invested nine billion pounds in the 42 acre brownfield site. This has caused controversy. “It’s lots of people’s pension funds in Malaysia,” said Malaysian-born Brian Su, 40, who had travelled from Stevenage to witness the opening. “I’m not sure it’s a wise investment? The money should be spent on local people in Malaysia.”
Meanwhile, in the snaking queue for the cocktail bar of ‘Control Room B’, I chatted with a woman in her 20s who lives in one of more than 200 flats in the property. “It’s good to finally have a bar so close by and to see the crowds,” she said. “We’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.” Her father bought her two-bedroom flat, off-plan, for £2.1million six years ago. Her neighbours – the few that live there full-time – are influencers and Bitcoin millionaires she said. Her flat has uninterrupted views downriver but more glass and steel apartments are proposed to edge up to her windows within years. “It doesn’t bother me,” she said. “I’ll be living in the country by then.”
Whatever you think of the morals of billions of pounds of Malaysian money pandering to the global super-rich, the best cities are dynamic, constantly reinventing themselves, re-purposing buildings rather than demolishing them, while breathing new life into previously unloved areas.
I remember when Covent Garden was the latest place to visit in London in the 1970s and I was living in the Big Smoke when another repurposed coal-fired power station – Tate Modern – opened in 2000. Its cavernous turbine hall wowed crowds, especially during one art installation, The Weather Project, by Olafur Eliasson: a vast orange sun. The former Bankside power station, also designed by Scott, had become a temple to modern art; arguably more edifying than shopping. London’s industrial heritage is still being repurposed. Canal-side Coal Drops Yard and the former gas-holders converted to flats in Kings Cross are more fine examples.
Reinvention and makeovers are not new of course. Battersea’s oldest part is around its Thames-side church, Grade I listed St Mary’s, rebuilt in the 18th century. It is a 40-minute walk from the power station westwards past Battersea Dogs and Cats Home and through Battersea Park along the Thames Path. I walked there for a break from the power station buzz but found the church locked. A houseboat looked as if it may have been there for centuries, its owners piling flotsam and jetsam onto its roof. In nearby Battersea Square, cafe tables colonised flagstones beside flower planters, overlooked by modest Georgian houses.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, Battersea was the market garden of London. Fertile soils – drained marshland – yielded harvests of fruits and vegetables, including melons and carrots. The area was especially famed for asparagus, known as ‘Battersea bundles’. Produce was sent downriver by boat to London. Manure – horse dung and night-soil (human excrement) – was brought back from the city. Things have come full circle in a way. The new Covent Garden wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Nine Elms, is within sight of Battersea Power Station underground station and Cringle Dock waste transfer centre, to the east of the power station, offers a malodorous tang similar to the “ever present whiff of manure” that bothered some residents in the 17th century.
Despite the whiffs – of filthy lucre and rotting rubbish – will Battersea Power Station divert crowds from better-known tourist hotspots? I hope so. Westminster Abbey area – location of my well-designed, good-value hotel – was rammed. It was tricky to negotiate pavements past selfie sticks. Westminster Bridge, with its backdrop of the Houses of Parliament and scaffold-free Elizabeth Tower resplendent after renovation, seems to be the location of choice for You-Tubers to be videoed, pouting and spouting. There was even one meditating in the lotus position. Another, dressed in bowler hat and gold chain, while holding a bottle of Bolly, talked of fossil fuel subsidies. Perhaps they’ll soon relocate to the newest spot in town, especially once the glass viewing lift to the top of the northwest chimney opens before the end of the year.
Essentials
Paul Miles stayed at Hub Westminster. Rooms from £109 per night. Battersea Power station is a 20-minute river bus ride from Westminster or an hour’s riverside walk. There are other hotels closer such as Pestana, Chelsea Bridge . On site, Radisson’s Art’otel is due to open by the end of the year. For more inspiration, read Telegraph Travel's guide to the best hotels in Battersea.