Save Battersea Power Station
February 15 2012
Picture: 'Battersea Power Station' by Robert Lowry, Wandsworth Museum
Have you noticed? It seems there has been a quiet campaign in the press recently to demolish Battersea power station, the iconic building designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (he of the red telephone box). The campaign would appear to have has the hallmarks of a cunning PR operation by someone. You don't normally get spontaneous op-ed pieces and calls from influential voices like the Daily Telegraph's City Editor, Richard Fletcher, in favour of demolishing heritage sites. Fletcher's piece was even accompanied by an online poll cunningly devised to make it look like a majority of people wanted to demolish the Station (by splitting the no votes into three options, with the single 'yes' vote in the lead at 41%).
What's going on? Well today we find out: a report has concluded that the site will be worth almost an extra £470m without the station. Permission to knock the station down would make it easier for the site's owners (largely banks such as government-owned Lloyds) to sell to a developer.
At the moment the site is Grade II listed, and English Heritage would no doubt object to the station's demolition. But, sadly, that doesn't mean very much these days. Recently, the heritage minister John Penrose over-ruled (in my opinion, shamefully) English Heritage's call to protect the concourse buildings at Waterloo Station, and now the fine early 20th Century arches and columns are being covered by hideous steel and glass 'retail spaces'.
So will the government be able to resist calls from 'business', and their friends in the press, to demolish Battersea power station? I doubt it, on the evidence so far. But let's hope so. Someone should see what the London mayoral candidates, Boris and Ken, want to do with the station. Remember, if the similarly sited and designed Bankside station had been demolished, we'd have no Tate Modern. In the meantime, I urge you to at least click your way over to the Telegraph Poll, and vote 'no' to the station's destruction.
Update: There's a new poll here. Vote no!
