Battersea

Started: 2023-04-20 19:32:51

Submitted: 2023-04-20 21:37:47

Visibility: World-readable

A tube station and power station with the same historic name; a cruise down the Thames; a rooftop garden; and a museum at the Docklands

Friday, the 7th of April 2023, was a bank holiday for Good Friday, making the beginning of a four-day weekend. Some rail lines were closed for engineering works, so I made sure to plan my travel accordingly. The rest of my family decided to take a break from sight-seeing and stayed in the flat most of the day (they eventually emerged, in the middle of the day, in search of more scones). I started the day with a Danish at Ole & Steen, then headed to my nearest Tube stop. I took the subsurface lines east to Embankment, then transferred to the Northern line (Charing Cross branch) south to its new terminus at Battersea Power Station.

Or, because the name "Battersea Power Station" refers to the power facility itself, the Underground station serving the power station must be "Battersea Power Station Station".

The last time I photographed Battersea Power Station was in 2016, when the station was in the middle of its reconstruction to convert the historic listed power station into a shopping mall, the centerpiece of an infill redevelopment on the south bank of the Thames.

The area between the tube station and the power station was filling up with high-rise apartment towers; it was hard to get a good vantage point to view the power station. From the tube station the iconic quad smokestacks were just visible; as I followed the pedestrian path to the power station the whole brick edifice came into view, towering over the handful of people out on Friday morning.

I walked through the first turbine hall, which had been stripped of its original industrial power equipment and filled with shops. The gantry crane was fixed into place and used to suspend a walkway over the cavernous open space running the length of the hall. I arrived just as the mall officially opened for the day at 10:00, and there were only a few people walking about inside. I headed for the entrance to Lift 109, the observation elevator climbing one of the smokestacks. When I checked the timed tickets for the lift the previous night several of the slots had exactly one space available; and since I was out by myself I picked the first available slot at 10:10. (All of the smokestacks were rebuilt to stabilize them; my 2016 photo shows the front two stacks in the process of being torn down and replaced.)

The first part of the experience was an interactive exhibit on a platform at the end of the turbine hall, with some interactive touchscreens showing historic pictures of the power station as well as giving one the opportunity to "operate" the power station by tapping on the screen (to light the coal to make steam, apparently?) and balance the power grid by matching generation to demand.

The next part of the experience was a room (approximately the size of my living room) with projectors on every wall that reacted to movement in some way; if one stood at the right position in front of the screen the image projected on the screen looked like one was blocking the flow of energetic particles in the wind. This lasted just long enough to get an idea of what was going on before we were ushered through another door and into an elevator to the top of the main hall (I think the elevator showed floor 12, but it was a single-purpose elevator for tourists and only stopped on the top floor), then through a helical staircase at the base of the smokestack going up one more floor to the proper observation elevator.

This observation elevator looked like it belonged in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory: the top and sides were a giant glass cylinder, providing an unobstructed view up the top of the smokestack; we could see the elevator machinery and rings of colored lights running up the stack. Our elevator operator hit the button and we began to ascend.

Fortunately for us, unlike Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, when we reached the top the elevator slowed and stopped, perfectly aligned so that the top of the capsule stuck up above the rim of the chimney like a bubble. (I think there was a gasp as we reached the top and the city of London, under the bright morning sun, popped into view all at once.)

From the top the glass gave us a wrap-around view of London, centered on Battersea. Looking down the Thames I could see the Shard (London's newest and weirdest skyscraper, looming above Southwark looking like Mount Doom with its jagged roofline). The City of London and Docklands were both visible, their skyscrapers identifying the twin financial centers in the city. Elsewhere low-rise apartments and buildings stretched in every direction to the horizon.

The observation elevator was built with an opaque railing up to waist high, with an interpretive sign just above the railing explaining all of the sights (not all of which we could actually see; some of the signs indicated where sights were supposed to be if it weren't for all of the other buildings in the way). On the far side of the glass there was a couple of horizontal feet before the edge of the chimney (an opaque panel at the top of the chimney, and the concrete ring forming the chimney itself). This was enough that it didn't trigger my height anxiety, even if I got up close to the glass. (As we rode the elevator to the top I stood as close as I could get to the middle of the elevator, next to the oval bench in the very center, until I could evaluate the conditions at the top.)

I walked all the way around the elevator a couple of times, looking out in every direction, before our elevator operator called time and hit the button to bring us back down to the ground.

On our way down I watched the people in the lift, rather than looking up; this also gave me the opportunity to see the inside of the shaft as we descended.

We exited into the gift shop, which was populated with an impressively-curated selection of books about industrial reuse and redevelopment around London. I only bought two books: one discussing the power stations and gasworks around London, and the other a glossy picture book of abandoned and disused spaces.

I looked around the rest of the mall, including the other turbine hall, which was built after the first hall and had been finished in a different style, though the exterior of the building had been a perfect match.

There was only a little bit of old power equipment inside the shell of the station. I looked through a little gallery discussing the plans to reuse and reopen the station. The power station closed in 1983 and went through several decades of plans, some less sympathetic to the site than others. (There was one weird plan that called for a large tower planted in the middle of the station, looking like an arcology from SimCity 2000 had assimilated the old building.) The roofs of the turbine halls had been removed at one point during one of the aborted reconstructions, causing damage to the structure inside. The current owners had rebuilt all of the exterior damage, carefully matching the bricks and power-washing the entire building so that it looked new, even as I could clearly see the evidence of a century of industrial history inside.

Finally I emerged onto the north side of the station, its massive edifice towering over the plaza reaching out to the Thames. The plaza was comfortably crowded with people, especially families with young children, enjoying the sunny morning at the start of their four-day bank holiday weekend. The original coaling docks, where barges docked to feed the massive amounts of coal the station burned, had been converted into a park (and an extension to the plaza) with picnic tables and strings of lights.

I got coffee at a cart on the waterfront, then joined the queue for the river boat ferry service down the Thames. The RB2 river boat was running slow, and when it arrived it only took the first half of the people in line. I waited for the next boat, a half-hour later, and boarded to cruise down the river.

The boat cruised languidly down the Thames, stopping every few minutes at a dock on one side of the river or another to take on (or, occasionally, discharge) passengers. I watched the London waterfront glide by my window; I was on the wrong side of the boat to see the Houses of Parliament, but I did see the London Eye.

At Tower the boat approached the ferry dock, then announced over the PA that the dock was full and we would have to proceed to Canary Wharf and anyone intending to disembark at Tower would have to catch the next ferry back from Canary Wharf. There was some discontentment in the passengers; but I intended to get off at Canary Wharf anyway.

I found a "California-style" burrito (served in a foil wrap, as a proper mission burrito) for lunch, then found the rooftop garden on top of the Canary Wharf station built for the Elizabeth line. (The Elizabeth line itself was closed for engineering works over the bank holiday weekend, but the rooftop garden remained open.)

The rooftop garden was set into the water at the historic Canary Wharf dock. The garden itself was long and skinny, apparently matching the station box underground, meeting the tracks dug by the tunnel boring machines under the dock. The garden's ceiling was made up of laminated wood beams forming triangular panels. Some of the panels were filled by translucent windows, but many of the panels were open to the air. The garden was planted with plants from around the world, and organized geographically, apparently set up so that the garden was the meeting point between east and west, like the docks were in an earlier era.

The overall effect was similar to the new garden on top of Salesforce Transit Center in San Francisco (which I visited in December, but apparently neglected to post my photos), which was an interesting bit of connection between two new rooftop gardens.

My next stop was the Museum of London Docklands, in an old warehouse building on the other side of the dock. I started on the top floor, where displays told me about the workers on the docks, with a bunch of hand carts and other equipment that dock workers would use to load and unload ships, in the era of sail and steam when cargo was packed by hand on ships, before the modern era of containerization. There were displays showing the progression of the docks eastward, out of the Pool of London onto the Isle of Dogs (where I stood, where large docks were built in the bend of the river, to facilitate the cargo needs of the growing empire), then further eastward, culminating at the container docks far to the east today. There was an exhibit on slavery, and an exhibit about labor unrest at the docks as workers sought better working conditions.

My favorite tunnel under the Thames got a shout-out with a pop-up papercut depicting the Thames Tunnel. It was built with multiple pieces of paper in a row, illustrating what the tunnel looked like carrying carriages and people under the river.

Part of the museum talked about the docks during the second world war, including bombings trying to disrupt the docks themselves. There was a large model of the forts built in the Thames estuary with anti-aircraft guns to try to protect the docks.

The last series of galleries talked about the decline and redevelopment of the docks. I wrapped up the museum and dropped by the cafe on the ground floor for a cup of tea, then headed out of the museum to catch the Jubilee line to Westminster, then changed to the subsurface lines west to South Kensington.

I dropped by the Victoria and Albert Museum late in the afternoon, as the museum was transitioning from its normal opening hours to the extended evening hours on Friday. This meant that some of the galleries I was most interested in seeing, the rapid-response collection, were already closed. I looked around the rest of the museum, including the cast courts (impressive replicas of classical masterpieces, created at the end of the nineteenth century to bring the arts to London) then departed to walk back to the flat.

Kiesa ordered take-away from a nearby restaurant so we didn't have to go out, and we retired for the night ahead of one last full day in London.

I took more pictures at Photos on 2023-04-07.