Too late for Ironbridge
It’s too late for Ironbridge but the Twentieth Century Society is calling for at least one set of cooling towers to be preserved via listing designation.
Our cooling towers were built in between 1963 and 1969, and had a red tint to blend in with the local soil. On Friday December 2019 at 11am they fell. A fate shared by many other cooling towers.
The society says “From a peak of 240 towers in the 1960s, today just 45 individual cooling towers survive in clusters at 5 power station sites in the Midlands and Yorkshire – all but one of which are in the process of decommissioning and demolition.”
It’s hard to work out what to do with the ones that are left, but in Europe, some have been repurposed into museums and a viewing gallery. Here in Ironbridge, the site is being transformed into housing, but with a huge block in the middle which houses essential power transmission equipment that’s still needed.
Although the power station was just outside of Telford, many people frlt a great affection to them. At the time one person had them tattooed on their arm, and there is a local restaurant names the four towers.
You would be unlikely to gain permission to build anything like them again in that location, but should we have hung on to at least one of them?
Pic: Telford Live
