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Cooling Towers

Ferrybridge A Power Station and Cricket Club, pictured in 2019
Image credit: Luke O’Donovan

Higher than the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral (300ft+), yet with a concrete hyperbolic structure in some places only seven inches thick, cooling towers are unlike any other structure in the British landscape. Artist Sir Anthony Gormley has described cooling towers as a ‘Man made volcano…a wonderful relic of the carbon age, a memorial to Britain’s great, 200-year-long romance with the second law of thermodynamics’. These silent sculptural giants are akin to the Stonehenge or Avebury of the mid twentieth century, yet they exist on borrowed time.

The last coal-fired power station in the country, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, shuts down on the 30th of September 2024, and most cooling towers are due to be demolished before the end of the decade. The transition to a greener, cleaner energy network is a profoundly positive step for the UK, and one we wholeheartedly welcome. Yet the preservation of our industrial heritage and the arrival of new energy technologies should not be an either / or situation – there’s room for both to coexist.

Interior of a cooling tower at Ironbridge Power Station
Image credit: James O. Davies / Historic England

C20’s Campaign

How many cooling towers are left in Britain?

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. The Society believes there to be a further 24 examples at other industrial sites around the country – like steel plants, oil refineries and chemical works. These are generally much smaller in scale and of lower historic significance than those constructed at post-war power stations. A full list of all known examples can be found below. Are there any cooling towers we’ve missed? Please email coordinator@c20society.org.uk to notify us of any omissions.

Will cooling towers be listed?

To date, Historic England’s advice to the government (DCMS) has been that cooling towers ‘do not have the architectural interest requisite for listing’, and that ‘at the moment there are no plans to preserve a cooling tower’, only to ‘work closely with power companies to ensure a photographic record is secured before loss’. Almost all remaining examples of cooling towers are covered by a COI (Certificate of Immunity from Listing) which legally prevents them from being designated for a period of 5 years – during which period they are scheduled for demolition. We profoundly disagree with this approach, and and urging all concerned to fully explore the alternatives.

What are we proposing?

The Twentieth Century Society is calling for at least one set of cooling towers to be preserved via listing designation and remain in ongoing discussion with the national heritage bodies in England, Scotland and Wales. We’re also working with architects, artists and engineers to explore viable approaches for how they might be repurposed in the age of sustainability.

Post-war power stations were absolutely vast, often 400-800 acres – or the size of 200-300 football pitches. The footprint of a cluster of 8 cooling towers takes up less than 2% of that. Why not retain the towers and integrate them into the new plans for the wider site? Be it for clean power infrastructure, affordable housing, new industries, art and education, a country park or any other use.

The British landscape is dotted with the remnants of power generation and infrastructure from previous centuries, from smock windmills to mill chimney stacks, bottle kilns to gasholder frames. Long after the sails have stopped turning and the furnaces have been extinguished, these functional structures have gradually assumed the status of regional and national landmarks. The cooling towers of post-war power stations are simply the latest example – a majestic and invaluable part our twentieth century industrial heritage.

West Burton Power Station. Image: K7 Photography

Fiddlers Ferry Power Station. Image credit: Raymond McBride

Willington Power Station. Image credit: Warren Elkes

Examples of reuse

Surely it’s completely impractical to reuse these enormous vacant vessels? Think again. There are plenty of examples internationally of creative new uses for redundant cooling towers.

At Wunderland Kalkar in Germany, a disused cooling tower forms the centrepiece of a family theme park, with a climbing wall affixed to its concave outer surface – painted with a mountain range for added effect – and a telescopic amusement ride that emerges theatrically from within the tower. In Venice, industrial heritage vies with the architectural masterpieces of the Renaissance, as a 1938 cooling tower in Porta di Venezia was recently converted into a museum and viewing gallery, offering panoramic views over the lagoon to the fabled ‘floating city’.

At Vilvoorde on the outskirts of Brussels, an abandoned power station and military base were beset with illegal raves for many years. The entrepreneurial local Mayor, initially called to close down a rave, saw the potential for a cultural festival on the site. The annual Horst Festival now stages sonic and artistic installations within the cavernous interior spaces of the cooling towers. This was a model replicated in Hungary, at the 1950s Inota Power Plant near Budapest. The semi-derelict site had already been used as a dystopian filming location for the futuristic Blade Runner 2049 (2017), and in 2023 the INOTA music festival was launched, with video mapped projections on the three cooling towers providing a suitably sci-fi backdrop to the experimental electronica.

While in South Africa’s Soweto Township, a pair of cooling towers have been wrapped with a giant painted community mural, and now provide a home for businesses that cater to the extreme sports enthusiast. A narrow bridge slung between the two towers provides a unique 100m bungee jump, while within one of the towers is a freefall jump into safety netting – reputedly the world’s highest.

Wunderland Kalkar – Amusement Park, Germany. (Image: Marco van den Arend)

Soweto Towers – Extreme Sports Centre, South Africa (Image: Betrand Rieger)

Horst Festival Vilvoorde – Music and Arts festival, Belgium (Image: Olmo Peeters)

Venezia Heritage Tower – Viewing platform and museum, Italy (Image: VHT)

Drogenbos – Light installation, Belgium. (Image: Alan Neuros)

Inota Festival – Music and Arts festival, Hungary (Image: Edina Kavecz)

Actions to date

The Society has submitted listing applications for the cooling towers at West Burton and Ratcliffe-on-soar. The former was assessed and rejected by DCMS in August 2022, the latter is pending an assessment.

The towers at West Burton Power Station were included in our 2023-24 Risk List of the top-10 most threatened 20th and 21st century buildings in Britain. In June 2023 we staged the British Cooling Towers: Sculptural Giants exhibition at Margaret Howell on Wigmore Street London, for the London Festival of Architecture, while in spring 2025 a new book will be published by Batsford – the first to explore the architecture, engineering, landscape, and cultural impact of cooling towers. Read some of the coverage of the campaign in The Guardian, Wallpaper*, Dezeen, Apollo Magazine, PORT, Architects Journal.

How can you help?

Sign our petition to help send a message to Historic England and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, that these are highly significant and valued landmarks that should be preserved for future generations – an important chapter in our national story at risk of being completely erased.