Some 83 years ago my Great Great Uncle was approached by the London Power Company in regards to making a new London power station more appealing to the surrounding community after proposals for the site brought out local protests in fear the site would be too large and a blight on the area. He took up the challenge and decided on a brick based exterior and four new style column chimneys to take the smoke from the coal powered station high over the surrounding chimney tops.

My Great Great Uncle was Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and the power station was, of course, Battersea Power Station.

The following image shows my line of descent, the only person missing is me.

Sir Giles Gilbert Scott is in the middle of the photograph next to the woman in white (my late Grandmother), on the left of her is my late Grandfather, David Gilbert Scott and on his shoulders is my dad,
Christopher David Scott.

Adrian Gilbert Scott (Giles’ brother, and my Great Grandfather) is second from the right. The photograph was taken at George Gilbert Scott Jnr’s wife’s house (Ellen) in Ninfield, East Sussex. Ellen is the old lady on the bottom row in the center of the image.



Whilst we are doing the family tree lines, Sir George Gilbert Scott (The Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station, Albert Memorial etc) is my Great Great Great Grandfather.


So my family history explained, you can see my reason for contacting Battersea Power Station. I read they were to open the gates to the public for one last time in September before the building work intensified. We looked at going on these days but realised that only one person was able to make it, so I contacted their head office to start the ball rolling. Eventually we organised a date to suit us all and went out for one of the most relaxed visits to BPS. This was a good idea as we found out that over 40,000 people attended the 2-day open day and many more were turned away despite queuing for hours in Battersea Park!

At this moment I would like to thank all at BPS, including the security who were all so kind on the day.

We arrived and donned our PPE and were ready to trek towards the station when we find out we will be driving around in a luxury leather seated Land Rover! (I could get used to this!).




Part of the reason for the visit was to get answers on questions I had concerns over. As, like most of you, I had heard hearsay on the net about what was going to be scrapped and what public access was going to be like. Well hopefully I will answer (some of) these questions here.

Our first point of call was Control Room A.

Everything you see in here (well bar the temporary floor and building strip lights) is staying, there are thoughts of turning it into some kind of restaurant or bistro where the public can still enjoy it. I for one think that is a great idea and has worked well in places such as Saltaire in Bingley (W. Yorks). Most of what is currently on site (including Control Room B, which we did not visit) will be remaining.

So we entered the building and worked our way up...













Checkout the amazing ceiling! Pure luxury...



A look down to Turbine Hall A...










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