Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station once generated nearly a fifth of London’s power. It must have hummed and clanked almost as much as it does today while its transformation proceeds noisily.

Graphic prints of it are two a penny across the capital, but I’m fond of them because the power station is my near neighbour. I still thrill to glimpse it framed by rows of Victorian semis, especially now that the new chimneys are lit dramatically at night, red crane lights dotted about them like a spiky ruby crown.

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Across the world it has celebrity status, thanks to the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals. The band’s inflatable pink piggy caused more bother than the protesters’ Trump blimp, becoming untethered and drifting off to Kent, alarming pilots along the way. Morrissey and Elton John played concerts here. The Dark Knight and The King’s Speech used it as a dramatic backdrop.

It might not look quite so rock’n’roll when it’s cleaned up, shiny, new and filled with the very well-off. There was not much good in it languishing on the river crumbling quietly, but it’s a shame that from most angles it lurks behind glass developments.

On a recent visit I was intrigued to discover it’s a building of two halves. ‘A’ Station, the western half, was completed in 1935 and ‘B’ Station, the eastern half, in 1955. Once inside, you can see the difference. A is art deco: detailed, decadent. The interior attracted visitors and, in 1939, the station was voted Britain’s second favourite modern building after Peter Jones on Sloane Square, only three bus stops away. The 1950s front is more functional, its tiling square and white. ‘A’ Station was decommissioned in 1975, followed by ‘B’ Station in 1983, but the stripped-out shell retained a melancholy grandeur.