5 minute read
Post-war power
By Hal Moggridge
Hal Moggridge CBE is an architect and landscape architect, co-founder of Colvin & Moggridge with Brenda Colvin, former Professor of Landscape Architecture at Sheffield University, and a past president of the Landscape Institute.
Brenda Colvin and Sylvia Crowe were at the heart of landscape developments in the post-war period – Hal Moggridge explores their impact.
Landscape architects enjoyed opportunities during the 1960s-70s when working on landscapes of power in the rural context. Historic England’s (2016) ‘England’s Redundant Post-War Coal and Oil-fired Power Stations’ confirmed that “landscape architecture became a key aspect of the Central Electricity Generating Board’s (CEGB) policy from its formation in 1958,” with early landscape appointments. Dr Luca Csepely-Knorr explains this in her article, mentioning many of the landscape architects involved. It was partly due to effective campaigning by the Institute. For instance, I remember the LI’s splendid 50th anniversary international dinner at Kings College Cambridge in 1979, when CEGB chair Glyn England, a guest, discussed potential with British and international landscape architects; within weeks landscape architects were appointed for forthcoming electricity projects.
In their report 86/2016 ‘High Merit’, Historic England1 recognised the profession’s historic contribution to power station design: “It was Brenda Colvin and Sylvia Crowe who early on helped shape the CEGB’s attitude and approach to landscape design [...] during the 1950s and 60s [...] Colvin was the first to become directly involved with the landscaping of power stations (from 1952).” Brenda Colvin recognised the impossibility, and in her opinion, undesirability, of screening the larger components, seeing the problem as one of how to ‘integrate and relate them to their surroundings’. Her approach to the new generation of 1960’s stations was to employ massed planting of trees and shrubs (often raised on linear banks), to give strong horizontal base lines that balanced the height of the cooling towers and principal buildings while concealing only the ‘unsightly and nondescript’ low elements such as coal stores, railway sidings, car parks, sheds, stores and operational space.” The report lists ten of the practices which became landscape consultants for CEGB schemes, broadly following this approach, the outcome of exchange of ideas within the then small profession.
Eggborough Power Station. Distant view of edge mounding obscuring coal store
© Colvin and Moggridge
For example, here are four successful 1960s power station landscapes. Brenda Colvin’s layout for Eggborough coal-fired station, where the eight cooling towers spread across half a kilometre, surrounded the whole site in continuous tree belts, many on mounding; thus setting the huge buildings above long horizontals, these trees provided shelter for a green staff recreation area. Beside Wylfa nuclear power station, Sylvia Crowe created wooded hills with material from excavations beneath the reactors. At Sizewell nuclear power station, Peter Youngman located the reactors in a space between existing woodlands, open only towards the wide expanse of the sea. The model of Ratcliffe power station by Gordon Patterson shows an arrangement of spinneys around the power station, which similarly provide a horizontal setting; the coal store, accessible by rail, is to the east. These landscapes are now approaching maturity when the stations themselves are becoming redundant; it is to be hoped that they will be understood as valuable potential settings for new industrial or other future functions.
Derek Lovejoy extended this approach outwards beyond the West Burton site to include new tree planting and Tree Preservation Orders in locations within a 3-mile surrounding radius. Views of the power station were screened where considered intrusive and framed between tree groups where attractive. His regional landscape plan was carried out and maintained by the County Council. Consideration was also frequently given to the grouping of cooling towers; for instance, at Didcot, Frederick Gibberd had two triangular tower groups positioned half a mile apart to integrate them into the wide Vale of White Horse. Some projects were enriched by special attention to nature conservation, particularly when this interested the station engineer who had powers to influence the character of the station. Drakelow was an example of this, where lakes for gravel to build the station were made into a wildfowl nature reserve, and a nature walk with a dipping pond for visiting school children was included within the enclosing woodland.
Coal-fired power stations produce large quantities of pulverised fuel ash (PFA), a product of burning, the disposal of which has led to two different long-term hill-building projects in Yorkshire. Arnold Weddle designed a slowly expanding PFA hill alongside Drax power station, starting in the 1970s, and it is still being constructed under Weddle Landscape Design four decades later. Profitable farmland has been established with at least 300mm of soil from beneath the hill over the PFA – a quiet elegant landform.
A different hill has been built at Gale Common, where water-logged PFA was pumped from two nearby power stations, Eggborough and Ferrybridge. This is a steep sided lagoon structure, including shale from the nearby mine
Wylfa nuclear power station – wooded hills created by Sylvia Crowe
© image from LDT monograph edited by Collens and Powell.
supplying coal. Brenda Colvin prepared the original design in the late 1960s, sitework starting in 1972. CEGB’s ecologist solved a problem of dust blowing from the lagoon surface by establishing a floating mat of vegetation which rose upwards as the lagoon was filled. Stage 1 of this hill was completed by 2005 with sides to the original contours, but in other respects to Colvin & Moggridge’s gradually evolving design, in response to changing priorities. In particular, the hilltop, originally conceived as level arable farmland, was constructed to an irregular profile for nature conservation, which indeed became a high priority throughout. The whole soil body from a wood beneath stage 2 was successfully moved to become a stage 1 hillside bluebell wood; native wild daffodils were replanted onto the hillside; habitats for birds were created, even temporary faces in ash piles formed each year for sand martins to nest. Though stage 1 of this hill has become a 1km2 new landscape 60m high, interestingly, unfinished later stages are now being quarried for PFA, for building blocks and cement manufacture. The cessation of coal-fired electricity production to help meet carbon targets means that no PFA will be made in future, so that which exists from the past has gained an unexpected value. This is part of the ever-evolving character of landscape challenges, all of which now need the same careful input which characterised the former handling of the sites of coal-fired power stations. In the LI’s present invaluable promotion of urban landscape, we should not forget also to promote full involvement of our profession in rural contexts.
Drax PFA hillview of restored southern end in 1986 to the design of Arnold Weddle
© HSL UK 86-0271
Drax PFA hill in 2020 by Weddle Landscape Design
© Google Earth.
