RIP Tinsley Cooling Towers
. | 12.08.2008 16:57 | Climate Chaos | Ecology | Other Press | Sheffield
E.ON UK Press Releases
12 August 2008 10:06
August demolition date set for Tinsley cooling towers
E.ON has today announced it will bring down the redundant Tinsley cooling towers this August Bank Holiday weekend.
The 250ft towers will be demolished in a controlled explosion in the early hours of Sunday 24th August.
12 August 2008 10:06
August demolition date set for Tinsley cooling towers
E.ON has today announced it will bring down the redundant Tinsley cooling towers this August Bank Holiday weekend.
The 250ft towers will be demolished in a controlled explosion in the early hours of Sunday 24th August.
E.ON UK Press Releases
12 August 2008 10:06
August demolition date set for Tinsley cooling towers
E.ON has today announced it will bring down the redundant Tinsley cooling towers this August Bank Holiday weekend.
The 250ft towers will be demolished in a controlled explosion in the early hours of Sunday 24th August.
Because of the need to close the M1 motorway, the timings were decided following extensive consultation with the Highways Agency, Police and other local agencies to try to minimise disruption to locals and road users.
And to mark the event the company is sponsoring fundraising initiatives to benefit local charities - a souvenir book and postcard set charting the history of the towers.
Plans for a viewing platform at Meadowhall and a text raffle to win the chance to start the demolition countdown will be announced shortly.
Derek Parkin, Managing Director of Business Services at E.ON, said: "Our priority has always been to make sure this demolition is carried out safely and with as little disruption as possible, which is why we've opted for the early hours of the morning."
To mark their demolition, E.ON is funding a souvenir book of the life of the station, produced by the University of Sheffield's Archaeology consultancy, Arcus, and a collection of postcards based on historical images of the site.
Funds raised from the sale of these will be donated to The Rotherham Hospice and Neurocare at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital.
Lesley Eland, Neurocare's fundraising director, said: "We're delighted to have been invited to benefit from this unique opportunity.
"The Tinsley Towers have been a longstanding landmark for the city and, while many people will be sad to see them go, the money raised will hopefully leave a long lasting impression on the people of Sheffield, helping to improve the lives of patients with a range of debilitating illnesses for many years to come."
Gill Shaw, chief officer at Rotherham Hospice, added: "Every year Rotherham Hospice needs to raise more than £1.8m to help cover its day-to-day operational costs. The Tinsley Towers are a well known local landmark and it's great that the proceeds of the book will be used to help support our work."
The M1 motorway will be closed between junctions 32 and 35 from midnight on Saturday evening and for most of Bank Holiday Sunday. The A631 Tinsley viaduct lower deck between the Tinsley and Meadowhall roundabouts will also be closed.
Arthur Ashburner, Divisional Director at the Highways Agency, said: "We have agreed that the best time to close the motorway to allow the demolition to take place will be in the early hours of Bank Holiday Sunday when traffic levels are at their lowest.
"Clearly-signed diversions will be in place along the M18 and M62 together with local diversion routes, in order to limit any delays to road-users, but we advise drivers to allow extra time for their journeys.
"Up to date traffic information on the closure will be available via roadside electronic message signs, the Highways Agency's website at
http://www.highways.gov.uk/, by tuning in to the Highways Agency's Traffic Radio available on DAB digital and online at http://www.trafficradio.org.uk/, and by listening to local radio stations.
"Our primary concern is for the safety of road-users. Over the past 30 years, since the main Blackburn Meadows Power Station was demolished, the Agency has carried out extensive strengthening works on the adjacent M1 Tinsley Viaduct. We are now content that the demolition of the remaining towers, as planned, poses a very low risk of damage to this important structure.
"Nevertheless, a rigorous programme of inspection and testing will ensure that reopening of the motorway will only take place when we are entirely satisfied that is it safe to do so."
Ends
12 August 2008 10:06
August demolition date set for Tinsley cooling towers
E.ON has today announced it will bring down the redundant Tinsley cooling towers this August Bank Holiday weekend.
The 250ft towers will be demolished in a controlled explosion in the early hours of Sunday 24th August.
Because of the need to close the M1 motorway, the timings were decided following extensive consultation with the Highways Agency, Police and other local agencies to try to minimise disruption to locals and road users.
And to mark the event the company is sponsoring fundraising initiatives to benefit local charities - a souvenir book and postcard set charting the history of the towers.
Plans for a viewing platform at Meadowhall and a text raffle to win the chance to start the demolition countdown will be announced shortly.
Derek Parkin, Managing Director of Business Services at E.ON, said: "Our priority has always been to make sure this demolition is carried out safely and with as little disruption as possible, which is why we've opted for the early hours of the morning."
To mark their demolition, E.ON is funding a souvenir book of the life of the station, produced by the University of Sheffield's Archaeology consultancy, Arcus, and a collection of postcards based on historical images of the site.
Funds raised from the sale of these will be donated to The Rotherham Hospice and Neurocare at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital.
Lesley Eland, Neurocare's fundraising director, said: "We're delighted to have been invited to benefit from this unique opportunity.
"The Tinsley Towers have been a longstanding landmark for the city and, while many people will be sad to see them go, the money raised will hopefully leave a long lasting impression on the people of Sheffield, helping to improve the lives of patients with a range of debilitating illnesses for many years to come."
Gill Shaw, chief officer at Rotherham Hospice, added: "Every year Rotherham Hospice needs to raise more than £1.8m to help cover its day-to-day operational costs. The Tinsley Towers are a well known local landmark and it's great that the proceeds of the book will be used to help support our work."
The M1 motorway will be closed between junctions 32 and 35 from midnight on Saturday evening and for most of Bank Holiday Sunday. The A631 Tinsley viaduct lower deck between the Tinsley and Meadowhall roundabouts will also be closed.
Arthur Ashburner, Divisional Director at the Highways Agency, said: "We have agreed that the best time to close the motorway to allow the demolition to take place will be in the early hours of Bank Holiday Sunday when traffic levels are at their lowest.
"Clearly-signed diversions will be in place along the M18 and M62 together with local diversion routes, in order to limit any delays to road-users, but we advise drivers to allow extra time for their journeys.
"Up to date traffic information on the closure will be available via roadside electronic message signs, the Highways Agency's website at
http://www.highways.gov.uk/, by tuning in to the Highways Agency's Traffic Radio available on DAB digital and online at http://www.trafficradio.org.uk/, and by listening to local radio stations. "Our primary concern is for the safety of road-users. Over the past 30 years, since the main Blackburn Meadows Power Station was demolished, the Agency has carried out extensive strengthening works on the adjacent M1 Tinsley Viaduct. We are now content that the demolition of the remaining towers, as planned, poses a very low risk of damage to this important structure.
"Nevertheless, a rigorous programme of inspection and testing will ensure that reopening of the motorway will only take place when we are entirely satisfied that is it safe to do so."
Ends
.
Additions
HISTORY
12.08.2008 17:04
HISTORY
Blackburn Meadows electricity generating station was built by the Sheffield Corporation in 1921,mainly to support the steel industry in the Lower Don Valley. The station was expanded in the 1930s, requiring the construction of Cooling Towers 6 and 7 in 1937-8 to supplement earlier square cooling towers to the north east.
These new hyperbolic shaped towers were designed by LG Mouchell and Partners. This was the same partnership responsible for the first hyperbolic cooling towers in the country (built in Liverpool in 1925) and some 150 towers subsequently built across the United Kingdom. Blackburn Meadows was one of those power stations nationalised to form part of the National Grid after the Second World War. It was decommissioned and mainly demolished in the 1970s.
ASSESSMENT
The Blackburn Meadows cooling towers are nationally rare surviving remains of pre-nationalisation large scale electricity generation. They are thought to be the only pre-1950 hyperbolic cooling towers surviving nationally, with nearly all the other 500 or so towers in the country dating to 1960or later. In addition to their early date, the association with LG Mouchell, the design features such as the banding and the thinness of the shell all give the towers interest. The addition of the spray coating of concrete following the 1964 disaster at Ferrybridge adds further interest by showing a development in the industry.
Even without the clouds of steam that signify operational examples, the cooling towers are also very prominent landmark features, providing a visual indication of the former scale and importance of the Sheffield steel industry in the Lower Don Valley.
However the two hyperbolic cooling towers are just one component of an extensive complex that formerly existed. The plant at Blackburn Meadows generated electricity by using steam turbines to turn electric generators, with the steam produced using coal fired boilers, the coal supplied by rail.
The railway system, coal handling plant, boiler complex, turbine and generating halls, as well as the switchgear for connecting the plant to the electricity grid and the earlier square cooling towers have all been lost. Water used by the steam turbines would have been maintained within a closed system, the steam leaving the turbine then passing through a condenser to change it back to hot water before being reboiled to produce steam to turn the turbine.
The cooling towers were used to cool water circulating in a separate system that was used to cool the condensers other equipment.
With the demolition of the rest of the generating station, the surviving cooling towers have lost their context so it is difficult to see how they functioned as an integrated part of a much wider plant.
Functionally, cooling towers still in use consist of far more than just the shell of the tower that survives at Blackburn Meadows. In operation, water is piped into the lower portion of the cooling tower into a complex network of pipes or troughs ending with sprinklers.
A fine mist of water is then sprayed on to a timber or asbestos lattice of staging and screens filling the lower 4-5m of the tower, with the water being cooled via natural evaporation aided by air being drawn upwards by the tower above. Any water droplets carried by this updraft are intercepted by a layer of louvers positioned above the sprinklers. In addition, operational cooling towers have a network of maintenance access ways. All bar one pipe in one of the towers has been stripped out from the cooling towers at Blackburn Meadows, leaving very little indication of how the towers actually functioned.
The Blackburn Meadows cooling towers are thus not only a very partial survival of an electricity generating station, they are also only a very partial survival of a pair of cooling towers. Even given the national context of the highly fragmentary survival of the pre-nationalisation power generation industry, designation of the Blackburn Meadows cooling towers cannot be justified.
The rest of the generating station has been lost, depriving the towers of their functional context and the loss of pipe work, staging, screens and access ways means that a highly significant part of the interest of the towers as cooling towers has also been lost.
www.tinsley-towers.org.uk/pages/english_heritage.pdf
Blackburn Meadows electricity generating station was built by the Sheffield Corporation in 1921,mainly to support the steel industry in the Lower Don Valley. The station was expanded in the 1930s, requiring the construction of Cooling Towers 6 and 7 in 1937-8 to supplement earlier square cooling towers to the north east.
These new hyperbolic shaped towers were designed by LG Mouchell and Partners. This was the same partnership responsible for the first hyperbolic cooling towers in the country (built in Liverpool in 1925) and some 150 towers subsequently built across the United Kingdom. Blackburn Meadows was one of those power stations nationalised to form part of the National Grid after the Second World War. It was decommissioned and mainly demolished in the 1970s.
ASSESSMENT
The Blackburn Meadows cooling towers are nationally rare surviving remains of pre-nationalisation large scale electricity generation. They are thought to be the only pre-1950 hyperbolic cooling towers surviving nationally, with nearly all the other 500 or so towers in the country dating to 1960or later. In addition to their early date, the association with LG Mouchell, the design features such as the banding and the thinness of the shell all give the towers interest. The addition of the spray coating of concrete following the 1964 disaster at Ferrybridge adds further interest by showing a development in the industry.
Even without the clouds of steam that signify operational examples, the cooling towers are also very prominent landmark features, providing a visual indication of the former scale and importance of the Sheffield steel industry in the Lower Don Valley.
However the two hyperbolic cooling towers are just one component of an extensive complex that formerly existed. The plant at Blackburn Meadows generated electricity by using steam turbines to turn electric generators, with the steam produced using coal fired boilers, the coal supplied by rail.
The railway system, coal handling plant, boiler complex, turbine and generating halls, as well as the switchgear for connecting the plant to the electricity grid and the earlier square cooling towers have all been lost. Water used by the steam turbines would have been maintained within a closed system, the steam leaving the turbine then passing through a condenser to change it back to hot water before being reboiled to produce steam to turn the turbine.
The cooling towers were used to cool water circulating in a separate system that was used to cool the condensers other equipment.
With the demolition of the rest of the generating station, the surviving cooling towers have lost their context so it is difficult to see how they functioned as an integrated part of a much wider plant.
Functionally, cooling towers still in use consist of far more than just the shell of the tower that survives at Blackburn Meadows. In operation, water is piped into the lower portion of the cooling tower into a complex network of pipes or troughs ending with sprinklers.
A fine mist of water is then sprayed on to a timber or asbestos lattice of staging and screens filling the lower 4-5m of the tower, with the water being cooled via natural evaporation aided by air being drawn upwards by the tower above. Any water droplets carried by this updraft are intercepted by a layer of louvers positioned above the sprinklers. In addition, operational cooling towers have a network of maintenance access ways. All bar one pipe in one of the towers has been stripped out from the cooling towers at Blackburn Meadows, leaving very little indication of how the towers actually functioned.
The Blackburn Meadows cooling towers are thus not only a very partial survival of an electricity generating station, they are also only a very partial survival of a pair of cooling towers. Even given the national context of the highly fragmentary survival of the pre-nationalisation power generation industry, designation of the Blackburn Meadows cooling towers cannot be justified.
The rest of the generating station has been lost, depriving the towers of their functional context and the loss of pipe work, staging, screens and access ways means that a highly significant part of the interest of the towers as cooling towers has also been lost.
www.tinsley-towers.org.uk/pages/english_heritage.pdf
make the middle class history
e-mail:
worldwarfree@riseup.net
Homepage:
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video of the cooling towers demolition
24.08.2008 04:12
This video is only part 1 we'll have to wait for part 2
mark
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On the 12th August 2008 10:06 E-ON set an August demolition date set for Tinsley
12.08.2008 18:53
On the 12th August 2008 10:06 E-ON set an August demolition date set for Tinsley cooling towers:
E.ON has today announced it will bring down the redundant Tinsley cooling towers this August Bank Holiday weekend.
The 250ft towers will be demolished in a controlled explosion in the early hours of Sunday 24th August.
The Tinsley cooling towers are not just an icon of Sheffield, England’s fourth largest city, a city of some 525,800 people, where there are four mature trees to every resident. Sheffield is the greenest city in England with 175 woodlands, 75 public parks. We have window cleaners and hairdressers as well. Our city has the best independent, cutting edge culture and the icons of England.
The future is ours.
Life is so boring there is nothing to do except spend all our wages on the latest skirt or shirt.
Brothers and Sisters, what are your real desires?
Sit in the shopping arcade, look distant, empty, bored, drinking some tasteless coffee? Or perhaps BLOW IT UP OR BURN IT DOWN. The only thing you can do with modern slave-houses — called boutiques — IS WRECK THEM. You can’t reform profit capitalism and inhumanity. Just kick it till it breaks.
Revolution.
Communique 8
The Angry Brigade
On the 23rd of August, we are asking people to gather in black, 11.30pm at Sheffield Cathedral to mourn and share our collective anger and sorrow at the demise of this icon. We will be boarding The Tram that will Depart: from Sheffield Cathedral at12:23pm. Arrive: Meadowhall South/Tinsley at 12:39 Your fare will be: £2.10. For a short walk to our own chosen location, and not one decided for us by E-ON.
There are rumours of a mass action, a free party, projections onto the doomed towers, a flash mob action, and other events as they happen, there will be a collection for us to purchase a plaque, and permission shall be asked for it to be located at a spot where people can gather to remember these giants of Sheffield.
At 2.45am we are asking people gather to go silent to their demise, then on the hour we ask we break this silence by people shouting, crying and just ensuring that when E-ON blow up our collective culture…..
They will have a night they shall neither forget, or even care to remember, it shall be known that the people of Sheffield come to gather and give one loud protest of our anger, at the loss of our Heritage.
We hope to see you there, further information and images on Sheffield,s Icons can be found at
Note for editors, and others this press release is for information only, of course we would simply prefer the young to be out in an over priced club being ripped off, The old to be asleep, and for us not to even bother turning out, yeah right, bring it on..
make the middle class history
e-mail:
worldwarfree@riseup.net
Homepage:
http://pressreleases.eon-uk.com/blogs/eonukpressreleases/archive/2008/08/12/1268.aspx
Tinsley Towers
15.08.2008 14:07
Thank you for your comments on our plans for the Tinsley Towers, we appreciate they inspire strong feelings on both sides of the debate.
The towers have stood next to the M1 for nearly 70 years but have begun to seriously deteriorate. Based on engineering data collected over 30 years, and supported by the results of a structural survey, we have taken the decision to demolish the towers before they become a safety risk.
The date and time for the demolition has been decided upon following lengthy discussions with the Highways Agency in order to reduce disruption to both the local area and users of the M1, and to give engineers enough time to inspect the viaduct afterwards so the roads can be opened later on the Sunday.
I’m pleased to say that Meadowhall Shopping Centre has kindly agreed to open its car parks on the night so the people of Sheffield and Rotherham can come and watch the demolition from a safe distance.
To make sure the people of South Yorkshire are involved in the process, as well as being able to view the demolition, we have launched a charity text raffle so one person can win the chance to begin the countdown. We are also sponsoring a book and a collection of commemorative postcards on the history of the Blackburn Meadows site. All three will be used to raise funds for two local charities; Neurocare at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital and the Rotherham Hospice.
In the longer term, E.ON is funding a public art project which should be a permanent landmark for the city.
E.ON has not taken this decision lightly and even though you may disagree with our decision we hope you can appreciate the reasons why we feel we must take this step.
Regards
Andrew Barrow
E.ON UK plc
Westwood Way, Westwood Business Park
Coventry CV4 8LG, England, UK
www.eon-uk.com
At least they bothered to respond...
make the middle class history
e-mail:
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