Battersea Power Station: from coal to Chimney Lift, the back story

For half a century Battersea Power Station lit London; for almost forty years after that it stood empty, a roofless shell beside the Thames. Since October 2022 its turbine halls have been full again, this time with shoppers, diners and a lift that rises inside a chimney.

A cathedral of power

Work began on the site in 1929, and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the architect of Britain’s red telephone box, joined the project to shape its brick exterior. The first half, Battersea A, was finished in 1935; its twin, Battersea B, began generating in 1944, and the fourth chimney completed the famous silhouette in 1955.

At its peak the station produced a fifth of London’s electricity, feeding addresses such as Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. In the war, pilots used the white plumes from its chimneys to find their way home in the mist.

The long silence

In 1977 an inflatable pink pig floated between the southern chimneys for the cover of Pink Floyd’s album Animals, and slipped its mooring into the Heathrow flight path. The building was listed Grade II in 1980, and in 1983 it stopped generating for good.

A theme-park scheme came and went, owners changed, and the roof of the boiler house came off, leaving the chimneys standing over an open shell. In 2007 the station was raised to Grade II*, a rank held by fewer than 6% of listed buildings. The long wait ended in 2012, when a Malaysian consortium bought the site and work began the following year.

Shopping in the turbine halls

After an eight-year restoration, the Power Station opened to the public on 14 October 2022, together with Electric Boulevard. Turbine Hall A, restored to its Art Deco splendour, and the plainer 1950s Turbine Hall B now hold more than 100 brands across galleried floors, with the old gantry cranes still overhead.

The Chimney Lift begins with a short exhibition in Turbine Hall A, then rises 109 metres inside the north-west chimney for 360-degree views of London. The 24,000 sq ft Arcade Food Hall opened in 2023, and the Control Room B bar serves cocktails among the original dials.

The shops inside the Power Station open 10am–8pm Monday to Saturday and 12pm–6pm on Sunday; many restaurants and bars open later.

Electric Boulevard and the riverside

Electric Boulevard is a new pedestrian high street running south from the Power Station, framed by Foster + Partners’ Battersea Roof Gardens and Gehry Partners’ Prospect Place, with shops and restaurants at street level and homes above. By the river, Circus West Village, opened in 2017, was the first phase to welcome visitors, with restaurants facing the Thames.

The boiler house was once so vast that St Paul’s Cathedral could have stood inside it.

In front of the station, Power Station Park opens up a stretch of riverbank that was used for coal and warehouses for a century and closed to the public. The riverside walk now runs past the chimneys towards Nine Elms and Vauxhall, and across the 42-acre site more than 19 acres are public space.

Nine Elms reborn

Battersea Power Station is the western anchor of the wider Nine Elms regeneration, a former riverside of railway yards and depots between Battersea and Vauxhall. New Covent Garden Market, London’s wholesale fruit, vegetable and flower market, has traded here since November 1974, and the US Embassy opened its new building here in January 2018.

Between them, towers of new homes, offices, gardens and a riverside path have turned a once-closed industrial shore into a new district of Zone 1, linked by the extended Northern line.

Getting there

The Northern line extension opened on 20 September 2021, running from Kennington to two new Zone 1 stations, Nine Elms and Battersea Power Station; the station entrance is on Battersea Park Road, and Leicester Square is about 11 minutes away without a change. Uber Boat by Thames Clippers stops at the Battersea Power Station pier, with boats east to Embankment, Blackfriars and Canary Wharf.

By rail, Battersea Park station, with trains to Victoria, and Queenstown Road station, with trains to Waterloo, are both within walking distance. From Sloane Square it is a 12-minute walk over Chelsea Bridge, and buses 44, 137, 156, 211, 344, 436 and 452 stop nearby. Our travel-times guide has every route into central London.

Our advice: arrive by river for the best first view of the chimneys, book the Chimney Lift for late afternoon to see the city turn to lights, then shop the turbine halls and finish with dinner by the water in Circus West Village.