Tinsley Cooling Towers - important landmarks or ripe for demolition? 3 October 2006
Posted by Anders Hanson in Architecture, Sheffield.trackback
Like most cities, Sheffield has its fair share of architectural triumphs and disasters. Much of the debate has centered on the future of Park Hill flats and the architectural merit of the city centre’s new St. Paul’s Hotel and St. Paul’s Place developments. One debate though that is becoming more high profile is on whether Tinsley Cooling Towers should be retained or demolished.
The future of the cooling towers is not a new debate. But at the very time that E.ON. is planning the demolition of the structures, the argument on their future is now going national thanks to Channel 4’s The Big Art Project.
I say it is going national now, but for those people who regularly travel up and down the M1, the cooling towers may be familiar. They stand on the opposite side of the M1 from Sheffield’s Meadowhall Shopping Centre, immediately next to the Tinsley Viaduct. Indeed it is the motorway that prevented their demolition many years ago when the old Blackburn Meadows Power Station closed down. Their proximity to the M1 makes their demolition quite precarious.
So over the years the debate has raged about whether they are an eyesore that has to go or whether they are landmark structures. Despite my love of industrial buildings, I would not normally look at cooling towers as beautiful. I suppose they’re a bit too commonplace, bland and uniform for that. But in my view, there’s something about Tinsley’s that make them important. From any high point near where I live you can see them in the distance on the other side of the city, and you know that that is more or less where Sheffield ends. They are a sort of full-stop to Sheffield, everything before them is a part of the city and beyond them the land gets flatter and flatter through Rotherham, Doncaster, the Humber Estuary and eventually the North Sea. So I suppose the reason I want to save them is not because they are beautiful or because they are unique, but because they are a clear landmark in the city. Some people have declared them as Sheffield’s equivalent to the Angel of the North, but I think that denegrates the beauty of that sculpture.
But the question then is what do you do with them? Some proposals have been to beautify them, but in a way that would take away their starkness and the way that they stand out so much. But leaving them as they are would just make them look like what they currently are - something that has yet to be demolished. I suppose I don’t know what should be done with them, but I do feel they should be kept.
CHANNEL 4: The Channel 4 The Big Art Project - Sheffield
I can’t help but feeling looking at your photo of the towers that if you took them out (and I’ve not had the time to play around with photoshop) there would just be something missing.
Sheffield’s a wierd place architecturally - and I’ve no time for much of the stuff which was put up shortly after the war. The redevelopment of the city centre since I moved away is, I believe, to be welcomed - and every time I go back home I get the sense that the city is pulling itself out of an architectural dark age.
But, much as they are part of the post-war industrial concrete, the cooling towers are also something different. I’ve never really thought about it that much before - but you might be right in the idea that they provide an endpoint to the city on the side that doesn’t have any hills. You can see them from the bedroom window of my childhood, and when you’re whizzing down to Ringinglow from Burbage on a bike after a day in the Peak District they’re a sign that you’re home (or, more likely these days when I’m whizzing down the M1 in a car!).
Yes, there would definitely be something missing.
I am Part of a student team at Hallam uni. We are making a documentary on the cooling towers, if they stay up or if they dont. Anyone with any information which could help please get in touch with
Bovinedreams@hotmail.co.uk
Two of the team are from sheffield and obviously want to see the towers survive, as doc makers we hae to remain impartial.
I have set up a new site, to help.
http://www.tinsleytowers.com/