Tuesday 12 August 2008

Ugly beautiful??

If, as I do, you make regular journeys up and down the M1, then these will be a familiar sight:

Image: Flickr user 'bits of rubble'

The Tinsley Towers' days are numbered, however. The 250ft high cooling towers are all that remains of the Blackburn Meadows Power Station which helped to power the famous Sheffield steel industry, and are the oldest of their type in the world.

The towers, nicknamed "Salt and Pepper" have been described as "important post-industrial icons"; "an imposing indicator to drivers, letting them know they've arrived in the North"; "living art" and "the most beautiful pieces of urban landscape I have ever seen" (more comments and pictures of the towers here), some locals have set up a campaign to save the towers and The One Show visited the towers as part of their Ugly Beautiful series last week...

It seems the the owners of the towers, EOn, disagree though - the demolition is set to go ahead in the early hours of Sunday 24th August, closing the M1 and bringing dozens of people to a special viewing area in the Meadowhall car park... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/south_yorkshire/7555945.stm

EOn have been given permission to build a £60 million biomass power plant on the site, which will provide enough renewable energy to supply 40,000 homes.


What do you think??

1 comment:

TammiMagee said...

As a Historian and as a person who is keen to see more renewable energy sources I have conflicting views on this. The towers are definitely iconic and stand as a monument to the indutrial age, but am I sure that we can suffer the loss if it means 40,000 homes will benefit from a renewable energy source.