London Borough of Barking and Dagenham
Local Studies Information Sheet No. 7
BARKING POWER STATION
Coal conveyor to boiler house, Souvenir booklet, 1925
King George V and Queen Mary officially opened the coal-fired Barking Power Stationin 1925, although it had been running for some months before the ceremony.It was builtby the County of London Electric Supply Company (“CLESCO”) to provide electricity for a large part of Essex as well as forpart of Kent and, by the time its four separate sections were completed, it was the largest steam powered station in Europe with a total output of some 100 megawatts of electricity. This electricity was fed into the National Grid for general consumption.
The site, where River Road, Barking, meets the Thames, was chosen because it was easily accessible for the constant stream of coal ships bringing deliveries.
Importantly, there was no shortage of coal during World War II which allowed the crucial energy supply to continue. From 1935, emergency coal stocks were built up at Samuel Williams’s Dagenham Dock during the summer for use by several of the Thames-side power stations during the winter. The station also escaped serious bombing – thought to be, in part, because of the smoke it produced which obscured the buildings themselves and offered some protection to the nearby factory of Fords.
Although the unloading of the coal and its delivery into the boilers was mechanical, there was much dirty, heavy and dangerous work to be done such as cleaning the boilers out and lagging the huge pipes. As a result, the Station did not take female employees before 1940. Until then, even the clerical and secretarial work had been done by men. Fine coal dust covered everything, including the contents of the offices.
At its height, Barking Power Station ran its own football and cricket clubs and had a darts team but with the decline in coal-produced electricity, the Station started a redundancy programme in the 1970s and finally closed inNovember 1981. The buildings were then demolished.
Today,another new Barking Power Station exists, sitedinChequers Road, Dagenham,beside the Breach. Construction started in March 1992 and it took 2000 people three years to build. Excavations for the new building’s foundations and cooling water pipes removed thousands of tonnes of the spoil which Samuel Williams (see separate Information Sheet) had used to fill in Dagenham Breach in the 19th century to create his dock. The Station was commissioned in 1995.
This was the first independent power project in southeast England to operate within the newly privatised electricity industry and was the first large generating station to be built in Greater London for more than 30 years. Run by Thames Power, a company jointly owned by Atco Power and Balfour Beatty, the plantis gas-fired anduses advanced combined-cycle technology.This enhances fuel efficiency and reduces emissions by utilising the heat recovered from the gas turbine to power a steam turbine to generate more electricity.
Running 24 hours a day for 365 days a year, the Stationhas a 1000 megawatt output with one of the best environmental records in Europe and provides more than 20% of London’s peak need or over one-third of its annual consumption.
Primary sources held elsewhere
The records of the London Electricity Board, the successor body to the County of London Electric Supply Company Ltd, are held at the London Metropolitan Archives/City of London Joint Archive Service. No archives are held in the Borough’s collections except for some photographs of both the old and the new stations.
Barking & Dagenham holds the bell pushed by King George V at the opening ceremony in 1925 in its museum collections.
Secondary sources in the LBBDArchives and Local Studies Centre
The titles listed below represent a small selection of the books and pamphlets available.
County of London Electric Supply Company Ltd, Opening of the Company’s new power house at Creekmouth, Barking, by His Majesty King George V on 19 May 1925, 29pp.
County of London Electric Supply Company Ltd: The Story of the County Company, includes pages on ‘the Barking story’.
County of London Electric Supply Company Ltd: Visit to Barking Power Station by members of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, 24 September 1931. (41pp)
Harrison, Godfrey: Alexander Gibb, the story of an engineer, (1950).
Jamieson, William: Jetty and pump-house works at Barking Power Station, in Minutes and Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol.226 pp.135-188(1927).
Archives & Local Studies Centre, Valence House, Becontree Ave, Dagenham RM8 3HT / 09.2014