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Post by Dave on Jul 27, 2014 4:20:12 GMT
At 5:00am this morning the three iconic cooling towers on the site of the old Didcot A power station were brought down with explosives by Birmingham based demolition experts Coleman & Co. As a long time Formula 1 fan and follower of the Williams F1 team these three towers have a special significance for me and many other fans as they have become synonymous with the team and their historic presence within the town.
A large number of residents began a petition to save the towers as they were considered by many to be a symbolic landmark which, they argued, formed part of Didcot's heritage. Unfortunately their efforts fell on deaf ears, and so consequently the view across the town may have become a little more expansive today, but in reality a significant part of the Didcot skyline has been forever lost as a result of the towers destruction... |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2014 5:05:39 GMT
That is a shame. I used to drive past these when visiting my parents in Oxfordshire. Another bit gone  |
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 27, 2014 7:11:44 GMT
Sorry Dave, but what's the connection with car racing?
I find the human animal very strange indeed. We just don't like change, whatever that change may be. The local people would have protested till the cows came home when the towers went up and now they're an indispensible part of the landscape! Incredible! I find myself facing this sort of stuff all the time in my work - I spend a good part of my time trying to establish new native woodland on all sorts of different types of sites and almost always for, in large part, the benefit of the local communities. Now, we all love trees, don't we? So much so, that you'd think my job would be a simple task, especially when you take into account some of the land I'm interested in - cOlliery spoil heaps, landfill sites etc. Oh no! You wouldn't believe the number of conversations I have that begin with, "I love trees, but....."! or worse, "I'm a member of the Woodland Trust, but..."! They hate it when you plant a wood and they hate it when you cut one down.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2014 7:59:26 GMT
Lets face it, most of our 'natural landscape' is nothing of the sort. Man has been shaping it to his own wants and needs for many many centuries. Each generation has its own ideas of what is good and bad and worth preserving.
Its true of course that we resist change because it rather suggests that our ideas were wrong but needs change.
Difficult to accept sometimes but its the way of the world.
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 27, 2014 8:05:52 GMT
As Mark Twain said, they only made land once and they're not making any more of it. There's already litte enough of it to go round in the UK and I'd rather see a site like this put to better use than 'enhancing'the landscape!
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Post by Chris on Jul 27, 2014 9:26:18 GMT
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 27, 2014 12:38:46 GMT
I spent a few years working in an office at the foot of some very large power station cooling towers. They're 98 metres in diameter at the base and 114 metres tall. Here's a photo taken from the top of the chimney stack (the tallest in Europe) - you can see one of the cooling towers in the bottom right corner - 145 metres below! Good view from the top on a clear day!  |
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Post by Dave on Jul 27, 2014 12:39:23 GMT
Sorry Dave, but what's the connection with car racing? I find the human animal very strange indeed. We just don't like change, whatever that change may be. The local people would have protested till the cows came home when the towers went up and now they're an indispensible part of the landscape! Incredible! I find myself facing this sort of stuff all the time in my work - I spend a good part of my time trying to establish new native woodland on all sorts of different types of sites and almost always for, in large part, the benefit of the local communities. Now, we all love trees, don't we? So much so, that you'd think my job would be a simple task, especially when you take into account some of the land I'm interested in - cOlliery spoil heaps, landfill sites etc. Oh no! You wouldn't believe the number of conversations I have that begin with, "I love trees, but....."! or worse, "I'm a member of the Woodland Trust, but..."! They hate it when you plant a wood and they hate it when you cut one down. Where to start with this? Addressing your first sentence, I pretty much explain that in the post so I'd just be repeating myself if I explained it again 
I suppose to get my point you need to be the sort of person who connects with a 'landscape', whatever it may contain. For example, I spent a good part of my childhood growing up in North Kent on the Hoo peninsular. It's a rather beautiful part of Kent which contains a diverse range of scenery, low rolling hills interspersed with arable land, small coppices, brooks and salt marshes (it being located between the Thames and Medway estuaries).
There were (and still are to an extent) several sites housing heavy industrial plant on the peninsula such as Kingsnorth power station (there are two there now although Kingsnorth A, the larger of the two, is due to be decommissioned). There's another, larger, power station sited on the Isle Of Grain (my father was involved in its construction incidentally) just a few miles east of Kingsnorth. Adjacent to the power station at Grain there used to sit a vast oil refinery operated by BP when I was a kid. It sat on the salt marsh looking for all the world like the industrial complex in the opening title sequence of the classic Jerry Anderson series, Thunderbirds. It was part of the scenery and accepted as such by the locals, even though it was noisy and smelly. As beautiful as the natural scenery was (and still is) the refinery contained its own strange beauty, especially at night when lit from within. We lived about a mile and a half east of it over the marsh and the heat haze would make the thousands of individual lights in the plant twinkle like stars. I've always possessed an excellent imagination and so I'd sometimes imagine it was some vast spaceship which had alighted to Earth, waiting patiently to receive an emissary from the strange lifeforms it had discovered.
Located to the north of the plant were two, two hundred and fifty foot masts, each topped out with a giant burner (or flare), these burnt off the waste gases from the plant. Depending on the rate of production the flames atop these towers could vary in size from a small, orangey yellow flicker to twin roaring inferno's which could reach a length of sixty to seventy feet. When at full chat those flares would illuminate the marshes between us with an eerie but quite gorgeous golden flicker, forcing shadows to dance about like mischievous demons.
It is mostly gone now. The natural scenery is as beautiful as ever and Grain power station and it's seven hundred foot chimney still stands proudly at the confluence of the Thames and the Medway, however BP dismantled the refinery in the early nineteen eighties after which the site was employed to construct the vast reinforced concrete sections which make up the Channel Tunnel. Today there exists a small oil farm consisting of just a few storage tanks sitting on the southern border of the old BP site where once upon a time they were legion, and that's about it.
The point Chris is this, this stuff was all part of the landscape I grew up in and the dichotomy of its consistency, natural and man-made, never entered my head. It was home and very much a part of me and my life, which is why I understand how some of the people in Didcot are feeilng today.
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 27, 2014 12:43:25 GMT
Sorry, am I being thick?
You state that there is a connection, but you don't explain what that connection is. How have cooling towers become synonymous with a racing team? It's not clear to me at all!
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Post by Dave on Jul 27, 2014 12:52:52 GMT
Ah, I see now. Sorry  Back in days of yore when Murray and James reigned supreme on BBC's coverage of F1, Murray Walker often referred to them in relation to the team as their headquarters is not that far from the site. Also, many photos of the Williams HQ show the towers in the background...  |
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Post by ChrisB on Jul 27, 2014 12:57:29 GMT
Thanks.
The rest of my posts might give you a better idea of where I'm coming from.
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Post by Dave on Jul 27, 2014 13:23:18 GMT
People tend to be uncomfortable with change however when changes occur, over time they become part of their paradigm and thus they embrace them, which is very much the case in this instance. What were seen as ugly, industrial monstrosities in the past have, over time, graduated to become the subject of local affection. As for the tree thing, why wouldn't people want trees planted in their community? This I do not understand... |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2014 14:28:10 GMT
People tend to be uncomfortable with change however when changes occur, over time they become part of their paradigm and thus they embrace them, which is very much the case in this instance. What were seen as ugly, industrial monstrosities in the past have, over time, graduated to become the subject of local affection. As for the tree thing, why wouldn't people want trees planted in their community? This I do not understand... My experience is that most people like trees as long as they are not anywhere near where they live. I live on a hill with a wooded bank on the uphill side of my garden. Old maps and prints indicate that a bank of trees have been there since at least 1710 and yet my all my neighbours (who proclaim to love trees) want them chopped down, notwithstanding that we live in a Conservation Area and the trees are protected by law. Apparently the trees spoil their views of the Thames estuary and Hoo peninsular and they seem to believe they have a divine right to cut them down. Some of the machinations I have had to put up with are beyond belief and even involve the production of an S26 planning consent that transpired not to be bona fide document. I have the LPA squirming over this one.  |
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Post by Dave on Jul 27, 2014 19:10:59 GMT
That's crazy and somewhat hypocritical on their part, it probably has more to do with property values than anything else. In my experience some peoples ideals fly out the window when they perceive they might be out of pocket. I'm assuming you live on the Essex side of the Thames estuary from your post Andy |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2014 19:29:04 GMT
No, the Kent side Dave, on a hillside about 55m above the river facing NE. I can see most of Essex and it's a bit flat over there. |
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Post by Dave on Jul 27, 2014 19:32:24 GMT
I remember that view fondly Andy, some of the best times of my childhood were spent in the area and truthfully, I really miss it. Have they made the SS Mongomery wreck safe yet or are they still fudging it? |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2014 20:09:37 GMT
Still a no go area but I'm far enough up river for it not to be of any serious concern to me.
I think there's about 14,000 tonnes of explosives on it and Boris wants to build an airport in the locality!
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Post by Dave on Jul 27, 2014 21:24:33 GMT
Don't get me started on Boris Island I am vehemently against it as it is totally unnecessary, and that's before bringing my personal issues into the equation. I used to live in Allhallows and every time there was a big winter storm there were concerns that movement of the wreck would set off the unstable munitions. The wave from such an explosion would swamp the sea defences there in minutes...  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2014 21:44:06 GMT
Used to occasionally go to allhallows when I was a kid. As a teenager a group of us used to go out to Grain fort at low tide and fish a couple of hours either side of high water. The only trouble was that we had to wait for the next low tide to get off. Access required ropes ang grapling hooks.
That reminds me, Cooling castle should be one for the castle thread as it does have a music connection.
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Post by MikeMusic on Jul 28, 2014 12:22:14 GMT
Sooner or later they have to go or be maintained - for money !
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Back in days of yore when Murray and James reigned supreme on BBC's coverage of F1, Murray Walker often referred to them in relation to the team as their headquarters is not that far from the site. Also, many photos of the Williams HQ show the towers in the background... 
