Inside Battersea Power Station
Talking of crumbling, abandoned iconic landmarks (see yesterday’s post), here’s what the inside of London’s Battersea Power Station looks like. Yep, it’s an empty shell of its former self. Without a roof. What to do with the building has been hotly debated for the last twenty years, in which time the Grade-II listed building has been left to decompose. Umpteenth plans have been submitted over the years (when I was a kid it was going to be a theme park), all of them collapsing, like the building will do eventually, unless it’s purposely knocked down and the prime land next to The Thames sold off.
The latest plans (after many setbacks) include a rather pedestrian mix of offices, shops, housing and restaurants. The joint owner, playboy property millionaire Johnny Ronan, has had his private life in the news lately. He jetted off to Marrakesh for the weekend with a former Miss World – the cost of which apparently could have saved the ailing iconic white pillars.
In a perfect world... it should have been preserved as it was, given to English Heritage and turned into a museum with parkland around it. Naive idealist, moi?