Sculptural Giants

From a peak of around 240 towers in the mid 1960s, today only 45 Cooling Towers from Britain's great post-war power stations remain. These silent sculptural giants are the Stonehenge or Avebury of the mid twentieth century, yet they exist on borrowed time. 

The last coal-fired power station in the country, Ratcliffe-on-Soar, shut down on the 30th of September 2024, and almost all cooling towers are due to be demolished before the end of the decade. Historic England have stated that ‘at the moment there are no plans to preserve a cooling tower’ and that they  ‘do not have the architectural interest requisite for listing’. We profoundly disagree.

Our Campaign

C20 Society - the national charity for the protection of Britain's modern architectural and design heritage - is campaigning to retain and list just one set of Cooling Towers for future generations, and is working with architects, engineers and artists to explore viable approaches for how they might be repurposed in the age of sustainability.

Sign the petition to send to send a message to Historic England and the government, that these are valued parts of our national heritage that deserve to be protected.

End of the carbon age

Higher than the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral (300ft), yet with a concrete hyperbolic structure in some places only seven inches thick, Cooling Towers are unlike any other structure in the British landscape. Artist Sir Anthony Gormley has described cooling towers as a ‘Man made volcano…a wonderful relic of the carbon age, a memorial to Britain’s great, 200-year-long romance with the second law of thermodynamics’.

Our countryside is dotted with the remnants of power generation and infrastructure from previous centuries; from smock windmills to mill chimney stacks, bottle kilns to gasholder frames. Long after the sails have stopped turning and the furnaces have been extinguished, these functional structures have gradually assumed the status of regional and national landmarks. The Cooling Towers of post-war power stations are simply the latest example –  a majestic and invaluable part our twentieth century industrial heritage.

Retain and Reuse

Post-war power stations were absolutely vast, often 400-800 acres – or the size of 200-300 football pitches. The footprint of a cluster of 8 Cooling Towers takes up less than 2% of that. Why not retain the towers and integrate them into the new plans for the wider site?

There are plenty of examples internationally of creative new uses for redundant cooling towers. From amusement parks to extreme sports centres, giant art installations to music festival sites, heritage parks to panoramic viewing platforms.