Bankside

Cathedral of Power

 

Electricity was first generated at Bankside in 1891, feeding the heart of London. But the Victorian power station polluted the air with sulphur and grit and covered the ground with mountains of ash and coal. After the harsh winter of 1947 and the need to rebuild wartime bomb damage, London needed more power and cleaner living.

 

Designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, the magnificent new Cathedral of Power was in trouble from the start. Protests over its environmental impact affected the design and led to the use of oil rather than coal to generate electricity.

 

Construction of Bankside took over 16 years to complete, sadly its prime was not quite as long and by the late 1970s was often idle. Oil prices made it uneconomic to use and in 1981 power generation stopped.

 

Too young for listing, and too valuable not to hand over to a privatised industry, when Except Buses beheld the beauty of Bankside in the mid 80s we wondered how long this Cathedral would last and held our breath.

We created music in homage to this inspiring building and two collections were compiled.

 

During our hiatus our fears were quashed, and Bankside lives on as Tate Modern, visited by millions of art lovers and tourists from around the world every year. But we want to share our homage to Bankside and return you to those bleak late 80s and how we saw its future.