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How the Beauty of a Coal Power Station Led to its Downfall
The design & demolition of Didcot ‘A’ and the future of green energy
This essay first appeared on the It’s Freezing in LA! blog on 13th September 2020, click here to read it there.
It used to be easy to know when you were passing the small town of Didcot in Oxfordshire; whether you were changing trains at the rail interchange on its outskirts, or racing past it on the dual-carriageway heading anywhere but here. Home to Didcot ‘A’, a coal-burning station, the huge cooling-towers stood proud above the endless green fields. They became an iconic symbol of the town, but here they no longer stand.
The first three cooling towers were demolished on July 27, 2014, followed by the rest on August 18, 2019. The demolition details were kept vague to avoid crowds, but a Facebook event for the second demolition had interest from 4,560 people — I was one of them. Comments across social media shared information from people who had been scoping out the area and suggested locations with the best view. I chose a small hill to the south-west of Didcot, about three miles away.
The demolition itself had a mixed reception: some celebrated the destruction of a pollution giant, others lamented the loss of a landmark. Kit Wright, the author of the…
