Main Building At Central Electricity Generating Board Ferrybridge A Site

The main building at the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) Ferrybridge 'A' site, now offices, laboratories, and workshops, was constructed in 1926 for the Yorkshire Electric Power Company and subsequently altered. It’s built of red brick in English bond, with white terracotta dressings. The building’s rectangular plan incorporates a turbine hall and boiler house as receding wings attached to a front office block. The style is 20th-century classical, with bays defined by giant pilasters of brick, featuring roll-moulded terracotta bases and capitals.

The symmetrical south front, of nine bays and four storeys, is dominated by a full-height porch containing the entrance hall and staircase. The doorway, set within the terracotta plinth, features revolving doors and a square overlight with a terracotta architrave and cornice. Above the doorway is a giant round-headed stair window, framed with terracotta and containing iron glazing bars arranged in three lights with numerous small panes. The four bays to each side have similar three-light windows divided into diminishing stages of panes (7, 6, 6, and 3), with high transoms. Ground-floor lorry doorways are present in the outer bays, with the one on the left enlarged vertically and horizontally. The building has a plain frieze of square tiles and a prominent dentil cornice, topped by a flat roof; four tall chimneys associated with the boiler house (on the right) have been removed. Pilastered return walls mirror the front’s detailing, with the west return wall comprising seven bays and the east return wall eight bays. The east return has square windows and some doorways at ground floor.

Internally, the former turbine hall (now a workshop) occupies the west side and features a full height with an inner steel frame supporting overhead cranes. The former boiler house on the east side has been partitioned vertically and horizontally for office use. The open-well staircase in the porch is supported on steel bearers with a lift to the rear. Rear elevations have been altered with additions.