Accumulator Tower And District Heating Workshop

TQ 2977 NW WESTMINSTER CHURCHILL GARDENS ROAD (South side) 1900/113/10110 Accumulator Tower and District Heating Workshop

GV II

Accumulator tower, pump house and workshops. 1947-50 by Powell and Moya for Westminster City Council, Kennedy and Donkin engineers. Accumulator tower set on plinth of rough granite setts, formed of site-welded steel plates, insulated and independent welded steel frame entirely glazed with rough-cast glass panels enclosed in anodised aluminium frame. 136 feet high with 18 tiers of glazing. Glazed link to pump house of rolled steel stanchions, fully glazed with tiled end wall to Churchill Gardens Road and one-bay roll shutter; five-bay single-storey building over basement pumps. link to workshops with reinforced concrete frame, some brick cladding clerestorey glazing and north rooflights. Interior of workshops and machinery not of special interest. Later lightweight buildings on the site not of special interest. Churchill Gardens was the first district heating system in Britain, originally served by hot water through an existing tunnel from Battersea Power Station (already listed, in Wandsworth). The accumulator tower was designed as an 'architectural form', its round, translucent form contrasting with the rectilinear, solid blocks of flats. 'The best single building is the crisp and elegant boiler house at the bottom of the big polygonal tower ... the machines and their fine-drawn glass and steel cage which surrounds them are a perfect match', considered Ian Nairn. It forms a close group with Chaucer House, and with it, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley Houses it won a Festival of Britain Merit Award in 1951.

Listing NGR: TQ2921877963