Accumulator Tower and District Heating Workshop is a Grade II listed building in the Westminster local planning authority area, England. First listed on 22 December 1998. Tower and workshop. 7 related planning applications.
Accumulator Tower and District Heating Workshop
- WRENN ID
- crooked-passage-umber
- Grade
- II
- Local Planning Authority
- Westminster
- Constituency
- Cities of London and Westminster MP: Rachel Blake (Lab)
- Country
- England
- Date first listed
- 22 December 1998
- Type
- Tower and workshop
- Address
- Accumulator Tower and District Heating Workshop, Churchill Gardens Road, City of Westminster, SW1V 3AJ
- OS grid reference
- TQ 292 779
- Coordinates
- 51.48586, -0.14033
- Source
- Historic England listing
Description
The Accumulator Tower and District Heating Workshop is a notable structure built between 1947 and 1950 by architects Powell and Moya for Westminster City Council, with engineering by Kennedy and Donkin. The accumulator tower stands 136 feet high on a plinth made of rough granite setts and is constructed from site-welded steel plates. It features an insulated, independent welded steel frame that is fully glazed with rough-cast glass panels, all enclosed in an anodised aluminium frame. The tower has 18 tiers of glazing and is connected to a pump house via a glazed link supported by rolled steel stanchions. The pump house itself is fully glazed with a tiled end wall facing Churchill Gardens Road and includes a one-bay roll shutter.
The single-storey building above the basement pumps has a five-bay layout and incorporates a reinforced concrete frame, some brick cladding, clerestorey glazing, and north-facing rooflights. The interior of the workshops and machinery is not considered of special interest, nor are the later lightweight buildings on the site. Churchill Gardens was the first district heating system in Britain, originally supplied with hot water through an existing tunnel from Battersea Power Station. The accumulator tower was designed as an architectural feature, with its round, translucent shape providing a striking contrast to the solid, rectilinear blocks of flats nearby. Architectural critic Ian Nairn praised the boiler house at the base of the tower for its elegance, noting the harmonious relationship between the machinery and the fine glass and steel structure surrounding it. The tower forms a cohesive group with Chaucer House and, along with Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley Houses, received a Merit Award at the Festival of Britain in 1951.
Local climate
Accumulator Tower and District Heating Workshop sits in one of the driest parts of the UK, with an average of 690 mm of rain a year. This makes it drier than 95% of listed buildings in the UK. Its exposure to wind-driven rain is lower than that of 98% of listed buildings.
It experiences an average of 35 freeze-thaw cycles a year, more than 57% of listed buildings. Of these, 16 follow at least 1 mm of rain in the preceding 48 hours. Average temperatures at this location have risen by 0.3°C per decade since 1991.
Averages for 1991–2020; temperature trend 1991–2025. Figures describe the wider area (a grid cell of roughly 10 km), not the individual site. Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2026.
More on this building
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- Full EPC report — heating system, energy costs, size, glazing, construction etc.
- No sale records on file
- Related listed building consents — 7 applications
- Detailed attributes — period, style, materials, features
- Flood risk assessment
- Radon risk assessment
- Weather exposure and heating demand — rain and frost month by month and year by year, wind direction, solar and humidity
Matched applications, energy data and sale records are assembled automatically and may contain errors. Flag incorrect data.
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