Accumulator Tower And District Heating Workshop

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.