Electricity Museum (Former Christchurch Power Station)

Electricity Museum (former Christchurch Power Station)

An electricity power station, now a museum of electricity, built in 1903 for the Bournemouth and Poole Electricity Supply Company. The building is constructed of red brick with stone and terracotta dressings, with slate roofs featuring ridge ventilators and parapeted gable ends with stone coping. Parts have been re-clad in corrugated asbestos sheets.

The building comprises two parallel ranges: a generator hall on the south with entrance and offices at the west end, battery room above, and a shorter boilerhouse range to the north. A later 20th-century single-storey extension was added in the north-west angle. The original boiler chimney has been demolished.

The architecture is Late Victorian Italianate in style. The west front is two storeys with twin gables. The right gable is 2:1:2 bays with corner pilasters and gablets, a central two-storey portico containing a round-arch doorway with panelled door and fanlight, large stone console brackets and a stone pediment above with dentils. Segmental arch windows flank the portico with late 20th-century frames. The gable apex is raised with a moulded brick keyed roundel containing a terracotta cartouche inscribed with the date 1903. The left gable is set back with a similar raised apex, an oculus, and a later 20th-century single-storey extension below. The north side of the boilerhouse has a moulded brick eaves cornice, a blind segmental arch, and four bays with iron piers that were formerly open and now contain round-arch windows. The east rear features two similar gables with raised apexes and oculi; the left blind, the right with tracery. Large segmental arch doorways and brick pilasters feature on both gables; the right doorway is blocked.

The entrance contains glazed wall tiles and segmental arch doorways with tall keyblocks. The generator hall is open to an iron-tie roof structure and features an ornate cast-iron gallery on three sides supported on columns, with stairs at the west end having similar ornate balustrades. A gantry on cast-iron columns supports a travelling crane inscribed "Herbert Morris and Bastert Limited, Loughborough, Leicestershire". The boilerhouse has an inserted floor but retains the original iron roof and two blast doors. Original plant surviving includes a carboniser for converting AC to DC and engine room telegraphs on the gallery landing. The generator, dating from 1905-6, originates from a power station in Oxfordshire.

Christchurch Power Station was built in 1903 as a generating station to serve the Christchurch area of the Bournemouth and Poole Electricity Supply Company's network. From 1905, power generated was used to operate trams running from Poole in the west to Christchurch in the east, as well as for street lighting in Christchurch. When the National Grid took over in 1926, the power station was no longer required for generation and became a sub-station. The sub-station became redundant in the late 1970s when high voltage switchgear was relocated outside the building, which subsequently became a museum of electricity. The Bournemouth and Poole Electricity Company is an early electricity supply company, and Christchurch Power Station is one of the most complete early power stations to have survived in England.