Cottam Power Station
April 2022 | England | Demolished
Well now. Where to start. The imposing Cottam Power Station is infamous among urban explorers for being particularly hard to attempt to explore. A combination of a very active and on the ball security team consisting of many guards and dogs, and also a very very secure outer fence. I won’t specify why, but those of you who know… you know.
Technical Details
Commission Date: 1968.
Decommission Date: 2019.
Capacity: 2,000MW (four units).
Cooling Towers: eight 114 meter (375ft) cooling towers, arranged in a rectangular array.
Chimney: single 200 meter (650ft) multiflue stack.
Fuel Type(s): coal.
Control System: CUTLASS with later APMS modifications.
Boiler Manufacturer: John Thompson LTD and Clark Chapman & Co.
Turbine Generator Manufacturer: English Electric Company.
OCGT Plant: four 17.5MW Rolls-Royce Olympus gas turbines (decommissioned many years before).
Architect: Yorke, Rosenberg, Mardall of Nottingham.
Status: demolition underway.
History:
To begin with, planning of Cottam Power Station began in the 1960s soon after the nearby West Burton A was ordered by the CEGB. Work on the colossal new site began with breaking ground in 1964 on the site of Mickleholme Farm, which the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) had purchased. Construction began soon after, with the contractors for the building work being Balfour Beatty, and the power station was commissioned in 1968 by the CEGB – the building was designed by Yorke Rosenberg Mardall of Nottingham, who also designed Lynemouth Power Station. Four coal fired boilers were manufactured and built by John Thompson Water LTD, along with Clarke Chapman & Co, which fed superheated steam to the four 500MW English Electric turbo-generator sets. These turbines were specifically developed for Cottam Power Station and were streamlined in such a way that they had a smaller footprint and mass than previous turbo-generator installations at other power stations. The boilers fired pulverised coal dust, with temperatures reaching 568°C. The coal was transported from the coal stockyard via conveyors to a distribution tower within the building that spanned the length of the structure. There, the coal was discharged into hoppers (known as bunkers) were it was fed into large rotating ball mills whereupon the coal was pulverised into a fine dust. Hot air was blasted through the mills, taking the powdered coal up into the furnace area of the boiler. Each unit of the power station was cooled by a pair of cooling towers – eight 114 meter tall cooling towers stand adjacent to the main power station building. A single 200 meter high chimney dominates the local skyline.
The plant was fitted with flue gas desulphurisation in the 2000s to reduce the emissions of the station – this required the addition of fluero-elastomer coatings and acid resistant tiles to the inside of the four flues of the chimney, and also the construction of four flue gas desulphurisation units, and also large silos to hold the gypsum created as a byproduct of that process. Rail loading facilities to transport the gypsum elsewhere to the concrete industry were also built. The power station changed hands many times – upon the privatisation of the CEGB in 1990, Cottam fell into the hands of Powergen until 2000, whereupon it was bought by London Energy for £398 million. London Energy then became a part of EDF, a French state owned utilities company. Cottam Power Station operated from 1968 to 2019 and was decommissioned, with the blame falling on alleged “challenging market conditions”. EDF also owns the nearby West Burton A Power Station. Brown and Mason moved onto the site in August 2021 and have begun the demolition work.
Below: a short video I made showcasing highlights of the exploration.
The Explore:
This was an exploration that I and others had been building up to for quite some time. Over the years, we had heard much talk of security that turned up the moment you got onto the site, with dogs and police and all the usual stuff one would expect. It was definitely a very hard explore, somewhere where many had been caught before they even got anywhere near the power station building. We knew this would not be easy whatsoever.
After a hiatus from exploring since January 2022, I was really rather rearing to get out there and photograph something. The masses of deadlines and essays and coursework for my degree had swallowed up the majority of my time for the last three months. My friends and I had long planned to give Cottam an attempt, but we were always slightly put off by the tales of security and their response times. Plus the fact that the fence is equipped with vibration detectors. However, after a couple of reccies, we identified some possible weak spots… and in April of 2022, we put our heads together and we went for it.
I left my flat on a Saturday, and arrived at my friend’s house the day before the explore – a nice coincidence was that whilst I was sitting on the steps of the local church waiting to be picked up, I happened to come across a group of bell ringers who were having a practice there. I was invited to join them so I did. Nice tower grab along the way! Afterwards, I was picked up and we headed back to my friend’s. I made sure to get a good night’s sleep beforehand, as this would be a long day. We left early and arrived at Cottam a couple of hours later. By that time I was dry mouthed and determined not to fail. This is when we put our plan into action. We all moved like a well oiled machine, and then boom, before we knew it, we were inside the perimeter. At that point we all belted it across to the buildings and took shelter to regain our breath. After that, we began to search for the access. It took us a little while, but I managed to find it. And I cannot tell you how big the smirk on my face when I stuck my head into the building, smelling that characteristic smell of decaying power station mustiness. And then the explore began! We were inside the building for a good 16 hours, photographing every angle possible. I will admit, I did get really quite exhausted towards the end of the day and missed the coal mills (I was wanting a rest and sleep, and couldn’t be bothered to light paint with my crappy torch), but even so I still think I did well to cover what I did in the time there.
The place is vast and frankly beautiful. However, that said, demolition work has begun – three of the four magnificent turbo-generator sets are being stripped. One has been totally stripped out, with another open to the air with the turbine blades visible. A third has had a little bit of casing removed. The fourth is currently intact. That said, it was still a most breath taking view that lay before us. With a long day ahead of us… we began the explore. It was all smooth sailing until about half past six in the evening. Two of us were beginning to crash (myself an one other) so we decided to go and have a sleep in a mess room adjacent to the turbine hall. Another member wanted us to go into a different room, but frankly neither of us could be bothered so we stuck in the mess room. I fell asleep on a table for an hour until I was woken up by the others who had looks of concern on their faces…
I was told there were people in the turbine hall with torches looking around – the others had heard pigeons flying around in a blind panic, and also beeping and wondered what it was so they cracked the door open and saw orange vested security guards shining torches around. So, we prepared to get out of the fire door in the mess room that went outside just in case the guards came closer. And then, thanks to sod’s law, they got closer, far too close for comfort. And then called it and hurried out of the fire exit and ran 800 meters around the outside of the building and got spotted and chased on foot for about 100 meters or so. We got into an area where we could hide and lost our tail and hid quite snugly away out of view. Then about eight guards turned up on foot shining really super powerful torches everywhere, walking up and down and up and down. And then police turned up, also shining torches around like lighthouses. And then huge security vans with massive search lights started driving up and down too. And then out came the damn German Shepherds, their tell-tale barks echoing up and down where we were hiding! And still we hid and waited out. We waited there for about an hour and a half, maybe two hours, and they eased off. But saying that… they were still razzing around the site in their 4×4 trucks – they knew we were still in there.
We waited for it to go quiet around the area we were hidden in and then made it towards the exit area in stages and kept an eye on the cars and their movements as it was dark and we could see their headlights. One car turned off and went back to the security cabin. So that’s when I called it. We made a break for the exit and started piling over. Just as the last man got over, security came razzing up towards us from the inside of the site at a million miles an hour with searchlights blazing like a falling sun. We belted it away and ran into some fields with the guard screaming at us to stop and come back. We then pegged it to the cars, threw our gear into the back seats and flew away from the site, stopping a good few miles away and changing into some clean clothes. We got away. By the skin of our damned teeth. Enjoy the photographs. I am immensely proud of them.
Exterior:
Cooling Towers:
Boiler House:
Coal Bunker and De-Aerator Bay:
Turbine Hall:
Shadow Dragon 