Riverside East of the Tower, north bank. Barking Power Station site

Riverside East of the Tower, north bank
Barking Power Station site

Riverside strip of marshland where a major power plant was built in the early 20th.  Many small industrial and haulage sites, but huge plans for housing development

This post only covers sites north of the river. The south bank part is Thamesmead Pumping Station

Post to the west Creekmouth
Post to the north Barking Marsh

Atcost Road
Buzzard Creek Industrial Estate.
Trading estates and light industry

Railway
Rail line coming into the powers station site from the north east originating from Ripple Lane sidings.

River Road
Barking A Power Station. In 1920, the County of London Electric Supply Company applied for permission to build a power station here capable of expansion to 600 MW.  This was a consortium of local authorities to rival privately built Battersea. Although originally built to supply the county of London it then served a wider area, including part of Kent, as well as the national grid. It had 8 Parsons turbo-generators and 22 boilers, plus 2 reheat boilers. These were in two boiler houses, one being all chain grate boilers and the other being all pulverised fuel boilers. It opened in 1925 and when completed was the largest power station in Britain built as a complete station at one time. The Yarrow boilers were scrapped in the early 1950s, being replaced by steam from the B station. The pulverised fuel boilers were converted to oil firing around 1964. The site was chosen for easy delivery of coal from the Thames and by rail.
A cable tunnel was built the river to supply the south bank with electricity.
Shaft house for the cable tunnel which took cables to the Arsenal and Thamesmead
Barking B Power Station. This began to operate at full capacity in 1939. The capacity was 303 MW with 4 x 75 MW B.T.H. turbo-generators. It had 16 chain grate boilers, each capable of producing 256,000 lbs steam per hour. These were arranged in two boiler houses, with 8 boilers in each. The power station was transferred to the London Division of the British Electricity Authority in 1948. The B station closed on 1976.
Barking C. This was built by The British Electricity Authority in 1954. It had three B.T.H. 75 MW turbo-generators and 6 boilers, 5 for pulverised fuel and the sixth a cyclone furnace. The pulverised fuel boilers were converted to use oil in 1960. The station was closed on 26 October 1981,
Barking East 33kV Switch House, the Control Room and Office Block, and the interconnecting cable tunnels remain
Dagenham Sunday Market is now on part of the power station site.  It has over 600 stalls and thousands of visitors each week. The market opened in 2002 moving here from Chequers Lane, Dagenham
Barking Guano Works. This factory was at Creekmouth but also on a site later used for the power station,
Powder magazine. This dated from 1719 and in 1885 was sold to the Creekmouth Gunpowder Company, despite attempts by the local authority to close it; it lasted until after the Great War. This now appears to be the reception area for a property company.
Riverside Piers


Sources
Barking and Dagenham Nature Conservation
Bird. Geography of the Port of London
Dagenham Sunday Market.Web site
Essex JournalGLIAS. Newsletter
Hillman. London Under London
MPP electric list
Port of London Magazine
Victoria County History. Essex
Wikipedia. Barking Power Station. Web site


 

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