Riverside east of the Tower, south bank. Long Reach

Riverside east of the Tower, south bank
Long Reach

Riverside area of marshland now being 'regenerated' with housing following the closure of Joyce Green Hospital. Mainly taken up with the sewage works and defunct power station.

Post to the east Littlebrook
Post to the north (north bank only) Purfleet Board Mills
Post to the north (south bank only), Long Reach Hospital
Post to the south Bob Dunn Way

Birdwood Avenue
New build housing on the site of a development area mainly to the west of this square, on the site of Joyce Green Hospital.

Littlebrook D, Power Station
Littlebrook D was an oil-fired power station built by Cleveland Bridge Company for the Central Electricity Generating Board, opening in 1981. It was seen as a robust station to have a pivotal role if the bomb dropped. Five fuel oil storage tanks stored the heavy fuel oil which was delivered by tanker to one of two jetties. This generating capacity was enough to power the needs of over 2 million people. During the miners’ strike of the 1980s all three units of the station operated simultaneously and continuously throughout exceeding what it was designed to do and led to one unit being moth balled. . The remaining two units remained operational, having been refurbished to increase efficiency and improve the quality of emissions from the chimney - which was the fourth tallest in the UK. The station could start generating without an external power supply and played a vital role in restoring power supplies following the 1987 hurricane. It had three open-cycle gas turbines which included Rolls Royce Olympus derived from those on Concorde which can be turned up to full load in less than five minutes so they can deal with short-term peaks in demand.  After privatisation in 1991, the station was owned by National Power and its subs division Innogy and later bit RWE Power owned by the Gern utility company, RWE. They decided that it would "opt-out" under the EU Large Combustion Plant Directive aimed at dealing with air pollution. It therefore closed in 2015
Long Reach
Thames Water Authority works –West Kent Outfall works.  Long Reach Treatment and Sewage Works. This Opened in 1877 and was under the West Kent Authority before being taken over by the Thames Water Authority in 1974. It serves an area including Dartford, Crayford and Sevenoaks. The works was upgraded in 1979 and this is currently being done again as part of the Thames Tideway Project.
Connecting road from the hospital built 1902

Sources
Dartford Council Web site
GO-Fasttrack. Web site
Littlebrook Power Station. Wikipedia. Web site
RWE AG. Web site

Thames Water. Web site

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

South Norwood

Bromley by Bow

River Lea/Bow Creek Canning Town