Tinsley Towers
Thursday, 28th August 2008 by Alex Turnbull
Tinsley Viaduct is a two-tier road bridge in Sheffield, England; the first of its kind in the UK. It carries the M1 motorway over a 1033 metre section of the Don Valley, and is one of Sheffield's most prominent landmarks. Sadly there's not much to see from our viewpoint.
Fortunately for us however, the Tinsley Viaduct runs right past the Tinsley Towers, a fantastic pair of defunct cooling towers. Due to their extremely close proximity to the viaduct, they were left standing when the power plant they served was demolished in the 70s.
As it happens, "extremely close" is a bit of an understatement - the nearest tower stands only 12 metres from the M1!
Actually, "stood" is the correct term I'm afraid.
Following years of strengthening work to the viaduct (and presumably advances in demolition technology), the towers were finally brought down1 in the early hours of Sunday the 24th August. You can watch a video of the spectacular destruction of the towers over at the BBC.
Thanks to Radio 2 and the ever informative Jonathan Rawle.
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Despite several campaigns to save them, including a rather fanciful attempt to reposition them as some kind of "art installation". ↩︎
About the author
Alex has decided that his title will be Senior Vice President of Stuff.
They have just been demolished last weekend! I am 30 minutes away from Sheffield UK
Never had a reason to visit Sheffield, and if this is one of the most prominent landmarks then I don’t think I ever will have, either.
Yet something strange is going on here with the shadow of the bridge: https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=53.419794,-1.408329&z=19 https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=53.419794,-1.408329&z=19
OK, next try for the second link: https://www.googlesightseeing.com/maps?p=&c=&t=k&hl=en&ll=53.414539,-1.403198&z=19
Small point of pedantry. Well actually a massive, power station sized point of pedantry. The link you have provided is to Ferrybridge power station – approximately 36 miles to the north of Tinsley. The Tinsley cooling towers were part of the former Blackburn Meadows power station. Cheers Carry on.
@CM – you know I thought that was funny. I Googled for “wiki Blackburn Meadows Power Station” as I often do, and the link I included was the first result.
Clearly Google is wrong, and I am an idiot for believing it! Post updated with correct link in 3, 2, 1…
Some pictures of the original power station here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/image_galleries/blackburn_meadows_power_station_gallery.shtml?1 None of them shows more than two cooling towers, though. It makes me wonder if there were ever any other hyperbolic towers, or whether the other five cooling towers were of some other form.
This birds eye view really shows how close the towers were to the M1.
I’m surprised, and slightly dismayed, that nobody turned them into apartments. That would have been a cool place to live!
Ah, how I miss these towers. They might not have been anything special, but seeing them when I was driving along the M1, especially from a long journey always reminded me how close to home I was :).