OPINION - John Darlington on great London monuments: the story of Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station is one of London’s modern icons. Its four distinctive chimneys and great cathedral-like turbine halls are instantly recognisable, and have featured in films, advertisements and, famously, on the cover of Pink Floyd’s 1977 album Animals, where a 12m long inflatable pink pig floats between two of the chimneys.

But it might never have been built, such was the furore when the London Power Company (LPC) proposed its construction on the site of an abandoned waterworks company on the south bank of the Thames in 1927. Lined up in opposition were the Mayors of Chelsea and Westminster, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and countless others – including the local MP, Sir