A few years ago, I was sleeping on a train from Sheffield to London when I suddenly awoke as we passed by the imposing cooling towers of the now decommissioned Ratcliffe-on-Soar coal-fired power station.

It was a disorienting experience partly because, as a recent newcomer to this country, I didn’t even realise that anything like this existed in the UK. But my initial shock quickly gave way to fascination and wonder. These cathedrals of industrial power truly are “simultaneously hellish and exciting”, as Edwin Heathcote, the Financial Times’ architecture critic, described them.

That’s why I agree with him that they should be preserved and adapted for future generations — not just for posterity’s sake, but in recognition that one unintended consequence of having deliberately removed some of the industrial landscapes of the past is that erasure of local identity, and the sense of belonging, that these edifices of carbon and concrete once instilled.

But what do I know? Before anyone proselytises this way or that, perhaps local communities should be consulted directly so that they can have a say in what happens to them.

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Published in the Financial Times in response to “Cathedrals of industrial power are ripe for reimagining,” by Edwin Heathcote.

Photo: Cal McNab