The Ironbridge Power Stations, sometimes referred to as the Buildwas Power Stations were a series of two power stations which have occupied a site on the banks of the River Severn at Buildwas in Shropshire, England.
The first power station, later to become known as Ironbridge ‘A’ officially opened on 13th October 1932. Extra boilers were commissioned and by 1939 the station had a capacity of 200MW. In 1980 100MW of capacity was taken offline, and the remainder in 1981 when the station was closed.
Construction of the Ironbridge ‘B’ station began in 1963 to meet the rising demand for electricity after World War II. The 1,000MW power station was built alongside the existing ‘A’ station and began generating electricity on 11th June 1969 after delays in construction owing to industrial action and implementation of improvements that had been pioneered during the construction of similar stations using the new 500 MW generating units.
Project architect Alan Clark worked closely with landscape architect Kenneth Booth, to ensure that the station merged as seamlessly as possible into its natural surroundings. When viewed from Ironbridge, the surroundings of the station are hidden by wooded hills. The cooling towers were constructed using concrete to which a red pigment had been added, to blend with the colour of the local soil. So impressive were the measures taken to ensure that the power station was an asset to the gorge and not an eyesore, that it was short listed for a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors/The Times conservation award in 1973.
In 2012 Ironbridge underwent modification to allow both generating units to run on 100% biomass. This reduced the generating capacity from 500MW per unit to approximately 370MW per unit.
In February 2014 a serious fire damaged unit 1’s turbine and generator. It was later announced that the damage would not be repaired, reducing the plant’s generation capacity to just 370MW in total.
Ironbridge ‘B’ stopped generating electricity on 20 November 2015 when the power station was closed.
Buildings and Plant Detail
Turbine Hall
Boiler House and Mills
Control Room
Admin BlockThe admin block contains the medical centre, bathhouse and various other staff facilities.
Cooling TowersIronbridge Power Station Image Gallery
Visit the plant detail pages above to view more images from each area of the power plant
Fires at Ironbridge
Two major incidents have occurred at Ironbridge involving fire. The first took place in 1998 and resulted in the entire turbine hall requiring reconstruction. The second incident in 2014 when unit 1 caught fire. The fire caused extensive damage to the turbine and generator set of unit 1, which was never returned to service.
Site Plan
2 thoughts on “Ironbridge B Power Station, Shropshire”
I worked at Ironbridge A station starting in 1963 and was one of first two female admin staff to move to B station and worked behind a locked door due to some of the contractors being less than nice. It was like a large family – everyone knew each other.
I started as an apprentice in 1977 & went on to join EMD CE shift in 1981, leaving in 1987 – the most memorable years of my career, lovely people.