Fawley Power Station Control Room
Considering this report just looks at the control room and admin block I will keep the history of the actual station short. There are plenty of older reports on this site too when the rest of the station was intact. @Exploring with Andy has a great write up on Fawley from 2017 which has a few sections of the admin block included which we sadly couldn’t get to photograph. As a side note for any interested and that weren’t aware, the chimney was demolished here only a few days ago.
Fawley was built by Mitchell Construction Architect Colin Morse RIBA for the CEGB between 1965 and 1969. It was commissioned in 1971 as a 2,000-megawatt (MW) power station, with four 500 MW generating units, each consisting of a boiler supplying steam to a turbine that powers an associated generator. The boilers were capable of delivering 1788.0 kg/s of steam at 158.6 bar and 538°C. The cooling pumps were Britain's largest with a flow of 210,000 GPM. One was driven by an experimental super-conducting electric motor. On 18 September 2012, it was announced that they would be shutting down Fawley power station by the end of March 2013. Subsequently, the power station was shut on 31 March 2013 after more than 40 years in operation. The admin block where the control room is situated is an indistinguishable domed structure that sits toward the estuary side of the station. It was completed in 1968 which is three years after construction of the station started.
Back in the summer of 2020 when we set out on our first road trip to the South of England together, we finished around Portsmouth. It was the first time we had seen Fawley but sadly it was only from across the water and since then we forgot about it due to the demolition work being well under way. The 4 hour and a bit drive with not much else around it that we wanted to tick off at the time also put it to the back of our minds. It wasn’t until the CR appeared publicly again that it motivated us to head down to Southampton for an evening to see it for ourselves. I was joined by @UrbandonedTeam, @DustySensorPhotography and @KPUrban_ and @Dragon_Urbex as we journeyed down to the south coast. A relatively short walk brought us to the point where we wished to clamber on site. The rest of the entry was no more exciting. We wandered up to the admin block and found our access point and began exploring.
The control room is on the top floor, so we worked our way up exploring the curving hallways and rooms. Part way through the explore a patrol car checked up on the main entrance (shown below) and it so happened that everyone was in there at the time.
The library.
A small lab space, not the main labs.
We moved onto the second floor.
Second floor, just off the main staircase.
Conference rooms.
Hallway.
The rest of the rooms proved of no interest to us, so we moved up further to find the bridge that connected the admin block directly to the turbine hall. It is now sealed up.
This corridor led you to the CR and each plaque on the wall boasted interesting facts about the station throughout the years.
When you entered this corridor naturally, you were greeted with the first sight of the huge control room.
Inside the spaceship.
A central shot for scale.
There is a couple of images from the 70s online that show the station in use.
Moving closer toward Unit 3 and Unit 4’s panels.
Some more closer shots.
Unit 4 if I remember correctly.
Looking out between Unit 3 and 4.
More panels!
And with that we made an exit before sunrise and caught a ferry coming into Southampton.
Definitely a well known one but thanks for looking anyways.
Considering this report just looks at the control room and admin block I will keep the history of the actual station short. There are plenty of older reports on this site too when the rest of the station was intact. @Exploring with Andy has a great write up on Fawley from 2017 which has a few sections of the admin block included which we sadly couldn’t get to photograph. As a side note for any interested and that weren’t aware, the chimney was demolished here only a few days ago.
Fawley was built by Mitchell Construction Architect Colin Morse RIBA for the CEGB between 1965 and 1969. It was commissioned in 1971 as a 2,000-megawatt (MW) power station, with four 500 MW generating units, each consisting of a boiler supplying steam to a turbine that powers an associated generator. The boilers were capable of delivering 1788.0 kg/s of steam at 158.6 bar and 538°C. The cooling pumps were Britain's largest with a flow of 210,000 GPM. One was driven by an experimental super-conducting electric motor. On 18 September 2012, it was announced that they would be shutting down Fawley power station by the end of March 2013. Subsequently, the power station was shut on 31 March 2013 after more than 40 years in operation. The admin block where the control room is situated is an indistinguishable domed structure that sits toward the estuary side of the station. It was completed in 1968 which is three years after construction of the station started.
Back in the summer of 2020 when we set out on our first road trip to the South of England together, we finished around Portsmouth. It was the first time we had seen Fawley but sadly it was only from across the water and since then we forgot about it due to the demolition work being well under way. The 4 hour and a bit drive with not much else around it that we wanted to tick off at the time also put it to the back of our minds. It wasn’t until the CR appeared publicly again that it motivated us to head down to Southampton for an evening to see it for ourselves. I was joined by @UrbandonedTeam, @DustySensorPhotography and @KPUrban_ and @Dragon_Urbex as we journeyed down to the south coast. A relatively short walk brought us to the point where we wished to clamber on site. The rest of the entry was no more exciting. We wandered up to the admin block and found our access point and began exploring.
The control room is on the top floor, so we worked our way up exploring the curving hallways and rooms. Part way through the explore a patrol car checked up on the main entrance (shown below) and it so happened that everyone was in there at the time.
The library.
A small lab space, not the main labs.
We moved onto the second floor.
Second floor, just off the main staircase.
Conference rooms.
Hallway.
The rest of the rooms proved of no interest to us, so we moved up further to find the bridge that connected the admin block directly to the turbine hall. It is now sealed up.
This corridor led you to the CR and each plaque on the wall boasted interesting facts about the station throughout the years.
When you entered this corridor naturally, you were greeted with the first sight of the huge control room.
Inside the spaceship.
A central shot for scale.
There is a couple of images from the 70s online that show the station in use.
Moving closer toward Unit 3 and Unit 4’s panels.
Some more closer shots.
Unit 4 if I remember correctly.
Looking out between Unit 3 and 4.
More panels!
And with that we made an exit before sunrise and caught a ferry coming into Southampton.
Definitely a well known one but thanks for looking anyways.
