On the site where, long ago, Dundee jute sacks were once shipped to the cotton plantations of Carolina USA, they built the Power Station for Scotland Hydro-Electric Board.
As you can see, it was quite a chunky structure, with it's chimney stack easy to spot from miles away.
The images (both from the late 60's) show the building from opposite angles, and according to my 1970 Dundee Street Directory, the power station was located on "Electric Street", which I guess is the road seen in the bottom picture.
Mitchell Construction of Glasgow being who built it.
And to see to which extent the power station dominated that part of the waterfront, below is a short piece of footage from the mid 60's, filmed from Fife.
James Wallace was the Civil Engineer who built this power station. He was very proud to have built something in his home town of Dundee having worked all around the UK. He was somewhat dissapointed I think to see how short a life the building had.
ReplyDeleteI too built it (or bits of it). I was an engineer with Mitchells seconded from their job at Fawley Power Station during one winter. I didn't see my landlady from Christmas Eve until 2nd January. Not bad for a sassenach
ReplyDeleteI trained there in 1979 I think it was as part of my sandwich course in electrical and electronic engineering at the Bell Street Tech. I'm pretty sure that it wasn't producing any electricity at that point. I remember a visit to the old Carolina Port A station that was still standing just North of the new station and that was a fantastic wee place with the control room and generation hall still intact. I will never understand why they allowed that to be demolished.
ReplyDeleteOne of my first deliveries in the 60s was a load of steel piling tubes to Carolina Port Power Station from Claydon Suffolk. Then several more loads after that.
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