Barking Power Station - Control Building

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King George V opened the coal-fired Barking Power Station in 1925, although it had 

been running for some months before this official ceremony. It was built to provide 

electricity for a large part of Essex as well as for part of Kent and, by the time its four 

separate sections were completed, it was the largest steam powered station in Europe

with a total output of some 100 megawatts of electricity.  This electricity was fed into the 

National Grid for general consumption.

At its height, Barking Power Station ran its own football and cricket clubs and had a 

darts team but with the decline in coal-produced electricity, the Station started a 

redundancy programme in the 1970s and finally closed in November 1981. Some of the 

buildings were then demolished.