Derelict for more than 30 years, Battersea Power Station has long captured the imagination of dreamers. Its first private owner hoped to fill it with rollercoasters and waterfalls – but failed to overcome the potentially lethal asbestos.
The power station has passed through several hands since then – with each successive owner planning to build homes and shops beneath its chimneys – before ending up with a consortium of Malaysian investors that bought the site for £400m in 2012.
Now surrounded by hoardings and scaffolding, it lies at the heart of one of the most ambitious redevelopment schemes in Britain’s capital, with nearly 40 sites, owned by domestic and overseas developers, clustered in the surrounding 561 acres known as Nine Elms.
