The Stella power stations were a pair of now-demolished coal-fired power stations in the North East of England that were a landmark in the Tyne valley for over 40 years. The stations stood on either side of a bend of the River Tyne: Stella South power station, the larger, near Blaydon in Gateshead, and Stella North power station near Lemington in Newcastle. Their name originated from the nearby Stella Hall, a manor house close to Stella South that by the time of their construction had been demolished and replaced by a housing estate. They operated from shortly after the nationalisation of the British electrical supply industry until two years after the Electricity Act 1989, when the industry passed into the private sector.
These sister stations were of similar design and were built, opened, and closed together. Stella South, with a generating capacity of 300 megawatts (MW), was built on the site of the Blaydon Races, and Stella North, with a capacity of 240 MW, on that of the former Lemington Hall. They powered local homes and the many heavy industries of Tyne and Wear, Northumberland and County Durham. The large buildings, chimneys and cooling towers were visible from afar. Their operation required coal trains on both sides of the river to supply them with fuel and river traffic by flat iron barges to dump ash in the North Sea. After their closure in 1991, they were demolished in stages between 1992 and 1997. Following the stations' demolition, the sites underwent redevelopment: the North site into a large business and industrial park, the South into a housing estate.
History Development The British demand for electricity increased after the Second World War. In the North East of England this led to the expansion of existing power stations at Dunston and Billingham in the late 1940s, the two new Stella power stations, and the construction of two more large stations built at Blyth later in the 1960s. This new generating capacity quickly met the demand for power. The British Electricity Authority were granted permission to construct the Stella North and Stella South power stations in 1951. The two stations were originally projected to cost around £15,000,000.
The site chosen for Stella North was the Newburn Haugh, which was the site of Lemington Hall. Lemington Hall was demolished in 1953 during the construction of Stella North. Stella South was built on the Stella Haugh, the site of the Battle of Newburn in 1640. A cannonball from the battle was on display in the South station for many years, after having been dredged from the river bed. Between 1887 and 1916, the Stella Haugh had been the site of the annual Blaydon Races, which stopped after a riot broke out following allegations of race fixing. Just before the construction of the South station the haugh had two uses. Blaydon Rugby Club's ground had been there since 1893, but in 1950 it was compulsorily purchased by the British Electricity Authority for £1,000. The club moved to a new ground in Swalwell, which it still uses. Newcastle University Boat Club had owned a boathouse on the site since 1929, but in 1951 the British Electricity Authority requisitioned it, forcing the club to move upstream to its current location in Newburn.
The addition of various power lines was needed to connect the power stations to the National Grid. These included a 275 kilovolt (kV) connection from Stella to West Melton, and another 275 kV connection from Stella to Carlisle. The towers for these connections were to stand at , rather than the towers of the existing grid system. The line from Stella to Carlisle, which was to consist of 250 towers spaced at 320 metres over a distance of around , came up against opposition when first proposed. The Northumberland County Planning Authority launched a public enquiry in 1951, and Hexham Rural District Council held a meeting. The Ministry of Agriculture and other outdoor associations voiced their concerns, as it was feared that the line would interfere with good farming land. An alternative route was proposed, but in view of its additional cost of £72,000 it was turned down, and the Ministry of Fuel and Power gave the line the go-ahead.
Construction Both of the stations were designed by Newcastle upon Tyne-based architects L J Couves & Partners, and construction work began in 1951. The Cleveland Bridge Company were contracted to construct the steel frames for the stations' main buildings, including their turbine halls, boiler houses, workshops and stores buildings. Various other companies were contracted for the construction of other parts of the station. Sir Robert McAlpine & Sons were contracted for site clearance, provision of the foundations for the main and ancillary buildings, as well as the diversion of streams and sewers. Davenport Engineering Co. were responsible for the construction of the North station's cooling towers, as well as the stations' ancillary buildings. P.C. Richardson & Co. built the stations' brick chimneys. Aiton & Co. installed the stations' low-pressure piping equipment. Underwater electrical work was carried out by British Royal Navy frogman Lionel "Buster" Crabb, chosen for the dangerous job because he wore a rubber diving suit at a time when most divers used canvas.
The first generating sets of the stations became operational on 20 December 1954. However, it was not until 1956 that all four of the North station's units were commissioned, and 1957 before all five of the South station's units generated electricity. The cost of the two stations in total came to around £40,500,000.
On the morning of 14 December 1955, during the stations' construction, switchgear exploded in the South station's substation, closing down the generators. Dunston power station could not take the extra load and it also shut down, creating a total blackout on Tyneside. Around 400,000 people were affected by the fault, including 20,000 miners trapped in over a hundred collieries. Power was fully reconnected by that evening. but the failure caused an interruption of work and services worth more than £1,000,000, as well as the loss of 300 megawatts of electricity.
Post-commissioning Although developed by the British Electricity Authority, the stations were first operated by the Central Electricity Authority, following the Electricity Reorganisation (Scotland) Act 1954. From 1957 they were operated by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB), following the Electricity Act 1957.
In 1961, Stella North was presented with the Hinton Cup, the CEGB's "good house keeping trophy". The award was presented by Sir Christopher Hinton, the first chairman of the CEGB. The station's achievement was attributed to the fact the station's annual efficiency had never been less than 29.1%. The station also won the North East regional award for the second year in a row in 1961. In March 1967, Stella South's male first aid team won a national first aid competition in Harrogate, organised by the CEGB. Over 150 teams took part.
In 1966, Stella North was at the centre of a legal case in which three men were found guilty of conspiracy to defraud after trying to sell the CEGB poor quality coal when contracted to deliver high quality coal. The three men involved were D.C.P. Brooksbank, a salesman for a coal firm; J.W. Patterson, a sampler at the power station, and M. Ridley, a contractor. Their scheme was for Patterson to substitute samples of reasonably good coal for the samples of poor coal taken from the lorries. However they were found out only two days after starting the scheme, when a foreman at the station saw Patterson dropping a bag of cement into the sampling bin, and reported the incident. Ridley was found to have planned the fraud, and was jailed for a year, while Brooksbank was fined £150 and Patterson £75.
Design and specification
The main visible features of the stations were their large boiler houses, turbine halls, cooling towers and pairs of chimneys; other facilities on both sites included offices, coal sorting areas, small fire stations and workshops. The power stations had the "brick-cathedral" style of design popular for power stations in the 1930s and 1940s and, as of 2009, still tenuously surviving at Battersea power station in London.
The main buildings of the South station had a total length of and a width of ; their tallest point, the roof of the boiler house, was high. The main buildings of the North station were of a similar length and height, but in total slightly narrower as the station had one less generator unit. This also meant it had a smaller generating capacity; it was sometimes erroneously termed the South station's "B" station.
The boiler houses and turbine halls were all-welded steel structures, consisting of box-type main columns and roof girders, clad with brick and glazed in parts. Each of their four chimneys was made of brick and stood tall, weighing about 5,000 tonnes. The North station's four cooling towers were made from reinforced concrete and were of the typically hyperbolic, natural-draft design.
The South station had five generating sets and the North station had four. Each generating set had a bunker for 1,250 tonnes of coal, fed by a conveyor from the coal store. This conveyor belt system was built by E. N. Mackley & Co, Gateshead. Each bunker fed coal into a pulveriser, manufactured by Raymond. From here it was fed into a boiler in powder form and burned. All of the boilers were suspended from the boiler houses' steel frames, and were made by Clarke Chapman Group Ltd, Gateshead. The boilers were forged in Sheffield, the first of the nine arriving at Stella South in 1953. At 62 tonnes, the boilers were at the time the largest ever made in the UK. The boilers were of the radiant-heat type, comprising a water-cooled combustion chamber, controlled-type superheater and an economiser. Each of the boilers had an evaporation rating of 550 kL/h, a steam pressure of and a steam temperature of . Each boiler was equipped with two forced and two induced Howden fans, twenty-two electrically operated Clyde soot blowers, an automatic control system made by Bailey and Sturtevant electrostatic precipitators. Each station was designed to burn 2,000 tonnes of bituminous coal a day.
Each boiler powered a turbo generator, made by Parsons, Newcastle upon Tyne. These were three-cylinder reaction type steam turbines operating at 3,000 rpm, generating 60 MW of electricity. The stations used them because of a Statutory Order of the Ministry of Supply in November 1947 that all turbo alternators made for the home market could only be of 60 MW at advanced steam conditions. Stella South had a total generating capacity of 300 MW and Stella North originally 240 MW (later recorded as only 224 MW). The stations were the first to use silica removal beds in their turbines, a development which became standard within the CEGB's power stations for some time. In 1967, one of the sets at Stella South became the world's first in commercial operation to use brushless excitation. The set was modified by Parsons to use A.C. exciters and silicon diode rectifiers. The stations' switchgear was manufactured by A. Reyrolle & Company.
The power stations were illuminated by what was then the most powerful lighting installation in North East England. The North station was lit up by 60 flood lights, 15 on each of four towers; the South station also had four towers, but each held 26 flood lights. The Central Electricity Authority justified the use of 194 flood lights over the two sites as "economical, safe and much more efficient than lighting the stations at street level".
Operations Coal transportation