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At The Push Of A Button - Cooling Towers Blown Up
16 Oct 1988
Huncoat Power Station
The dust settles and the second tower remains. A previously unpublished image.
From an article by Martin Webster, photographs by Keith Snowden:
With a few hundred people looking on, and many more feeling the effects miles away, the massive cooling towers of Huncoat Power Station came tumbling down on Sunday, 16th October 1988. At precisely 8 a.m. and 8.21, two winners of a charity competition pressed the detonator buttons which blasted the two familiar landmarks out of existence after 36 years. Huncoat was the highest above sea level of all Britain's power stations and the towers dominated the surrounding countryside. Each tower was almost 322ft high, had a base circumference of 223ft, a top circumference of 131ft and was formed of 9,042 tonnes of re-enforced concrete. 90 kilogrammes of explosives was used in each tower.
The operation for their destruction, which had taken weeks of planning, went perfectly. The sale of prize draw tickets to decide who would press the buttons raised 5,000, half of which will go towards the East Lancashire Scanner Appeal and the other half to local charities in the area. The two lucky people given the chance of a lifetime were Padiham optician Mr Peter Mawson and Mrs Liz Wilcock, of Colne. After the event they were quite short of words to describe their feelings, but one man had no doubt about his. After the dust had settled, former site manager Mr Bill Harling now 65 and retired, who saw the station built said he felt very sad.
