The Holborn Viaduct And The World’s First Coal-Fired Power Station

You may well be familiar with the Holborn Viaduct, an impressive Victorian construction acting as a bridge over Farringdon Street linking Newgate Street and Holborn. 

Did you know though that it was once home to the world’s first ever coal-fired power station? 

The Holborn Viaduct

Down the Western edge of London once ran the Fleet River. It was a tributary of the Thames, but from the 1730s onwards it was built over and subsumed into the storm drain system beneath the modern city. I have written a self-guided walk of its route before. 

Farringdon Street now runs along the final stretch of what was once the Fleet’s route, joining Blackfriars Bridge. The streets coming off from it slope upwards, once the sides of the river valley. 

In the 1860s, to improve access into the City of London, a series of improvements called the Holborn Valley Improvements were implemented. This included the rebuilding of Blackfriars Bridge, the creation of Queen Victoria Street and the construction of the viaduct, meaning vehicles did not have to descend down into the river valley and up again.

Designed by William Haywood, the Holborn Viaduct was essentially one of the first flyovers in central London.

The Holborn Viaduct, as well as the other projects, were opened officially on the 9th November 1869, with Queen Victoria herself taking a processional coach ride along the streets. 

Her coach apparently stopped beneath the Viaduct so that she could admire the details.

The Design 

In true Victorian style it is impressive, colourful and detailed. It covers three spans and is supported on granite piers.  

On the viaduct are statues representing Commerce, Agriculture, Science and Fine Art. 

In the centre is the coat of arms of the City of London. 

Underneath the bridge you can also admire some of the detailing. 

In each corner are beautiful pavilions, with staircases leading down to Farringdon Street. 

Each pavilion has a statue on it of a famous past London figure: Sir Hugh Myddelton (1560-1631) who led the construction of the New River, bringing fresh water into London, Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579) who founded the Royal Exchange, Sir William Walworth (1322-1385), Mayor of London and slayer of Wat Tyler, and Henry Fitz Ailwin (1135-1212), the first ever Mayor of London. 

The two Northernmost pavilions were destroyed in the Blitz and replaced with more modern buildings. Facades matching the originals have however now been put up, in 2002 (North-Western building) and 2014 (North-Eastern building).

The World’s First Coal Power Station

In January 1882 the world’s first coal-fired power station opened at number 57 Holborn Viaduct. It was opened by Thomas Edison and known as The Edison Electric Light Station.

In September of the same year Edison also set up the Pearl Street Station in New York City. 

Coal was burnt to drive a steam engine which in turn drove a 27 tonne 93kw generator. This then initially lit just under one thousand incandescent lamps along the street.  

Electric Street Lighting In London

To put that in a bit of context, the station opened three years after Edison developed his practical carbon-filament incandescent light bulb. 

The first street in London to be lit with electric lights was in fact the Victoria Embankment in 1878. They used a ‘Yablochkov Candle’, a type of electric carbon arc lamp that predated Edison’s bulb.

These used Gramme DC Generators to power them, a small device consisting of coils wrapped around a spinning ring of iron. It was the first generator or ‘dynamo’ that could be applied to industrial purposes.

The Embankment ended up swapping back to gas lights in 1884. The Holborn Viaduct had also previously briefly been lit with electric lights from 1878 but it was discontinued due to cost. 

The first public electricity ‘station’ in the world came just two months before the opening of Edison’s station in Holborn. It was a water wheel in Godalming in Surrey which generated enough power to light 31 lamps. 

A Lightbulb Moment

Following his development of the bulb, Edison was keen to expand his commercial enterprise in the US and had a plan to supply electricity to the whole of New York City via a series of central stations. Whilst planning to build one on Pearl Street in Manhattan he also exhibited at the world’s first Electrical Exposition in Paris in 1881 and at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1882. 

He ideally however wished to demonstrate from an actual station and started looking for suitable sites. He was a great believer in underground cables, but generally this would have involved digging up streets, an activity that his rivals, the gas companies, had a monopoly on.

Edward Johnson, Edison’s representative in London, found him the perfect spot: the Holborn Viaduct. During the construction the architect of the viaduct had included in the design a series of culverts, subterranean channels, beneath it. This meant that the lights and buildings along it could be supplied with electricity cables without any further digging. 

The power generated was used to provide street lighting from Holborn Circus to St Martin’s le Grand, powering 968 incandescent lamps, later expanded to 3000. It also went on to provide power to other nearby houses and buildings.

The Power Station Closes

The station ran at a loss for that whole period and shut in 1886. The lamps were switched back to gas.

The station was however a technical success and is seen as a key part of the process of getting the Pearl Street station in New York opened and electricity’s eventual, of course, domination. 

The building was destroyed in the Blitz and now the modern 60 Holborn Viaduct sits on the site. 

Thank you for reading, more of London’s hidden history below…