The Untold Tate Modern
voices of the former power
station.
© Daniela Couling 2016
All Rights Reserved
︎
Noisy? Smelly? Dark?
Electrifying?
Ever wondered about the past of this building?
If only the walls could talk...
This is an oral history project
exploring and preserving the untold stories and odd happenings during this brick cathedrals’ former years as a noisey, buzzing power station.
Clive
Former worker1975-1979
On top of the chimney (left) and in one of the damaged turbines in the Turbine hall (below)
—
To Be Completed
(INTERVIEW TO BE EDITED AND UPLOADED)
Next ︎
William ‘Nobby’ Clarke
Turbine Operator
1951-1981
STRESS
“It is really important to emphasize the stress, its not just the discomfort of the work, but actually the sense that something could happen, that the stress they were under while driving the turbines, and watching to make sure it didn't happen, that the steam didn't get to hot or the whole thing could exploded.”
- Norma
(Nobby’s daughter)
WEEKLY WAGES
“They were paid on a weekly basis. At the end of the week you got your money, cash, in an envelope, generally brown, with bits of writing on the front, showing how much had been docked, taken for tax and national insurance. So your wages would be written on it. The wages clerk was probably a woman … So there is an office up there and one of their main jobs is putting the money in the envelopes and handing them over at the end of the week. I have a strong mental image of my father’s wage packet. You know, every Friday this is an important thing and he is taking out of it how much he is giving my mother (which she thought should have been all of it) and then how much he is keeping for himself. Dad’s wages were always at or a little above the national average industrial wage, but it was barely enough to meet the basic needs of a large family. He regularly worked overtime, as did most of the men at the station. Mum supplemented his income by doing casual work as a waitress in between pregnancies and by taking in sewing work.”
- Norma
(Nobby’s daughter)
© Daniela Couling 2016
THE CHIMNEY
“The chimney…a
noble shaft.
Up this noble shaft
my father regularly
went.
The dampers … had
to be turned by hand
every night.
Working the dampers
was not easy...To get
there, you had to
take a lift into a
dismal noman’s land,
climb a flight of
stairs, and then,
perhaps a hundred
feet up inside the
chimney, struggle to
turn the controls.
It was not pleasant
and he wouldn’t risk
delegating it.”
Norma,
Generation.
Generate. 2014
“Every year the men
organised a
Christmas party for
the children. In the
basement canteen,
tables were laid out
in rows and piled
with party food.
There were organised
games; a stage with
curtains was set up
and musical and
comedy acts
performed; Father
Christmas gave
everybody a big
present; and, at the
end, by which time
half of us were half
asleep, Charlie
Chaplin and Laurel
and Hardy films were
shown. My sister
scared herself sick by
climbing to the
highest metal
walkways in the
turbine room and
looking down, a
feeling she
remembered with
shocking clarity the
first time she went
to Tate Modern.”
Norma Clarke,
Generation.
Generate.
2014
“The chimney…a
noble shaft.
Up this noble shaft
my father regularly
went.
The dampers … had
to be turned by hand
every night.
Working the dampers
was not easy...To get
there, you had to
take a lift into a
dismal noman’s land,
climb a flight of
stairs, and then,
perhaps a hundred
feet up inside the
chimney, struggle to
turn the controls.
It was not pleasant
and he wouldn’t risk
delegating it.”
Norma,
Generation.
Generate. 2014
“Every year the men
organised a
Christmas party for
the children. In the
basement canteen,
tables were laid out
in rows and piled
with party food.
There were organised
games; a stage with
curtains was set up
and musical and
comedy acts
performed; Father
Christmas gave
everybody a big
present; and, at the
end, by which time
half of us were half
asleep, Charlie
Chaplin and Laurel
and Hardy films were
shown. My sister
scared herself sick by
climbing to the
highest metal
walkways in the
turbine room and
looking down, a
feeling she
remembered with
shocking clarity the
first time she went
to Tate Modern.”
Norma Clarke,
Generation.
Generate.
2014
THE END of
A POWER STATION
A POWER STATION
“It was a staggered ending … But it meant going
down to other stations after a while. So it meant being bussed down the river,
to somewhere like Graves End and working down there. My father was not really
interested in doing that. But it was troubling because he wasn’t quite at
retiring age. He was still fit and well and still had a child at school … I
remember it as being a gloomy sort of a time ….. And what it’s like in these
sorts of places when people start to leave is that death has its hand on it all
and there are fewer and fewer people and less work to do in a day.”
- Norma
(Nobby’s daughter)
© Daniela Couling 2016
(Nobby’s daughter)
© Daniela Couling 2016
Next ︎
JIM KNIGHT
Former Worker1976-1979
Avid photographer and DJ
(AKA Knight Lights)
—
To Be Completed (INTERVIEW TO BE EDITED AND UPLOADED)
Next ︎
GERARD
Technical Staff Trainee1973-1978
Sounds + Smells
Ghosts
“At the age of 18 I walked into Bankside and had my induction - in those days being allocated a locker and locker room, some overalls and a towel and a bar of soap.
To me, it really was a Cathedral of Power - very noisy, very hot, very steamy, very dirty.
The Turbine Hall was huge and imposing as you entered... the basement, below ground ...was dark, dingy and, at times, very intimidating to a new starter.
Bankside had a range of smells. Hot Fuel Oil from the underground storage tanks, flue gases from the leaking boiler casings and sulphurous fumes from the aerating chambers.
Heavy Fuel Oil sticks to anything and hard to remove from skin and clothing... it is like thick treacle. Spillages require solvents to be used to clean it up and inevitably leave stains in the concrete, still visible in the Tate Modern extension.”
- Gerard
©Daniela Couling 2016
“Two were asleep in the Jetty hut on a summer night when the door opened and saw a tall soaking wet ghostly figure covered in plastic silhouetted against the moonlight, in blind panic they sprinted back through the tunnel to report what they had seen and form a pose to return to the jetty only to find the ghost asleep in the hut - he had fallen off one of the disco cruise boats and found a ladder to the Jetty.”
- Gerard
©Daniela Couling 2016
NOBBY
'Nobby' was a big guy and one you wouldn't want to mess with. I was told that he used to be a bare knuckle fighter and would enter fights down at the Elephant and Castle - the prize a Sunday joint for the 'missus'.
- Gerard
©Daniela Couling 2016
FRANK
"Frank', he was a guy who had lost his teeth but never wore false teeth, it was very difficult to make sense of what he said anyway. He also had a thing about oral hygiene, he's the only person that I ever knew who use to actually put TCP in his mugs of tea. You could smell him a mile away.
He was the one who found a corpse draped across the dark handrails below the jetty on a low tide, thinking it was a piece of plastic until he shone his torch on it”
- Gerard
©Daniela Couling 2016
The Turbines
“It was so hot during the summer, it was unbearbly hot and I can remember when I was training I sat down for a 12 hour shift driving the turbine and when I got up at the end of the shift I had blisters all round my ankles because it was just so hot with steam leaking from the turbine, I could hardly walk. It was quite though conditions for the guys int he those days.”
- Gerard
©Daniela Couling 2016. All rights reserved