Constructed 1963-67 to designs by Godfrey Rossant & J.W. Gebarowicz (Building Design Partnership) C.S. Allott & Sons.
'Daughter' of Ferrybridge 'C', but higher quality design different treatment of components: 'monumental' concrete and white metal-clad turbine hall/boiler house; extensively smoke-glazed enclosed 400kV switch house; courtyard-plan admin block near entrance. (1)
Ratcliffe was one of 13 oil- and coal-fired power stations based around the 500MW turbo-generator set built by the Central Electricity Generating Board (CEGB) during the 1960s. Released for construction in 1963, the plant was completed in 1967 and first commissioned in 1968. Together with nearby Cottam, and West Burton ‘A’, Ratcliffe is one of three such ‘super-stations’ of 2,000MW capacity within the lower Trent Valley. The power station comprises a standard grouping of structures based around the generating core of boiler house, turbine hall with attached control room, and precipitator block, served by a single, four-flue chimney to the north and a massive, enclosed 400kV switch-house located axially to the south. Cooling towers are arranged to the west of the main generation buildings, while an extensive coaling plant, associated stock area and enclosing rail loop are sited to the east. Ratcliffe on Soar is furnished with a total of eight natural-draught cooling towers of hyperbolic profile, arranged in a single ‘field’ in two parallel lines of four, aligned north-south and staggered to form a double ‘lozenge’ pat-tern. The cooling towers currently under consideration, designated 2a and 4a, comprise the southernmost towers of each row. The towers were erected by specialist contractors Bierrum and Partners to British Standard (BS) speci-fication and are essentially similar in form, though the external mantle of tower 4a was enhanced during the con-struction phase while tower 2a was subject to a phase of secondary re-strengthening in 1990, which saw the in-troduction of an additional concrete mantle to throat level and associated steel props to the base of the shell. As part of the Ratcliffe Environmental Upgrade, the distributor pipework, packing and drift eliminator elements of all towers on the site were replaced between 2009 and 2012. The associated CW pump house, fed by above ground return channels, incorporates a distinctive ‘annular’ moat design, similar to pumphouses at Ratcliffe’s ‘mother’ station at Ferrybridge C, at Cottam and at Didcot ‘A’. While of historical interest and significance at a ‘local’ level, the cooling towers and wider power station site have been recently assessed by Historic England as being insufficiently innovative in terms of technology, planning or design to be deemed of ‘special interest’ within a national context, and thus not suitable for statutory listing. In the con-text of an ongoing, national programme of recording of this generation of power station sites, the current report presents a ‘point in time’ record of the Ratcliffe on Soar’s southernmost cooling towers and will, once expanded to cover the wider site, add to a growing corpus of material on the 500MW unit programme as a whole. (2)

<1> Jonathan Clarke, 2013, 'High merit': existing English post-war coal and oil-fired power stations in context, appendix 1 page2 (Published document). SNT5199.

<2> Ric Tyler, 2022, Cooling Towers 2a, 4a, Ratcliffe on Soar Power Station: Heritage Assessment and Building Record (Unpublished document). SNT5549.