12th Nov: Where’s the chimney?

At around 0700 on the 31st October 2021 they demolished the 650 foot Fawley Power Station chimney. It had long been a landmark visible from much of the Solent and the New Forest. However it isn’t only the chimney which has disappeared. The power station turbine hall, mainly demolished earlier in the year, was itself huge. I’ve cropped the photos below so they all show the same length of Ower Bay coastline before, during, and after the power station demolition. The last photo was taken on the 12th November, the first time I’d been in the tower after the chimney came down.

The change to the shape of the horizon is quite disconcerting. The photo of geese on the beach south of Warsash was taken in 2016 (first photo below). Calshot Tower is hard to make out because it has the bulk of the power station turbine hall behind it.

The second photo below was taken from Hamble Point in November this year after the chimney and remaining parts of the turbine hall were demolished. Admittedly it is a different view point and the power station site is off to the right of the photo. However Calshot Tower is now the highest building along the coast!

A last example shows how the chimney used to dominate views. In 2020 I photographed some water buffalo from Stanswood Lane, the road linking Calshot to Lepe. In a view from more or less the same spot in November 2021 it is not just the buffalo which are missing, the chimney is too!