Power to the People

A Broader Outlook: NarrowBoat, Spring 2025

Andy Tidy

With Britain’s last coal-fired power station closing last autumn, Andy Tidy looks back at the canals’ connections with the UK’s power industry

Ferrybridge We can’t finish the story of the power industry’s canal connections without a visit to the North East where the larger waterways were used to move huge tonnages of coal for decades after the trade had died elsewhere. The final phase in the UK’s upscaling of coal-fired power production came in the 1960s and ’70s when the industry became concentrated in the Trent Valley in the North East. The massive Ferrybridge C was opened in 1966, which had a generating capacity of 2,000mW, mostly powered by coal from the nearby Knottingley Colliery. In its day this was Europe’s largest coal-fired power station. Ferrybridge was located next to the Aire & Calder Canal, a waterway which supplied both cooling water and a significant proportion of its coal in special linked coal pans owned by the local water hauliers, Hargreaves. Three pans were lashed together and had the capacity to carry up to 170 tons and, with a push tug added to the stern, were 195ft …