Carville power stations

The Newcastle-upon-Tyne Electric Supply Company (NESCo) built their first power station at Pandon Dene in 1890. As electricity demand grew they moved their main generating site to Neptune Bank, near Wallsend in 1901. Once again, as demand grew, they ran out of space for further development at this site and so built another new generating station in the Carville area of Wallsend. The new station was built on a 15 acre site with frontage to the River Tyne. The Carville station was built so as to be available for very large extensions. It was opened in 1904, and at the time was the largest power station in the United Kingdom. Prior to the First World War, the station was the site of NESCo's…

The station was designed by the British electrical engineering consultants, Merz & McLellan. The station's design set the pattern for power station layout and design for most of the early twentieth century, as it was the first in the world to use the "unit system" of layout, whereby each boiler and turbine generating set is directly connected electrically to an alternator, and can work independently from any other generating unit in the station. This system has remained popular throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. The station's boiler houses and turbine hall were of steel frame construction clad with corrugated iron, with the boiler houses built at right…