Plinth

A single concrete plinth at White Bay Power Station sits in one of the working bays of the plant, the heavy foundation block that once carried a piece of equipment now removed. The plinth is rectangular in plan, around waist height, with the anchor bolt patterns from the equipment that sat on it still in place across the upper surface. The concrete is stained where decades of operating spills worked at the surface; the bolts protrude in regular rows, the threads rusted, the heads cut off at the level of the concrete in some cases. The floor around the plinth carries the bolt-down marks of associated equipment, all now gone.

White Bay had dozens of equipment plinths across its working levels: under the turbines, the alternators, the major pumps, the larger motors, the condensers. When the 1990s decontamination program removed the major plant from the building, the plinths were largely left in place because they are integrated with the structural floor. The plinth in this photograph is one of those: a record of where something specific once stood, with the equipment gone but the anchorage pattern legible. The plant ran from 1917 to Christmas Day 1983.