You can’t ignore Cockenzie Power Station.
Since 1967 its twin towers have dominated the skyline of the East Lothian coast, clearly visible from Edinburgh, 10 miles away. They have become an iconic sight, symbolising an industry with a dubious environmental reputation, an oddly intimate relationship with the historic village and provoking a grudging affection.
“You don’t realise how much you like something until it’s going,” remarked a dog walker on...
more »You can’t ignore Cockenzie Power Station.
Since 1967 its twin towers have dominated the skyline of the East Lothian coast, clearly visible from Edinburgh, 10 miles away. They have become an iconic sight, symbolising an industry with a dubious environmental reputation, an oddly intimate relationship with the historic village and provoking a grudging affection.
“You don’t realise how much you like something until it’s going,” remarked a dog walker on the Boat Shore.
The Boat Shore is the charismatic heart of the place – ‘Cul Coinnich’, the Cove of Kenneth, from which Cockenzie is thought to derive its name – it is a tiny gap in the rocky shoreline, forming an elegant and tiny semi-circular natural harbour that provides some protection from the threatening turbulence without.
It seems a compelling place, visually, historically and socially; a place where people gather, ceremonially launch boats and jump in the sea, human activities that have surely been taking place there for centuries and more. This natural haven is starkly overlooked by the industrial museum-piece next door.
The power station has been decommissioned and is currently being dismantled. The stacks are due to come down this summer, but what is to replace them, and who decides are questions exercising people along the coastline.
Proposals emerged haphazardly of a plan to create an ‘energy park’ and facility for an off-shore wind farm, a new half-mile long quay, the absorption of popular green spaces and historic battlefield site, and the separation of Cockenzie from Port Seton in an industrial development that dwarves in scale the existing power station.
“It puts a Berlin Wall between communities who are tired of industry and who have done their bit,” is a remark from Carl Barber from the Community Regeneration Alliance. The proposals provoked panic.
Opinions of the scheme range from Orwellian conspiracy to inept chaos. Gareth Jones, skippering the skiff, Boattie Row, thinks it is chaos. “One thing is clear though – there hasn’t been any consultation. No-one is asking what the local community has to say,” he says as freshening wind whips up the sea and the clear line of an approaching weather front obliges the crew of the coastal rowing boat to seek the safety of the Port Seton harbour.
These photographs are a personal response to the area from a photographer who’s better known for photographing wild and unpopulated Scottish landscapes, a style of photography that tends to downplay any evidence of humankind. That kind of photography – celebrating the beauty of nature – has been described as conservative because it celebrates the status quo.
There is no status quo to celebrate in Cockenzie. The place is in an uneasy mixing of the waters, a slack tide between the outgoing power industries of the 20th century and their onrushing replacements, with the local community banding together to create a harbour wall to control the tide and provide a haven.
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