It’s like a forest, and it’s in the right place to be one. A deep green valley where the canal branches, just prior to its intersection at the weirs above Armley Mill. It’s like a forest in that it makes special sounds of its own, clicks and sizzles, just as the waters beyond have their gentle noises, and as do the wind-caressed trees which define this area. It’s like a forest, but an unnatural one. For the wide acre of hidden Kirkstall, hemmed in between canal and mainline railway, bordering Kirkstall Valley Country Park and the municipal golf course, that vast space, is filled with electricity switching gear, capacitors and cables rising high on frames and pylons behind fences bearing forbidding notices.
Visitors make their way to this hidden land behind the Vue cinema / Hollywood Bowl complex, down Redcote Lane past Fitness First, the golf links and Goals Soccer Centre, under the railway arch. They may perhaps be heading towards their boat moored at the Aire Valley Marina or their caravan at the neighbouring Leeds Caravan Park, but whatever the purpose for their journey they will first encounter this forest of killer energy, a power centre for the city now, as in ages past.
From the 1930s Kirkstall power station stood here, initially a dirty coal-fired unit which covered the surrounding streets in fly ash, later burning oil before that became unprofitable in the mid-1970s. The fly-ash is still on and beneath the ground, the power is generated elsewhere (maybe at mighty Ferrybridge) but this place, unknown to most of those who pass by daily along Kirkstall or Armley Roads, plays a key role in keeping Leeds lit, the mobile phones of its citizens recharged.
But some do see it and understand: the canal fishermen enjoying the potential in these live waters, the ubiquitous dog-walkers and joggers on their round-Kirkstall route, those entering or leaving Leeds by train who catch a view of this electrical forest from their moving window, the narrowboaters, the caravanners, those with an interest in industrial history who decide to look in on this force-field after their visit to Armley Mill museum, and the men and women of unknown provenance like me, who happen on the place by randomly slipping away from the over-fussy leisure park by a canalside back route.
This is where it all started, really, Leeds: by the river, beneath the Abbey where a major seat of power first lay. Today the church’s power is peripheral (symbolised by the Parish Church’s off-centre position in the city) and the river is quiet, and the Kirkstall Valley is a hidden secret keenly held by those who have found it. But on every fence in the switching station acre there is a picture of a falling man, struck by power from above, and he is a reminder that the city’s power isn’t all in its central skyscrapers. It’s out here, too, in these unlikely places where it’s always been.