Weddle Landscape Design

Industrial

Weddles' Sheffield office is well located for some of the worst despoiled industrial landscapes in Britain. We have advised on landscape masterplans for several British Steel sites in Sheffield, Rotherham and Stocksbridge. We have shown even the most sceptical site managers that lawns and gardens can be successfully created within steelworks.

Sellafield, Cumbria

Further afield, we were invited to advise the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority on how to deal with their many properties, including Windscale. We were appointed immediately after the 1977 Windscale Public Inquiry, and devised a wide-ranging Masterplan for future expansion of the Sellafield site. The past 25 years have seen that Masterplan achieved, so that tourist coaches now pass through the works and see some of the best industrial landscape in Britain. From a run-down MoD site to the top tourist attraction in West Cumbria in a decade!

We have helped the Central Electricity Generating Board with several power station sites, including Drax, the biggest coal-fired power station in Europe. More recently we were asked to solve a salt toxicity problem on a Gas Power Station at Killingholme, a problem which had ruined the most prominent area of landscape at the site gates.

As well as the biggest sites we have brought our knowledge to bear on many smaller schemes, requiring screening, staff gardens, planning consents and environmental enhancements.

Restoration

Drax Ash Mound Restoration

We have been involved at the planning and environmental assessment stage, right through to construction and operation, for a number of power stations including Drax, the largest coal fired station in Europe. We have experience of gas, oil and nuclear stations, and power line corridors and substations.

Our pioneering work for the CEGB in visual and environmental assessment pre-dates the introduction of Environmental Impact Assessment as a statutory requirement.

Our clients include National Power, National Grid, Powergen, UKAEA, British Nuclear Fuels and British Gas.

Sheep Grazing on the Ash Mound

Possibly our best known expertise is with the above ground disposal of pulverised fuel ash. Our scheme for Drax Power Station began in the seventies, and by 1993 over 100 hectares of new farmland and woodland had been established on a 40 metre high mound of waste ash. The award of the top Civic Trust Special Landscape Award gave national recognition to this achievement.