Bold, Merseyside

Bold is a civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens in Merseyside, England, near the borders with Halton and Warrington in Cheshire.

Bold itself is to the east of St Helens. The parish extends southwards a good way and includes the hamlet of Bold Heath along with the Clock Face area of St Helens. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 2,283. It also had a coal fired power station Bold A and B Power Station with a total generating capacity of 300Mw, now closed and a coal mine and a large engineering works, now an industrial estate.

Merseyside-geo-stubThe Bold area was the site of Bold Colliery and on adjacent land Bold A and B Power Stations,this was a coal fired power station with a direct coal conveyor belt to the Colliery.

Bold A and B Power Stations was a coal fired power station with a direct coal Conveyor belt for direct feed from a washery at the colliery to feed either to a stocking area at the Station or direct feed to coal bunkers in both stations, the Station also had extensive rail sidings for delivery either from the Colliery or from other collieries via the main Liverpool to Manchester Line. As the coal from Bold colliery was deep mined and therefore costly to recover,In the later years due to commercial reasons the main coal supply became mostly by road from either Yorkshire or Scotland.

The “A” Power station a installed capacity of 120 MW with 4x30 Mw 2 cylinder Turbine/Alternators manufactured by Metropolitan Vickers / Associated Electrical Industries (AEI). No 3 M/C was installed with the first direct water cooled Alternator.Steam was supplied from 4 “Yarrow and co “coal fired boilers with tangentially fired tilting pulverized Fuel burners, with 3no type LM13 table mills made by ICL of Derby.

The B Station Installed with 3 x 60 Mw machines. (180Mw)used a Central Unit Control system with the Turbine/Hydrogen cooled Alternators manufactured by GEC ,again No3 Alternator was a prototype direct water cooled.The coolant water being fed via Glass tubes on the 3 phase connections.Each unit had boilers manufactured by John Thompson of Wolverhampton, each using 2 Suction Ball Mills each with 2 Exhausters, these feeding to 12 front wall pulverized Fuel burners .The boilers fed steam at 900psi/900 deg F directly to each Turbine/Alternators of GEC manufacture

This was the largest Generating Station in the NW region at the time of completion in the 1958 to 1960 period .

Rainhill trials-Rocket 150th Anniversary of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway in May 1980 was held on the extensive rail sidings of the Station, a working replica of Stephensons Rocket,Val Parail, Tilting train,among others where accommodated with a selection of Main line Locomotives

1/ http://www.localhistory.scit.wlv.ac.uk/Museum/Engineering/JohnThompson/johnthompson05.htm

2/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Electric_Company_plc

GEC - http://www.britishtelephones.com/histgec.htm