Towering ambition of iconic Ironbridge structures

The pictures, of daredevil workers busy hundreds of feet up were provided by retired engineer Victor Thompson.

He was one of an army of men who built the towers, which now face being demolished as the life of the power station comes to an end.

Vic is now 80 but remembers vividly the effort to build the towers in the mid-1960s.

He said: "There was a lot of sweat and tears that went into them. It was two to three years of my life that I shall never forget."

With the power station due to close in 2015, thoughts are turning to the future of the site and what, if anything, should be kept.

The pensioner today backed calls for one of the towers to be kept, adding: "I was up there last summer and couldn't resist stopping by to have a look and take a few photographs. I think it's a great shame they're going to demolish them. I would like to see at least one of them retained.

"There's a great deal of controversy and a lot of people see them as eyesores. But I thought – and still think – that they are wonderful structures."

Vic, who now lives at Ferndown in Dorset, started as an engineer on the project in July 1964, and was later site agent for the contractor Kier Ltd, staying on the site until all four towers were completed in mid-1967.

He said: "It was just an open site. The power station was well under way. The contract for the four cooling towers was a separate contract and was let after the power station had started."

Vic initially commuted to work from near Mold, but later he and his family lived in Shrewsbury. Describing the method of working on the towers, he said: "The shell was constructed in about 3ft lifts at a time, pouring a ring of concrete. The idea was to try to get a ring a day, which we achieved most times."

The former engineer also remembers the secret formula behind the distinctive colour of the towers.

He said: "For some reason the architects decided the towers had to have a pink hue. Every mix of concrete had a sort of powder mixed in with it.

"We had pre-packed bags of powder which went into the mix of concrete so that it gave the right consistent colour throughout the construction."

This special hue of the towers was in fact designed to echo the hue of the ploughed fields in the area, in an effort to make the power station blend in better to the surrounding landscape.

"Everybody had to wear a safety harness, particularly the scaffolders who constructed the temporary works everything hung on. But health and safety was not quite so stringent as it is nowadays."

The last of the four towers, the heights of which are variously given as 374ft, 375ft, or 381ft, went up in record time at five and a half months – a week less than the rest.

Vic said: "The foreman in charge of the towers was a particular star, an Irishman called John Costello. He built almost every cooling tower in the country and had this particular gang with him. He knew everything about building cooling towers."

Ironbridge's operating hours were restricted in 2008 under a European Union-wide law that imposes a pollution threshold on power plants. In 2012, it was given the permission to trial the use of biofuel. Ironbridge is due to close at the end of 2015 as it does not conform to EU emissions.

But Vic, who moved from Shropshire in 1972, said it would be appropriate to keep one of the towers.

He said: "With the changes in modern power generation, the cooling towers throughout the UK are destined for demolition, and it would seem appropriate therefore that Ironbridge – which is recognised as the birthplace and showpiece of industry through the ages – should retain at least one of its towers so that visitors in the future could view an example of a civil engineering project in the 20th century."