2-847-684 - Historic England Archive/Heritage Images

A view of the oil platform Thistle A at Graythorp on the day of the naming ceremony, with an Elstree Plant platform in the foreground. In the early 1970s Laing Pipelines Offshore constructed the Graythorp fabrication yard and dry dock on the site of the old William Gray Shipyard. The company created a dry dock which was used for the construction of fixed platform North Sea drilling rigs for the BP North Sea Oil Project. Oil platforms, Graythorp I and Graythorp II were built at this site between 1972-1975, followed by Thistle A, which at the time was the largest steel oil production platform in the world.