British Oxygen - the multinational and its site in Tunnel Avenue

 

British Oxygen is a huge great multinational company which we see advertised everywhere as ‘BOC’. It is part of an even huger great multinational called Linde.  A tiny part of it was once located in East Greenwich on a site which has not only vanished but which I cannot find marked on any maps - although I remember well and where it was. So I thought perhaps I should write something about it and see if anybody else out there has any memories.

Brin’s Oxygen Company was formed in 1886 to exploit a process for separating oxygen developed by French brothers Arthur and Leon Brin and they set up in Westminster. At around the same time German, Carl Von Linde, also developed a separation process and the Brin brothers negotiated an agreement with him to use this. In 1906 the Company name was changed to ‘British Oxygen” and it grew with the development of the oxy-acetylene welding process.

In 1911 the company bought a site in Greenwich from the London County Council. It was in Tunnel Avenue with a frontage of about 237 feet which lay between what was then called Fergus Street and Marlton Street - Fergus is an older name for what is now Fingal Street. The London County Council must have been selling off land they had originally bought for the construction of the Blackpool Tunnel and Tunnel Avenue.  At around the same time the company was opening similar outlets in Cardiff, Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester Newcastle and elsewhere.  It is interesting to note however that in many of their advertisements the Greenwich works’ address given as THE works of the company to contact.

I remember the works in Tunnel Avenue well, but they always seemed very quiet - I don’t remember anybody ever mentioning them, talking about them or saying that they worked there or what went on there. Their site was surrounded by a brick wall and there was some sort of gatehouse. A picture of the Linde plant there in 1911 shows it in a large machine hall type building. The only remains of the building today maybe the brick wall on the edge of the grass area in Chilver Street.

The work of the company nationally  can be followed through their advertisements  Although these concentrate on selling the oxy acetylene process and welding gases in 1925 they also manufactured nitrogen, argon, neon, helium, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide, ethylene and ’other gases’. Their London showrooms were in Horseferry Road, Westminster and the Head office was then at Angel Road, Edmonton, in what was the originally the Sparklets factory, which they had taken over.

After the Great War the advertisements mainly concentrated on the sale of gases for oxy-acetylene and oxy -coal gas blowpipe systems for welding and cutting of metals. In 1918 they could boast factories in ’all important engineering centres, equipped exclusively with modern plant capable of producing 1,250,000 cubic feet of oxygen per day’. Equipment was for sale branded as ‘Alda’.  They said dissolved acetylene flares ‘gave a ‘steady light when working in dark places or in urgency at night’. This could be done with their portable cutting and welding outfits which could be taken anywhere and ‘bring the facilities of a forge to the work’.  It could cut up or shape steel, burn rivets and weld any metal.

They offered to hire out or sell small sets of welding equipment to homes or very small scale users.  These included welders goggles and a set of keys for £9.An acetylene burner came with an endorsement from the Model Engineer magazine with details of how safe it was. But the oxygen and dissolved acetylene would have to be obtained from them ‘compressed in cylinders’, the rates for which would be quoted on request. Customers would not be charged for these cylinders but if they kept them more than one month they would have to ‘pay a nominal charge to counterbalance any loss which the company might suffer by the cylinders being out of circulation’. For another £4 2s.6d. you could add a trolley on rubber wheels which could be turned within the space of its own width.

A fleet of vans was sent out with demonstration equipment which could be taken to exhibitions or to individual customers to         show the convenience all the gases and equipment for sale.  Sales of equipment to the model making community needed to be counterbalanced with advertisements featuring the Consett coke works and the use of British Oxygen equipment in plant maintenance in the very largest factories.

In 1943 they could claim that there was not a plane, a tank, a ship or gun in the making of which oxy-acetylene had not been used at one stage or another. This meant that the speed at which a gun could be made ‘would astonish the old gun founder from 1344’.  You could also help the war effort and British Oxygen by making sure that all empty cylinders were ready for collection when their lorries called for them

Post war, hydrogen was advertised and - did you know that it was used to make margarine? Sadly the use of such things would have to be explained to ‘Dads’ by their more technologically aware ‘teenage sons’.  Things had changed during the Second World War and it’s very noticeable that the advertisements moved away from the promotion of welding equipment and nothing else. Suddenly they were talking about other gases and increasingly high tech applications for them.

All these were national advertisements and trends and we have no way of telling what went on in the Greenwich works and what they specialised in. We know more about the work’s football team.

But then in July 1950 --

“Explosion Blows Off a Roof.  Cylinders Catch Fire in Factory”.  It was reported that ‘women and children ran into the street in their night-clothes’ when an early morning explosion ‘blew off the roof of the British Oxygen factory in Tunnel Avenue’.  Jack Wakefield, of Birdbrooke Road, Kidbrooke, saw a flash  and warned his colleagues – five men who were filling cylinders - and they ran for safety – ‘I skidaddled and fell on my stomach—it was like an air raid!".  Several cylinders exploded and went ‘through the roof with terrific force’ while other cylinders caught fire.  The windows of the houses on the other side of the road were shattered. Mr. J. Bright. of Eltham - one of the fillers who escaped - said ‘it was a grim few seconds for us - it was a wonder all four of us were not killed’. 

Seventy years old Mrs. E. A.  Buckley, who lived opposite said: "Mr husband and I were awakened by a sound like a bomb.  It was just like an air raid.    The Second World War had ended only ten years earlier and clearly the imagery – and the fear - persisted.

And then in March 1951

‘Explosion at Oxygen Factory- Hundreds of Families Sent from their Homes’. This time three men had been working In a filling bay stacked with hundreds of oxygen-cylinders –‘they saw a tongue of flame suddenly spurt from the filling end of one of them and ran for cover. Six seconds later the cylinder exploded’.

No one was hurt but the blast shattered 11 panes of glass in the home of Mr. Walter Buckley, and his wife, who lived opposite.

And then in March 1955

‘Oxygen Cylinder On Lorry Explodes’.  In this accident one man was killed and six taken to hospital. The dead man was driver John Donnelly of Blackheath Grove. William Anderson. of Parkside Road. Barnehurst, was "fairly seriously injured.   The oxygen cylinder was on its side on a lorry in a loading bay when ‘one of them burst - there was a colossal crack and pieces of jagged metal flew round ..... it was just like shrapnel.’ The building was badly damaged and four fire brigade pumps fought the blaze – ‘which was quickly brought under control’.

It was lucky, of course, that the nearest fire station was virtually next door to the works - only a matter of yards away at the top of Tunnel Avenue. So fires in the works could be tackled very quickly.

A local lad described an explosion in the early 1950s – it could have been any one of these. ‘Even though my bedroom was at the front of the house I slept soundly through the whole thing. Something my parents were absolutely amazed at. Not only was there the sound of the explosion but all the bells and noise from fire engines, ambulances and police cars which attended the scene’.

But as neighbour Walter Buckley said: “We are almost getting used to it ... this is the third time we have had an explosion since I have lived here.”

In the 1960s Tunnel Avenue works suffered an increasing number of industrial  disputes and strikes -  some of which were national,  involving  several  British Oxygen works and others purely focusing on the Greenwich works.  It had been realised by activists that cutting off the supply of gases needed for welding was a quick way of stopping work throughout the entire country.  Such disputes made national headlines.

BOC clearly still exists. Nothing to do with Greenwich -  but I was very taken with the story of their amazing headquarters in the village of Windlesham in Surrey built in the shape of a oxygen molecule in 1982. The pictures on the net showing it are wonderful and it’s a shame that so many of them are of a derelict site – it was sold and abandoned in 2006.  Only a very big and wealthy multinational could afford to build an astonishing head office like this and use it for less than 25 years.

I am not sure exactly when the Greenwich site closed - I guess it was in the 1990s. Today the site is all modern housing fronting on to Tunnel Avenue. I suspect that of all the Greenwich factories this one that has been the most quickly forgotten.