Curtain Road gas works.

 

As this is an industrial archaeology publication perhaps I should look at some sites! Early gas works fans should go north from Liverpool Street station to Hearn Street and look at the taxi depot on the eastern corner of Hearn and Worship Streets. The present occupants are friendly enough and will, if you are lucky, invite you into their canteen. Cynical taxi drivers will show no surprise when you tell them it is the site of one of the earliest gas works ever built. If you look around you can see many, very interesting, signs of the coal depot which previously occupied the site. I might stick my neck out and say that there is a possibility that parts of the perimeter wall could be that of the old gas works - although the only picture shows that being demolished - but the gates posts seem to be in the same place.[1]One of the interesting things about this site is its location. It was built to supply gas to the Liberty of Norton Folgate, just north of Bishopsgate. In 1811 and the very first years of the Gas Light and Coke Company, the Court of Governors worked very hard to get their first local authority lighting contract. At Norton Folgate one of the GLCC Governors had influence over 'one of Trustees'. The Trustees (vestrymen) were interested in the constant issues of lower rates and cutting crime and so this tiny area became the first to have its own public supply gas works.          [1]The site was leased from two coal merchants James Weston and Thomas White and the works was designed and begun by Frederick Christian Accum. He was a German chemist who made a living in London lecturing on the virtues of gas lighting [1]This is not the place to give a lot of detail on the works itself -what became known as 'Curtain Road works' had an interesting history as one of the earliest gas works in the world. As time went by it became less and less important, always on the brink of being closed. In 1865 the new North London Railway lines into Broad Street passed down the east side of the works and a complicated agreement was entered into with the railway whereby coal sidings would be built into the site and the railway would deliver 'coal and all other materials' from Poplar Dock at 1/2d. per ton. Other arrangements concerned the use of Gas Light and Coke Co. gas for lighting in North London Railway stations and works and a promise that they would try and persuade LNWR to do so too.     Within six years the gas company had decided to close the works. A print of it under demolition is sometimes reproduced with the claim that this was to enable the new Great Eastern Railway terminus to be built. However the site shown in the print, is west of the existing North London Railway, whereas the Great Eastern lines are to the east. Plans in the Greater London Record Office make it clear that demolition was actually carried out for the widening of the North London Railway. It is possible to stand in Hearn Street at the same angle from which the print was drawn and see where the railway lines have been widened and the line of the wall changed. A large gasholder stood at the eastern end of the site now partly covered by the railway.  There is no apparent sign of this within the site itself.           [1]In the late 1870s the site returned to its previous use of a coal yard and is shown as that on subsequent maps. Remains of a coal delivery system from the railway are still there and have been examined by GLIAS in the past. The future fate of the railway viaduct is not clear but will presumably be demolished as part of the East London Line Extension. Detailed investigation might still throw up clues to the past of this interesting old site and might become clearer when and if building work commences.           [1]E.G.Stewart,A Historical index of gasworks.NTGas, 1958;     [1]Sterling Everard, History of the Gas Light & Coke Company 1812-1949, Benn.Bros., London, 1949,