In the 1950s a gas company employee, called E.G.Stewart, tried to make a list of all the London gas companies which had ever existed – there were far more than most people would believe possible. [1] He found, in the minute books of the Imperial Gas Company, a reference to the purchase in 1822 of a gas works at ‘Dutton Street’. This works had belonged to a William Caslon and was apparently private. No more was known and it might be assumed that this was another of several gas works set up to provide gas lighting to a factory.
Stewart managed to trace a Dutton Street near a turning off the Grays Inn Road – and there the matter rested. Dutton Street is indeed not easy to track down, since both the road and the road name seem to have vanished with the construction of tenement blocks on the site in the late nineteenth century. It was a turning off what is now Lucas Street at the Kings Cross end of Grays Inn Road. Lucas Street was previously Cromer Street and a long thing strip of land to the north of it had been acquired by a Joseph Lucas and developed for housing from about 1800.[2] In April 1817 the estate’s management committee opened discussions with a Mr. William Caslon about gas lighting for the area.[3]
Stewart describes William Caslon as ‘the typefounder' – as did Sterling Everard,[4] the other historian of the London Gas industry who wrote in the late 1940s. Everard was aware that one of the subscribers to the City of London Gas Company, was a William Caslon. The City of London Company was one of several commercial gas undertakings in London in this period. In order to operate and sell gas to the public such companies needed to have an enabling Act of Parliament – and names of subscribers are appended to such Parliamentary documents. In the City of London Gas Company Act William Caslon’s address is that of the typefounder, thus it is very likely that it is the same person. ‘Caslon’ as the name of a typefounder and the type style he designed is, of course, famous. This, the ‘famous’ William Caslon had, however, died in 1766 and, whoever it was that had an interest in gas manufacture, was of a generation likely to be one of his grandchildren.
In fact, by the 1820s there were two Caslon typefounding businesses. The original Caslon foundry in Chiswell Street was in the hands of, Henry Caslon, a great-grandson of the founder. The present company descends from this branch of the business but has no information or knowledge at all about either a gas works or Dutton Street.[5]
Another grandson, and a third William Caslon, had sold his shares in the original business and bought a different type foundry which from 1807 was run by his son, yet another William. It must be assumed that the Dutton Street gas works was set up by William Caslon, either father or son. This Caslon typefoundery was in Dorset Street, Salisbury Square - immediately adjacent to the works of the City of London Gas Company.
In 1800 the Cromer-Lucas estate had considerable pretensions. There were gates into the estate and an elected residents committee, sworn in as Commissioners of Paving, who employed staff – a scavenger, watchmen and so on – and who negotiated with Caslon and tried to impose some sort of standards on the gas works and the lights it provided.
The gas works was actually on the estate, among the houses and soon things started to go wrong. By November 1821 there were complaints that the lights were not ‘properly lit’ and in June 1822 a very strong complaint was made that the gas works ‘had of late become so great a nuisance that it was almost impossible to live in the neighbourhood’. There were threats that the works would ‘be indicted’. [6] Perhaps inevitably it was soon closed. The Paving Commissioners received a letter from the Imperial Gas Company in May 1823 to say that they had purchased the works – and the Commissioners replied that Mr. Caslon had not told them of an intention to sell. In June Caslon told them that the works would be ‘gone in two months’ – which implies that a great deal of pressure was being applied, perhaps by local residents, to close the works down. It was indeed closed by the Imperial Company, and some of the equipment was transferred to their new Fulham works after 1829.
The site in Dutton Street must have been difficult to relet and the estate records show it vacant for many years, let for short periods to other industrial concerns. It was not until 1851 that it was permanently let, and then to a private school – and a school is shown on the west side of Dutton Street on Bacon’s Street Atlas of 1888.
By the late 1880s the Cromer-Lucas estate had descended into slum property and around 1900 a number of tenement blocks were built by the East End Improved Dwellings Company – and most of these still remain on site. At the eastern, narrower, end is a more recent block of flats. It is impossible today to work out the exact street pattern of two hundred years ago and the location of Caslon’s Gas Works. Today this is an area of high crime and all the dwellings on the site are fortified – the new flats aggressively so. In the early 1800s residents also felt sufficiently insecure to provide gates – and new street lighting – on their new private estate.
In the 1820s a network of London-wide gas providers did not exist – and perhaps was not even seen as a possibility. It seems in retrospect entirely reasonable that a developer should wanted to provide all services for a new estate, yet I can only think of other example – that of the electric power station and hydraulics installed at Carr’s Kensington court in 1886. There certainly seems to be no other example of a small gas works for one estate – although plenty for single houses and single factories.
Mary Mills
It is intended that a version of this piece is included in a book about the early London gas industry.
(for Camden History 1990s)
[1] E.G. Stewart, A Historical index of gasworks past &
present in the area now served by North Thames Gas Board, NTGas, 1958
[2] Survey of London, Vol. XXI, gives some details about the site and the development.
[3] Minutes of the Paving Commissioners for the Lucas Estate
[4] Sterling Everard, The History of the Gas Light & Coke Company 1812-1949, Benn.Bros., London, 1949.
[5] I would like to thank Mr. Richard Caslon, and information on his company's web site, for details of Caslon in this period.
[6] Paving Commissioner’s Minutes
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