Early Woolwich Gas Works - Thomas Livesey - the first gas works in Woolwich

This, I am afraid, is going to be another tale of a gas works which didn't work very well.  I am afraid this is not going to be a story about one of the really scandalous London gas works – of which there were more than several! Just a little local matter down in Woolwich.

 In the early 19^th century there were a number of men who built and sold ready made gas works to local authorities and private individuals. They were all looking round for towns in need of a gas works and there was considerable competition among them.  Woolwich was then already a heavily industrialised town in Kent - very near to London and with much riverside industry.  Much of this industry was government owned - the royal dockyard, the rope works and, of course, the Arsenal.  It was all clearly in need of a source of good lighting.  It is no surprise, therefore, to find that it was seen as a good place to build a speculative gas works.

 So this story is about an early public supply gas works built by two speculators who hoped to sell it on to a local management body - and failed. No one, apparently, was interested. 

 In nearby Greenwich the first approaches about a gas works had been made to the local authority in the early 1820s by a Mr. Hedley, closely followed by a Mr. Gostling. In the 1830s a works had been built in Deptford by a Mr. Barlow. All of them had a track record of building gasworks.

 Mr. Barlow was one of a large family involved in there the gas industry and who had built a number of works which were planned to be later taken over and run by others. John Barlow was an iron founder in Sheffield and north London and his eight sons worked with him. They had realised that there was money to be made in the fitting out of gas works. One way to build up customers was to set up a gas company themselves, build a works, and then to pass it on, readymade, other people. Similarly both Mr, Gosling and Jos Hedley with his two sons founded many gas works in England. This included an attempt to build the first Greenwich gas works. All these families made a continuing contribution to the gas industry throughout the 19th century

 In 1817, or thereabouts, a Mr. Livesey and a Mr. Hardy built a gas works in Woolwich.  If the name Livesey is familiar, it is because this Mr.Livesey was the famous George Livesey's great-uncle, Thomas.  After 1870 George Livesey became the leading figure in the gas industry in Britain and some extent was heir to the ideas and energy of his great uncle Thomas. 

 Thomas Livesey was a hosier based in the City of London. In 1812 he had been one of forty men who had bought a block of shares in the first ever – Westminster based - gas company, with a view to changing the way it was being run.  In 1813 he had been elected to their Court of Governors put forward by this group and, quite literally, set about finding out how a gas company should be set up and managed. A great deal has been written about the invention of the technology of gas manufacture but it is rarely mentioned that Thomas Livesey designed gas company management – in many ways just as important.  Busy as he was with this role he clearly had time for other things, and like many others, an eye for a profit on the side.

 The other partner in the first Woolwich gas works was a Mr. Hardy, a coal merchant and a friend of Thomas Livesey. He was also at that time a partner of Mr.Hedley and they operated a gas equipment and ironmongery business out of an office in Kings Arms Yard off Cheapside in the City of London.  Thomas Livesey also sometimes used this address, although his hosiery business was just round the corner in Wood Street.

 Livesey and Hardy built their gas works in Woolwich on a site known as 'Roff's Compound' or 'Edgar's Coal Wharf'. This was on the river in the area of today's Bell Watergate and next to the current site of the Waterfront Leisure Centre – then a tangle of small streets and wharves. Coal wharfage was a big feature of the Woolwich riverside in the eighteenth century and later.   The former old Gun Wharf – a crucial site in the development of ship building in Tudor Woolwich - was east of Bell Water Gate.   It was used in the 19^th century by William Roff, a coal merchant, and William Burgess, a lighterman. Roff and Burgess continued here until the 1830s and beyond. Roff’s Wharf was still marked on a map in 1853, nearly forty years later, by which time there was also a 'steamboat' pier on site.

 The first gasworks in Woolwich was built by Livesey and Hardy from about 1817, in this area probably on part of what had been Remnants Wharf . This was west of Bell Water Gate, It was where Samuel Remnant and his son Stephen had a smithery which supplied British and foreign governments with guns and shot through the eighteenth century

 It is likely that they had some local support since it appears that the first Manager was a Mr. Sanderson who had a business in Richard Street, Woolwich where he exhibited gas lights before the works was opened.  Perhaps he was the same Mr. Sanderson who later had paint and glazing business in Powis Street.

 Whatever the plans for the works were it seems that it was not successful and after only six or seven years Livesey and his friend set about trying to dispose of it.  In 1824 they tried to sell the works to the South London Gas Company, based in Southwark. When this approach failed they tried to sell it to the Phoenix Company which had works on Bankside and in Greenwich. They first approached Phoenix  in February 1825, in November 1827 and then again in December 1828 when they offered it to them for £6,500. Phoenix turned it down every time.

 One of the reasons Livesey and Hardy were so keen to get rid of the Woolwich Gas Works was that Thomas Livesey was Deputy Governor of the Westminster based Chartered Gas Light and Coke Co. He was not supposed to have an interest in another gas company. In fact the Chartered took a very dim view of his extra-curricular activities and in May 1827 he had to make a sworn statement to the effect that he had disposed of his interest in the Woolwich Gas Company.  This was not true and Livesey continued to be described and treated as the owner of this works.

 However it seems that he had made it a bit less of a lie because he had transferred the actual legal ownership elsewhere. His Woolwich gas works was actually ‘owned’ by a corporate body of which a Mr. Ainger was a trustee.  Ainger was yet another coal and iron merchant - this time based on Bankside.  Livesey must have known him well since Ainger sold coal to the Chartered Company from the day it began work.

 The years went by. The works continued to be offered or sale to other gas companies. But none of them apparently wanted it.

 In Woolwich, as elsewhere, local businessmen, dissatisfied with the existing private gas companies began to find ways of setting up new works in order to have one which would be more responsive to their wish for cheaper gas and more efficient service.  A rival company was set up - the Woolwich Equitable Gas Co. who advertised that it would sell 'cheaper and purer' gas. They set about trying to buy up the existing works and they began to negotiate with Mr. Livesey and Mr. Ainger. At last! They had been trying to get rid of it for at least the previous ten years.  A valuation was commissioned from a John Barlow.

 Barlow was one the gas works building family I mentioned above. Locally he had been involved in building the Greenwich Railway Gas Works at Deptford, and many others. So, as he was an interested party, and, in the interests of honesty and fair play, another valuer was brought in. This was a Mr. Robert Brown of Royal Hill. I assume that this is the Robert Brown, Architect of Royal Place in 1839, not Mr. Robert Brown, Plumber, of Blackheath Hill also extant in 1839 (or perhaps they were the same person).

 The valuation report was very long and very damning – the works was 'very dilapidated' to say the least.  However in negotiations Ainger and Livesey began frantically to talk the equipment up – they explained that the wooden tanks were after all, only fifteen years old and the pipework would last at least a hundred years. The writers of the report apparently didn't agree with them.  Ainger accused the Woolwich Equitable Board of trying to cheat him. 

 The new Equitable gas company was however desperate to 'buy up the competition' and continued negotiations regardless.  Livesey began to talk about problems with an Act of Parliament and the Board of the Equitable brought their solicitor along to see him. 

 A settlement was reached in July 1832 at a meeting between both sides and their lawyers. In the following January a list was produced of Messrs. Livesey and Ainger's various misdeeds and Woolwich Equitable Directors were most annoyed that £245 of the purchase money had found its way into Mr. Livesey's private pocket.

 So the old Woolwich gas works was taken over, run for a while, and closed down. While negotiations had been going on with Livesey and Ainger the Equitable directors had begun making arrangements for a new works to be built for them.  It's nice to know that the contract to build the new works went to Mr. Barlow.

 This story in some ways echoes the problems behind so many early gas works. Usually, a works was built by speculators which turned out to be inefficient and soon became ruinous – but things began to improve as operators gained more experience of the technology.  It is perhaps ironic that Thomas Livesey - who was so successful in his management of the first and largest company then in existence – should get in such a mess at Woolwich.  It also throws considerable light on the standards of honesty not only of Livesey but also of others of the time and to the lack of statutory regulation.

  Greenwicb Weekender