So what does SELIA have to say about it? “Holder No.2.two, built in 1891 was then the largest gas holder in the world. It was built as a six lift holder to contain 12.2 million cubic feet. The top two lifts (flyers) were destroyed in the Silvertown explosion of January 1917.
There are lots and lots of descriptions of this gas holder it in gas histories and in the trade press – many in a great deal of detail. It gets a mention in a new book which could be described as the definitive history of gas holders around the world. It was written by a very nice young woman from Munich - Barbara Berger. Five or six years ago a group of us entertained Barbara to dinner at a restaurant near the Dome overlooking the site where the two gas holders had stood.
The problem with Barbara’s book is that it is German - which I don’t understand at all. I have struggled with Google translate to find what she says about East Greenwich No.2. So this is a bit of a guess at a quotation, Barbara says “this gasholder by George and Frank Livesey stands out as a sublime building which presented and showcased the technology of gas tank construction.”
I’ve written extensively in the past George Livesey and a biography of him is still rotting on my hard disc. He was the genius who changed the entire gas industry in the late 19th century. As the manager, and later Chair, of the South Metropolitan Gas Company he built East Greenwich gasworks. It was planned as the most perfect gasworks and an expression of his ambition. He wanted to show the world that South Met. was ‘in the lead’ and to make that fact quite clearly visible with bigger and bigger gas holders.
Frank was his younger brother who had had the public school and university education which George did not. George had the bright ideas and Frank had the job of implementing them;
East Greenwich gas works
was built in the early 1880s. Gas holders generally a bit like icebergs with a
great deal buried below ground level in a tank, but there were problems with
the marshy ground and the high water table made No. l holder very difficult and
expensive to build. For No.2 the ground was excavated only as far as the underground
water. A great deal of research was done into the structure of the guide framing
– that’s the ironwork of the holder which we can see. It was necessary to ensure its stability and
a lot of thought was given to the effect of high winds on it. It was
constructed with great care and Livesey described the ironwork as combining “the
English radial system with the French tangential roller - and we think we have
succeeded in making it safe”. Two
'flying lifts' rose from the top of the holder up above the ironwork frame. It
was only the second holder ever to be built like this. The ironwork was all
made in Leeds by the up-and-coming firm of Clayton Son & Co. It cost £41,195.
It came to Greenwich ‘by rail or boat’ to be erected by Clayton’s own staff
from Leeds. It was described in the
trade press as “the ultimate in
frame-guided holder design;"
The
holder was completed for a total cost including the tank of £62,000, giving the
amazingly low figure of £5-2s-6d per 1,000 cubic feet of stored gas - less than
a third of that considered normal a few years before. Thus its
enormous size was a very cheap way of storing gas – taking in the costs of construction,
maintenance and usage. Large amounts of
gas could be stored over weekends and holiday periods cutting the amount paid
in wages for unsocial hours. South Met. had a strong ideological commitment to
giving its workforce time off on Sundays for religious reasons - and it must also
be remembered that in the 1889 ‘strike’ one of the Gas Workers Union’s demands had been the abolition of Sunday
working.
When No.2. was finished there were many press stories - most of them being about how it was the largest holder in the world. A Manchester paper reported ‘There is now being built for use at Greenwich, an immense gasometer, three hundred feet in diameter, to fit a circular tank ten and a half yards deep. This monster is to be ready by October of next year, and it will have a cubical capacity of twelve million feet’. Locally, sadly all the Kentish Mercury could say was that ‘the unsightly gasometers of the South Metropolitan Company arose to spoil the view of College Reach,’
When a gas holder is ruptured the lighter than air gas goes up into the sky where it explodes. In 1917 Charlie Wellard, then a small boy, asked his mother if it was the end of the world – she said ‘yes’.
The holder was rebuilt but the two 'flying lifts’ were never replaced and the holder assumed its final shape.
And so the years went by. In the mid-1980s SEGAS decided to mark the near- centenary of the largest gas holder in Europe by demolishing it. When holder No.1.number one was demolished a couple of years ago there was a huge community response with a petition against its demolition and loads of people taking pictures. The only pictures I’ve ever seen of the demolition of No2. are those I took myself - on my Dad’s old eight-shots-a- film camera. It was winter and snowing a lot of the time. I used to go down to the bridge over the motorway and take pictures as the frame was removed bit by bit. At point I managed to talk my way past the security man and got inside the actual holder itself - frantically taking pictures until a very angry security man realised where I had gone. The pictures are terrible but they are all there is.
After No.2. was demolished the site was left for trees
and other growth for nearly 35 years.
It was quite clear for a long time that the plans for the Silvertown tunnel were the reason for the pressure to demolish Holder No.1.and why it was denied listed status despite its quality and the innovation it represented. I would never be surprised to find that even in the 1980s it was a reason for the demolition of No.2.
By the 2010s the site of No.2. And its remains were on a site which had been taken over by Transport for London who were building the workshops for the tunnel construction there. It became increasingly clear that that was where they were to start tunnelling and that this had been planned for a long long time.
We began to ask if any archaeologists were going to be working on the remains of the base of number two – it had been built very differently from other gas holders. We never got an answer, except informally. I understand now that there has been an archaeologist on site and understand they have been in touch with at least one gas industry historian who is also a civil engineer. They have apparently found something on site which they want to display.
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