Millbank gas works

 This is going to be a very short and speculative article about a very short and speculative gas works.   I only found out about it by chance – a note in Vol.66 (1994-95) of the Newcomen Society Transactions. This was embedded in a really excellent article by Martin Meade and Andrew Saint on ‘The Marquis de Chabannes, Pioneer of Central Heating’.   I don’t know if either author reads the GLIAS Newsletter but I would be grateful if someone would mention to them how much I enjoyed the article.  I had known about Chabannes for some time – in connection with the infant briquette industry around 1800 – and their article illuminated many corners of his heterogeneous life.

 Anyone trying to tackle a history of the early gas industry in London is faced to having to explain away Frederick Albert Winsor.  More than anyone else Winsor founded the gas industry – he was a German who promoted the idea of a gas supply system vigorously, and, getting together a band of supporters was instrumental in setting up the first ever gas company.  Winsor presents a number of problems for historians. One, because his promotional literature is extremely wild and peculiar , how is it that he ever taken seriously?  He appeared to have money and contacts. What was his source of influence?   Who was he, really?

 
The Newcomen article does not help with either of these problems but it does throw some light on another one. We know nothing about Winsor’s experience in making gas other than that he had tried to contact a successful experimenter in France. His technical knowledge – from his pamphlets – appears to be sketchy. There is also a small amount of contemporary evidence that he was responsible for some small scale gas making plant. What was this? The promoters who joined him to set up the Gas Light and Coke Company must have had some evidence that he could deliver in practise the scheme which he was – so eccentrically – putting forward.  The conclusion must be that he  had a demonstration plant somewhere.

 

Messrs. Meade and Saint have described how the Marquis of Chabannes set up a manufactory for briquettes on Millbank around 1799 and – tracing it through the rate books – they note that by 1808 the site was ‘ in the hands of another vagabond entrepreneur of talent and ebullience, Frederick Albert Winsor’.   So was this saite Winsor’s demonstration plant?  They also note his company name – ‘The Westminster Gas Supply Company’.  Do they realise what they found here?  Is this in fact the first gas company and that the great Gas Light and Coke was really the second.  This could start a revolution.  At the very least the London Gas Museum will have to amend its displays about the great march forward from Westminster Gas Works to Beckton and North Thames Gas!

 

One question remains – which I ought to be able to solve. I am not sure exactly which site on Millbank this note refers to and I am very aware that the Gas Light and Coke Co., had a wharf  in that area from about 1814.  They seem to have acquired it from a Mr. Sergeant,  a coal merchant  who was to deal extensively with many of the London gas companies.  Was this Winsor’s old site?    As it happens I have a rather nice picture of