Roan Street gas holders

To the north and east of the Rennie works was a very large area which is now covered in new housing. It has been very difficult to find out much about the background to this area – and I must apologise for relying so heavily on old maps of the area.  But it did have two large gas holders on it.

 

In the 1840s this area appears on the tithe map to be vacant and is marked as in the ownership of Joshua Hargrave, a local bigwig and let to a Richard and Thomas Harriss, about whom I know nothing. This area is listed as ‘a market garden with a stable, shed and offices’. At the end which is nearest to Roan Street is a square area described as ‘a walled garden’. A few years later on 1850s maps it all still appears to be completely empty and vacant. It is open to Deptford Creek with a long frontage with no wharf shown on the Creek  – but this is the area which would soon be New Sun Wharf. We also know, from the advertisements by the coal merchant who used New Sun Wharf,  that it was once part of the Copperas Grounds.

  

However on the 1869 OS map this big area is marked ‘Gas Works’ (which it wasn’t). What is shown on it is a large gas holder – and the site is used for the storage of gas made down in Thames Street at the Phoenix Gas Company’s Greenwich Works. It’s a storage site not a ‘works’. Readers may remember that I described the Greenwich gas works which was on the riverside at the point at which the Creek meets the Thames, where Waitrose is now, and which was owned by the Bankside based Phoenix Company.  In 1864 they needed a site for increased gas storage which could not be fitted onto their Greenwich site.  So, they had purchased the Roan Street site from a Mr. Smith and had also built a gas main to it which went down Roan Street.  I have no idea who Mr. Smith was.

 

This gasholder site is walled off from Ravensbourne Street – now Norman Road - and from Deptford Creek and has no riverside access.  The entrance appears to be from Roan Street and the gas holder belonged to the Phoenix Gas Company. All the (very few) historic references call it the ‘Roan Street Works’ and locally it was always known as ‘those holders in Roan Street’.  But I have a note from a fellow gas historian which says, rather angrily, that this was ‘Norman Road Depot’ and that I wrong to describe as ‘Roan Street’.  I might mention that when it was built Norman Road was called Ravensbourne Street. 

 

In 1867 Phoenix Gas Company reported that the gas holder and other works at Roan Street were complete at a cost of £55,625 and the holder is shown on the 1869 OS map.  At some point, possibly in 1877, a second rather larger holder was added a bit nearer to the Creek. This holder appears to have had problems with leaks in the tank.  Gasholder had a tank lying underground below them and this would be filled with water – and for this leak workmen ‘divers’ had to go down and plug any leaks. Phoenix Gas Company was taken over by George Livesey’s South Metropolitan Gas Company in 1881 but I have found out very little about these two holders - even George Livesey in his detailed work on the holders of South Met. seems to ignore them.   

 

By 1959 they had both gone and the site is once again vacant and empty. In 1964 there was an exhibition of a housing project for this site and the architects complained that there were particularly difficult planning problems because of the deep bases of two gas holders at what is still described as a ‘gas works’

 

It seems very likely that what was on the rest of the site over the years was a sports ground used by the workers are the West Greenwich gas works. We have reports of cricket and football matches played against other local factory teams.  There was also probably a ‘workers institute’ here or nearby in Roan Street where there would be social events and entertainments.  We also have a description from the late 19th century of a fundraising event in aid of the Seaman’s' Hospital on the cricket ground and this included a selection of music by the South Met. Gas Company's military band.  The only photograph I am aware of from the site shows the holders - or at least the side of one of them - dates the 1930s and shows a children’s sports day.  I have no idea what is going here except it appears to show a number of men with their heads in buckets. So I guess that this was some sort of fun event

 

I have a plan of the site dating from 1941 which shows two gas holders.  It also shows a governor house and a Boiler house. More interestingly to the south of the site and partly on the site of the old Rennie works is a fact a large factory for national enamels and to the side another factory for gas efficiency. More about them in a moment. Also nearby but just outside the site in Roan Street are stores and offices.

 

I have always had a suspicion that there was an early gas mantle factory here. I am interested to see in the December issue of Historic Gas Times an article by a local gas history expert, Brian Sturt.  It’s about the eventual manager of the great East Greenwich Gas Works, Joseph Tysoe, who was sent off to Brazil in the early 20th century to try and get a supply of Monazite for South Met. Monazite sand is a source of thorium used in the manufacture of gas mantles.  South Met. didn’t buy monazite from Brazil but later on got a supply from North Carolina.

 

This all went very wrong and South Met’s stockpile was sold off during the Great War. So I have no basis whatsoever for an early gas mantle factory here – just a failed attempt to get raw materials. 

 

There was a gas mantle factory here eventually. This was said to be ‘small’ and date from 1935. In the Second World War a Mr. Higgins was the works manager and he also had a commission in the home guard. The works was called Gas Efficiencies and it is said that in the 1950s this factory was ‘used for the manufacture of lime magnesite catalyst for SEGAS’ and ‘material for use in reforming plants’. This manufacture was transferred in the 1960s to the chemical works at Phoenix Wharf at the East Greenwich Gas Works site on the Greenwich Peninsula.

 

On the Creekside part of the site was National Enamels. They enameled Ascot water heaters as well a numerous gas stoves and similar equipment in white vitreous enamel.   This was an unpleasant and dangerous process to work with involving spraying and then baking the objects at very high temperatures.

They produced enameled objects of all sorts – specialist trays for industrial applications to notices advising that a field of allotments was private.

 

They were eventually replaced by Vickerys who were not connected to the gas industry. This was founded by Frederick Vickery and made, for instance, the Vickery automatic sheet feeder for printing machines. Their paper laying machine was used world wide.

 

The Roan Street site was finally sold off by SEGAS around 1960