West Greenwich gas works

 

To continue the walk along the Greenwich Riverside from Deptford we need to cross Deptford Creek and at last we will be in Greenwich.  There is now a footbridge from GlaisherStreet over to Greenwich and new flats, bars and shopsin Greenwich west.  This footbridge dates only from 2014 and isa cable-stayed foot and cycle swing bridge.  It is not floodlit at night so as not to upsetthe fish.  So cross over and end up on another identikit and largely featureless riverside walkway.

This area was notalways so clean, respectable and boring.   Up until the 1820s it was called Brooks Marsh and contemporary maps show that it was nothing like it is now.  This was an area of mudflats and muddy islands projecting into the Thames on and off covered by the tide.It was stabilised and turned into the solid land we see now by a contractor, David Mackintosh.  He was very busy working on all the new roads, railways and docks in East London so I can imagine that this was just another job on his list.  He was commissioned to do the work by the Phoenix Gas Company who had bought a market garden, osier bed and a wet dock. I need to explain something about Phoenix and the gasworks which stood on this site for the next hundred years.

 

I wrote up the history of the early gas industry in Greenwich for the Greenwich Historical Society a couple of years ago with a lot of detail and the ins and outs of the scandals which took place in this period with various gas companies and the Greenwich local vestry. That story is how eventually Greenwich was subject to a Parliamentary Mandamus order – so please read that article if you want to know about that.   In this account now I’m just going to tell you a bit about the gasworks which stood at the Creek mouth from the mid 1820s.

 

I also ought to explain – details in that other article - that there was a very small earlier gasworks slightly up the Creek in what is now Norway Street and it would’ve been roughly on the site of the Council flats. I also wrote an article about that little works – and that should be on the British Library website, along with a picture of it.

 

The use of coal gas for street lighting had been developed in the early 19th century with a pioneer gasworks in Westminster, which was quickly followed by others. One of the earliest works to use this new technology was based on Bankside.  Like every town and village in England Greenwich was worried about ‘horrible instances of robberies and murder’ and there were those who sought to solve their problems with the new gas lighting. Sadly sometimes they gave a very rosy view of the wonders of this new lighting and how it would even be profitable. The early gas works at Bankside had undergone a number of changes to became the Phoenix Gas Company and by the mid 1820s they were trying to expand south London - Greenwich was a particular target. 

 

Phoenixnegotiated lightingcontractswith Greenwich vestry in 1825 to build a new gas works. They also took over the works in Norway Street built by a rival, and used it until their new works could be built. Then they began to get into trouble. In 1827 it was reported from the new site that “the tank had given way for the third time, water was undermining the whole premises, and the foundations were dangerous”.  Eventually the new works was finished and the old Norway Street works was leased out to an engineering firm, although the gas holder there was kept in use for many years. 

 

Greenwich Gas Workscontinuedto supply the townand the surrounding area with gas for street lighting. In the 1870sas part of a major deal when Phoenix Company became part of the South Metropolitan Gas Company and this included Greenwich works. Although this was an important works in use for nearly 100 years very little seems to be known about it.In fact nothing seems to be known about the holders on site, and most of the reports about the works and gas company records are about social life there.  There are not really even any pictures that I am aware of.

 

We must therefore assume that the works continued with little need for comment. Both Phoenix and later South Met were efficient and respectable gas companies.   The 1867 map shows the site with a large square building set at an angle with four gas holders on the east side – that nearest the River much bigger than the others. By 1894 only the largest is shown and it may have seen a ‘two lift holder’ built in the late 1850s. The three smaller ones probably dated from 1837.  There is also the Norway Street holder just down the road.    Then further away and up the Creek in Roan Street was another holder. This had beenbuilt to give more gas storage on a bigger site and moreholders werebuilt there in due course.

 

No jetty is shown on the 1864 map either on the Thames or Deptford Creek – but a wharf was built as part of the original contract although it is not obvious where it was. Coal came to these works from the Durham coal field and was delivered in specialist ships called ‘colliers’.

 

Apparently Greenwich did not have the facilities for its workmen -baths, wash basins -  that the other Phoenix works enjoyed and staff petitioned the Board  in the 1850s to  do something about this saying they wanted "a room for their occupation during the intervals of drawing and charging the retorts; such room to be also devoted to reading and religious instruction.”Later under South Met they, like all the other gas works, got an ‘Institute’ – although I don’t know exactly where it was.  This was a much more ambitious affair with a hall which could be let out to local societies as well as sports facilities and space for social activities generally.  There was a cricket ground – which I think was up on the Roan Street site – and a verysuccessfulrowingclub

 

In the mid 1880s the works was producing three million cubic feet of gas a day but once the huge East Greenwich works was built and it was decided to run West Greenwich down. In the Great War the company was asked by the Government to use its retorts tomake charcoal for gas masks and similar equipment. They are said to havemade enough to supply notonlyBritishneeds but French and Italian as well.Gas making finally ended in 1926.

 

The site became a base for the South Met's lighterage– shipping  -department until the 1940s. They operated a fleet of three tugs, a dock tug and over a hundred barges of various types - this had started with a single barge on the Surrey Canal. All coal supplied for south London’s gasworks was transported by river. The department had opened in 1887 when the company launched its first tug the ‘George Livesey’.  It would have included vessels liketug ‘T.B. Heathorn’, built 1893 and which sadly sank in Barking Creek only two years ago.  In the 1890s Heathorn was followed by another tug, ‘Partnership’.

 

After closure the site was sold.  It seems likely that it became a roadstone depot and remained so until taken over for ‘regeneration’ in the 1990s. When the wharf closed it was called Granophast Wharf which was a trade name for products of British Quarrying Co.  British Quarrying dated from 1914 and was taken over by ARC roadstone in 1947. A new layout for coating plants was designed and first used by them at Greenwich in 1947 and in 1953 they had a Coated Macadam Unit.  ARC itself dates from 1935.

 

Finally I remember when I was busy trespassing on the wharf in the 1980s being delighted to find aggregate being stored in what was clearly the pit dug for the tank of a gasholder. 

 

People interested in the history of old gasworks seem to be few and far between, but it is nevertheless a pity that none of them seems to have taken any notice of West Greenwich gasworks – it wasn’t as bad as all that