Woolwich Equitable Gas Works - Woolwich's second gasworks

 

Two weeks or so ago I wrote an article here about the earliest gas works in Woolwich, which was built by a Thomas Livesey in 1817.  I ended up that article with a long description of how that works was taken over by a new local gas company to try and sort out complaints from residents.  Thomas Livesey had originally built the early works along with a Woolwich coal merchant, Mr Hardy, who, by the 1820s had been replaced by a Mr Ainger –another coal merchant. They had been trying to sell the gas works since the early 1820s.  Livesey was Deputy Director of the big Westminster based Gas Light and Coke Co. and he had lied to them that he had no longer anything to do with the works in Woolwich.

Local activists, hoping for a better supplier of gas for lighting, set up the Woolwich Equitable Gas Co. in 1832.  It’s quite difficult to say exactly who they were. A lot of names are given in press stories and Vincent’s History of Woolwich does a very good job with mini-biographies of various locals but very little about their actual political affiliations. The first Company meeting was chaired by a William Strother whose family were coal merchants based on Roffs Yard - which of course is where the original gas works was located. Other directors seem to be Powis Street shopkeepers and other local business men. Their first resolution was to buy the works at Roff's Yard which was ‘very dilapidated. Thus their first decision was to buy a properly apparently owned by the family of the man who was chairing the meeting - that really is a bit much even by the ethical standards of the early 19^th century.

 

However they continued to negotiate with Livesey and Ainger and a settlement was reached in July 1832. In the following January a list was produced of Livesey and Ainger's various misdeeds and Woolwich Equitable Directors learnt that £245 of the purchase money had found its way into Mr. Livesey's private pocket.

 

Roff’s Yard was a small piece of ground east of what is now the approach to the Woolwich Ferry. In 1832 new Equitable Company commissioned a valuation of the gas works there from John Barlow. The Barlow family were involved in gas works in many localities. John, the father, was an iron founder from Sheffield who had eight sons all involved in building and fitting out gas works -  which they would pass on, readymade, for a local management to take and run. His report on the old Woolwich works was very long and very damning – it was ‘very dilapidated' to say the least. They also commissioned some work from George Holworthy Palmer - I only mention this because a couple of years ago I published a long academic style article about Palmer who was a complete disaster area   sacked from more gas companies than you knew existed. Although in 1832 his worst disasters were in the future and he was still a rising young gas engineer. It was reported that Barlow was ‘against octagonal retort houses’ – which must refer to what Palmer was doing at Old Kent Road gasworks and which was to leave that works in ruins in 1836.

However the new Equitable Company despite the damning report soon reduced the price of gas - which is what they had been setup to do. It was also said that by canvassing in Woolwich they had obtained ‘signatures for upwards for 800 burners’ and had sold gas appliances ‘to 8 out of 10 people they asked’.  They were also making plans to build a new gas works in Harding (or Hardens) Lane

However four years after the new Equitable Company was set up there was another public meeting of ‘gas consumers’ to condemn them and make charges against the directors. This was obviously a different bunch of agitators from the ones who had originally set up the Equitable Company. As I said earlier I don’t have a way to find out the ‘politics’ of it. This Meeting said much the same things about the Equitable Company as has been said about its predecessor – they were extravagant and were charging too much for their gas.  The Company was ‘supplying the Dockyard with gas at nine shillings per thousand cubic feet, whereas the ordinary consumers were called upon to pay eleven shillings’. ... ‘We beg to assure them we do not any longer consider them entitled to the name of 'Equitable'.

The protestors went off and decided to set up another gas company which would do what they wanted. Now that is another story and I’m not going to the details of it here because I said I would do an article about all of the Woolwich gas companies - so I’ll were it up in a week or two.  It was to be called ‘The Woolwich Consumers Gas Co.’.

So the Equitable Company moved to a wharf, said to be the site of a large eighteenth-century house, at the end of Harding (or Hardens) Lane. This lane ran from Woolwich High Street to the river and was right up against the east wall of the Arsenal. It was more recently known as Ship and Half Moon Lane but is now undiscoverable under a massive new development and blocks of new flats. In 1841 John Barlow built the Equitable gas works there with ‘two small gasholders and a retort house’.  The company also advertised for ‘tenders for brick erections and for machinery, utensils and iron work’ and ‘for the building of a wharf wall’.

Protests however did not cease.  I would like to quote one letter in the local press but it’s very long.  To quote a tiny extract: ‘that little, miserable, empty nut-shell, the Kentish Mercury; and the self-styled Equitable Gas Company ... having a glorious monopoly of the supply of gas ... which with characteristic hauteur and indifference .... was lamentably deficient.’ And so on.

However once in business the two gas companies ’very quickly fraternised, and they have worked together...as friendly and as quietly as mice.’ Whenever the price of gas rose or was lowered, the fact was announced by the two companies in the self same words, and on the same day.”  ...’For many years the two companies have earned so much money that the directors have had to contrive how to divide it so as to keep within the law’. The two companies had also ‘the advantages of having nearly all their directors on the Woolwich Local Board of Health’.  I see.

What meanwhile was actually going on in the works? There is a newspaper report about a badly injured workman apparently the result of a fight. However the doctor’s report said that the injuries were the result of a fall and not the fight so everybody was discharged - no more court case.   Then, in 1856, the workmen ‘presented as a mark of esteem ...a handsome silver snuff-box to Mr. Macpherson, the Superintendent of the Company’.  Later. ‘in 1860 there was a report on the stokers 'demand for more wages ... reports are that this is practically a strike’.  And – as ever Thomas Glover, coffee house keeper was charged with ‘fraudulently burning gas, the property of the Woolwich Equitable Gas Company’. He had arrears of three or four pounds, which he refused to pay. It had since been found that he had connected two pipes and ‘used the gas after midnight at least for three weeks past’.

Rather more positively in 1882 ‘a good specimen of improved gas lighting is to be seen in the new lamp which has just been put up by the Woolwich Equitable Gas Company in the centre of Beresford Square’.

In the 1880s Robert Morton was appointed engineer at Woolwich in his first gasworks job. He was to become a leading gas innovator working closely with George Livesey, becoming a director of South Met. following Livesey’s death in 1908. Years later he described the original engine and exhauster in the Equitable Works ‘it was the engine of an old paddle steamer, one half (high pressure) being used as the engine, and the other half (low pressure) was the exhauster. In those times many people thought anything was good enough for a gas works’.

In 1885 Livesey’s South Met. Gas Co. got parliamentary powers to extend their area of supply through Woolwich into Kent. They then took over the two Woolwich gas companies presumably to tidy the area up a bit. In 1887 advertisements came out for the sale of ‘Lot 1. The Freehold Property, situate in Harden's Lane, Woolwich, comprising the site of the works of the late Woolwich Equitable Gas Company, with a frontage on the river Thames and covering area of 38,370 feet’.

From then on Woolwich was supplied with gas from East Greenwich where steam engines were never converted from old paddle steamers and any protest meetings would mean either confronting George Livesey or realising that they were actually beneath his notice. It was a different world.