I thought it was about time I wrote something about our poor doomed East Greenwich Gas holder. The campaign and petition to try and stop demolition of the holder has had a far greater public supports than we expected and shows how much people value its dramatic presence on the Greenwich Peninsula.
All over London gas holders are being demolished at a shocking rates - apparently the owners have been ‘tasked’ by their regulatory body to dismantle them all by 2029. A few have been ‘listed’ and will remain, one of which is the big holder in the Old Kent Road.
South Metropolitan’s Chair, and the man who made all the decisions was George Livesey – clever and unconventional - but this article is about gasholders not about all the other things which Livesey did. He designed a series of gas holders for the company’s Old Kent Road works, each more technologically advanced than the last. Three of these holders still stood until recently but I understand that only the very large holder, No.13, is going to stay, because it is listed. That holder was built in 1879 and is technically a departure to what had gone before. It was built on a revolutionary ‘cylindrical shell principle’ which is very simple and very strong. It is said that this ‘set a new bench-mark in gas holder design’ also that this was ‘Concorde’ while other holders were ‘bi-planes’.
Back to East Greenwich. Our great gas holder was one of two built in the 1880s by the South Metropolitan Gas Company for their new super works in Greenwich. It followed the same design ideas as the No.13 holder at Old Kent Road and developed them. The Gas Company needed to expand and modernise away from their Old Kent Road base where they had been since the 1830s. East Greenwich was then marsh land and the new gas works was sited at its northern end, much of which was undeveloped. I do not think that another Gas Works has been built in London since East Greenwich and it therefore remains the most modern works ever built here. It embodied the highest possible standards of the latest of absolutely everything – and crucially it was planned from the start whereas older works had usually just ‘grown’ as and when necessary. South Met. was not a company to do things by halves.
No.1. gas holder which still stands (well just about) was the first of two holders and it was soon joined by another even bigger holder. It was described at the time as ‘a mountain of iron against the sky’. Together they were said to be the biggest concentration of gas storage in the world. There are good economic reasons for these huge sizes and the company could produce figures to prove the savings through storage on like this.
So East Greenwich No.1. was a development of his new ideas on holder design. There is also a good reason why it stands so high. Gas holders usually stand above an underground tank of water but at East Greenwich they are built on marsh land. When they tried to dig out the tank it just kept flooding so the holder is built on a little mound – you could still see it when I wrote this article. There is still a tank below the holder but a third or so if it is above ground. The actual design work on the holder was done by George Livesey’s brother Frank –and despite being younger and better educated than George; he had to do what he was told.
The holder is very plain with none of the iron work decoration of earlier holders. Livesey was advised by an American military man that decoration was not necessary and that the design of the holder should express what it was it was he is and not try tone fancy. These were the sort of ideas which would later come into fashion with the style of architecture known as the modern movement and we should put the holder into this context as an industrial building.
The holder has stood there for nearly 130 years and it seen a lot of things happen. Soon after it was built there was a massive strike in the works. In 1917 it withstood the terrible munitions explosion in Silvertown while its neighbour No.2. was badly damaged by the shock wave. The gas supply was saved by quick thinking Frederick Innes, who later received an OBE.
Our holder was damaged by Second World War bombing. Worse than that in 1979 the IRA planted the bomb alongside it and the resulting explosion woke up most of South London, except for me (I slept through it). These holders are designed so that the gas escapes into upper atmosphere where it explodes. It’s very dramatic and frightening but does a lot less damage than if it exploded at ground level. Only a few years later, in the mid-1980s, the second holder, No.2. was demolished. No.1. continued to be used for storing gas – but now, not any more.
Gas is now stored underground and under pressure and these holders are redundant. It is seen as important by the authorities via the regulatory body, Ofgem, that they should all be demolished. A very small number were listed on the basis of a consultant’s report and they will remain. One of those is the big No.13 holder at Old Kent Road, and another is the one at Kennington which is always on the TV when cricket is played at the Oval.
In some ways you can understand this view of the authorities. These huge structures are expensive to maintain and there is always the risk of danger to the public. They may present a temptation to urban explorers – or worse local ten year olds – as something to climb. Many of them are also on valuable sites which could be used for building.
However internationally all sorts of things have been done with gasholders, some are museums, or diving centres, or concert halls. In London it is now well known that flats have been built inside gas holders and there is a similar scheme in Dublin. I also rather suspect that Manu gas industry staff is unhappy about seeing all these holders go. Many other holders have had local campaigns to keep them, and I know of none which have managed to prevent demolition of what many communities have seen as a local icon. We have always felt that we had a better case than most in Greenwich. Not just because the holder is valued by the community but also because of its size and advanced technology and design, and its monumentality in the landscape;
There have been attempts to get the East Greenwich holder listed since at least the mid-1990s but all applications were turned down, or deferred indefinitely. What has happened –and this is a procedure which has been used for many other holders – it was declared, with very little consultation, that the holder had immunity from listing by the Secretary of State following an application from the owners to Historic England. They then told the Council that it was going to be demolished and asked them to agree the method of demolition, giving them only a very short time to decide. This was raised twice, once in just before Christmas and once just before an election when councillors are not allowed to make decisions.
The local campaigners set up a petition and quickly got over 1500 signatures. Also some people went door to door and we are told that everybody felt strongly that the holder should be kept. We had meetings with gas company officials - some of these have been with Councillors and Council officials and the campaigners were very grateful for their support.
So – with all this effort why is it still going to come down? Partly of course, because the government seems determined to get them all down – but gas company officials tell us that all the rush is because of the Silvertown tunnel. The tunnel won’t run under the holder, but it will go very near it. So Greenwich will lose this valued monumental example of technological excellence - And for why?? You couldn’t’ make it up!
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