Greenwich Railway Gas Works

Greenwich Railway Gas Works

The biggest and most successful Gas Company in South and Kentish London in the early 1820s was the Phoenix Gas Light and Coke Co. based in the Borough.  They were to become the main suppliers of gas in Greenwich and operated an important gas works in the town.  In Greenwich there had been a great deal of trouble over the proposal that the vestry back a gas works to be built by a Mr. Goslings.  Complaints had been made by a rival, Mr. Hedley, whose tender had been ignored.  Eventually the  works built by Mr. Gosling's, was to be taken over by the Phoenix Company and they were to be the main supplier of lights to Greenwich for many.

Before this could happen, in 1824 Gosling proceeded to build his Greenwich gas works.  It had been assumed that this was the works which later became the Phoneix Company's 'West Greenwich' gas works in Thames Street  a plan had recently come to light which may indicate that is not so.  It shows an 'old gas works' site on the eastern side of Norway Street - adjacent to the later gas works but not actually part of it and it maybe that this is the Gosling site – perhaps including the land between Norway Street and Deptford Creek to the west. .   As Gosling built the works so he was also trying to sell it. As early as May 1823 the South London Gas Light and Coke Company reported that Phoenix Gas Co. was about to buy the Greenwich Gas Works.

The background to the Phoenix Gas Light and Coke Co. needs some explanation.   A gas works had been set up on Bankside around 1817 by a Mr. Munro. This was one of the earliest London gas works. In due course Mr. Munro seems to have also started the South London Gas Light and Coke Co. Another company, the Phoenix Gas Light and Coke Co., which also included Mr. Munro, had then been formed – but not necessarily from the ashes of the South London since they both existed in parallel for a while – but in due course Phoenix took over South London.  By the early 1820s Phoenix had two gas works – one on Bankside, and another in the back streets of the Blackfriars area.  They were very looking to expand in all directions and as speculative gas works were built by the Hedleys and Goslings of this world, so Phoenix considered purchasing them. 

Phoenix was described in a company history written in the 1920s as having 'a philanthropic, if not a Whiggish tinge'. This comment derives from the nature of some of the early subscribers to the company several of whom were well-known Quakers and philanthropists.  Someone who was certainly involved from Greenwich was Charles Pearson, the copperas manufacturer who was a personal friend of Mr. Munro and his sister records in her diary how they dined together in Nelson Square, Blackfriars and how Charles Pearson had to help Munro with problems about an accident at the gas works.  Pearson was also a close friend of Mr.Tilson, the Phoenix Company's solicitor.  

 Phoenix – and for a while the South London – definitely had hopes of selling gas to all of South London and also to what we would now describe as Kentish London and beyond.

In Greenwich Mr. Gosling proceeded with building his gas works but both he and his son both made overtures to Phoenix.  Initially there were enquiries about pricing policy – perhaps with a view to coming to a joint agreement on charges but by the end of 1824 Gosling was publicly in negotiation with Phoenix for sale of his Greenwich works to them.  He said he would sell at cost and take a percentage of future gas sales. An assessment of the works was to be carried out by Mr. Mackintosh, a member of David Mackintosh's contracting firm, which was heavily involved in major construction works around the area at that time. Within a month second arbitration on the site was arranged this time with William Anderson of the Grand Junction Waterworks.

By the end of December some sort of agreement had been reached to sell the works to Phoenix and Phoenix recorded Gosling's demand to be paid extra money to cover his son's salary and for the expenses of the Parliamentary bill for the Ravensbourne Gas Company – which had now been dropped.   He told them he would pay their solicitors expenses in investigating his title the land on which the works was built – but they must agree to buy whatever the result of those enquiries.  The indignant members of the Greenwich public who were having to pay for all this noted that the same solicitor acted for both Gosling and the Phoenix in this sale – and it must be presumed that this was the respectable Mr.Tilson.  The sale was finally placed in his hands, the solicitor for the other parties being Greenwich's ex-vestry clerk, Bicknell, who had resigned as the details of his dealings with Hedley and Gosling had emerged.

Things dragged on and a year later had still not been completely resolved. Gosling asked Phoenix for the loan of 16 lampposts and requested that his foreman be sent to Canterbury where the same process of selling the vestry a gasworks was, no doubt, underway. In the meantime Greenwich Vestry negotiated separately with the Phoenix Company for a supply of gas lights and Phoenix was able to tell them that they had finally completed purchase of Gosling's works by November 1825.  It cost them £13,302. 7.4d.

The South London Gas Company had already noted that Phoenix intended to buy some land in Greenwich.  Phoenix were also in negotiation with Mr. Hedley, who had now abandoned his attempts to build a gas works in Greenwich, on the subject of a take-over of a gas works recently built in Woolwich.  However Phoenix bought land in Greenwich from a Mr. Horrocks in order to build a new gas works adjacent to Goslings on the area which is now the eastern entrance to Deptford Creek. They first needed to undertake a large civil engineering project to stabilise the land at the creek entrance and to build wharves there. This work was undertaken by Mackintosh and was to take some time. Meanwhile Phoenix intended to honour their contracts to provide street lights in Greenwich by using Goslings new gas works in Norway Street.

The trouble with Mr. Gosling's works was that it was falling down.  The Phoenix engineer reported that.. 'the Retort House at Greenwich is settling again … the Tank has given way for the third time …. We have had to employ 150 men to renew the timber and water has seeped through to Mr. Hartley's premises …. The foundations were dangerous …. The sand had not been puddled first in the contract'.   They were finally able to close it in 1828 when the new works was finally finished.  Gas had been made at the Gosling works for about four years, it had caused a major rift in the Greenwich vestry and given Phoenix a lot of problems.

Phoenix hung on to the site for many years and the gasholder there probably remained in use.  In 1828 the site, minus the gas holder area, was advertised as a 'valuable property near the river, with brick buildings and a lofty chimney, suitable for an iron foundry or any trade needing large premises'. It was subsequently let to a Mr. Harrington at £100 a year.  Two years later it was under offer to Mr. Beneke – a German chemist who had come to England to open a chemical works connected with the Deptford copperas industry.    He paid £150 a year and got a right of way through the gas holder yard.  Three years later it was to let again.  It is not very clear how long the site continued to be owned by Phoenix.  In 1841 it was let to William Joyce the steam engine builder who must be presumed to have bought it from them. In the 1860s it is still marked as a foundry.  In the absence of a map, which shows its exact boundaries, it is not clear. It is known however that in the 1840s Gosling's gasholders were repaired and brought into active use by Phoenix.

Phoenix Gas Light and Coke Company flourished and continued to supply Greenwich with gas for lighting from their new works built on the east bank of Deptford Creek.  Things were far from easy and there were many projects for new works over the coming years.

This article has been complied from material in the north Thames Gas Archive at LMA and some other minor sources.

Part 3 Greenwich Railway Gas Works

In 1820s Gas Lighting in Greenwich was supplied by the Phoenix GasLight and Coke Company from their gas works in Thames Street.  From around 1830 another gas works built in the Old Kent Road and supplied some of the area – although private agreements were soon made between the gas companies as to the areas in which they were to supply their gas.  Deptford lay between the two and, as more and towns had gas works of their own, Deptford people began to want their own gas lighting supply from their own works. In due course they were to get it – but from a very unlikely source.

In October 1834 Kentish Mercury announced a meeting 'for the purpose of considering the expediency of immediately forming a GAS LIGHT ESTABLISHMENT'. It was agreed that Deptford 'presents peculiar local facilities for the advantageous formation' of such a body and it was proposed to call it the 'Deptford and Greenwich GasLight Company'. 

In due course the Mercury carried a notice of the formation of the company and announced a Board.  It must be said that a number of undated documents exist which give the names of Board members for a Greenwich and Deptford Gas Co. – not one of them is the same as any other. However since this is dated and appeared in the local press we can be sure of what it refers to.  The directors included Sir William Beatty of the Royal Hospital, which implies that the new company had the blessing of the powerful body and another director was George Smith, future surveyor for Morden College, as well as Thomas Brocklebank and Adam Gordon. Important local shipbuilders.   After such a good start it is shame to have to relate that nothing else seems to be heard about this body. 

At some stage an Act of Parliament for a Deptford Gas Works was achieved = we know this because there is an undated report of a celebratory dinner held in a pun on Deptford Broadway. It was a 'sumptuous entertainment' for a 'numerous and highly respectable' company.  They toasted everyone and everything from The Old Oak Tree' to ' The Army and Navy' and everyone else – but I don't think they ever built a gas works.  The only little bit of doubt is that there was a gas works – a very small one – built near the Blackhorse Bridge on the Surrey Canal. As recently as 1986 there was a small gas installation there with a notice inviting you to ring the SouthEastern Gas Board at New Cross for information. Nothing seems to be known about it – was that the much-celebrated Deptford Gas Works.

Meanwhile, as the 1830s progressed, excitement and innovation was in the air in Greenwich.  The first steam railway in London – the first suburban railway in the world - was to come to Greenwich.  As plans advanced for the scheme so the Greenwich pamphleteers and satirists were, as usual, out in force.  It appeared that not only was this railway to be the first in London but also would incorporate a number of novel features. Along with the boulevard and the inclined plane at Deptford were plans for an integrated scheme of gas lighting.

The engineer to the London and Greenwich Railway Company was George Landmann.  He had had a distinguished career in the Royal Engineers but had sold his commission in 1824. In the intervening ten years he had worked as Engineer to the Imperial Continental Gas Association – travelling round Europe to construct gas works in Continental towns.  In turning his hand to railway construction it is only natural that he should also think about how gas could be used as part of the scheme.

A separate company – The Greenwich Railway Gas Co. – was set up in 1836 with the same board membership as the railway itself. It was proposed to light the line with gas lamps –"lights at a distance of 21 yards on each side of the railway and also a number of lights for the stopping places each end of the road making in all about 700 lights" and to supply gas lighting to stations and to cottages built in the arches under the railways.  In a then revolutionary step it was also proposed to supply the cottages with gas cooking apparatus.  It seems very likely that part of the plan was to make coke on site for use by the locomotives.  The gas works itself was to occupy the site upriver of the railway on the Deptford side of Deptford Creek – a site which is very easy to see from the train today and which lies apparently derelict as it has done for many years.

As plans for the railway began to emerge Phoenix Company first of all became concerned about the potential of the railway for damage to the gas mains and Mr. Tilson, now acting as the company's solicitor, took steps to see that a clause was inserted in the Parliamentary Bill for the railway requiring compensation for any damage.  The railway was not making its own coke when it opened in 1836 and Phoenix was able to supply coke to them for the locomotives.  What Phoenix did not know was that Colonel Landmann had been discussion with the rival South Metropolitan company, based in the old Kent Road, on the question of a supply of gas for the stations and for the line.  When Phoenix found this out in 1836 they were not amused and pointed out that they had not been allowed to tender for these lights. 

The Greenwich Railway Gas Company does not seem to have been a success. And it is very unclear if it ever did in fact supply gas to the line. Since it is clear that the lights which people saw and reported in 1837 and 1838 were supplied by South Met. Gas Works. In 1838 it was abandoned and the site was sold and the works reconstituted as the Deptford Rotherhithe and Bermondsey Gas Light and Coke Co.  This had a board consisting of Charles Barlee, a Deptford coke merchant, Webster Flockton and Bermondsey tar distiller, John Wells MP and ex local shipbuilder, and John Twells deputy chair of the Greenwich Railway – a board constituted of interests connected with the railway rather than the local dignitaries who made up the proposed Deptford and Greenwich Company.  A fifth member of the board was John Barlow and it was he who built and operated the works.

Previous articles have mentioned specialists in gas works construction – notably Gosling and Hedley. A third such business was Barlow's - the family had come from Sheffield and were engaged in building gas works where they could. There were many sons one of whom was to found and edit the Journal of Gas Lighting. It was John Barlow who actually built a gas works alongside the railway on Deptford Creek – or so his son reported 18 years later.  

From then on the Deptford Rotherhithe and Bermondsey Gas Company supplied gas to the people of the area in competition with Phoenix, based in Greenwich, and South Met, based in the Old Kent Road. Although in 1840 Phoenix secured the contract to light the parish of St. Paul's, Deptford – an area that the new company could well hope to have secured. The reaction of both the older gas companies was immediately to lower their prices and in 1841 a limited agreement between them was reached on competition.

By the early 1850s there was yet another gas company in South London – the Surrey Consumers based in Rotherhithe.  Although this is too far from Kent to really mention here it is important because they posed yet more competition in the area and they made several attempts to buy up the now ailing Deptford works. By that time the Deptford Gas Works had a neighbour. I have written about Frank Clarke Hills before in the context of his Kentish connections and his East Greenwich chemical works.  He also had a chemical works on Deptford Creek, next door to the gas works and he seems to have used them for his own purposes.

It eventually transpired that the Deptford Works had been underwritten by Frank Hills to the tune of £10,000 loaned to them in order to extend the works. He had then used the works as a testing ground for his various gas purification schemes. The gas works included a dock – part of which can still be seen from the railway. Frank Hills used that as an extension of his wharf, together with a floating tank. He claimed that there was a footpath through the site over which he had rights.  This version of Frank Hills' rights was contested by some of the ex-directors of the Deptford, Bermondsey and Rotherhithe Gas Co.

The Deptford Works was eventually sold to the Surrey Consumers Co. In due course that was taken over by South Met. and at some stage, probably before 1870 the works was closed down but probably continued to be used as a holder station only.. It appears on the Ordnance Survey for the 1860s with three holders, the little dock and some buildings.  By 1914 only the largest holder in the centre of the site remained.  It appears that the site has stood vacant behind a very substantial wall ever since.  I wonder why?