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Sunday 26 January 2020

Bigger and bigger gas holders



Bigger and bigger gas holders

The first nine holders at Old Kent Road have been described. When the amalgamated company was set up how many holders were there??

In 1880 Livesey reported to the South Met. Board on the number of holders then in use.  He said there were 12 at Bankside. It is not easy to see any holders at Bankside on contemporary maps, and some small circular objects shown could be chimneys.  12 holders are shown in Wellington Street in this period, and could be the ones referred to, but they were soon to go because the site was sold in 1884.  So, where was gas made at Bankside stored??
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At Greenwich works in 1880 there were four holders reported – and there are indeed two on the gas works site where a gas holder tank near the riverside  which may date from this period, survived into the 1990s used for aggregate storage. A set of gas holders which stood alongside the Greenwich Railway on its north side in Roan Street  had originally been built by the Phoenix Company. After ‘the engineer at Greenwich had reported a need for more holders’ in 1864 Phoenix bought a site from a Mr. Smith and ordered a gasholder to be built on it which was accompanied by a gas main ' down Roan Street’.[1]

From the old Surrey Consumers works at Rotherhithe Livesey reported seven holders – but only three are shown on site, so presumably we have to add in one at Blackhorse Road and three at Copperas Street  - the Deptford site is well over a mile from the Rotherhithe Works and only a 100 yards or so across the Creek from Roan Street. It is perhaps worth noting an original holder at Rotherhithe said to have been built on a ‘soft foundation’ and to have ‘imitated the leaning tower of Pisa’.  On days when gas was in great demand men would stand on top of this holder to increase pressure.[2]

At Vauxhall and Kennington Livesey said there were 5 holders although maps show just two of them there. The Phoenix gas company was to build a series of important holders on the Kennington site from the mid-1840s.  When they took the site over from the Southwark and Vauxhall Water Works there were two brick lined water reservoirs and they were adapted for gas holder tanks.  The earliest of the holders was built in 1847 and used the smaller tank. It had a guide frame of 18 giant Tuscan columns supporting a balustrade. It took 600,000 cubic feet of gas and was then the largest telescopic in existence. It was demolished in 1877 and replaced in 1877-9. The second No1. had a new tank and took 3 million cubic feet of gas

In 1854 a second holder was built on the site of the second reservoir and is described as ‘another record breaker’ taking 1,250,000 cubic feet of gas and with giant guide columns made of wrought iron tubes. T was 70 feet high.  The third holder was smaller taking 600,000 cubic feet – although still larger than many others.  4 and 5 were ‘Siamese twins’ sharing one column.  These large holders in Kennington were part of the move continued by George Livesey at the Old Kent Road and later in the amalgamated company for bigger and bigger holders - for which there were sound economic reasons.
There were also holders at the two Woolwich works which were taken over by South Met in the 1880s.  The Equitable works  were the subject of an archaeological dig in 2015 where the remains of a small holder were found  but no details appear to have been published to date. Plans show five holders on the Woolwich Consumers site and four on the Equitable site.

It is clearly important to have of some sort buffer of between the point of gas production and that of supply.  In the early days of gas, because most of it would be used at night for street lighting, gas had to be produced during the day and stored for night time use. It was also have necessary to have enough gas in store to allow for unusual weather conditions.   As time went by and gas of began to be used for all sorts of other things gas storage had to allow for all sorts of fluctuations in demand.  Increasingly after the 1870s the issue of Sunday working became important and as increased calls came to cut working on a Sunday so also gas cookers began to be used and increased the need for gas to cook Sunday dinners. A foreman, writing his memories in Co-Partnership journal described the anxieties of Saturday afternoon and evening work to see that the holders were sufficiently full to see them through Sunday morning.

There were also good economic reasons apart from gas storage for the building of these large holders. There were plenty of economies of scale.  George Livesey described how a holder built at Old Kent Road in 1840 cost about £35.00 for 1000 cubic feet of gas storage while the giant holders built at East Greenwich in the 1880s were much cheaper to build and maintain, at around £5 per 1000 cubic feet. There was also a land use issue where one large holder takes up much less space than 12 small ones and needed less staff to maintain and manage.

And so we come to the Old Kent Road where in 1880 Livesey reported there were 7 holders in place.  Holder no 9 had been built in 1857 when George was his father’s assistant.  So what had happened since?

Gas holder No.10 was built in 1865.  There was at that time a great need for another gas holder following the construction of a new retort house. It was built by the Birmingham firm, Piggott, and the tank built by Docwra.  This time deeper wells were built to avoid the underlying water.  this was the first holder which George was fully responsible for and although it is relatively standard in construction it shows some individual features.

Holder No. 11. was built in 1872 as part of what was essentially a new works on the site. Again it was built by Piggott and Docrwa to George Livesey’s design.  In this holder the construction of the tank was in Portland cement concrete with only facing brickwork.  This was considerably cheaper than the previous all-brick tanks.   The tank was also founded on to the chalk which was 40 feet below the surface of the ground. The holder was demolished around 1980 and the tank is now buried.
There was soon need for another holder and this was built in 1875 and again Docwra built the tank which again was in mass concrete, plastered with cement - entirely unfamiliar in London. This was the first concrete gasholder tank built without a facing of brick. Livesey told the board his plans for the rest of the holder which would be ‘entirely novel’ and would save 100 tons of cast iron. This would consist of cast iron standards instead of conventional columns.  In 1897 a flying lift was added to this holder.  In 1897 the holder was described as in poor condition and needing repair and thus a flying lift was added as part of its reconfiguration.  Although this holder was still basically conventional it showed that Livesey was in touch with a great deal of work on the forefront of structural design as well as of work being in France and elsewhere.
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The next holder was described to the South Met board in 1874 this was to be No.13. It was very large and built in the knowledge that gas consumption was increasing by about 10 per cent a year. Thus a lot of storage would be needed in the future.

Docrwa again built the tank. This was very deep and 2.1 million gallons a day were pumped out to keep the site dry. Again there were considerable savings made on materials and construction costs. The planned holder was to have three lifts and be 160 feet high. It would take 5 million cubic feet of gas. The revolutionary guide frame is a ‘cylindrical lattice shell’. It had been built tier by tier and all connections were riveted for firmness and the structure buiolt with great precision. There was no ornament following Livesey’s discussion on this with US Major C.W. Dresser. Much of the work was done by George’s younger brother Frank.   It was filled with gas and working by December 1881 and had been built for £8.10s per 1000 cubic feet – said to be an extraordinary low sum.

The holder was damaged in the Second World War and slightly altered in repair.  Despite this it is listed and to be retained as a feature in a park. 

This revolutionary holder was tested at the planning stage by R.M. Ordish who said that it was a strong enough structure. Following the Tay Bridge disaster in 1879 Benjamin Baker was asked to report on the design of the holder, which was then being built.  Baker tested for its strength in high winds and concluded the ‘overall structure was safe and robust’.  As well as its great height and the savings in cost other designers later took up the challenge of the abandonment of ornamental detail and the exploitation of structural form.  Much of the structure of the holder is efficient and lighter but whar was mist revolutionary was the cylindrical shape

After the construction of number 13 George Livesey began to think about a gasholder bell which would rise above the guide frame and so reduce costs by only having a short guide frame.  A flying lift was first used in 1887 with a holder at Rotherhithe which was raised from 2 to 3 lifts without rebuilding.  A second holder there was converted to bw the world’s first five lift holder with two flying lifts. It was finished in 1890 It was in an old tank and rose to 100 feet.   Both of these holders were demolished in the Second World War and the current holder still on site is a rebuild of 1935

By the early 1880s East Greenwich gasworks was planned with two gas holders.. These were the responsibility of George’s brother Frank. Because they were built on marshland it was decided to have shallower tanks and four lifts to make up the volume. Docwra began to build the tanks but the difficulty of ground water led to it being built on an embankment.  Thus the holder had four lifts with six tiers of framing. The holder stands over 180 feet high. It was damaged by the IRA in the 1980s and is about to be demolished for no good reason

East Greenwich No. 2 was intended as the twin of No. l. but the water table meant that the tank had to be built differently and it was on an embankment above the water table. The holder had six lifts two of which were flying…  The lattice design which braced the holder was also different and stronger than those of its two predecessors. For the total cost of holder was about £5.00 2/6 per 1000 cubic feet a third of the already low price of years before. It held 12 million cubic feet .The holder was badly damaged by fire following the Silvertown munitions explosion in 1917 and repaired. Frederick Innes who was working in the valve room that evening saw the flash of the explosion and turned off the gas supply from the holders before the shock wave reached the holder and ruptured the flying lift. Innes was later awarded an OBE for this action. The holder was finally demolished in 1985





[1] Phoenix Gas Co. Minutes 8th March 1865
[2] Copartnership Journal 1911

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