- George Livesey’s childhood plus some gas politics in south London
A gas works does not seem to be the best
place for a child to grow up in. But George Livesey always remembered his
childhood in the Old Kent Road with affection
He described his childhood is one in which
he ‘played about the works’ and there was nowhere there was nowhere a child was
not allowed to go and play. He described “The first
gasholder I remember being built was in 1840. I was playing about
the tank, and running along the planks one evening, as I had not got the rhythm
of the plank, the next instant I found myself in a puddle at the bottom of the
tank, fortunately not hurt.”[1] His
companions were other boys - some of whom grew up to be employed in the Old
Kent Road works and remained lifelong friends.
In those days children sometimes came daily to ‘bring father’s dinner ‘-hot
in a basin - and if stayed no one seems to have minded. Even forty years later it was seen normal for
boys to be on the giant East Greenwich Gas Works site. In the 1880s one was
crushed under the wheels of a locomotive driven by a neighbour and no-one
seemed surprised that they were there and getting ‘rides’ from the drivers. [2]
The nearby Surrey Canal was itself a source
of games. George remembered ‘fields,
hens, foxes’ and in the canal itself ‘reeds, rushes, flags, water lilies,
willows’. There was ‘bathing, fishing,
boating’ and on summer evenings hundreds of boys would swim and dive I from the
bank. George joined them and as he got older
taught younger boys how to swim. They dived
from and under barges moored alongside the Gas Works wall – surfacing in water
covered in tar’.[3] In
later years a divers suit – kept for emergencies which might need breathing
apparatus - hung in the clock tower of the Old Kent Road Works scaring the children
and filling them with ‘awe’.[4]
One of George Livesey’s earliest memories
was the delivery of the company’s first barge in 1841. This was to be used for the transport of coal
from collier ships brought to the company’s wharf from the Thames, via the
canal. The barge was brought second
hand for one of the company’s directors. This was almost certainly Joseph Heathorn
[5]
who was described many years later as an
‘old sailor who used to sail his own ships’ but who was also a City based ship-owners.
The barge was called Thomas and had come
from Farncombe’s wharf in Bermondsey. Men
from the works lined the canal banks as the barge arrived and ‘all gave three cheers’. [6]
On the canal bridge stood a store owned by
a Jonathan Hinchcliffe. George Livesey
remembered this as a timber store but Hinchcliffe described himself as a
stonemason. In 1845 a group of working
men - some from the Gas Works - began a temperance society there. George was now then eleven and ‘just a boy swimming
in the canal’ but he was encouraged to come into meetings by the men from the
works. There was, he said, ‘a lot of
religion about in those days’.[7] It was the start of what was to become his
second career.
George never spoke about any school days
and this remains a mystery. He must have had some schooling although perhaps not
a formal ‘education’. His brother, Frank,
ten years younger went to Dulwich College[8]
- so, where did George go? He started work
at 14, as his father had done, so a formal secondary education is
unlikely. Did he attend a local
elementary school? Was there a reason he
never spoke about his schooldays?
What was the South Met.’s Old Kent Road gas
works site like in the early 1840s. A
plan from 1838 shows it running alongside with the offices nearest to the main
road. Beyond that are holders, a retort house and other buildings. Manufacture of coal gas changed in its
essentials very little in the 170 years in which it was made but to gas engineers
and managements things changed constantly. In the 1840s coal was heated to
‘blood red’ heat in cast-iron retorts ‘in a crude arrangement of furnaces and
flues’. Gas came off the coal and was taken from the retorts by series of pipes
and through a ‘purification’ process .[9] It was then taken to gasholders for storage
and eventually distributed around the district in gas mains to customers
Gasholders are some of the
most dramatic structure which remain from old Gas Works. Those still around today are relatively
modern and don’t date from the in earliest days of gas manufacture. The first holders at Old Kent Road were guided
round a central column and enclosed in walls for protection against the
weather. New holders had been built under Thomas Livesey and in addition consideration
was given to telescoping those already in place. Following
the 1880s explosion a new purifying house had been built to the specifications
of Mr.Kirkham, the Imperial Company engineer who was advising them. A new system
for washing of purifying the gas had been put in place designed by Greenwich
Dr. Henry Beaumont Leeson from Greenwich.[10]
In 1834 South Met had ten and half miles of
mains extended along Old and New Kent Roads, Bermondsey New Road, Newington Causeway,
Borough Road, Blackfriars Road, New Cut. Westminster Road and others out far as
Camberwell Church
There was not one part of this which George
Livesey was not to change in the coming years.
He began work at the age of 14.
[5] Joseph Lidwell Heathorn, one of the earliest
directors of South Met. Was succeeded by
his son Thomas Bridges Heathorn (obit Co-partnership Journal 1911) . As both
are often described as ‘Captain’ it sometimes difficult to know which is which.
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