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The Great Berkhamstead Gas Light and Coke Company
by
Tony Statham,
reproduced by kind permission of the author.
We are all familiar with the phrase “fossil fuels” applied to oil,
gas and coal and know that most of our utility needs are met from
these commodities. Recent price rises in all these items have
been very much in the news over the past year and even with the
subsequent fall in the oil price, remain a topic of everyday
conversation. Most of us probably take fossil fuels for
granted and I am sure few people consider the origins of their
electricity when they flick a switch to power up a computer,
electric kettle or all their other domestic appliances. Gas is
perhaps a little more “hands on” as the user has to ignite the
material unless it is used in a heating boiler where this is
typically done automatically. However, most gas customers
again assume that the pipe laid to their house or premises somehow
arrives by magic without too much concern for its origin.
While coal, per se, has been known as a fuel for thousands of years,
as early as the 17th
century, scientists were discovering that a “wild spirit” escaped
from wood or coal if these were heated. The Flemish scientist,
Jan Baptista van Helmont (1577-1644) thought this substance
“differed little from the chaos of the ancients” and named it gas in
his Origins of Medicine (c. 1609). Several others
experimented with the “Spirit of the Coal” and in England, William
Murdoch (later Murdock) (1754-1839) and a partner of James Watt, is
reputed to have heated coal in his mother’s teapot to produce gas.
He developed new ways of making, purifying and storing gas and by
1792 had installed gas lighting in his house at Redruth.
Further installations followed in various premises and other
demonstrations and installations were established in France and the
United States. It is however generally recognised that the
first commercial gas works was that built by the London and
Westminster Gas Light and Coke Company in Great Peter Street in 1812
laying wooden pipes to illuminate Westminster Bridge the following
year. The all too familiar practice of digging up streets to
lay gas piping required legislation and to some extent this hindered
the development of street lighting and gas for domestic use.
Nevertheless, by the 1850s every small to medium sized town and city
had a gas plant to provide for street lighting. In the 1860s
(and the remainder of the 19th century) several other advances were
made in the production and use of gas. Perhaps one of the most
important was the introduction of the gas mantle, a somewhat fragile
impregnated mesh, which allowed the gaslight to burn with a much
brighter and more even flame. An ordinary gas flame is similar
in illumination to a single candle whereas the application of a
mantle produces something akin to a 100-watt electric light bulb.
This development naturally had a dramatic effect on industry and
domestic life enabling night-shift work to expand, encourage more
people to read and write and render public streets and spaces safer
after dark. Towards the end of 19th century, the invention of
the gas meter played an important role in selling “town gas” to
domestic and commercial customers for lighting and subsequently
heating and cooking appliances.
The Great Berkhamstead Gas Light and Coke Company built the first
gas works in Berkhamsted in 1849 at the lower end of The Wilderness,
effectively where the Water Lane car park extends behind Tesco; the
manager of the works lived in Adelbert House, which remains today on
the corner of Mill Street. At this time the Parish Vestry
oversaw the development of public health, relief for the poor and
other services in the town. However, the funds to build the
gas works were raised by public subscription and the company started
with a capital of £2000 comprising 400 shares of £5 each. This
was sufficient to establish the works (£1800), the initial service
pipes (£3-13-1ld) and install street lighting. The Vestry
consequently only had to pay for the gas itself and any maintenance
came from the rates.
The first Trustees of the company were R. A. Smith Dorrien (of
Haresfoot) and Mr T. P. Halsey MP (of Berkhamsted Hall). The
first chairman was the Hon. Col. J. Finch (of Berkhamsted Place) and
the directors included J. E. Lane of Lane’s Nurseries. The
first year of operations yielded an income of £242-12-2d from the
sale of gas while by-products such as coke and tar yielded
£35-19-10d. The company’s records show that the cost of coal
in the first year was £67-0-6d and that a surplus in excess of £150
allowed a dividend of 5% to be paid. It is recorded with a
note of disappointment that the Town Inspectors failed to pay their
first gas bill (£74-5-0d) for public lighting. However the
directors were sufficiently optimistic to reduce the price of gas
after the first year from 8/4d to 7/6d per 1000 cu. ft. This
level of generosity proved so popular in increasing the customer
base that the price ultimately fell to just 4/9d per 1000 cu. ft. by
1882. Ultimately, the persistent increase in coal prices put a
stop to this practice and the company records suggest that the gas
price stabilised at around 5/- per 1000 cu. ft.
The generation of “coal gas” as it was sometimes known, naturally
depended on a regular supply of coal and at the inception of the
works, this fuel was brought by canal boat although the railway had
reached Berkhamsted by 1837. However it was not long before
rail freight became a more viable alternative and soon coal was
being delivered by rail with the return wagons taking tar and other
by-products from the gasworks, back to London.
The annual reports and minutes of company meetings from 1849 to
1905, which are held in the Museum Store, provide detailed accounts
of the various maintenance and expansion works that were deemed
appropriate as the supply of gas extended to the boundaries of the
town. The original three iron retorts were expanded to five in
1852 and then replaced by brick ovens in 1855. This year also
witnessed the cancellation of supply contracts to the town
inspectors and the station in favour of meters being installed.
This apparently allowed the town to reduce street lighting by some
25%. In 1856, additional land was purchased for a second
gasholder and in 1857 the height of the chimney to the “furnace” was
raised “to carry off the vapour from the purifiers and thereby
remove a nuisance which was threatening the very existence of the
works”. A new six-inch main was laid to the High Street in
1858 (replacing a three-inch one) and new pipes were laid to Manor
Street and Ravens Lane. By 1860, over one million cubic feet
of gas were being generated and in 1861, Thomas Curtis took over the
chairmanship of the company.
Throughout this period the financial profile of the company grew
substantially, new shares were issued, profits were raised and the
dividends were increased. The new capital and higher levels of
income allowed continued expansion of the works and the network of
service pipes, and in 1868 a second site in Water Lane was acquired
to erect another gasholder. In 1873 it was decided to change
the company’s bankers who had been
Messrs Butcher and Co. in Tring to the more convenient London
and County Bank in Berkhamsted High Street.
In 1886 additional land between the works and the River Bulbourne
(owned by Earl Brownlow) was earmarked for future expansion.
However in 1892 the Sanitary Authority had instituted proceedings
for an “alleged nuisance” from the works and by 1903 the governors
of the neighbouring Grammar School expressed a strong desire for the
removal of the works altogether. This is perhaps not so
surprising given the relatively anti-social environment of a gas
producing plant in the centre of a market town. Apart from the
disadvantages of coal-dust and the manufacturing plant itself,
various waste products inevitably would have contaminated the site.
To be fair, the area around the Wilderness at the end of 19th
century was not especially salubrious but the gasworks would
certainly have been an added blight on the town centre. Lord
Brownlow again provided a solution by offering a totally new site
off Billet Lane.
The new site lay between the canal and the railway and is now the
River Park Industrial Estate (see map). This offered the
advantage of being able to deliver coal by either canal barge (the
adjacent canal lock, no. 51, still boasts a sign “Gas 1”) or by
railway wagon. However, as it was presumably impractical to
off-load coal directly at the gasworks, a dedicated feeder line (a
horse-drawn tramway) was built at the end of the railway goods yard,
to the west of today’s station car park. As this lay to the
north of the main railway line (at that stage The London Midland and
Scottish Railway), the tramway utilised an existing pedestrian
subway tunnel to reach the gasworks on the south side, a total
distance of approximately 400 yards. The tunnel still exists
today but is sealed with a metal gate.
Coal was unloaded from the main railway wagons into a small bunker
and thence into the skips on the tramway, which had a gauge of 18½
inches. According to
Contact magazine (date unknown, but probably early 1950s),
the German engineering firm Krupps of Essen made the tramway rails.
The skips apparently held about six hundredweight of coal
(approximately 305 kilos) and in the earlier years, a load consisted
of four skips.
A letter written to H. C. Casserley by the Eastern Gas Board in 1955
confirmed “Horse traction has always been employed. ‘Kitty’
a fine mare, did the job for many years, then came Billy and
following him our present mare ‘Ruby’. While in 1906 ‘Kitty’
handled a maximum coal requirement of 10 tons, ‘Ruby’ now deals with
a maximum of 50 tons”. Apparently this was a daily figure
and Ruby was able to pull five skips, thus about 1½
tons per journey. H. C. Casserley’s article in the Railway
Bylines magazine of April 2005 stated that by “the 1930s more
than 5000 tons of coal was conveyed by the tramway each year”.
The Contact magazine article also identifies the two staff
operating the tramway at that time who were nicknamed “Old Bert” and
“Young Bert”. Old Bert in reality was Herbert Alfred Hartup,
originally a cowhand who became a stoker. Married with five
children, his name persisted in one son following his footsteps by
helping out at the Watford gasworks. Young Bert was Bertram
Hannel and was not related to Old Bert.
Ultimately “horse traction” was overtaken by mechanised transport.
The gasworks ceased production in 1955 and was finally closed in
August 1959. The two gasholders (or gasometers) continued to
be used for storage for some years and the tramway tracks were
mostly removed in the 1970s; a short section still lies in the
subway tunnel.
So, what happened next? To start with, coal gas continued to
be supplied to Berkhamsted but from the gasworks at Boxmoor where
the gasholders still persist. The composition of gas varies
according to the type of coal used and the temperature at which the
heating process or carbonisation takes place. A typical
breakdown might be: Hydrogen 50%, Methane 35%, Carbon Monoxide 10%
and Ethylene 5%; only the latter produces a luminous flame but as
explained above, this can be greatly enhanced with the use of a
mantle. Depending on the quality of coal used, the process of
making gas generated by-products such as coke, coal tar, ammonia and
sulphur all of which had their own end-uses. Coke provides a
smokeless fuel but can also be used to generate other types of gas
and in metallurgical manufacturing where a higher temperature is
required. Coal tar can be distilled to produce tar for road
surfaces, benzene (a solvent or motor fuel), creosote (wood
preservative) and phenol/carbolic acid (used in the manufacture of
plastics and disinfectants); sulphur is used principally for the
production of sulphuric acid and ammonia is the foundation for
various fertilisers.
The Gas and Coal Act of 1948 created a nationalised industry
throughout the UK and in the 1960s, natural gas was discovered under
the bed of the North Sea and a new national distribution network of
some 3000 miles was established. Apart from being a readily
available supply of indigenous energy, natural gas has the
advantages of being non-toxic and requires little processing.
Town gas contained extremely poisonous carbon monoxide and both
accidental poisoning and suicide by gas were commonplace.
Poisoning from natural gas is possible if incomplete combustion
occurs and carbon dioxide accidentally leaks into living
accommodation. Both town and natural gas are odourless and
thus a foul-smelling substance (mercaptan) is added to allow
detection if gas leaks occur.
All gas equipment in the whole of the UK was converted to burn
natural gas instead of town or coal gas at a cost of some £100
million between 1967 and 1977. This included writing off all
the coal gas plants and affected some 13 million domestic customers,
400, 000 commercial users and 60,000 industrial customers. The
town gas industry died in 1987 when the last plant was closed in
Northern Ireland. It is interesting to speculate that with
natural gas now being a world commodity and subject to the vagaries
of international trade, supplies may be subject to disruption or
even disconnection. The possibility of supplies also being
depleted might suggest the possibility of a return to the
manufacture of coal gas in the future especially where substantial
reserves of coal remain available.
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References:
The minutes and accounts for The Great Berkhamsted Gas Light and
Coke company 1849 to 1905 — held for the Berkhamsted Local History
and Museum Society in the Dacorum Heritage Museum Store
Wikipedia
Encyclopaedia Britannica - DVD2000
A Short History of Berkhamsted — P. C. Birtchnell
Contact magazine
Railway Bylines magazine (April 2005) H. C. Casserley
Photographs — R. M. Casserley and H. C. Casserley
Britishgasacademy.co.uk
The London Encyclopaedia — edited by Ben Weinreb and
Christopher Hibbert (1983 revised 1992)
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First published by the Berkhamsted Local History and Museum
Society in
The Chronicle Vol.VI. March 2009
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