The Gas Industry in West Yorkshire
Extracts from the WYAS Newsletter, Issue ? 19??
Gas for lighting, heating and cooking has been a part of daily life for nearly two hundred years. However, few people below the age of 35 may appreciate how radically the technology of gas production and supply has changed since the late 1960s, when large reserves of natural gas were discovered under the North Sea. Until 1970, most gas was coal gas. This was derived by roasting coal in cylindrical ovens, or retorts, at temperatures sufficiently high to drive off the gases and oils contained within the coal matrix, but not high enough to ignite the carbon content. The significant by-products of this operation were coke, coal tar and combustible gas. The process was developed in Birmingham at the very beginning of the 19th century; the first public use of gas lighting was in the city's illuminations to celebrate the Peace of Amiens in 1802. Gas quickly became a common form of factory and street lighting. The first mill in Britain to be lit by gas was probably H. Lodge's mill in Sowerby Bridge in 1805. By 1812, the first company to supply gas commercially had been set up. Domestic gas lighting swiftly proved popular, and was not really supplanted by electricity in poorer households until the 1930s. The earliest gas contained significant impurities – it smelled, and gave an uneven light. However, lamps that did not have to be filled with a messy and highly combustible liquid proved a popular concept, and commercial interest was sufficient to fuel a whole range of improvements. By mid-century, town gas production and supply were clean, cheap and efficient. Technical advances in appliances kept pace - gas cookers and fires were commercially available by the 1860s, with a big boom in sales from the 1880s.
Largely the province of private companies during the first half of the century, by the 1880s, gas production for public supply was chiefly in the hands of the local authorities. The service radius of the average gasworks was limited – about three miles – so most towns had their own gasworks. By the early 20th century, many city gasworks were large, sophisticated complexes. At its simplest, however, a works consisted of: a retort house where the gas was produced; apparatus to cool and clean the gas, and tanks for the storage of by-products; a meter or valve house to monitor gas pressure and quality; and a gas holder to pressurise and store the gas. Once common, installations like this are now extremely rare. The last coal-gasworks in the country closed in 1983. Although a very small number of gasworks have been preserved as monuments or museum exhibits, there are no working examples left in Great Britain.
Keighley gasworks, West Yorkshire
Heavily-populated West Yorkshire had more than one hundred gasworks and gas-handling installations in the late 19th/early 20th century; this number had been approximately halved by the time the industry was nationalised in 1949. With the coming of natural gas, the majority of these sites have been dismantled and overbuilt. However, some significant remains of this once-important utility still survive within the County. The best-preserved remains of coal-roasting plant are represented by the set of retort benches which survive at Shaw Lodge Mills in Halifax. These are the remains of a privately-operated gas plant built to supply the mill in the 1860s and, along with the remains of the attendant process buildings and gas holders, are now a Scheduled Ancient Monument. A well-preserved octagonal meter/governor-house at Dewsbury dates from 1876 and is probably the last to survive in the County. Gas holders, the most visible sign of the industry, were still used for storage in some areas after the introduction of natural gas, but are now being phased out. The majority of gas holders which survive in the area are of the spirally-guided type (invented in 1888) and probably date from the middle of the 20th century. Major examples of the earlier, column-guided type of holder are still in existence, however, and include the gas holders at Keighley and at Heckmondwike. The original gasworks at Keighley dated from the early 1820s and was thus one of the earliest in West Yorkshire. The gasholder, and the elegant office block which still survive on the site, appear to date from rebuilding in the late 19th century.
The County Sites and Monuments Record has recently carried out a rapid appraisal of the surviving sites related to the gas industry in West Yorkshire, and is currently compiling a set of records relating to these sites. Details of this material, and of other industrial sites in the County, can be obtained by contacting Helen Gomersall