East Greenwich Gas Works
The East Greenwich Gas Works of the South Metropolitan Gas Company was the last gas works to be built in London, and the most modern. Originally manufacturing town gas from coal brought in by river and exporting coke and chemicals, the plant was adapted to produce gas from oil in the 1960s. Nothing remains but a single gas holder, built in 1886.
Located on the Greenwich Peninsula by the Thames in south-east London, the works was built between 1881 and 1886. Most of the works was built on a greenfield site on Greenwich Marshes. The start of work on the site was complicated by proposals to build a dock system on the peninsula, similar to that on the Isle of Dogs across the river. Originally proposed in the 1850s, this plan was resurrected in the 1880s, but eventually came to nothing.
The works was built under the auspices of the South Metropolitan Gas Company's chairman George Livesey. Before construction could begin many tons of clinker and heavy rubbish were dumped in order to build up the marshy ground. The gas works eventually occupied most of the east and centre of the peninsula, stretching for around 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from Blackwall Point, southeast towards New Charlton and covering some 240 acres (0.97 km2). The works took over the chemical works of Frank Hills at Phoenix Wharf on the east side of the peninsula, which already used tar and ammonia from existing gas works.
In 1889 (during a time of labour unrest including the 1889 dock strike) under the leadership of Will Thorne the workforce resigned en masse in an attempt to prevent a profit-sharing scheme with anti-strike clauses. Livesey successfully brought in labour from outside to replace the workforce.
The site had two very large gas holders. The first, built in 1886 and of 8,600,000 cubic feet (240,000 m3) was the world's first 'four lift' (moving section) holder. The second, with six lifts and originally the largest in the world at 12,200,000 cubic feet (350,000 m3), was reduced to 8,900,000 cubic feet (250,000 m3) when it was damaged in the Silvertown explosion in 1917, but was still the largest in England until it was damaged again by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb in 1978. It was later demolished. An extensive internal railway system carried coal from a large coaling pier to the rest of the plant.
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