Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
One of the last local Victorian gas holders was dismantled last week.
The huge iron cage was built in Bounds Green in 1912 to store gas produced locally from coal, apparently.
This website has discussed many times the removal of gas holders with some people preferring to keep them as iconic landmarks.
It took just one man with an oxygen acetylene torch and his friend in a crane just ten days to take it down.
The site is lined up to be a Lidl supermarket.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by yeon barrow on
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..but with a little imagination.. (Kings Cross)..
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True, just because you can tear something down does not mean that you should do - but let's wait for the design replacement - forget imagination - I'm sure it will be a thing of rare beauty...
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Permalink Reply by Richard Woods on
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The cage contained the gasholder which rose and fell on rails inside the uprights of the 'cage'. The holder's weight was used to propel the town gas (made from coal and water - filthy process) through the pipework. If gas use on a Sunday was especially heavy the gas men would be called in to sit on and walk on top of the holder to force the depleted gas up hill. Gas works were always at the lowest point in town, near the river and the railway.
Town gas was lethally poisonous (contained carbon monoxide) but smelt foul so unless desperate gassing yourself was an unpleasant and dangerous process.
When natural gas was first brought here from Africa and then found under the North Sea it had no smell. They had to make that (based on the smell of rotting cabbage) and it was called Ethyl Mercaptan and injected into the pipework. Some people said it should smell nice but who would have reported a gas leak if it smelled nice?
Full gas holder (NEVER gasometer!).
Partially empty gasholder.
Today all gas supplies are controlled by computers. Main transmission lines run across country and are 42 inches in diameter and are packed with gas at 600 lbs per square inch (sorry to be imperial). It arrives in your street at 2 lbs per square inch.
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