Post by sean1981 on Jan 31, 2012 10:08:57 GMT
Haworth Gas Works
When I was writing about living without electricity it made me think of the gas works in Haworth and how it served the village well until I think the late 1950s.
Gas Street turned off Mill hey and ran up the slope between the library and a little shop. This was opposite the gas showroom and Parker’s chemist on Mill hey. The street had sets rather than cobbles and twin ruts or depressions caused by the wagons that carried the coal up to the gas works, the wagons being horse drawn two wheelers. Two brothers brought the coal, each with a large brown cart horse drawing these large, high sided wagons heaped with coal which was in small pieces (not like the huge lumps we had delivered down our coal chute.) The Shackleton brothers had the contract I believe and managed to make it so that one wagon was at the gas works tipping the coal while the other was at the station yard depot being loaded up.
There were two or three houses on the left as you went up Gas Street and the top was a little office where Mr Raistrick acted as manager; I was at school with one of his daughters. On the right was a level area with a huge pile of coke (taken from the furnaces) and we lads were not prevented from watching as buckets of water were thrown onto this to cool it down; a fantastic sight in winter with all the smelly steam. People would come to buy this coke because it was cheaper than coal and still had a lot of flame still in it, not to be confused with the coke you can get today. Well away from this was the huge pile of new coal and also some large water troughs to fill the buckets from.
On occasion we wandered into the main part of the furnace room where there were perhaps 8 or 10 round metal doors set into the wall, maybe 2 feet diameter and 3 feet up from the floor. The men were mostly working the middle 6 or so furnaces, all dresses in white vests if I remember correctly, looking hot and operating these, chain driven, hand operated long troughs for want of a better word. They would shovel the small coal into these troughs which were, maybe 12 feet long and when full the whole contraption was moved round to line up with one of the doors. Once open they would use long rakes to pull out the red hot coal/coke, still flaming a bit, into large barrows which would be taken outside to be cooled. The open door revealed a tube of red hot fire bricks, into which went the newly filled trough of coal. Once in there a chain device rotated the trough which dropped the coal into the tube where the coal would be burned, the gasses drawn off, cleaned and passed to the large gas holders (gasometers) which were at the top of the site next to Prince Street. My father used to tell me that in other large gas works they would take out other things like tar but we had a simple system at that time.
The need for gas in Haworth was for all sorts of things, the street lamps being gas, by then operated by a wind up clock to turn them on and off (I still have one) Alfred (I think Chaplin)was the last lamp man I remember. Then of course most people had a gas cooker, some even a water heating geyser. There was some gas lighting in homes but no gas fires at that time that I ever saw. Reid’s book shop in Keighley was the one place I saw self standing gas heaters back then. After using the flat irons held up to the fire we went ‘modern’ yes we bought a gas iron that plugged into an outlet in the kitchen, a long red pipe trailed behind but mum could carry on ironing without stopping to change the flat iron by the fire for the cool one. We never had a gas poker, what a luxury, but used the rolled newspaper method to set the fire; my job most early evenings.
It was the smokeless regulations that brought gas fires into most homes in the 70s with grants etc being available since coal could not be burned on open fires, then after that the North Sea natural gas took over.
I have one earlier memory of Mill hey when I mentioned the chemist’s shop run by Mr Parker. That was where I stood in amazement looking at a lake of water after the 1947 snow melted and flooded the whole area of the station yard, Royal Oak pub and right up Mill hey. I was holding mum’s hand as we looked; I assume she was contemplating the possibility of getting to Feather Brothers butchers, a little lower down.
John
When I was writing about living without electricity it made me think of the gas works in Haworth and how it served the village well until I think the late 1950s.
Gas Street turned off Mill hey and ran up the slope between the library and a little shop. This was opposite the gas showroom and Parker’s chemist on Mill hey. The street had sets rather than cobbles and twin ruts or depressions caused by the wagons that carried the coal up to the gas works, the wagons being horse drawn two wheelers. Two brothers brought the coal, each with a large brown cart horse drawing these large, high sided wagons heaped with coal which was in small pieces (not like the huge lumps we had delivered down our coal chute.) The Shackleton brothers had the contract I believe and managed to make it so that one wagon was at the gas works tipping the coal while the other was at the station yard depot being loaded up.
There were two or three houses on the left as you went up Gas Street and the top was a little office where Mr Raistrick acted as manager; I was at school with one of his daughters. On the right was a level area with a huge pile of coke (taken from the furnaces) and we lads were not prevented from watching as buckets of water were thrown onto this to cool it down; a fantastic sight in winter with all the smelly steam. People would come to buy this coke because it was cheaper than coal and still had a lot of flame still in it, not to be confused with the coke you can get today. Well away from this was the huge pile of new coal and also some large water troughs to fill the buckets from.
On occasion we wandered into the main part of the furnace room where there were perhaps 8 or 10 round metal doors set into the wall, maybe 2 feet diameter and 3 feet up from the floor. The men were mostly working the middle 6 or so furnaces, all dresses in white vests if I remember correctly, looking hot and operating these, chain driven, hand operated long troughs for want of a better word. They would shovel the small coal into these troughs which were, maybe 12 feet long and when full the whole contraption was moved round to line up with one of the doors. Once open they would use long rakes to pull out the red hot coal/coke, still flaming a bit, into large barrows which would be taken outside to be cooled. The open door revealed a tube of red hot fire bricks, into which went the newly filled trough of coal. Once in there a chain device rotated the trough which dropped the coal into the tube where the coal would be burned, the gasses drawn off, cleaned and passed to the large gas holders (gasometers) which were at the top of the site next to Prince Street. My father used to tell me that in other large gas works they would take out other things like tar but we had a simple system at that time.
The need for gas in Haworth was for all sorts of things, the street lamps being gas, by then operated by a wind up clock to turn them on and off (I still have one) Alfred (I think Chaplin)was the last lamp man I remember. Then of course most people had a gas cooker, some even a water heating geyser. There was some gas lighting in homes but no gas fires at that time that I ever saw. Reid’s book shop in Keighley was the one place I saw self standing gas heaters back then. After using the flat irons held up to the fire we went ‘modern’ yes we bought a gas iron that plugged into an outlet in the kitchen, a long red pipe trailed behind but mum could carry on ironing without stopping to change the flat iron by the fire for the cool one. We never had a gas poker, what a luxury, but used the rolled newspaper method to set the fire; my job most early evenings.
It was the smokeless regulations that brought gas fires into most homes in the 70s with grants etc being available since coal could not be burned on open fires, then after that the North Sea natural gas took over.
I have one earlier memory of Mill hey when I mentioned the chemist’s shop run by Mr Parker. That was where I stood in amazement looking at a lake of water after the 1947 snow melted and flooded the whole area of the station yard, Royal Oak pub and right up Mill hey. I was holding mum’s hand as we looked; I assume she was contemplating the possibility of getting to Feather Brothers butchers, a little lower down.
John
