HIDDEN Oswestry has taken the time to bring to you, our readers, the many tales of people, places and events which have taken place in and around Oswestry, or are in some way related to Oswestry, from various sources, including Isaac Watkin’s book on Oswestry and the John Pryce-Jones series.

Today, we read a rather interesting story on Oswestry’s Gasworks from William Cathrall’s book on the history of Oswestry.

Other sources tell us of how the first gasworks for the town were opened in 1820 by Mr Richard Roberts, the proprietor, and operated from premises in Willow Street, next to the Willow Street Theatre, possibly on the site of what is today the Willow Street Dental Laboratory. Popularity and demand for gas soared throughout Oswestry; by the end of 1820, all the properties in Bailey Street were fitted with gas lights and two street lamps had been installed.

By 1840, the increasing population of the town, which had by now been granted municipal borough status, rendered the existing gasworks to be too small and inconvenient to cope with the supply of light and heat, so a two-year building project was initiated to build a new gasworks on a bigger premises in Victoria Road, near the Gallows-tree Turnpike Gate – Oswestry’s main border with the rest of Shropshire.

Construction of the new gasworks was completed in 1842 and were built on an extended scale, comprising a retort house, a purifying house, a large tank and gasometer, condensers, purifiers, scrubs, fire-clay retorts, hydraulic mains and a large chimney attached to the tank with a spiral in form and tapering to the top. The book describes the chimney as “an object of interest on the approach to the town from Shrewsbury”, which would have meant this chimney could be viewed from surrounding areas – there must have been competition from Cambrian Railways when they designed the chimney for their railway works, two decades later.

These new gasworks were officially opened by Mr Robert Roberts (who would become known to many as ‘Roberts the Gas’), the proprietor, and were large enough to cope with the supply of not just Oswestry, but the surrounding parishes.

Like many gasworks in towns, municipal boroughs and urban districts, Oswestry Gasworks produced coal gas, which was also called ‘town gas’. The coal was heated in the retort to remove the coke and produce the crude gas, which would pass through the condenser to remove the tar and then would pass through the scrub to remove any other impurities and dangerous substances. When the production was complete, the gas would consist of 50 per cent hydrogen, 35 per cent methane, 10 per cent carbon monoxide and five per cent ethylene which, in a gas burner, would produce the flame that could be increased using a gas mantle.

Just before his death in 1861, ‘Roberts the Gas’ founded the Oswestry Gas Light and Coke Company Ltd, who operated these gasworks on an industrial scale, and in 1896, were granted an order by the government to extend their gas supply to the civil parishes of Oswestry rural, Selattyn and Whittington.

In 1903, the Order for the Oswestry Gas Light and Coke Company Ltd. was spent and ownership passed to subsequent gas providers before being nationalised under the Gas Act 1948 and ownership passing to the West Midlands Gas Board in 1949.

Following the Second World War, ‘town gas’ was declining in popularity for many reasons, such as research into how petrochemicals can kill coal tar, the decline in creosote use, the replacement of cast iron and steel products with aluminium and plastic and the British government’s discovery of the benefits of natural gas.

Finally, the White Paper of 1967 forced the government to commit to the direct supply of North Sea gas to homes and buildings using reserves at Easington, Bacton and St Fergus, resulting in a nationwide replacement or conversion of gas-supplying equipment.

This subsequently meant the Oswestry gasworks were no longer required and were finally closed and demolished in 1970. The site would eventually become a minor industrial estate for various businesses, including the Handyman House tool company and J T Hughes’ car dealership. As of 2018, the site is now a Lidl supermarket. The railway bridge next to the site was called the Gasworks Bridge and still stands to this day.

In 2015, ‘Roberts the Gas’ was commemorated by a portrait, which is currently on display in the Guildhall, along with a plaque on Raven Cottage – his old house in Lower Brook Street.

Two years after its closure, the Gas Act 1972 was passed, which privatised the gas industry and the Oswestry Division of the West Midlands Gas Board became part of British Gas Plc.

This meant Oswestry would no longer produce and supply its own energy to burgesses until proposals were made in 2014 to build a solar farm at Rhosygadfa, along with the initiation of Oswestry Town Council’s Solar Project, earlier this year.