View from N showing N front of retort house

Description View from N showing N front of retort house

Date 14/8/1970

Collection Papers of Professor John R Hume, economic and industrial historian, Glasgow, Scotland

Catalogue Number SC 766078

Category On-line Digital Images

Scope and Content Girvan Gas Works, Gas Lane, Girvan, South Ayrshire This shows the exterior of the retort house, with the washer and scrubber to the right. The vertical cylinder is the condenser, used for initial cooling of the gas from the retorts to remove tar. The horizontal cylinder is the tar tank. To prepare coal gas for customers the tar and ammonia were removed, initially in the condenser seen here, and were saleable. This left hydrogen sulphide as the last unwanted impurity, which was removed in purifiers. Girvan Gas Works closed in the mid-1970s when the town was connected to the Gas Grid. This was one of the last coal-gas works in Ayrshire, and still used hand-charged retorts in 1970. It was relatively large because of the number of summer visitors, most of whom stayed in boarding houses. The retort house had an opening to the street, allowing the operation of the works to be viewed by small boys. Source: RCAHMS contribution to SCRAN.

External Reference H35/70/48/31

Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/collection/766078

File Format (TIF) Tagged Image File Format bitmap