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Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders
Date 2007
Event ID 605605
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Publication Account
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/605605
The two most historic gasholders at Provan, Nos. 1 and 2, built side by side in 1903, are identical, and highly visible from the M8 motorway east of the city centre. They measure 283 ft 7 in. in diameter and have a capacity of upto 8.77 million cu. ft of natural gas. The holders are made of steel and are retained by vertical guides of 30 steel lattice columns 153 ft high, connected by four tiers of horizontal lattice girders, all of elegant construction.
The base of the holders is located in tanks 51 ft deep constructed in brickwork and sealed with puddle clay,
the builders of which, together with the retort houses and other operational buildings (now demolished), were
Sir Robert McAlpine as part of their £300 000 contract. No. 1 gasholder was fabricated by Mechans Ltd and No. 2 by Barrowfield Ironworks Co. Ltd. The Glasgow Corporation engineers were W. Foules and A. Wilson.
As the strata consisted of boulder clay, McAlpine’s erected a complete brick-making plant with an output of
40 000 bricks per day and all the common bricks used in construction were made on site.
R Paxton and J Shipway 2007
Reproduced from 'Civil Engineering heritage: Scotland - Lowlands and Borders' with kind permission of Thomas Telford Publishers.
