Archaeology Notes
Event ID 853483
Category Descriptive Accounts
Type Archaeology Notes
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/event/853483
NT03NW 59 centred 03880 37687
Gas Works [NAT]
OS 1:2500 map, 1975.
See also:
NT03NW 248 NT 03913 37699 Gasworks Manager's House (2 Gasworks Road)
NT03NW 250 NT 03891 37707 Gas Showroom (Gasworks Road)
(Location cited as NT 040 378). Gas works, mid to late 19th century. A group of single-storey rubble buildings, with two small holders. The smaller holder has three guides, the latter five. The retort house has a Belfast roof. To be preserved as an example of a small horizontal-retort works.
J R Hume 1976.
One of the last surviving examples of a small town gas works which were once familiar sights throughout Scotland, and it has recently been taken over by the Royal Museum of Scotland. It comprises a group of single- storey buildings accompanied by two gas-holders, the larger with five guides and the smaller with three. The retorts are of horizontal type and are housed in a building with a Belfast roof.
J B Stevenson 1985.
This site has only been partially upgraded for SCRAN. For full details, please consult the Architecture Catalogues for Clydesdale District.
Information input (RCAHMS) February 1998.
NT 038 376 A watching brief was maintained in September 2002 during maintenance works on ducts on the E side of the mid-late 19th-century Biggar Gasworks (NT03NW 59). The area had been disturbed in the recent past and all that was revealed throughout the cutting was modern hard-core infill over residual pipe work.
Archive to be deposited in the NMRS.
Sponsor: Transco.
G Ewart 2002.
Situated on the E bank of the Biggar Burn, this small industrial plant was erected in 1839 by a joint-stock company (Hunter, 91; Butt, 277). The manager's house, linked to the plant buildings by gateway piers, is a single-storeyed block constructed in pinned whinstone rubble masonry with droved freestone quoins and rybats to openings. The openings have flush surrounds with square arrises. The roof is pitched and gabled with raking copes and has a slate covering.
The plant structures are mostly stone-built and re-roofed with corrugated iron or asbestos. The exhauster house is of brick and probably dates from 1914. The complex includes a circular brick chimney set on a square stone base built in ashlar with a pronounced ovolo-moulded cornice.
The retort-house incorporates nine hand-fired horizontal retorts dating from 1912 (Westwood and Wright Ltd, Brierley Hill) and subsequently modernised; ascension pipes feed the gas into a hydraulic tanks above the retorts. The condensers are probably original. The exhauster-house sucks gas from the condensers and blows it out under pressure into a scrubber at the top and into a washer at the bottom. The plant, which is probably contemporary with the building, is dated 'Henry Balfour & Co. Ltd., Engineers, Leven, Fife, 1914'. The gas is fed back over the roadway into two, possibly original, rectangular purifiers built by the Barrowfield Ironworks, Glasgow, and thence via the works meter (D Grant & Co, Edinburgh, 1922) to the two gas-holders, both of which remain in use. The original gas-holder was recntly re-built but retains early triform latticed hoisting posts; the other holder, apparently later in date, was re-built in 1914. The casings of the water-tanks under each holder beneath ground-level are early in date.
According to the stoker, Mr Wilson, other hand-charged retorts were to be found at Kirkconnel and Girvan, Ayrshire; Millport, Great Cumbrae, Bute; Moffat, Dumfriesshire, and Newton Stewart, Wigtownshire.
Visited by RCAHMS (G D Hay and 'R W'), 25 May 1970.
RCAHMS Record Sheet, LAR/4/1.
Biggar gasworks is depicted on the Ordnance Survey 1st Edition 25-inch (Lanarkshire, Epoch 1, [1:]2500, 1858-1889) map and shows the retort house (now the coal store), a range to the N and a now demolished gas holder (partially overlain by the current exhauster house). The manager's house is also depicted. The Ordnance Survey 2nd Edition 25-inch (Lanarkshire, Epoch 2, [1:]2500, 1897) map shows the original retort house, but the N range has been partially demolished and replaced by the buildings now visible on the site (showroom/office block) and the now demolished coal/coke store which served the original retort house. Two gasholders are depicted (corresponding to the modern layout). The Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of 1911 (Lanarkshire, Epoch 3, [1:]2500) shows the addition of the current retort house and the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map of 1940 (Lanarkshire Epoch 4, 1:2500) shows the meter house and the lime store (to store the lime needed in the purifiers) more clearly. The exhauster house is also depicted on the 1940 map (built circa 1914).
Information from RCAHMS (MMD), 24 November 2006.
