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Stromness, North End Road, Stromness Gasworks
Gas Works (19th Century)
Site Name Stromness, North End Road, Stromness Gasworks
Classification Gas Works (19th Century)
Alternative Name(s) Stromness Gas Works
Canmore ID 1496
Site Number HY20NE 23
NGR HY 25635 09754
Datum OSGB36 - NGR
Permalink http://canmore.org.uk/site/1496
- Council Orkney Islands
- Parish Stromness
- Former Region Orkney Islands Area
- Former District Orkney
- Former County Orkney
HY20NE 23 25635 09754
(Location cited as HY 255 094). Stromness, gas works, 19th century. The retort house only survives, with two small lean-tos. It is rubble-built, with an asbestos roof. There is a sharply tapering stone-based brick chimney.
J R Hume 1977.
Field Visit (28 July 2010)
This former gasworks is now a workshop with associated storage buildings. The retort house (where coal/coke was burnt to produce gas and byeproducts for lighting, cooking and so on) survives and consists of a rubble-built building with upper parts of the wall rebuilt with brick around 1953, when the retort house roof structure was replaced. It has a square, rubble-built chimney with the upper 43 courses of brick. These upper courses are strengethened with wrought iron ties. The lower masonry courses have strengethening bands of wood.
The ancillary lean-to buildings that contained the purifiers and the exhausters are of rubble construction with corrugated asbestos roofs.The long, single-storey buildings at HY25645 09762 have a footprint similar to building depiction on the first edition Ordnance Survey map (Ordnance Survey first edition 25-inch map, 1882, sheet CVI.11). This was probably the gasworks manager's house, although modernised and extended. The earlier gas holder has been demolished, although the levelled area on which it stood is visible. By 1959 (see RCAHMS drawing ORD/240/2) a 20,000 cubic feet capacity gasholder had been constructed at HY25598 09765. This has been dismantled but the concrete base is still evident. The Governor House building survives at HY25610 09767. The Oxide Store, Livesey Washer, and Condenser have been removed. The extension to the Coal Store is now used as a workshop (HY25639 09740). Coal would have been delivered by road.
The gasworks is depicted and named on the Ordnance Survey first edition 25-inch map (Orkney, 1882, sheet CVI.11). It consisted of a gasholder at HY25617 09757 measuring 106 square metres in extent. There were structures at HY25645 09766 and HY25635 09754. The buildings covered and area of approximately 340 square metres in a plot measuring 2150 square metres.
By 1902 (Ordnance Survey second edition 25-inch map, Orkney, 1902, sheet CVI.11), the site has been added to presumably to increase gas production capacity for the town. The buildings covered an area of about 484 square metres in a plot measuring approximately 2150 square metres. This gasworks was sited to the N extent of Stromness due to the unpleasant odours produced by making town gas and the threat of explosion.
Visited by RCAHMS (MMD/IA), 28 July 2010.
Photographic Record (28 July 2010)
