Preston Gas Company
This is a topic of interest to me because I live what is known as the "gasworks estate". Lostock Hall gasworks was situated to the west of the East Lancashire Railway (by which I mean, in this article, the route; the company had disappeared in 1859) as it approached Preston from the south, and would have been an important local customer of the railway.
Town Gas vs Natural Gas
Natural gas is mainly methane, with some ethane and nitrogen. A "stenching agent" is added to give it a smell, so leaks can be detected. It comes from oil reservoirs formed underground; in the UK, these are beneath the North Sea. Natural gas is obviously highly flammable, but is not toxic (though can potentially be asphyxiating).
Town gas is quite different - and rather more complex.
It is manufactured from coal. It contains a larger proportion of inert gases (nitrogen and carbon dioxide), so gives less energy for the same volume, and contains significant amounts of carbon monoxide, making it toxic. It's exact composition has varied.
Originally gas was used primarily for illumination, and it was manufactured with a view to producing the brightest light possible. Oily bituminous coals would be used, or the gas would be enriched with oil to have a relatively large amount of soot-forming hydrocarbons (illuminants) in the gas. As electricity became more popular for lighting, gas manufacturers had to find new markets, and started to sell gas for heating and cooking. In these applications, a hot flame is better than a bright flame, so the illuminants were reduced.
Preston Gas Company
Preston was an early adopter of gas lighting in 1815 or 1816. Although the claim is disputed by Liverpool and Exeter, it may have been the first place outside London to have gas street lighting. The original gasworks was in the triangle formed by Glover Street, Syke Street and Avenham Lane, where Avenham multistory car park now is, the company originally being Preston Gas-Light Company. No sign of it remains. In 1839 the company became the Preston Gas Company.
A large works was also built at the corner of Moor Lane and Walker Street (by the Adelphi roundabout), straddling North Street (in fact, it may have been two separate plants, one each side of the road). Some of the brickwork of the Walker Street car park looks like it might be from the Gas Works.
It was demolished in 1936, and I wonder if issues with ground contamination led to it being used for parking rather than housing or offices.
There is a plan of the works here. The lower image above is looking southwest into the centre-left of the plan, and the strange shape of the walls - possibly buttresses - is seen in both. The upper image is also looking south west, from the top right of the plan.
There were storage depots built too: just south of Walton Bridge (where the A6 crosses the Ribble), on the riverside, behind an inn; and north of New Hall Lane, west of Geoffrey Street, towards Ribbleton Lane. Both had two gas holders. The walls of the former are still there.
None of these had any connection to the rail system (or canal).
In 1872, the company built offices, arguably the most impressive building on Fishgate. They got demolished in the mid-sixties to make way for the St George's Centre.
Lostock Hall Gas Works
In 1924, the company purchased 34 acres of land three miles south of Preston. Production of town gas produces toxic waste and bad smells too, and they probably wanted to keep it well away from where anyone lived. The site was adjacent to the railway for easy rail access. This was partly made possible by the ability to compress gases and so produce it at high enough pressure that it could be transported for some miles. The new works opened in 1931, at which point the other works were closed down.
This map from 1929-31 shows it under construction. A gas holder has been built, and a railway spur. Earthworks for more railway is in place.
This is ten years later, and shows the layout of the works:
The large circle at the south east is clearly a gas holder (a second was built at some point). To the north is the connection to the East Lancashire Railway, and to the north east a set of loops presumably used to exchange wagons between the rail network (the LMS by this time) and the works locomotive. I would guess wagons were hauled from there around the loop, up to the north west, then pushed along the inner loop, raising the wagons to a high enough elevation for discharging the coal.
From here:
The works were designed to produce 1000 million cubic feet of gas from 60,000 tons of coal per year and the by products included 33,000 tons of coke, 8,000 tons of ammoniacal liquor and 5,000 tons of tar. During the winter months 2,000 tons of coal were used each week, and as that quantity had to be handled during the ordinary work of 47 hours, the capacity of the coal breaking and conveying plant must not be less than 70 tons per hour. The total cost of the completed Lostock Hall scheme was just under 300,000. It was interesting to note that the plant had proved so successful in operation that the economies effected in manufacture exceeded the interest charges on the capital expenditure.
Pipeline
A gas pipe was laid connecting the works to the town (this is a little speculative, by the way). The obvious route would be to follow the East Lancashire Railway straight into Preston, but instead they went along Leyland Road, possibly because of crossing the Ribble on the viaduct owned by the railway. It may well have been easier to have access to the roads than the railways. I would guess it went along the Causey, which looks like it was built specifically to access the gas works (it was not there is 1900), and the eastern half originally followed what is now Handshaw Drive, connecting to Waterpool Lane. From the junction with Bee Lane it went north along Leyland Road. At Skew Bridge, it crosses the railway on its own bridge.
It follows the road as far as the river, crossing the Ribble on the side of the East Lancashire Railway bridge. The pipe is still there, but that is all that remains of the bridge now.
This image, from 09/Jun/21, is when the pipe was being maintained. The furthest section is shiny black. The next section looks silver, but I think that is actually a plastic covering. The next section has yet to be fixed, and is a very rusty colour.
The pipe follows Broadgate west, then up Fishergate Hill, which could be what is visible here (in which case they would be laying the pipe, rather than repair or maintaining it).
Closure
It lasted about forty years. In 1972 the railway was closed, and the gas works closed around the same time, superseded by natural gas.
Most of the site was levelled, and just waste land for many years, but is now being built on. A small section to the south is still owned by British Gas (or an associated company, possibly Cadent). There is a theory British Gas kept the most polluted parts of a sites, rather than try to clean it up. Whether that is true I do not know. The gas holders were only demolished in 2016, and since then the rest of the land has been available for development. Several hundred houses are being built there.
References
https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/e01ba6c3-59a8-48d9-91f4-d87792c091ef
https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/4776926
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:WW(SGB)-p26a.jpg
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