 Cambridge is renowned as an ancient university town, an even older market town and a modern centre of the high technology industry. Cambridge's industrial history tends to be less well known since much of the physical evidence has disappeared from the city's landscape and skyline. In this webinar, get a different view of Cambridge. With volunteers of Cambridge Museum of Technology who will take you on a virtual journey from the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in the early decades of the 19th century to contemporary 21st century Cambridge. Experience the sights and smells of the industrial site known for most of its operational history as the Cambridge University and Town Gaslight Company. Explore the legacy of this industry and its lessons for energy generation and consumption in the 21st century Cambridge. Let's begin by rewinding two centuries to the period when the first industrial revolution arrived in Cambridge and featuring extracts from a poem by one of Cambridge's most celebrated literary figures. 1816, the year without a summer. Let us go back two centuries now to one of the most turbulent yet influential decades in human history. Wars have raged across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas. National identities are forged in the flames. The capitals of the Russian Empire and United States of America both burn as their seats of government are occupied. One American political party collapses permanently. Another will split bitterly. The Industrial Revolution accelerates. George Stevenson, Isenbad Kingdom Brunel, Michael Faraday and many others all learn their craft. The Luddite rebellion grows. The birth or infancy of many epoch making influences to a Hanoverian princess, Alexandrina Victoria. Information still travels at the speed of the carrier pigeon, the clipper boat or the horse. In the 1810s, Samuel Morse is still a portrait painter. The Slave Trade Felony Act is enforced throughout the British Empire for the first time. In the middle of this decade, the then exiled Napoleon escapes the island of Elba and marches towards Waterloo at the same time. Almost unnoticed at first in the Northern Hemisphere, disaster unfolds on the other side of the world. A decade of volcanic eruptions in the Pacific Ring of Fire culminates in a most violent explosion in recorded human history. On the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, super colossal stratovolcano Tomboro erupts. The eruption of nearby Krakatoa seven decades later is but an aftershock. Releasing the energy of over a million atomic bombs. Tomboro's ash cloud is a thousand times the volume of an Icelandic eruption in 2010 that will disrupt global air travel for months. Mounts Tomboro's mushroom cloud is propelled 45 kilometres into the sky to the top edge of the Earth's stratosphere over five times the height of Mount Everest. Eruptions continue for four years. Jet streams spread the ash cloud across Asia, Europe and North America, triggering a global volcanic winter. Black snow falls. The following year of 1816, frosts and rain destroyed crops, causing simultaneous famines across Asia, Europe and North America. Collar and typhus outbreaks follow. The 1810s are recorded by meteorologists as the coldest darkest decade of the last millennium. 1816 becomes the year without a summer with candles lit at noon on the freezing cold shoreline of Lake Geneva. In the incessant rain of that wet, ungenial summer, Lord Byron and his house guests, the Shelleys, conjure up new genres of writing, science fiction, horror and apocalypse. This is an excerpt from Byron's poem, Darkness, written in the year without a summer. I had a dream which was not all a dream. The bright sun was extinguished and the stars did wander darkling in the eternal space, rayless and pathless. And the icy earth swung blind and blackening in the moonless air. Morn came and went and came and bought no day. And men forgot their passions in the dread of this their desolation. And all hearts were chilled into a selfish prayer for light. And they did live by watchfires under thrones, the palaces of crowned kings, the huts, the habitations of all things which dwell were burnt for beacons. Cities were consumed and men were gathered around their blazing homes to look once more into each other's face. Happy were those who dwelt within the eye of the volcanoes and their mountain torch. A fearful hope was all the world contained. Forests were set on fire, but hour by hour they fell and faded and the crackling trunks extinguished with a crash. And all was black. The decade following the year without a summer witnessed the rapid development of the first modern municipal energy utility, street lighting. In towns across the United Kingdom, including Cambridge, as we shall now hear. Hello, my name is Harriet O'Rourke and I am a volunteer at Cambridge Museum of Technology. Hello, I'm Gordon Davies, a volunteer at Cambridge Museum of Technology. We now approach the site where the Cambridge gasworks stood for many decades and the giant gas-folders dominated the Cambridge skyline. In the late 1700s, William Murdoch, a coining engineer, discovered that the gas emitted from burning coal could be used to produce a flame. After using this method in 1792 to light his house and some experimenting, it was used to light the Birmingham factory of his employers. In 1805, Bolton and Watt sold their first gas manufacturing plant. This resulted in gas illuminating the Industrial Revolution. The light was a huge improvement on previous candle or oil lamps and light 24 hour working. Murdoch became the father of gas lighting, but it was his assistant, Samuel Clegg, who was to make large scale gas supply systems possible. In 1812, the Chartered Gas Light and Coop Company gained parliamentary approval and became the world's first public gas lighting company. The following year, Samuel Clegg was appointed the Chartered Company's resident engineer. John Grafton was one of Clegg's young engineer contractors spreading gas technology across the country. In 1815, Preston became the first town outside London to establish a gas light company. Age 18, Grafton was the lead engineer on this project. Over the following years, he worked in a number of towns and cities around the country. Grafton was just one man in the movement and between 1815 and 1826, 145 public gasworks were established, serving nearly every time in Britain with a population of over 10,000. In 1818, the Cambridge Improvement Commission began to look into the advantages of this new technology. In June 1822, the finally decided on oil gas and signed a contract with James Smith Hancock to light 250 lamps. By June 1826, the Improvement Commission were reconsidering their original decision and asked for new tenders for both oil and gas. John Grafton submitted a tender and won and was contracted to light the town with coal gas. The gasworks that stood on this site near the river were built sometime between 1826 and 1830. They were built close to the river where coal could easily be unloaded from barges. It's worth recalling just how early John Grafton's contribution was to industry in Cambridge. The old sewage pumping station, now Cambridge Museum of Technology, would not be built for another seven decades after the first gas pipes were laid in Cambridge in the 1820s. The pioneers of electricity networks were not yet born. Indeed, the first public demonstration of electric street lighting in the city of Paris, where John Grafton would export his gas energy expertise later in his career, would not happen for another half a century until 1878. And when it did, eyewitnesses described the electric lights as smelly and noisy in comparison with gas. In 1834, an act of parliament in the fourth year of the reign of King William IV incorporated Cambridge Gaslight Company for better supplying with gas the town of Cambridge. The company took over Grafton's plants and contracts. The first general meeting of the proprietors and subscribers was held at the town hall in Cambridge on Friday the 13th day of June 1834. The company's contract with the council specified the municipal requirement for lamps to be lighted from half an hour after sunset to half an hour before sunrise, half the whole number in summer. A plan of Cambridge Gas Company's mains from 1835 in the Cambridge University Library Map Room shows that, just a year after incorporation, the company's gas mains had travelled from gasworks via East Road and Midsomer Common in circling the collegiate centre along St Andrew's Street, Trumpton Street and the Backs, and were expanding along the major arterial roads to the north and south of the town. By the time Grafton's lease had expired in 1840, there were 350 gaslights along the main roads of Cambridge. Grafton remained involved with the Cambridge Company until his retirement in 1866. By then the number of streetlights had nearly doubled to the 660. It's notable that Charles Dickens, the writer most closely associated with the period of the Victorian Age of the Industrial Revolution, highlighted street lighting rather than the factory or steam locomotive, as the social catalyst of the most profound changes that he had witnessed in his lifetime. The landing of Julius Caesar, the signing of the Magna Carta and the death of Harold. No one can say they were of more importance than the first laying of a gas pipe. The Battle of Waterloo was a mere puff of smoke in comparison. Civilisation took a vast stride. The living outdoor life was lengthened by more than one half. Dickens understood the social psychology of this lighting revolution. The diaries of Cambridge Fellow Joseph Romley provide local testimony to the illuminative effect on public streets and buildings in Cambridge. In this entry from 1863 to mark the wedding day of the Prince of Wales, I thought the effect from the gas of the Fitzwilliam Museum beautiful, lighting up of the fountain in the marketplace and town hall. There was a brilliant effect from the blue and red lights in the Senate House area, which lit up most gloriously King's Chapel and St Mary's Church. Alas no illustrations of these illuminations appear to have been recorded, but they did set the precedent for the Cambridge Festival of Light 150 years later. Persuading colleges to adopt energy utilities appears to have been a rather harder sell. Romley's diary entry in November 1859 notes that the Fellows of Trinity College agreed to the experiment of gas in the staircases of the new court before venturing it throughout all the staircases. Progress was slow. The majority of Fellows wanted to keep the charcoal fire in hall rather than a gas fired hot water radiator system. In June 1861 a grand standard gas light near the Brazier was finally agreed. While the streets of Cambridge were lit, few domestic properties took advantage of being able to connect to the mains. This is mostly due to being expensive for all but the wealthy. The annual cost of lighting a small house was equivalent to a week's wages for labour, while coal remained a cheaper option for cooking and heating. It wasn't until the invention of prepayment gas meters in the 1880s that it became more affordable. Competition from electricity also led gas to become cleaner and for gas companies to diversify. Gas cookers became accessible with the introduction of weekly hire schemes. Demands soared for gas and in Cambridge consumption travelled between 1867 and 1900. As Cambridge's population more than doubled during the Victorian era, the gasworks underwent a series of expansions and redevelopments from the late 1860s. The renamed Cambridge University and Town Gaslight Company expanded in 1867 with a new Act of Parliament and saw off a short-lived local competitor. At this time the entrance to the gasworks was via River Lane. In 1867 the company purchased approximately four acres for £750, approximately £85,000 in today's currency, from a local landowner Thomas Fisher comprising the strip of land along Riverside. Expansion of facilities did not always go smoothly. An example, the hurricane that hit Cambridge in January 1870, which Cambridge and Newspapers described as raging with great violence the whole day. A local resident Joseph Chater was eye-witness to the damage caused. A large gas holder erected in 1867 had overturned in this storm, releasing 300,000 cubic feet of gas which became ignited. There were, fortunately, no casualties, but the gasworks had become a local tourist attraction. Running of Victorian gasworks needed a reverend. The development of the gasworks site on River Lane during this period of the second half of the 19th century owes much to a couple of Victorian Cambridge characters. Firstly, the reverend Dr Robert Phelps, master of Sydney Sussex, vice chancellor of the University and, rather intermittently, according to parish records, sometime vicar of Willingham. Phelps was director of the Cambridge Gas Company for almost 50 years and chairman for most of that time. Phelps' notorious beliefs in old university customs and regulations didn't stop him from supporting the then cutting edge industrial technology of the gasworks, which caused significant disruption in the digging of gas mains across the town and retrofitting into buildings. Secondly, Dennis Adams, a multi-tasking Cambridge-based medic for over 50 years. A member of the Royal College of Surgeons, Adams was involved in supervisory roles at utilities such as the Gasworks and Cambridge Water Company and he still had time to be a magistrate and local councillor outside of the surgical theatre. More than figureheads, the directors were closely involved in operations, attending fortnightly board meetings that reviewed operational matters with site managers and engineers. This company structure, not without its tensions, enabled the company to balance the demands of town and gown, commerce and academia in terms of where and when gas mains were laid in Cambridge. From the detailed minute books of the company, written in suitably Victorian clerical calligraphy and now stored in Cambridgeshire archives, we know that subjects range widely, from product quality, which directly affected the brightness of gas lights, to procurement, customer complaints and a Victorian concern for sobriety in the workforce. And in an example of the first industrial revolution's own circular economy, company accounts indicate that by the late Victorian period, up to 20% of the Cambridge Gaslight Company's revenue came from the many byproducts of the multi-stage process to create town gas from the raw material coal for chemical industries, transport and agriculture. For example, exhaustors extracted bitumen tar to fulfil contracts with the council that would pave the roads of Cambridge. Washers extracted ammoniacal liquor that was transported down the river's Camden ooze to pick farmers in East Anglia for use as a fertiliser. Regulatory complaints feature frequently in the company's records. In 1867, the Cambridge Improvement Commissioners informed the Board of Directors that if fluvia arising from the manufacture of gas and residual products of the gas house in River Lane in the parish of St Andrews has been reported to be a nuisance and very serious to the public health. In 1875, the Board of the Gaslight Company reprimanded engineer Edward Sapie for allowing ammoniacal liquor to flow into the river Cam. In 1876, the Town Council's Commissioners of Improvements considered complaints of noxious vapours from the gasworks which claimed to destroy vegetation in the neighbourhood. In response, Phelps wrote back with some public relations lobbying. If it is to be imagined that the production of gas can be conducted to yield nothing but pleasant odours then the complainants are very much mistaken. And what about the brick kilns, manure works and most offensive of all the candleworks right in the middle of town? Company records also refer to acts of vandalism and sabotage. In the 19th century, reward notices were posted on the company's railings for information about the deliberate breaking of gasworks equipment with the tantalising inference that the damage related to previous complaints about pollution. The antics of students clambering up the wrought iron lampstands particularly on Guy Fawkes night was a recurring problem. In the 20th century, the press clippings archive of the company shows a growing preoccupation with public relations concerning the association of domestic gas appliances with suicide. While gas transformed life in Britain, it came at a heavy cost to the lives of those who produced it. Employees worked seven days a week working 12 hour shifts and had only one rest day a month. It was in response to these conditions that the National Union of Gas Stokers formed in 1889. As one of the first unions for unskilled workers, one of its greatest legacies was the establishment of the principle of the eight hour work day. Work remained hard, but gas companies often looked after their employees quite well. In Cambridge, many social clubs and sports existed for employees at facilities at the works. In the early 1900s, a recreation club was opened in facilities for cricket, tennis, children's parties and summer outings, as well as a well maintained bowling ring. Thank you Harriet for that overview of the site. I'm now going to take a closer look at the life cycle of construction and demolition on this site over a 75 year period between 1925 and 2000 which transformed the skyline of this part of Cambridge. It's relatively rare for the construction of an industrial site in Cambridge to have been captured for posterity on camera and we think unique that both construction and demolition has been captured by time lapse photography over the course of seven decades. For this time lapse archive, we have to thank J.W.Octoloni, the engineer and manager of the Cambridge University and Town Gaslight Company during the first three decades of the 20th century, who had the foresight to commission regular photographs at the site during its redevelopment. The result is a before and after time lapse sequence of photography now stored in the National Grid Gas Archive and Cambridge Collection, which provides insight into the early 20th century industrial landscape of Cambridge. And secondly, volunteers of Cambridge Museum of Technology, who in the year 2000 photographed the demolition and site clearance of the gasworks prior to its redevelopment for retail and residential use. The most substantial structural addition to the gasworks in its history was the construction of a 3 million cubic feet gas holder erected between 1925 and 1927. Not only did this gas holder more than double the gasworks storage capacity, the structure also transformed the River Cannes skyline of Cambridge's industrial quarter, which at that time comprised the sewage pumping station, brick kilns, quarries, as well as the town gasworks. Initial site clearance and creation of a raised embankment and laying of foundations for the gas holder began in the summer of 1925, when seasonal demand for gas was at its lowest. The sewage pumping station, which adjoined the property boundary of the gasworks, is clearly visible. During the remainder of 1925 and early 1926 workers sunk foundations and laid a crane track around the perimeter. The crane inserted concrete plins vertically to create guide channels for the lift frame. The location of the new gas holder in relation to the property boundary of the gasworks and the adjacent sewage pumping station was a very tight squeeze. Juxtaposing the architect's original site elevation plan, side by side with a site photo, illustrates how each tier of the gas holder had external grips that held each level of the gas lift in place as it expanded with gas. The three-tier in a lift of the gas holder was known by workers and local residents as the dumpling. By early 1927, the structure was already starting to dominate the rural riverscape of the River Cam and Chestnut area. The king post had been added to the top of the lift, enabling the next stage of construction. This photographic sequence frees frames construction workers, as well as the developing structure. For example, construction workers had been adding steel trussing to the king post on top of the dumpling. Nearly two years after construction work began, the skeleton of the structure was taking shape. Once trussing reinforcement from the king post was complete, outer sheets were added to create the crown of the gas holder. By summer 1927, the truss work had been completely covered by outer sheets. Workers could pump water in to seal the gas. As the guide frame rose, engineers had to find a solution to stack additional tiers of steel girders visible in this image at ground level, while the lift and crown was already in place. The next phase of the time lapse photography illustrates how engineers adopted construction practices in use at contemporary shipyards and skyscrapers to solve this challenge. The perimeter crane raised and maneuvered steel girders into position, where riveters in cages connected them into upper tiers of the outer guide frame. A third tier of the guide frame for the lift holder was quickly added in June 1927, as the chimney of the sewage pumping station began to disappear behind the inflated lift frame. Within a month, a fourth tier was under construction. This photograph, incidentally, captures the absence of vegetation on the rather barren chest and side of the river Cam. In the 21st century, this area is now a flourishing human-made nature reserve, Logan's Meadow. Throughout its history, the company had received numerous complaints about pollution. For example, 50 years prior to this photograph, the town council's commissioners of improvements considered complaints of noxious vapours from the gasworks, which claimed to destroy vegetation in the neighbourhood. By the autumn of 1927, the guide frame was complete. The finished gas holder would have been the largest and tallest steel-framed structure in Cambridge at the time, prior to the tower of the university library, which was completed in the early 1930s. The guide frames of gas holders were not merely functional, but also aesthetic architectural structures. The shiny metal rotunda would have acted as a reflected lighthouse on the river Cam. On a sunny day, the sun would have created dynamic shadow patterns across the hailing way, now riverside. Casting shadows onto the road during the morning and afternoon, then beaming the sun back off the rotunda onto the river at sunset. As we have heard from Harriet O'Rourke, the physical transformation at the gasworks in the early decades of the 20th century also coincided with major social and political change. In the 1900s, the company established a cooperative scheme in which workers purchased shares in the limited company. The company constructed amenities such as gardens, tennis courts, a greenhouse and rifle range, indicating that the company had absorbed lessons from the garden city's movement such as nearby Letchworth Garden City. During the First World War, females replaced those men who had joined the military as manual labourers, sorting and loading coal, a dirty and dusty process in which the workers wore overall coats on top of trousers and used shovels to sort the size of the coal. The increasing demand for gas energy required more raw material, coke. In the 20th century, railways and later road transport superseded fuel transport by River Barge, but brought additional traffic problems from the railway siding at Coldham's Lane. Those construction of all war memorial unveiled in 1921 with the inscription, The Employers and Employed of the Cambridge Gas Company erected this monument in remembrance of their comrades. By the end of the Second World War, gas consumption had increased fivefold over 1900 and the number of Cambridge consumers had risen from 5,000 to 30,000. By the 1960s, with the transition to North Sea gas and the decommission of local town gas production, many of the buildings on the Cambridge Gas Works site had already become industrial archaeology prior to demolition. We are fortunate that local artist John Harris captured the atmosphere of these former gas works buildings in a series of sketches and paintings during the 1960s. John Harris also captured a view of River Lane from Riverside during this period. The buildings had been demolished by the time of this aerial photograph in 1978. Only the gas holders for North Sea gas still stood, together with some of the leisure amenities for the workforce. In the early 1990s, well-known steeplejack Fred Dibner would photograph the site of the remaining gas holders when scaling the chimney of the Cambridge Museum of Technology for inspection and repair. In the year 2000, volunteers at Cambridge Museum of Technology photographed the demolition of the gas holders prior to redevelopment of the site for retail and residential use. Thereby completing a unique 75-year time-lapse archive of industrial construction and demolition. Pipework and gas holder supports salvaged from the gas works were moved to the Museum of Technology for display. Restored machinery from the gas works such as this tar pump has been installed in the retail park. A mural at the Museum of Technology has been designed from aerial photography of the gas works originally taken in 1933. In conclusion, hideous Cambridge, historic Cambridge, assessing the legacy of Cambridge's energy past for its energy future, its environmental impact, the lessons for future energy production and consumption, and the more general influence of the utilities industry on architectural, art and industrial design. What was the legacy of Cambridge University and Town Gaslight Company to the city's first industrial revolution? Over 150 years of high-carbon gas production and storage on the Riverside site required extensive soil removal and site decontamination before the site could be redeveloped for retail and residential use in the early 21st century. 2002 research article The Paradox of Smokless Fuels, Gas, Coke and the Environment in Britain 1813-1949 notes that Town Gas shifted air pollution from sites of domestic consumption to the ground and water pollution of the site of production. In the case of Cambridge Gas Works, a strategy of remediation and containment was required before the site could be redeveloped. A 9 metre depth of soil underneath demolished gas holders and tar tanks, comprising tens of thousands of cubic metres of earth, had to be removed for decontamination. This was followed by backfilling of the excavated area to the original ground level, with compacted material from a local Cambridgeshire quarry at Mepple. What are the lessons for redevelopment in contemporary Crane Bridge Cambridge? The history of redevelopment in East Cambridge's industrial quarter fits a pattern of land reuse over the last 150 years from agricultural to industrial to commercial and residential. This is mirrored elsewhere in Cambridge. The epithet Crane Bridge is not a new phenomenon. Examples elsewhere in Cambridge of multiple transitions of land use during the 19th and 20th centuries include the site of the University Library, formerly a cricket ground, then a First World War military hospital, then social housing, before Clare Memorial Court and the University Library were built, as covered by local historian Philomena Gillibow in her 2014 book From Bats to Beds to Books, the First Eastern General Hospital. Elsewhere in West Cambridge, fields have been transformed to become World War II bomber factories, veterinary schools to the new Cavendish labs, and now a high-tech hub, as explored by Christopher Evans and Gavin Lucas in their recent book, Hinterlands and Inlands. Finally, a more general observation about the legacy of the first energy utility on architecture, art and industrial design. This webinar has touched on the architectural influence of gas holders in the late 19th century design imagination from War of the Worlds to Meccano. Gas holders were, along with railways, the common imprint of the Victorian urban landscape. In the 21st century, as many of the physical structures associated with the first era of instant on utilities such as gas holders have disappeared from the urban landscape, I would argue that design elements of Gasworks heritage have actually been incorporated into other areas of modern industrial design. For example, new guidelines by Historic England have meant that some architectural structures of Gasworks have been retained in subsequent site use projects. These guidelines guide decisions regarding the possible retention or inclusion of historic fabric and site layout within a future redevelopment. The guidelines also take into account the important role of community engagement and oral history projects in capturing the memories and experiences of those who worked in and lived adjacent to Gasworks. In industrial design, the legacy of the gas holder lives on from a sludge digester in New York that evokes the curvature of gas holders to one of the most expensive buildings in the world, the headquarters of technology company Apple in California. Designed by architect Sir Norman Foster, with industrial design by Sir Johnny Ive, then Apple's chief design officer, both of whom are credited with putting the curve back into industrial design over the last two decades. It's no coincidence that both Sir Norman Foster and Sir Johnny Ive grew up and studied in places surrounded by the artefacts of the heavy industrial revolution. Foster in Manchester, Ive in Stafford and Newcastle respectively. You can plan your next museum visit, reserve your arrival time in advance, subscribe to the museum's online channels such as newsletters, monthly webinars and social media. Volunteers and staff of the Cambridge Museum of Technology look forward to welcoming you on your visit to Cambridge. Thank you for watching.