The Gas Works, Thornbury
The site of the gas works now as can be seen here on the right is an unprepossessing car park on Park Road next to Streamside Walk. We do not as yet have a clear photograph of it in earlier years but we do have a description from a former resident, Jack Pridham.
" The gasworks was in a depression in a field right next to the road on the right hand side looking north. It had two gasometers (one down and the other up) which could hardly be seen in the depression. The gashouse itself was right on the road and of red brick. There was a double gate leading to a yard where the coal was brought in and the heart of the operation, the ovens, were on the right of the yard. "
In the 1861 census, George Harward and his wife Mary lived in the Gas House in what was then Back Church Lane and is now Park Road. The account book of the Gas Company says that the family was moved to Thornbury by Feb 1857. George must have been working here without his family at first as the accounts for June 1856 show that he has been paid wages. The 1851 census shows that George had been a gas manager living at Upton on Severn before moving to Thornbury. In 1857 and 58 Harwood continued to be paid a wage but after that he was no longer paid wages but had a contract for the supply and manufacture of gas at "4s per m". In the contract there was a deduction for lamps which were not lighted. On January 29th 1862 his contract was terminated.
We know some more of the occupants of the gas house after George Harward:
We believe that one of these may have been Alfred Kitt. In the first quarter of 1862 the account books of Thornbury Gas Company show Alfred Kitt had taken over the contract to supply gas for the rest of the year. His name also appears in connection with putting in new meters. Alfred was born in Shoreditch and his father James was also a gas engineer. However we do not know how long he stayed in Thornbury because the 1871 census shows that he had returned to the London area and was lodging in Westminster.
The 1871 census shows that Alfred Head managed the gas works and lived in the Gas House with his wife, Martha and their three young children, Emma Alfred and Florence. Young Alfred aged only five was born in Thornbury and baptised in October 1866, so it would appear likely that his father could have worked and lived at the Gas works for five or six years. Their oldest child Emma was seven, and born, like her parents, in Weston super Mare.
The Heads had three children baptised in Thornbury; Florence in 1869 and Annie in 1871 as well as Alfred. This implies that Alfred Kitt had left his post by 1868 or 1869 and that Alfred Head took over at about that time.
By the 1881 census William Bryant and his family were at the Gas House. This was still their address in 1896 when the children of William Bryant started at the British School. However this is unlikely to be the one that Jack Pridham remembers as in 1907 the records in Gloucester Record office show that a new house at the gas works was proposed for Back Church Lane by Thornbury Gaslight and Coke Co (see GRO DA 38/710/7). William Bryant is listed in trade directories at this address until 1910.
In September 1922, when Phyllis May Buckingham was enrolled in St Mary's School, her father Mr Charles Buckingham was manager at the Gas Works and they lived at Gas Works Cottage. Phyllis' school before this was in Berkeley which suggests that the family had moved from there.
This page was last updated: 03/04/2008