Cowal Road is the one that runs between Maryhill Road at its eastern end and the junction of Cleveden Road and Dawsholm Road at its western end (with the Temple Road junction just north of this).
It is less than fifty years old (can anyone be more precise?) and as you drive through the part nearest Dawsholm you are passing through the site of what was, for nearly a century, one of the biggest gasworks supplying Glasgow.
This 1939 photo shows the scene:
Photo from Trove website, © Copyright: HES (Aerofilms Collection)
Our viewpoint is roughly above Maryhill Road, looking west. The red line in the bottom left shows the line of modern Cowal Road – the buildings it runs through are Dawsholm Gas Works. The loop of the Kelvin can be seen bottom left. To the left of the red line there is one footbridge and on the edge of the photo to the left you can see the road bridge – on the Dawsholm side it was (is) Skaethorn Street and on the near bank (out of photo) Bantaskin Street.
The orange circle shows the extensive railway sidings. The green circle marks Garscube Chemical Works. The yellow circle shows Temple Gas Works, including its distinctive gas holders. The Forth and Clyde Canal runs from centre left to top right with the new bridge carrying Bearsden Road just visible on the extreme right-hand side (purple circle). Anniesland Cross is just above the left-hand gasholder (blue circle); Great Western Road can then be seen heading off in to the rural area of Knightswood. Dalsholm Paper Mill would have been just round to the right from this photo.
This is my attempt to reproduce the photo in today’s landscape using Google Earth:
And here is a map of the time (1932), so the photos above are looking from right to left on the map:
All of this industry depended on coal. Coal powered the trains that carried wagons to the site. The wagons carried coal for the gasworks – gas was made by roasting coal. Some of the by-products could be used to make other chemicals. This post concentrates on the gas works, with the chemical works to be covered later. The diagram below gives an indication at a level even I can understand of the steps in the process (photo credit Berkshire Industrial Archaeology Group link):
Gas started to be used for lighting around 1805 and in 1817 the decision was made to adopt gas-lights for public places and residential use. By 1870 there were four gas works in Glasgow, at Townhead, Tradeston, Partick, and Dalmarnock.
Glasgow Corporation took over these sites in 1871 and started a new works at Dawsholm. The site was mainly, although not entirely, green fields:
For comparison with the 1932 map above – note Dawsholm Farm at the site of the moder ‘recycling centre’. The future site of the gasworks was part-occupied by Dawsholm Print Works.
On Friday 13th September 1872 the committee overseeing gas supply toured the various works under their control starting at Tradeston, then Dalmarnock. But, The Glasgow Herald reported, “The principal interest centred in the extensive works in course of construction at Maryhill. The Dawsholm Gas Works, as the new establishment is to be called, is being erected on a triangular piece of ground which formed part of the estate of Sir Geo. Campbell of Garscube.” The site covered 30 acres.
The plan was for Dawsholm to supply as much gas as the other works combined (i.e. 9 million cubic feet per day) with the initial phase to produce 3 million cubic feet per day. “It was expected that this portion would have been ready for use by November, but the exceptional character of the weather, and the difficulty experienced in procuring labourers, has seriously retarded operations.”
The building to house the retorts, the ovens for roasting the coal, impressed the writer: “This building, which occupies a site at the south side of the property, is of immense size, measuring some 600 feet in length by about 120 feet in width, and will afford accommodation for about 500 retorts. These occupy the centre of the building; and on either side coal houses, each 60 feet in breadth, run along the whole of the extent.” (Modern Cowal Road goes through the site of this building.)
Photo credit to Maryhill Burgh Halls website – looking over the aqueduct crrying the canal over the Kelvin, along the line of Skaethorn Street. Gasholders at temple top left, Dawsholm Park top right. This is my attempt to match the view using Google Earth:
The Glasgow Herald coverage continued that the costs of transporting coal to the existing gasworks in Glasgow were estimated at 5d (5 pennies) per ton “… but the proximity of the Dawsholm works to the Railway and Canal will enable the commissioners to reduce this charge to a mere nominal sum. The site of the works, it should be explained, consists of a sort of natural amphitheatre, and the railway and canal, which form the boundary on two sides, run at a considerably higher level.” Railway lines could run direct into the coal store in the retort house. “The piers for these service railways, which stand each some 25 to 30 feet in height, have been already built for about two-thirds the length of the retort house; and a bridge for carrying the line to the canal over Skeathorn Road is also being constructed.”
Three gasholders were being built, “The gas is to be conveyed into the city through mains 48 inches in diameter, diminishing to 36 and 30 inches. These mains have already been laid down as far as the Garrioch Road.”
The total cost of this initial work was £160,000; by a very crude comparison with wages at the time and multiplying the average income today by the same ratio I get a figure of about £80 million.
Photo credit: Glasgow City Archives.
I cannot see any clear landmarks on the photo to allow me to say where it was taken from – the houses on the left look like Skaethorn Road, but then the Kelvin should be in the foreground. The gas holders just visible suggest Temple but smaller holders existed at Dawsholm as well.
At the same time as Dawsholm was being built to supply Glasgow City, The Partick, Hillhead and Maryhill Gas Company built its own works at Temple. The boundary of Glasgow as a contentious issue at the time with some areas welcoming inclusion and others such as Govan and Partick resisting. The Temple works were intended to supply the western burghs outside of Glasgow and had a capacity of 2 million cubic feet per day.
The company’s office was on Byres Road (Victoria Road at the time):
From the invaluable website galsgowwestaddress.co uk (link)
Compared to Dawsholm less is known about the early years of the Temple site. While it did have gas holders at this time, they were smaller than the ones that survive today. A large facility to produce gas from oil was built but by 1912 it was in mothballs and the whole production facilities of the site were only used for research purposes.
We can only guess at the impact of this chemical factory on the local population, housing and environment. One early complaint was about the smell (Paisley Herald 29th July 1876):
I was intrigued to know more about Wallace & Tatlock. William Wallace was a chemist and together with Robert Rattray worked as a chemical analyst specialising in public health issues including sewage disposal and sugar refining.
In 1891 Glasgow Corporation took over the works at Temple and the sites were linked by a new railway tunnel under the road and over the canal. Production was switched to Dawsholm and Temple became a site for the storage and distribution of the gas. To this end, two new giant holders were commissioned from Barrowfield Ironworks (of Fordneuk Street, Bridgeton). The first was built in 1893 and the second in 1900; the southern one is the older of the pair and at the time was thought to be the third largest in the world. These are the surviving, listed structures.
Further building at the Dawsholm site in 1892 (second retort house with 512 retorts), 1896 (third retort house also 512 retorts, bringing capacity production to 19 million cubic feet per day). More building and rebuilding took place in 1912, 1918 and 1927. In 1900 Dawsholm’s capacity was bigger than Tradeston and Dalmarnock combined (10m plus 7m).
Yet this was still not enough and when the Corporation looked to increase capacity there was simply not enough room at Dawsholm to do it, hence the opening of the works at Provan, visible today from many points in Glasgow including the M8. By 1904, Glasgow’s gas supply infrastructure down to the age of ‘natural gas’ was complete.
We know now the coal-based industry was doomed, first by the rise of electricity for lighting (from the 1880s), then by the discovery of natural gas in the sea from 1959. In 1948 the Scottish Gas Board took over about 200 gasworks across the country but in retrospect the industry’s peak years were behind it. For a short and readable account of street-lighting in Glasgow by staff at The Mitchell Library, see this link.
I’d still like to show you a little more detail about Dawsholm. This is from the same series as the 1939 photo at the start of the post – but now we’re south of Dawsholm, looking north and Temple Gasworks is out of photo to the left.
Dawsholm Gasworks is bottom right and the chemical works is centre left. Just above it its Dalsholm paper mill. In the top half of the photo you can see Maryhill Park and the allotments on Maryhill Road. On the right of the photo in the middle is the cantilever roof of the tram depot at Celtic Street. The south-east edge of Bearsden is just visible in the top right of the photo.
This is my attempt to reproduce the view using Google Earth:
Professor John Hume took photos in the 1960s of what remained – the following three photos are © Copyright: HES (Papers of Professor John R Hume, economic and industrial historian, Glasgow, Scotland).
This one looks to have been taken from the bank of the Kelvin, looking back towards Temple (gasholders) and Cleveden (on the hill). I think it shows what Hume describes as a red-brick retort house, demolished in 1968:
The other photos are of Skaethorn Road. The first is looking towards the aqueduct carrying the canal over the Kelvin and shows the entrance gate to the works and presumably the works’ offices:
It’s also interesting to get a glimpse of the road bridge crossing over to Bantaskin Street.
This photo shows what was across the road from the previous photo:
They look like fairly solid houses, don’t they? Here’s an approximate comparison today:
To my frustration, I cannot find how many people worked here or any more about their working lives; the newspapers only record fires at the works and deaths or injuries sustained in eye-catching and gruesome ways (the clickbait stories of the time). In 1900, the Corporation employed 2466 people in gas-works plus a further 655 in workshops. Based on there being three major works at the time this suggests up to 800 employed at Dawsholm; note however this is the mid-winter figure, which is a reminder that for some workers, employment was seasonal – you were wanted in the winter but not in the summer.
Here are three photos of workers, albeit not specifically from Dawsholm (or Glasgow). The first shows ‘charging the retorts’ (loading the ovens):
Next, removing the coke:
Finally removing the clinker:
This only covers the work of the retort house – other men would have been working with the gas and by-products such as tar and ammonia with primitive safety equipment and standards.
I’m interested in the industries that we’ve lost and the local places where they happened – but I hope I never romanticise the hard physical work, at risk of injury, dirty, smelly and almost certainly damaging long-term health. The generations who worked through this have my respect.
In the 1960s the works was rebuilt
© Copyright: HES (Papers of Professor John R Hume, economic and industrial historian, Glasgow, Scotland)
According to the trove website, the works were “to make gas by reforming naphtha, a light oil produced in the refining of petroleum.” It’s hard to see how this could have worked, given that presumably the light oil had to be transported from the oil refinery to Dawsholm; the site probably lasted around 10 years.
For more detail on the gas production industry in Scotland, see this link.