Going Fast

English Heritage called it the world’s first of its type. Built in 1892 it prefigured Buckminster Fuller, Swiss Re, World Cup footballs and basically anything assembled from triangles that use them to support and stiffen the structure.

Samuel Cutler & Sons of Millwall, east London, patented the structural principle in 1888, which it called Cutlers Patent Guide Framing. Barnes Wallis of bouncing bomb and Wellington bomber fame later termed this way of building as “geodesic”. It leads to forms that are light, transparent and efficient in material usage.

It may now be the only one of its type left, a symbol of an era of accelerated technological development and an age of increasing public demand for the provision of basic needs of lighting and heating to all of levels of society. Unless something is done it will be gone. Forever. New housing and offices are scheduled to kill it off, Haringey Council Planning application HYG/2009/0503 sets out the plans recently resubmitted to the council.

What is this prominent example of Victorian engineering? A bridge? A railway station? No, it’s a more humble, but necessary part of our infrastructure heritage: a gasholder. In fact it is Hornsey no 1 gas holder, in Wood Green, north London; a beautifully spare and twisting structure, and one of few that used the triangulated structural technique widely used by the modern age but not rectilinear enough for the norms of the time. The Victorian Society has a good mini history here.

Why should we keep it? Surely new houses, shops and offices are needed? Well, yes they are and as some of the residents have commented that the area is an industrial wasteland in sore need of regeneration. The notion of preserving Victoriana as somehow symbolic of a golden age is a shallow and intellectually poor philosophy but unless we make the effort to keep the little, but important, steps of progress to how we got to where we are, we’ll forget how to move on.

Besides, it’s an elegant structure. Close up, the triangulations are themselves triangulated giving a nice componentry feel, and the geometry makes it look from a distance like it’s growing out of the ground rather than being imposed on it.

Gasholders from the UK to Ireland to Germany to Austria have been converted to public use. Could this example be preserved in the same way?