Site next to Battersea Power Station up for grabs
The Battersea gasholders will be demolished as part of the egenration of the site in Nine Elms
The National Grid has begun demolition work on a gasholder site in Battersea as part of its land re-use strategy.
The 80ha site on Prince of Wales Drive is part of the wider Nine Elms regeneration plan, which inlcudes the overhaul of Battersea Power Station led by Wilkinson Eyre. National Grid plans to sell the land to a housing specialist for development.
Improvements to the gas network have made the holders redundant and they were decomissioned in 2012.
The Gasholders on the site
Gasholders four, five and six
These gasholders were designed by the London Gas Light Company’s engineer, Robert Morton, who also designed the Engineer’s House which you can see behind the wall.
The large tanks at the bottom of all three gasholders were dug by John Aird & Sons who also worked on major projects such as dismantling Crystal Palace and moving it from Hyde Park to south London.
Gasholders four and five were built by a company called Joshua & William Horton that was based in Smethwick, near Birmingham.
Gasholder six was built by Ashmore & While, a company based in Stockton on Tees, near Middlesbrough. Only two years before completing gasholder six, the company built one of the largest telescopic gasholders at the time in Birmingham. They did this by ingeniously converting a non-telescoping gasholder tank and extending its frame, allowing it to store double the amount of gas.
Gasholder seven – The MAN holder
MAN stands for Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg, which is the name of the German company that developed the design for the tall blue gasholder. MAN gasholders are located across the country, Europe and the US. MAN still exists and specialises in making engines, buses and trucks.
While the technology was German, the gasholders were built by an English company called R&J Dempster. R&J Dempster were granted the licence by MAN to build the gasholders and went on to build them in Germany itself.
Today, modern variants of MAN gasholders continue to be built across the world by another German company, Leffer, thanks to their relatively lightweight design and large capacity.
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