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Archival description
GB 0074 LMA/4438 · Collection · 1823-1894

Records of the Chartered Gas Light and Coke Company and predecessors, 1823-1894. This collection contains agreements, contracts, licenses, specifications and patents, and related correspondence for the Chartered Gas Light and Coke Company, and other Companies which later merged with the Chartered Company, including Great Central Gas Consumers Company, Imperial Gas Light and Coke Company, and London Gas Light Company.

The records chart the early development of London's system of gas supply and the relationship between different Companies operating London. The agreements contain plans of London and mains supplies, and include gas lighting in the newly built Post Office, in the City of London in 1828, and the supply of coal fuel from Newcastle. The licenses, specifications and patents, and related correspondence illustrate the Companies' use of new methods in the manufacture of gas, such as gas purifying, the active involvement of the Chartered Company's engineers in these inventions, such as George Lowe, Alexander Angus Croll, and Frederick John Evans, and the legal difficulties involved. The contracts cover the construction of gas works at Bow Common, Edmonton, Fulham, Hornsey, Kilburn, Saint Pancras, Vauxhall, and Westminster, and disputes which arose between gas Companies and contracted builders and engineers.

The collection also includes compensation claims from a gas explosion in Islington in 1878, a list of proprietors of the Chartered Company and their addresses in 1829, and the impact from the building of London's 'sub-railways' on gas mains.

Gas Light and Coke Company , 1812-1949 x Chartered Gas Light and Coke Company