This is the story of a remarkable industrial achievement which, regrettably, no longer exists. Following the invention of coal gas early in the 19^th century, it was discovered over a number of years that, when purifying the crude gas, a vast Pandora's Box of chemical substances, both organic and inorganic, could be obtained. Processes began to be developed to recover these, and a major branch of the British chemical industry - the coal tar and ammonia by-products industry - came into existence. At first, these by-products were processed in a number of small works, which were operated in some cases by the gas companies themselves, but more commonly by independent tar distillers and chemical manufacturers.

About ninety years after the first commercial production of chemicals from coal gas began, the Gas Light & Coke Co (GLCC), Britain's largest gas manufacturer, decided that it would carry out the processing of its chemical by-products in a works of its own, rather than sell them to independent chemical companies. As a result of this decision, a purpose-built chemical works, Beckton Products Works, was constructed in 1879, adjacent to the newly built Beckton gas works, on the north side of the Thames, a few miles to the east of London.

The period between the two world wars saw the greatest variety of chemicals being made at the Products Works. First there were the "coal tar primaries", which were substances directly extracted (and in most cases purified) from crude tar, ammoniacal gas liquor (henceforth known as gas liquor), crude benzole and spent oxide; examples of these were naphthalene, refined tar, sulphate of ammonia and sulphuric acid. "Coal tar secondaries" were made by carrying out chemical reactions on the primaries; examples were Prussian Blue, beta-naphthol, and phthalic acid.

When the GLCC was nationalised in the 1940s, the scale of manufacture of primary products was increased by the construction of much new plant, whilst the production of secondaries virtually ceased. By the late 1950s, the Products Works had become a phenomenal success. It was, throughout the whole of its life, the largest tar and ammonia by-products works in the UK, possibly in the world. The reason for this was that the North Thames Gas Board (NTGB), and its forerunner the GLCC, had always been one of the largest manufacturers of towns gas and, furthermore, the company processed all its own by-products, as well as some purchased from other sources. It is true that some other gas undertakings did for many years carry out some by-products processing, but the scope of this was limited, usually to the distillation of crude tar to make road tar and light hydrocarbons, and to the manufacture of sulphate of ammonia. The scale of this production was much smaller than at Beckton. The principal exception was the South Eastern Gas Board's (formerly the South Metropolitan Gas Co) chemical works at Greenwich, where their processes were similar to those at Beckton, but on a somewhat smaller scale. Many other gas undertakings disposed of their crude by-products in an unprocessed state to independent chemical manufacturers and tar distillers.

In the 1960s, the pattern of gas making in Britain began to change. There was a move away from coal as the raw material, in favour of petroleum hydrocarbons. As a result, the amount of coal carbonised began to fall and, consequently, the production of chemical by-products. Then, in the late 1960s, the manufacture of gas from both coal and petroleum feed stocks ceased when natural gas was discovered in the North Sea. The attraction of natural gas was that it required very little processing, being able to be used virtually directly as a commercial and domestic fuel gas. Not surprisingly, Beckton Products Works went out of existence in a very short time, and nothing of it now exists.

The principal reason for writing this account is that Beckton Products Works represented an era in British chemical manufacturing which is now gone and, unless coal carbonisation is reintroduced in this country (which seems unlikely), will never return. I believe that it is important that the scale and technical sophistication of the Products Works' production processes, and its contribution to the country's prosperity, both in peace and war, should be properly recorded and accorded a place in the history of the British chemical industry.

A second, more personal, reason for this work is that my grandfather, Abe Smith, started work at the Products Works at the age of 23 as a Tar Stillman in 1880, soon after the works commenced operations, and retired in 1933. I began my career there as a Laboratory Assistant aged 18 in 1950, and left as Assistant Chief Chemist in 1967, some three years before it finally closed down.

When I began my research into the history of the Beckton Products Works, I first visited the National Gas Archive. This is a veritable "Aladdin's Cave" of documents, books, plans and photographs accumulated from virtually every part of the gas industry, dating back to its origins in the early 19^th century. There are company records from most of the gas undertakings, textbooks of gas manufacture, journals and magazines, both national and in-house, and a great deal more. However, on my first visit there I was informed that there appeared to be hardly any information about the Products Works, just one or two publicity documents dating from the 1950s. There was a lot of documentation about the famous Beckton gasworks (the largest in the world) but of its "poor relation", the Products Works, there was almost nothing. Three years on, though, I have uncovered a massive amount of information about the Products Works at the Archive, and this is due in no small measure to the unstinting help given to me by Helen Ford and Elaine Brison, to whom more thanks is due than I can easily express.

I admit that this account is based mainly on secondary sources. As an industrial historian, I would have wished for more primary sources about the Products Works, but I am convinced that, due to the many changes that have taken place in the gas industry over the last thirty years, nothing now remains of works records, management reports and the like. Despite this, I feel that sufficient information has become available to enable me to write a history that is both comprehensive and interesting enough to hold the reader's attention.

Since it is the intention that this history should be of interest as much to the layman, as to academics, I have taken the decision not to include literature references in it, but there is a comprehensive bibliography. One of the most useful sources has been the house magazine of the GLCC: the Co-partners Magazine, which commenced publication in 1911, and its successor after nationalisation, the Thames Gas Magazine. Some information on the Products Works has also appeared in the pages of the Gas Journal (formerly the Journal of Gas Lighting), in published papers, and in publicity documents. After the Second World War, the North Thames Gas Board and the Gas Council published a profusion of these pamphlets and booklets, which extolled the merits of the chemical by-products obtained from gas manufacturing. During the period of expansion of the works in the 1950s, visits by various dignitaries resulted in descriptive publications. These have provided valuable information about that period of the Products Works history.

Special mention must be made of a comprehensive and informative paper published in 1945 in the Journal of the Junior Institute of Engineers (JJIE, September 1945) entitled "The History & Present Practice of the Tar Distillation Industry", by W G Adam, Superintendent of the Products Works for many years. Although it is not specifically about Beckton Products Works, it does fully describe the tar distillation part of the by-products industry, from its early days at the beginning of the 19^th century up to the1940s.

It may be felt that some information on the processing of tar and ammonia products from the manufacture of coke for steel making (in coke ovens) and smokeless solid fuels, such as Coalite, (by low temperature carbonisation) should have been included in this account. The omission is deliberate. The processing of chemical by-products from these two industries was similar to those from gas manufacture but, since this is a history of the Products Works and not generally of by-products manufacture, no further reference will be made to these other industries.

Notes

When the Gas Light & Coke Company was first formed, it was called the London & Westminster Chartered Gas Light & Coke Co, and was commonly known as the "Chartered". Throughout this account it will be referred to (except after nationalisation in 1948) as the GLCC or the Company.

After nationalisation, the GLCC became part of the North Thames Gas Board, hereafter referred to as the NTGB.

Helen Ford and Elaine Brison at the National Gas Archive, Manchester.

Mary Mills for discussions on the early by-products industry in London, and for the information in Appendices I and II.

Former employees of the North Thames Gas Board, particularly John Butterfield, and Malcolm Millichip and Peter Smith for information relating to the Products Works railway system.

C A Townsend

Northwich, Cheshire