Gas

The Nottingham Gas Light and Coke Co. was established in 1818.[1]  In 1864 the Nottingham Gas Act [2] extended the area that the company could supply to include Stapleford. The bill was opposed by the Nottingham Corporation. In evidence to the Commons committee on the bill George Pendleton, draper, Stapleford,  stated: ‘The population was 1,799, the number of houses 413. It has four lace factories, employing 120 hands, four chapels and no gas.  A factory was stopped about a year and a half ago for want of gas.’ Mr Whitely, a Stapleford manufacturer, employing 60 hands, considered the bill the best means of getting gas.[3] The main witness on behalf of the bill was Thomas Hawksley, the company’s engineer, a self-taught Nottingham man, described when he died in 1893 as ‘one of the most eminent and best known civil engineers of his day’.[4]

Gas reached Stapleford in 1867, when St John’s school was given a half day’s holiday because ‘the gas fitters were at work.’[5] The vestry adopted the Lighting and Watching Act of 1833 and the first street lamp was lit on 5 February 1882 when over 2,000 attended the ceremony. The Stapleford Brass Band and the Drum and Fife Band were in attendance and 1,000 large buns were given to the children by J. Fearfield. [6]  When the parish council took over from the vestry there were 88 lamps in the village, 34 on Nottingham Road from Ewe Lamb Lane to the station, 7 on Church Street, one on Toton Lane and the rest on streets running off these main roads.[7] In 1902 the Springfield Estate was lit by 5 lamps supplied by E.T. Hooley’s gas works at Springfield Mill, and in that same year Pasture Road got its first lamp.[8] The minutes of the lighting and watch committee of the council record the installation of new street lamps and the development of the gas network.

The Nottingham Corporation Gas Act 1874 transferred the company to local authority control. On nationalisation in 1949 it became part of the Nottingham subdivision of the Nottingham and Derby division of the East Midlands Gas Board

The west of the parish, on the other side of the Erewash from the main village, was also supplied with gas. Springfield Mill was constructed in 1888 [9] for Terah Hooley of Risley Hall. He built a plant fronting and to the north of Gas Street to supply gas to his mill across the road across the county boundary in Sandiacre.  The area of the plant was 3389sq. yards. There were 35 retorts and two gas holders-a 50ft, diameter single lift holding 30,000 cubic feet and a 60ft.telescopic holding 100,000 cubic feet.[10] In 1905 he obtained an order allowing him to extend the gas works northwards and permitting him to supply gas to what was known as the Springfield Estate.  The order allowed Hooley to sell the gas undertaking to the Shardlow rural district council[11] or, if they did not wish to acquire it, to any other body. In 1909 the Long Eaton Gas Company acquired the undertaking authorised by the Order of 1905[12] and continued to manufacture gas here until the 1930s. The planned expansion did not take place.  The Long Eaton company became a subsidiary of Gas Consolidation Ltd in 1936. On nationalisation the company formed part of the Derby subdivision of the Nottingham and Derby division of the East Midlands Gas Board. In 1972 the area boards were merged creating the British Gas Corporation. This was privatised in 1986 and became the BG Group.

The site of the gas works which, when it was built, straddled the parish boundary between Stapleford and Sandiacre, was the subject of an investigation on behalf of the Environment Agency in 2009. As a result of this Erewash district council in 2010 declared it contaminated land. However, the contamination was restricted to shallow soils and the site had been built upon and in 2013 was occupied by an upholstery factory. No further action was suggested to remove the contamination unless the site was developed.[13]