Biggar Gasworks Museum

Biggar Gasworks Museum

Biggar Gasworks Museum
Gas Works Road
Biggar
South Lanarkshire
Glasgow
Scotland
ML12 6BZ

Tel: 01899 221 070
E-Mail: hs.members@scotland.gsi.gov.uk

Web: Biggar Gasworks Museum

About Biggar Gasworks Museum

Creating a stink

For upwards of 130 years – from 1839 to 1973 – Biggar Gasworks made coal-gas for the town and surrounding district. It was one of the first small-town gasworks to open in Scotland, and among the last to close. Not long afterwards, it passed into State care, to be preserved as a lasting reminder of an industry that provided so much benefit to all the country’s citizens.

Another Scottish first

In the 1780s a Scot, Archibald Cochrane, encountered coal-gas while heating coal to obtain tar, for use in preserving ships’ timbers. He successfully used this ‘waste product’ to light some rooms in his house at Culross, in Fife.

Experimenting with coal-gas was one thing. Solving the technical and commercial problems involved in creating a large-scale industry was an entirely different matter. Step forward another Scot, William Murdoch, from Ayrshire. In 1806, while working for the Boulton & Watt Company, he designed the first large-scale installation, at a Manchester cotton mill.

Six years later, a German, Friedrich Winzer, established the world’s first public-gas undertaking, in London. By 1815 the Chartered Gas Light & Coke Company had laid 26 miles of gas pipe. Glasgow got its first supply in 1817, and Edinburgh in 1818. Biggar was among the first small towns to convert to gas – in 1839, the year Murdoch died.

An industrial time-capsule

Biggar Gasworks is remarkable for its completeness. Even the coal barrows and shovels remain. The buildings and equipment have been renewed and replaced down the years, but almost everything is there – coal sheds, gas retorts, condenser, exhauster, purifiers, gas meter, holders, office and showroom.

The office/showroom was once the gasman’s house, built in 1858 and now the oldest part remaining. Such was the popularity of gas that the works evolved both to meet demand and to keep pace with technology. The gas holders date from 1858 and 1879, and the retort house and purifying equipment from 1914. By then, the gasman was using 400 tons of coal per year to serve 320 consumers and power over 100 street lights.

Today, Biggar Gasworks is jointly managed as a visitor attraction by Historic Scotland and Biggar Museum Trust (www.biggarmuseumtrust.co.uk). It is the only preserved gasworks left in Scotland.