The Gasometer - a Vanishing Sight. Picture of the week 3 July 2015

Is there a gasometer near you? If there is, take a photograph for posterity because this iconic part of our industrial heritage won't be around for much longer.

This rather elegant lattice structure is part of Huddersfield's gasometer (or gas-holder), a familiar sight near the town centre, just off the Leeds Road. Any fan who has ever watched a match starring either the Huddersfield Giants or Huddersfield Town FC and tried to park near the John Smith (formerly Galpharm) Stadium will have passed it or parked in its shadow.

Strictly speaking this is the structure which supports the actual telescopic gas holder as it rises and falls according to how much gas is inside, sealed in by the reservoir underneath. The telescoping gasometer was invented as early as 1824, in Wolverhampton. In Huddersfield the actual gas holder never rises these days, the curve of its top is just visible above the roofs of the factory sheds in the photo below. The structure is obsolete, surplus to the requirements of modern technology which the grid uses today to distribute gas by less impressive methods.

 All over the country, gasometers are being demolished, reduced to scrap metal. It can only be a matter of time before the same fate falls to this one.

The former Huddersfield Gas Works site (dating back to the 1820's) covered an area of 3.2ha and originally by 1837 had three gasometers. Over the years gasometers have come, gone and been re-built on the site. This last remaining one was built in 1916, it is 127 feet high and 220ft in diameter and the actual gas holder (the 'bell') has 3 telescoping sections which rise as the internal gas pressure increases. The gas works itself was decommissioned in 1972, when National Grid started distributing natural gas from the North Sea.

The Huddersfield Gasometer has been immortalised by local artist David Blackburn, whose 1981 pastel painting Industrial Landscape with Gasometer is in the V & A Museum in London.

Sarah O'Carroll @GasometerGal is trying to record as many gasometers as possible, before they all bite the dust.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30405066

http://www.28dayslater.co.uk/gas-holder-huddersfield-a-february-2012.t68912

http://www.historywebsite.co.uk/articles/Gas/Production.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/oilandgas/10473071/Gasometers-a-brief-history.html