Monument record 1514900000 - Taplow (Maidenhead) Gas Works, Mill Lane

The Uxbridge and Hillingdon Gas Consumers Co. purchased the Maidenhead Gas Company in 1925. Their gasworks were located at Taplow. The gasworks operated until 1949, when the site was then converted to gasholder station. Little survives of the site, parts of the boundary wall still stand as do some single story red brick buildings, although uncertain if these were original gasworks buildings (B1).
In 1834, WB Stears built the Maidenhead works, becoming the Maidenhead Gas Light & Coke Company in 1835. The works were built on the river because the coal from which the gas was extracted came by barge. Barge delivery continued until 1940, replaced by lorries shuttling from Taplow railway station. In 1898 the company added new plant to make carburetted water gas (CWG). In 1903 a new retort house was built, doubling the works' output. The earliest known output figure is 63 million cubic feet, in 1900. This rose to 100m in 1910, 169m in 1922, and finally 250m in 1949, the last year of regular gas production at Mill Lane, though the CWG plant was kept mothballed, for winter emergencies, until 1954. The present gas holder on the east side of Mill Lane was built sometime between 1957 and 1967 (B2).
OS mapping and aerial photos suggest the large gas holder on the east side of Mill Lane was built after 1962 and before 1966. 1979 aerial photos show demoltion of the former gas works underway (B3).