Newton Heath Library hosts heritage exhibition of Bradford Road gasworks
Regular travellers up and down East Manchester’s Alan Turing Way and around the Etihad Stadium over the past three years have seen a huge change to the local landscape. The demolition process to dismantle the last of the gigantic Bradford Road gasholders was finally completed in early 2025 and their stark beauty has vanished from the skyline. These circular cast iron and brick behemoths which were so long a feature of the east part of the city, standing side by side with the more recent neighbouring developments such as the National Cycling Stadium, might be gone but they are not forgotten.
In 2023 Manchester Libraries joined National Grid and local communities in Beswick and Bradford to explore and celebrate the heritage of these fascinating structures. A programme of local activities included tours of the demolition site for local residents and a celebration in December 2023 at Beswick Library for residents, community groups and staff and students from East Manchester Academy.
Since then a free touring exhibition has been created, showcasing artefacts, archive photographs and modern photographs from the Bradford Road gasworks including actual artefacts from the site in the form of rivets and sections of lattice work from the gasometers. The exhibition is currently on show at Newton Heath Library where you can visit during the Library’s opening hours when the exhibition will be available until January 2026. These fragments of cast iron are huge and extraordinarily beautiful objects and give a real sense of the scale of the gasholders. They will be retained by Manchester Archives and stored at Central Library as a surviving tangible piece of East Manchester’s industrial landscape.
If you’d like to learn more about this extraordinary part of Manchester’s history, “A History of Bradford Road Gasworks” by author Russell Thomas is a fascinating illustrated account of the gasworks and the adjacent colliery.
The book was published in late 2023 by National Grid and can be reserved to borrow from Manchester Libraries:
A history of Bradford Road Gasworks | Manchester Libraries
You can also explore the photographic heritage of the Manchester gasworks via our great new Manchester Local Images website Home – Manchester Images and searching for Bradford Road or gasworks:
Collections – Manchester Images
Bradford Road gasworks began production in 1884 taking coal from the neighbouring Bradford colliery and producing Town gas for use in local homes and businesses and manufacture of gas was ceased in 1971. Andrew Shannon is a member of the Manchester Libraries staff with an enduring interest in the city’s industrial heritage. Here he writes about the gasworks and his family’s memories of the fuel processed there:
“Bradford Road Gasworks manufactured gas which was known as “Town Gas”. The gasometers were used to store that gas. Coal was burnt in the manufacturing process. In some, perhaps all, instances the coal was only partially burnt.
Partially burnt coal is called coke. This can be used in domestic fires and was sold at the gasworks. My mum along with her father and brothers went to the gasworks with a small wooden handtruck to buy some.
After the introduction of North Sea Gas, the gasometers were still used for storage. The lattice type gasometers had a central storage tank. This was made with interlocking sections like the drawers of a telescope. As it filled and emptied, the sections would rise and fall. One always knew how much gas was in storage by the height of the tank.
The solid tower type of gasometer on Bradford Road was demolished in 2002 in readiness for the construction and opening of the Commonwealth Games stadium. It was rumoured that the gasometer blocked television transmissions to satellites but this was denied. The gasometers could obviously be seen from considerable distance. During my first visit to Alderley Edge in 1982, I could pick them out quite easily.”
The community heritage activities which took place in late 2023 both onsite and at Beswick Library prompted comments and responses from local groups and residents who were keen to learn more about the heyday of the gasworks and to explore this in a creative way. Linda Whillans Carver penned this poem inspired by thoughts about the demolition of the tanks and the clearance of the gasworks’ site.
GASOMETER
My skull split open.
The matter flows out
“A blot on the landscape”, shouts some lout.
Clinically dismembered,
The struts of steel that once
Encased me,
removed to set me free.
My bones are laid out on the ground.
Some of them I believe are heritage bound.
Unshackled for the first time in over a hundred years.
I am now able to speak.
And apologise for the sulphur reek.
But to be fair, I provided warmth and light.
For your dark, cheerless streets and smog filled nights.
I had to listen to you choking and dying.
From the fumes belching out from the turrets of wealth
The black snow falling with oh, such stealth.
Your homes grew weary of keeping clean.
But your pride insisted the windows must gleam.
Transition began many years ago,
The oceans, the sun, the winds shall blow.
These are the elements that will go on, and on.
I belong to the past, my work is done.
Copyright Linda Whillans Carver 2023
National Grid and Erith demolition contractors created two fascinating films about the demolition of the gasworks and the clearance and cleanup of the Bradford Road site from April 2022 which you can view here on the Manchester Libraries Youtube channel here:
