Derby Gas Light and Coke Company

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An aerial view of Derby gas works

THIS aerial photograph proved to be no mystery to Roy Cudworth, of Locko Road, Spondon, who worked as an electrician for Derby Gas Light and Coke Company from 1944-68.

It is, he says, a view of Derby gas works’s Litchurch site some time before 1968. The two gas holders are still there. To the right is an area where all the butane gas storage tanks were situated.

“Above, to the right, are the railway sidings which went right down to the river. We had a pumping station by the river, which pumped water up to the works, where it was used to cool coke, engines etc.

“To the left of the gas holders, you can see steam coming from a cooling tower and immediately next to the holders are some buildings which were the compressor station, where the gas was compressed before it went out to the public. They are probably still there.

“The gas company used to own all the land round about until it was sold as Pride Park. The track below the holders is now a road which leads to T C Harrison and to the right is Pride Park.”

When Roy (76) started as a 14-year-old apprentice electrician at the gas works in 1944, Italian prisoners-of-war used to be brought in to work each day. Later they were replaced by German PoWs. Then, when the war was over, there was an influx of demobbed servicemen and displaced people from Poland, Czechoslovakia and so on.

“In the 50s, we had a wave of Indian and Pakistani immigrants. It was a very cosmopolitan place, the gas works.”

But the facilities for workers, he says, remained very primitive until nationalisation.

“B section, where I worked, had a toilet block on the other side of the canal with no doors on the cubicles. All the lads used to sit in a row and have a conversation in the morning.

“When the works were modernised, it was a major improvement when we got a new block with doors. But we still didn’t get a canteen until 1964.”

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