WATERY DEATH OF THE LONDON HYDRAULIC POWER COMPANY
A little known but fascinating company will finally cease supply in July (1977) to a power distribution network which presented the only viable alternative to electricity to be commercially developed.
In 1883 the London Hydraulic Power Company commenced supplying power generated at central stations and distributed via an extensive public network laid beneath the streets to consumers who bought it via a meter - thus predating the commercial supply of electricity on a similar scale by four years. The medium of transmission was high pressure water, contained in cast iron mains, and derived from the Thames.
The brainchild of Edward Bayzand Ellington, managing director of the Hydraulic Engineering Company - Chester, similar systems were eventually established in Liverpool; Birmingham; Manchester; Glasgow; Melbourne; Sydney; Antwerp and Buenos Aires, of which the LHPC is the sole survivor. Developing side by side with electricity the relative obscurity of the system today and its ultimate demise leaves no doubt as to the technological verdict on hydraulic power generation, but its survival for ninety four years demonstrates that there is always an alternative to even such a universally adopted system like electricity.
The elimination of such bulky and labour intensive prime movers as steam or gas engines by a highly efficiently transmitted secondary power source was such a welcome idea in the late nineteenth century that the LHPC's rise was meteoric, new machines being connected at a rate of 250 a year for 25 years. An increase in demand of 150 Ml/yr required five pumping stations - Blackfriars l883; Millbank 1888; Wapping 1892; City Road 1893; Rotherhithe l902 and Grosvenor Road (replacement for Millbank) 1911; and by 1930 the Company reached its peak, supplying 140 Ml/wk to 8,OOO machines through 300 km of mains stretching from Kensington to Poplar and Kings Cross to Kennington.
The main application was for great force intermittently applied quite slowly; the Port of London and the railway goods depots making up the profitable two thirds of the Company's business with uses such as dockside cranes, warehouse hoists, coal conveyors, wagon hoists, capstans, dock gates, and baling presses. The remaining consumers were the multifarious commercial and domestic lifts, other small appliances. Pumping was by magnificent compound and triple-expansion steam engines/hydraulic pumps, specially designed by Ellington, smoothed by 7 mt high rams loaded with 112 tonnes of slag known as accumulators.
After 1926, when part of the Port of London Authority's system was acquired, expansion slowed to a halt as competition from electricity bit deeply, but WWII provided the death blow. The areas of highest concentration of hydraulic machines were also the high priority targets for the German Blitzkrieg, and the destruction of the Docks, railway goods yards, and the inner City resulted in the total loss of hundreds of machines and the destruction of the profitable section of the LHPC's business. Despite a gallant electrification programme from 1953-66 (which unfortunately resulted in the destruction of all the original steam engines) and the acquisition of the remainder of the PLA's system; the post-containerisation decline of the port of London and the Beeching Axe finally left the company with snowballing overheads and falling demand. Progressively retrenching back to the Wapping station, they commenced closing down the network last year, and ceased supply in June/July this year, having made provision for their remaining 500 consumers to be converted to self contained electrically powered oil or water hydraulic units.
London is thus left with an abandoned network of 500 km of mainly cast-iron mains (average bore 150 mm and depth 1 m ); the remnants of 8,OOO hydraulic machines of all sorts; and some rather magnificent Victorian pumping stations. Such a legacy must be utilisable in some commercially viable way, and the 5,500 m of mains awaits an entrepreneur to make his fortune using them for storage, communication or supply. Three of the pumping stations have been demolished already, but a constructive example of re-use is Marico's furniture factory in the City Road station. The rich crop of useless hydraulic machinery should provide a valuable addition to our industrial heritage, assuming the pressing task of identification and conservation can be accomplished.
To indicate the unsuspected influence the LHPC has had upon the life of the capital, and as an indication of the extraordinary diversity of the applications of hydraulic power, a list of the best examples includes - Tower Bridge, revolving stages at the Palladium and Coliseum, fire curtains at Drury Lane and Her Majesty's theatres, organ console lifts at the Leicester Square Theatre and Odeon Marble Arch, the swimming pool floor of the Earls Court exhibition building, fire hydrants at (Old) New Scotland Yard and the National Gallery, a picture lift at the Royal Academy, piped vacuum cleaning and artesian well pumps. It is to be hoped that other equally fascinating survivals of this magnificent Victorian example of technological verve come to light due to the cessation of supply, and the author would welcome and information on further examples. Pending the release of the Company's records sites of existing or replaced hydraulic machinery may be identified by the characteristic LHP service stop-cock covers, surrounded by a raised chequerboard margin, located near the gutter or in the pavement outside premises once served.
Copyright Roger J Morgan 1977