Public gas lights in Mayo county town lit for first time in 1909

By Tom Gillespie

IT is over 19 years since Alan King of Castlebar Library contributed an article to the 2006 Castlebar Parish Magazine on the gasworks in the county town.

The Castlebar Gas Company was located close to the town bridge in Newtown, opposite Marsh House.

In 1894 The Connaught Telegraph reported that the company was in a flourishing condition, with a profit of £200 to its credit.

The gas - called coal gas - was manufactured by a process of carbonisation involving the distillation of coal with a low ash content using a refractory vessel known as a ‘retort’. The resulting crude gas was then let through a series of cast iron pipes set in a metal box which acted as a condensing system.

As the gas cooled the tar it began to condense and was then led to an underground storage tank.

The ‘exhauster’, which was really a series of rotary pumps powered by a steam engine, then separated the gas, which was conducted to the ‘gasholder’ for general distribution. The gas holder, also known as a gasometer, was a large metal tank formed of rolled iron plates.

The company continued to prosper in the early years of the 20th century and even installed a second double lift telescope gasmeter in 1905 with storage space of 10,000 and 20,000 cubic feet on the different levels.

A number of public buildings had already been fitted for the use of gas, including the town hall, which was undertaken in February 1899 under the personal supervision of the company manager, Mr. James Carter.

The decline of the original Castlebar Gas Company began in 1908 with growing complaints about the cost and quality of the gas it supplied to the town’s public institutions.

In the case of the Asylum (St. Mary’s Hospital), which had installed the gas some years earlier, the then Resident Medical Superintendent (RMS) described the supply as ‘practically useless as an illuminant and so charged with obnoxious and foul smelling impurities as it constituted a danger to all who came in contact with it'.

In addition, when it became public knowledge that Castlebar Urban District Council (UDC) had paid £280 to the company in a single year, angry protests from both councillors and ratepayers were the order of the day.

The following year, 1909, saw the liquidation of the original company and the appointment of Messrs. Henry R. Sheridan and Hugh McGonigal, solicitors, as receivers. The assets of the company were purchased by a Mr. William Steele of 60, Connaught Street, Athlone, who tendered £3,690 for same.

Steele was the managing director of the gasworks in Kells, Co. Meath, and appointed two locals, Robert Scott and M.J. Egan, as manager and company secretary respectively for his new venture in Castlebar.

The early days of the new company were turbulent, however, with continuing complaints of the service from the large public institutions in the town.

In response to falling revenue, the new management reduced the wages of workers and dismissed two other staff.

The result was a strike that lasted a week and was only resolved by the intervention of Thomas H. Gillespie, editor of The Connaught Telegraph (my grandfather) (pictured), who acted as arbitrator between the parties.

Confidence in the company had been restored to a certain extent by August of the same year when it successfully tendered for the first large scale public lighting contract in the history of Castlebar.

The UDC had invited tenders for a three-year period involving the supply of six three-light meters in various areas, the supply of gas for 52 public Osram lamps throughout the town and the associated lighting, quenching and maintenance of the lamps.

The new management made a tender of £100 and this was accepted.

A new era began in Castlebar on the evening of September 15, 1909, when the public lights, fitted with new incandescent burners and mantles, were lit for the first time.

The era of the ‘glimmerman’ and his twice daily rounds of lighting and quenching the public lights had commenced.

On the basis of this new-found confidence the company’s fortunes improved to the extent that in 1912 its share capital had expanded to £4,000, the output of gas and sale of same had surpassed four million cubic meters in the year.

One of the last managers of the company in these years was a Mr. Meeks.

The good times continued until 1916 when the public lighting contract was advertised as usual by the UDC. The gas company which had held the contract since 1909 tendered a price of £142 initially. This was considered as excessive and was rejected and a new quotation was asked for lighting a reduced number of lamps.

The company then tendered a price of £100.

In any case the reduced tender was in vain and a new competitor had arrived on the scene in the shape of new-fangled electricity.

Local firm Joseph Bourke & Sons, who had recently installed a generation plant in Castlebar, tendered £90 for the public lighting contract, which was accepted by the council.

The era of the gasworks was coming to an end not only in Castlebar but in Ireland itself. In the period 1909 to 1932 the number of gas companies in production declined from 111 to 76.