Provan Gas Works is an industrial gas holding plant in the city of Glasgow, Scotland. The plant is in the Provanmill area of the city, and was built by Glasgow Corporation between 1900 and 1904. It later became part of British Gas, and subsequently Transco and most recently Scotia Gas Networks (a subsidiary of Scottish and Southern Energy) who operate it today.
Originally the plant was a gasworks, manufacturing town gas via the coking of coal. The plant was expanded after 1919. Following nationalisation of the gas supply in 1948, the plant passed to the Scottish Gas Board, and then to British Gas in 1973. In 1972, supplies of inexpensive natural gas from North Sea oilfields became available. The gasworks was downsized significantly in the 1980s in response to changing economic conditions arising as the British gas industry was privatised under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Today the plant is largely unmanned, used solely for gas storage and distribution.
The plant has become significant for its two massive column-guided gasometers and an additional spiral-guided gasometer, which have become an iconic industrial landmark in Glasgow's East End. Among the largest of their kind in the UK, each of the towers can hold 283,000 m3 (10,000,000 cu ft) of gas, and is 85.4 metres (280 ft) in diameter. Their combined storage capacity is 566,000 m3 (20,000,000 cu ft) - each enough to supply a city the size of York for an entire day.
Since the construction of the M8 and M80 motorways in the 1970s & 1980s, which run directly next to the plant, the twin gasholders have become an unofficial portal into the city's central area for drivers from Edinburgh and the north. The towers have also gained an affectionate following among locals since they are often used to display huge placards showcasing the various promotional slogans for the city, the most memorable being the "Glasgow's Miles Better" and "Everyone's Glasgowing On" campaigns.
The future of the plant is under discussion: Glasgow City Council have proposed plans for decontaminating the unused land on the brownfield site and redeveloping it for commercial use. The twin gasholder towers are expected to remain in use for the foreseeable future.
Famous quotes containing the words gas and/or works:
“... when I awake in the middle of the night, since I knew not where I was, I did not even know at first who I was; I only had in the first simplicity the feeling of existing as it must quiver in an animal.... I spent one second above the centuries of civilization, and the confused glimpse of the gas lamps, then of the shirts with turned-down collars, recomposed, little by little, the original lines of my self.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“‘Tis too plain that with the material power the moral progress has not kept pace. It appears that we have not made a judicious investment. Works and days were offered us, and we took works.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)