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When was gas lighting stopped in the UK?
When was house gas lighting stopping in the UK? I can recall my mother saying she used to go to the shop for a 2d gas mantle for her mother. I'm just watching The Elephant Man and it reminded me of it. She was born in 1926 so it must have been around in the early thirties at least. I can remember myself being in a caravan in the seventies and seeing it lit by gas mantles.
Yes I mean mains gas. I forgot in the USA gas means what we call petrol, so there may be some confusion there over what you call kerosine lamps. I mean natural gas piped in
It has occurred to me that laying the pipework would be an enormous job, so I would imagine it first came in in the South of England and headed north.
2 Answers
- ?Lv 72 weeks ago
I'm surprised at the answers (from people who really know) that gas lighting existed in the UK into the 1930s. I know that when houses were first wired for electricity, it was iffy, so people kept their gas lamps for when the electricity went out. But I think that was about the turn of the century in places like New York. On the other hand, much of the South didn't have electricity until the TVA was created by Roosevelt during the Depression, so it really varied depending on the part of the country. I often think that that's where we are with the internet now- you can't really depend on it. But my electricity was out for several hours last night because of storms, so I guess we could still use gas lamps!
- Anonymous2 weeks ago
Mains gas? Around WWII. My late next door neighbour used to often lament its replacement by electricity. My street, on which my neighbour lived his whole life, still had gas lighting in the late 1930s (Scottish tenements). Try as I might I've not been able to discover exactly which year the switchover occurred. The very last time I saw gas light being used in an unironic, unhipster way was just after the turn of the millennium in a construction site canteen with a giant gas canister in a cage welded to the outside of the canteen. The regs changed shortly after that and no gas was allowed in the canteens at all anymore. Shame, the generators are so noisy. It was a very nice light.