Report - Gillingham gas holder No 3 - October 2015

[Maniac]

I've been waiting a long time to finally climb this. Not sure what took me so long, but I finally did it recently.

It's hard to find out much about this history of this one. All I know is this is gas holder number 3 (The spiral one that remains is gas holder No 4) and it was constructed sometime in the 1930's by the Rochester, Chatham and Gillingham Gas Company, which were known previously as The Rochester and Chatham Gas Light Company, formed in 1818.

I know it was in use up until the late 2000's as I used to drive past it every day and saw it at is various different heights as the gas volume inside changed. It is however now dormant, its function being replaced by the new high pressure gas storage facility that's been built next door.

This thing is a right royal pain to get to. There's 3 high palisade fences (Yes you heard me right, 3 fences) and an anticlimb grill on the staircase. They really don't want you to climb this thing, so climb it we did.

Explored with new explorer @marmiteonpizza

From the bottom

Staircase

From the top

Modern high pressure gas storage

You can see the remaining holder No 4 here

No gas holder climb is complete without a selfie

Close up

Thanks for looking

Maniac

 

[wellingtonian]

Noice that Mr Maniac

 

[obscurity]

good effort. Remember looking years ago and it is quite a pig to get to. 3rd shot is spot on

 

[norfolkexplorer]

Very nicely done

 

[The Lone Ranger]

Cracking set of pics, looks a top night out

 

[marmiteonpizza]

Didn't realise it was that old! When you said it closed in the noughties, I assumed it would have been built recently twenty years ago max!

 

[Maniac]

Didn't realise it was that old! When you said it closed in the noughties, I assumed it would have been built recently twenty years ago max!

Pretty much all this style of gas holder are from that era or even earlier. The 'spiral' kind, one of which sits next door to this one, are more modern. From the 1990's onwards they started phasing them out of use, as far as I'm aware there's none that are actually used for storing gas anymore on the UK gas network.

 

[mockney reject]

I'm liking the staircase