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Shedding light

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about early attempts to introduce street lighting to Newark.

The story goes back more than 200 years to 1792 when a public subscription raised enough money to erect 300 oil lamps around the town at a cost of £150.

Contemporary reports suggest that the oil lamps made a great improvement, but in the early years of the 19th Century it soon came to be realised that the future lay with gas.

The Newark Gas Light and Coke Company was founded in July 1832 under the auspices of the mayor, Mr William Parker.

Construction of a gas works (for the manufacture of gas from coal) was immediately begun on land abutting on to Whitfield Street although in later years (1883), as demand grew, a new site was developed on Barnbygate.

This site, although now cleared, is still owned by British Gas, while nearby Parker Street recalls the important role played by mayor Mr Parker in bringing gas to the town.

The first place in Newark to be lit by gas on December 19, 1832, was the town's theatre on Middlegate (latterly the Electricity Board showrooms) followed on December 21 by 114 lamps set up along the town's principal streets.

The effect of the new gas lights, observed the Nottingham Journal newspaper, was most favourable, with: "groups of ladies and gentlemen parading the streets admiring the brilliancy of the lights and the splendid appearance of many of the shops."

Throughout the 1840s, 50s, and 60s Newark's public gas service was extended through the streets of the town and by 1874 there were 209 street lamps and 1,068 private subscribers.

Some impression of what Newark under gaslight looked like may still be gained in the parish church gardens where a row of modern gas lamps has been erected. It is worth remembering, however, that since these lamps use present day domestic North Sea gas, they do not burn as brightly as their 19th Century counterparts using coal gas.

Even while Newark's gas lighting system was being developed, however, certain individuals were looking further forward to the 20th Century and a new source of lighting - electricity. As far back as the late 1890s Mr W. P. L. Harrison set himself up as the town's first electrical engineer working from his father's butchers shop on Cartergate (now Fads DIY). In March 1898 he installed Newark's very first electric light in commercial premises at Martin Wilkinson's jewellery shop in the Market Place. The power was generated by a small gas engine and dynamo in Wilkinson's cellar providing sufficient electricity for 20 lights (each of 16 candle power) to illuminate the shop window and external signboard. Three months later, in June 1898 - 100 years ago this month - Mr Harrison installed electric lighting at the Advertiser printing works by attaching a dynamo and accumulators to the company's existing printing press engine. Forty bulbs were illuminated throughout the works, the quality of light being described as: "very steady, soft and beautiful." Some years later, in 1923, Mr Harrison actually became the first private supplier of street lighting in Newark when the council paid for a single electric arc lamp to be erected at Beaumond Cross to help ease the traffic situation. Following Harrison's lead, a number of other small businesses set about providing electricity to their neighbours. By 1901 Stennetts the stationers in the Market Place had three gas engines in its cellars supplying electricity to nearby businesses. A little later on a similar service was being offered from Hunts photographic and electical shop on Stodman Street. In 1919 two entrepreneurs called Mr Frank Pratt and Mr Bert Gelsthorpe began operating yet another private electricity generating service from their premises in Baldertongate. In their early days as Pratt and Gelsthorpe Motors (still a flourishing business in the town) they supplied electricity to one of Newark's first cinemas, the Kinema on Baldertongate (just opposite their shop) and even to the Palace Theatre. Pratt and Gelsthorpe's 110v DC supply generated by gas (and later oil) engines behind their motor repair shop was also taken by local shops such as Randalls outfitters and Knight-Dickins the grocers on Appletongate. Private entrepreneurial schemes such as Pratt and Gelsthorpe's clearly showed there was a demand for electricity in the town. The Town Council had been discussing the matter since 1894 and at one point had even proposed the construction of their own full-scale power station for Newark. Various private companies too had put forward plans to wire up the town, but the problem with all of them was that Newark only required electricity at night to illuminate the streets: there was no significant or ready-made market for electricity in the day. Other towns used this so called 'day-load' to power tram systems but Newark had rejected proposals to introduce trams in 1905 and with no other large customer for power then on the horizon the costs of introducing a town scheme was considered simply too prohibitive. It was this circumstance which had enabled small private operators like Pratt and Gelsthorpe to fill the niche left by the council's inaction. Mains electricity finally arrived in Newark in 1926 when, after much deliberation and a public enquiry, the town signed up to join the pre-existing East Midlands Regional Electricity Scheme taking power generated by the Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire Electrical Power Company. A sub-station was build on Queen's Road and on December 16, 1926, the mayor, Mr L. C. B. Appleby, had the honour of switching on the first supply to the town. Street lighting was the first priority for the new system but many businesses and public buildings were quick to connect themselves to the supply and when the system had been running successfully for a month, the town council gave notice to its private supplier - Hunts -that in future the Town Hall would be lighted by electricity from the Corporation supply. The days of the private electricity generators in Newark were numbered as the town began to embrace the benefits of the network supply. ABOVE: Early electric street lighting in Newark. This view of Castlegate in the 1940s shows how the ornamental lights were strung out across the streets on wires.

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