Municipal Electricity in Shoreditch: ‘More Light, More Power’

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Pre-1914, Shoreditch

If gigantic and tyrannical trusts monopolizing the production and use of electrical power are not to dominate our children as the railway companies dominate us, we must see that the community secures at the outset effective and systematic control over the new force.

This was not language – contained in a Fabian Tract of 1905 – that the good burghers of the Shoreditch Vestry would necessarily have used but their actions spoke louder than words. (1)  In 1897, Shoreditch became the first locality in the country to combine refuse disposal and electricity generation in a single municipal undertaking.

By the closing decades of the 19^th century, electricity was recognised as the fuel of the future.  Its growth and development had been largely left in private hands. But those laissez-faire Victorians weren’t quite as blind to the necessary role of the state as their modern advocates would have us believe.

The Electricity Lighting Act passed in 1882 empowered the Board of Trade to grant licences to supply electricity to both private and public organisations.  But it also gave local authorities the right to purchase private undertakings after 21 years.  It wasn’t thought that private local monopolies would necessarily act in the public interest.

Sixty-nine licences were granted in the following year of which 14 went to local authorities.  But in the years that followed, the interest of private enterprise – which felt that the 21 year period didn’t allow enough time for its investment to be recouped – waned.  An 1888 Act extended the period to 42 years.

At this point, Shoreditch began to tempt private supply companies.  Its southern portion contained a large number of warehouses and manufacturers.  Moreover, as the local press noted, ‘the exceptionally large number of public houses, amounting to 300, and the number of small shops which open at night’ made ‘the district one of the largest light consuming districts in London’. (2)

By 1891, three companies had applied for licences to supply the area.  But the Vestry – the local authority until the Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch was formed in 1900 – resented the idea of private profit made at the expense of local need.  It also had the problem of 20,000 tons of municipal refuse to deal with each year.  An innovative solution beckoned.

‘Light and power from dust’: the inscription on the power station facade

In 1892, the Board of Trade granted the Shoreditch a Provisional Licence to supply electricity and in November that year the Vestry commissioned the consulting engineer Edward Manville to conduct a feasibility study of a combined ‘dust destructor’ and electricity generating station.  He concluded the parish offered ‘a most admirable field’ for the undertaking and the Vestry moved forward, though not before receiving the endorsement of local voters in the 1894 elections.

Now, these pre-reform vestries are usually criticised for their lack of enterprise but Shoreditch was an exception. The ‘dust destructor’ and generator were to form part of a complex.

The Shoreditch Refuse Destructor and Generator Station, 2013

The generating station itself comprised a destructor house 80 feet square with a 150ft chimney, an engine house and offices. (3)  Next door, there were to be public baths and a washhouse – with hot water supplied by the station’s waste heat – and a public library and museum.

Dust destructor, 1902. With thanks to Peter Berthoud, http://www.peterberthoud.co.uk

A Technical Institute (developed on the foundation of the Vestry’s own municipal technical schools) would be opened by the London County Council just opposite. The whole scheme was estimated to cost £200,000.

This was thinking big and the Vestry took justifiable pride in it.  The Shoreditch Refuse Destructor and Generator Station was opened in Coronet Street in June 1897 with much ceremony and, appropriately, by the physicist, Lord Kelvin.  His speech suitably marked the occasion and the self-confidence of the age: (4)

The undertaking…was well worthy of the Victorian Era. It was a remarkable example of the combination of scientific knowledge and forethought with mechanical and engineering skill and courage.

He went on to praise the Vestry – ‘the premier body to undertake a large work like that they had just seen’ – a lesson amplified by the second speaker, James Stuart, also a scientist and educator and at this time Liberal MP for Hoxton:

Shoreditch had a population of working men, working women, small shopkeepers, and those persons who could not be said to be possess a great deal of wealth…the undertaking was therefore all the more praiseworthy.

And, it was, in fact an example for others to emulate.  By 1900 six similar stations had been opened in the country; by 1905, 40.  In 1905, 15 of London’s 28 Metropolitan Boroughs were supplying their own electricity. (5)

The Nile Street tenements were the first council housing to be lit by electricity in 1899. This interwar building replaced the original block. 

Nor did Shoreditch rest on its laurels.  In 1899, the workmen’s dwellings in Nile Street, built by the Vestry in partnership with the LCC, became the first municipal housing to be lit by electricity.  Lord Rosebery opened the flats and declared Shoreditch ‘one of our model vestries’.  He was then taken to view the generating station and associated complex to confirm his view. (6)

For this reason, the Vestry’s adopted motto ‘More Power, More Light’ seems peculiarly appropriate and it was happily embraced by the new Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch on its foundation.

Shoreditch remained a progressive authority though its politics evolved.  Labour took power briefly between 1919 and 1922 and then more firmly (excepting the cataclysm of 1931) from 1925 until 1965 when the borough was absorbed into the new Borough of Hackney.

From small beginnings – the undertaking had just 151 customers when it opened – Shoreditch’s electricity supply expanded.  Such was the demand that a second generating station was opened in 1902 at Whiston Street (now Whiston Road) in Haggerston but this was fired by coal supplied by the adjacent Regent’s Canal – Shoreditch didn’t have enough rubbish to satisfy demand.

A modern replica of the Vestry’s first electric lamp standard

The Vestry’s original coat of arms

By 1924 all 43 miles of the borough’s streets were cabled. (6)  As we’ve seen in interwar Woolwich, electricity was seen as the fuel of the future – clean and labour-saving – and the Labour Council was keen to extend its benefits.

The Borough’s Electricity Department initiated a Rental Wiring Scheme in 1926.  Its aim was to ‘make it possible for every householder in the Council’s area of supply to have electricity for lighting purposes’.  There was no upfront cost – consumers paid an additional 1.5d per unit on electricity supplied.  For this, they received: (8)

A first-class installation, complete with lamps and shades…fixed in each house by the Department’s own staff, and where there are several tenants, separate slot meters are fixed for each tenant, if desired. The installations are kept in good order by the Electricity Department.

By 1933, almost 33,000 installations had been provided.

Electricity Showrooms, 1933. With thanks to Peter Berthoud, http://www.peterberthoud.co.uk

The Borough also opened Electricity Showrooms on Hoxton Street  in 1929 – ‘a piece of modern commercial architecture of which the Borough may be proud’ and one that looks good today in its modern incarnation as a bar which pays due respect – externally, at least – to the building’s origins (9)

Electricity Showrooms, 2013

This was the heyday of the Borough’s provision.  In truth, as demand grew, municipal electricity supply’s days were numbered.  In 1927, the Central Electricity Board was established to create a national grid (Shoreditch had backed the wrong horse in opting for DC) and the era of large-scale generation in London was heralded by the opening of Battersea Power Station in 1933.

Regulation operations ceased in 1940 though Shoreditch enjoyed a brief swansong during the Second World War when small-scale generation offered a back-up should the larger stations be knocked out by bombing and during the coal crisis of 1947.

Attlee’s Labour Government nationalised electricity in 1948.  The Central Electricity Generating Board carried out further rationalisation and established a nationwide AC system.

The building lived on as a municipal depot until 1994 when it was converted to a circus training school.  Now, the old generating hall contains a gymnasium with additional training space being located in the former combustion house.

In its modern incarnation, the building lives on as a worthy monument to an era when public utilities were run for the public good rather than private profit.  Shoreditch Vestry would no doubt look at the modern-day ‘Big Six’ with as much disdain as we present-day consumers do.

Sources

(1) SG Hobson, Public Control of Electric Power and Transit, Fabian Tract 119 (1905)

(2) ‘Municipal Triumphs at Shoreditch’, Hackney and Kingsland Gazette, 30 June 1897

(3) Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, Shoreditch Refuse Destructor and Generator Station, Coronet Street, London N1

(4) ‘Municipal Triumphs at Shoreditch’

(5) Percy Ashley, ‘The Water, Gas, and Electric Light Supply of London’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 27, January 1906

(6) David Owen, The Government of Victorian London, 1855-1889. The Metropolitan Board of Works, the Vestries, and the City Corporation (1982)

(7) Christopher Derrett, ‘More Light, More Power: Electricity Generation and Waste Disposal in Shoreditch, 1897-2009’, Hackney History, vol 15, 2009

(8) Quoted in Peter Berthoud, Discovering London – The Old Electricity Showrooms Shoreditch

(9) Official Guide to the Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch, 1930

The Circus Space website has details on the current occupant and some interior photographs.

The Metropolitan Water Board: taking on ‘the Water Lords’

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1920s, 1930s, Pre-1914

In August, the Macquarie Group – the Australian-led investment bank which acquired Thames Water in 2006 – proposed a levy on each of the utility’s 14 million customers to meet the costs of bad debts and infrastructure projects.

To say this was controversial is something of an understatement. Even the Daily Mail weighed in – ‘£1.7billion profit in five years … but Thames Water still puts £29 levy on EVERY customer to cover extra costs’.(1)  In more measured, but equally damning, terms, a former head of Ofwat pointed out that that shareholder dividends – funded by debt – running at 20 to 30 per cent a year meant not only that privatised companies were running short of investment capital but that they paid no corporation tax.(2)

Of course, private ownership of water supply has always been controversial. As far back as 1875, Joseph Chamberlain, speaking in support of the measure that would municipalise Birmingham’s water supply, asserted: (3)

It seems to me absolutely certain that what Professor Simon called ‘the power of life and death’ should not be in the hands of a commercial company, but should be entrusted only to the representatives of the people.  I think the supply of water should not be directly or indirectly dependent on the profits of a private association.

In fact, in the Victorian hey-day of high capitalism, this argument had been largely accepted.  By 1900, of the major English towns, only London, Bristol, Newcastle upon Tyne, Gateshead and Portsmouth still had privately-owned water supplies.

Ironically, London’s water had once been provided publicly – by the Corporation of the City of London.  But in 1609 the private New River Company was licensed to create a new supply.  This was an enterprise founded with royal support and money – James I would take half the profits.  The 40-mile channel running from Hertfordshire springs to a reservoir in Islington – the so-called New River – was opened 400 years ago.

Other private undertakings followed.  Parliament had originally left their boundaries deliberately vague in the hope this would promote competition but the companies soon established their separate territories.  Parliament’s intentions were thwarted: (4)

The supply of water to London practically became a lucrative and, in the eyes of many, a dangerous monopoly.

Sound familiar?

London came again to public ownership late in the game and tortuously.  At the end of the nineteenth century, its water was still provided by ten separate undertakings.  But dependence on private profit and the goodwill of private enterprise came to seem increasingly anomalous as the metropolis grew.

An 1832 cartoon by George Cruikshank. It shows John Edwards, owner of the Southwark Water Company, posing as Neptune.

The Metropolis Water Act 1852 set standards of water purity for the first time.  A Royal Commission of 1869 even recommended public ownership but the resultant act merely imposed tighter safeguards.

But times were changing.  The London County Council, established in 1889, was a proudly Progressive authority, ambitious to extend its reach and committed – at least in its Fabian members – to ‘gas and water socialism’: municipal ownership of utilities.

This was more than dogma.  The private companies were under no statutory obligation to supply water and they lacked the means – or, more accurately, the will – to supply upper-storey dwellings.  Nor did they guarantee supplies. In 1891 only 57 per cent of homes connected to the mains enjoyed a constant supply. Moreover, droughts led to severe water shortages, particularly in East London, in 1895, 1896 and 1898.

All this at a time when Londoners paid £2m a year for water which cost, it was claimed, just £900,000 to supply – the difference went on ‘lavish pay and pensions to all the superior employés and handsome fees to directors’ and shareholders’ dividends.(5)

The LCC promoted a series of bills seeking the power to take over the private suppliers but a formidable coalition opposed these efforts.  Neighbouring local councils – of a different politics but jealous also of their autonomy – resisted any attempt by London to extend its powers.  After 1895, a Conservative government was equally resistant.

At this point municipal dreams took off. Both Birmingham and Liverpool had already secured supplies – under municipal control – from Wales.  London looked to the same.  To Sidney Webb, ‘an aqueduct from the Welsh hills’ would make ‘the “water lords” see their polluted supply obsolete.’(6)

For Webb, the scheme had the added advantage of employing direct labour.  He praised the Birmingham example in which dams, reservoirs, tunnels and ‘workmen’s dwellings to accommodate a thousand people’ were being built, ‘all without the intervention of a contractor’.

The LCC’s Chief Engineer, Alexander Binnie, was commissioned to draw up plans. He envisaged seven new reservoirs in Wales and 16ft by 11ft aqueducts, 150 miles long, which transported 200m gallons of water daily to two new reservoirs outside London – all at a total cost of £38.8m.  At the time Britain spent just £28.5m annually on its Royal Navy.  It was a bold scheme.

The Conservative government bought time by appointing a new Royal Commission to investigate whether these plans should be sanctioned.  And the companies mobilised.  They promoted a rival scheme involving new reservoirs around Staines on London’s western borders and they lobbied. ‘The County Council has been captured by the labour party, and a good deal of their administrative work is done on political lines,’ they claimed – with some truth, of course, though, in reality, it was just a different sort of politics.

Webb had foreseen this in earlier struggles:

During the next few months the battle will be fought in the committee-room of the House of Commons against all the forensic talent and expert energy which wealth can enrol in defence of monopoly rights.  But water companies have been beaten before and may, in a democratic Parliament, be beaten again.

He was right in the former, mistaken in the latter.  Parliament rejected both LCC control and its Welsh scheme. Still, even in this hostile terrain, private ownership of water supply was deemed unsustainable.

The 1902 Metropolis Water Act set up the Metropolitan Water Board.  Eight existing private companies – plus the water undertakings of Tottenham and Enfield Urban District Councils – were taken over, with £30m compensation paid to the shareholders.  Henceforth, London’s water would be provided by a public utility with an indirectly-elected board comprising 67 members from all the affected local authorities.

The LCC, with 14 members, and the London boroughs, with one representative from each of the 27 new Metropolitan Boroughs, would take the lion’s share of representation.  But the LCC condemned this ‘mere mockery of representation’.  Even the British Medical Journal ‘favoured a municipal authority directly responsible alike to the water consumer and the ratepayers’ – in practice, the LCC.(7)

‘Water London’ – the area that the new authority supplied – covered 559 square miles and a population of around 7 million.  A staff of 3463 provided over 220m gallons of water daily.

The ladies of the Metropolitan Water Board Staff Association, photographed in 1909 © Bishopsgate Institute

The Metropolitan Water Board naturally felt that an enterprise of this scale deserved headquarters of a fitting dignity. They chose, appropriately, to build them at New River Head on the site of the former New River Company offices.

The new building – ‘a modern expression of English Renaissance architecture’ – was designed by Herbert Austen Hall.  Construction began in 1915 but was halted by the First World War. The completed offices opened in 1920 at a cost of £324,205.

The building on Rosebery Avenue remains impressive but its most striking feature is the Oak Room, formerly the boardroom of the New River Company and dating from 1693, transferred by the MWB to its new HQ   – ‘one of the most remarkable specimens of a late Renaissance room in England’ and the chief reason for the building’s current grade II* listing.

The Oak Room, 2013

This was retained for ceremonial purposes, a new boardroom to house the much larger board along with press and public was included elsewhere.

The New Boardroom © Bishopsgate Institute

But maybe the heart and sinew of the HQ actually lies in the Rental Ledger Hall.  Seen below, it looks stately but it was a once a functional space, full of clerks and desks with a large curved front counter for the public at its entrance.

The Rental Ledger Hall, 2013

A few steps away to the north is a more spectacular building which better captures the technocratic ideals of the Metropolitan Water Board.  The New River Head Research Building, designed in Modern Movement style by John Murray Easton, opened in 1938. It’s a bold embodiment of a belief that progress and the people’s welfare are best served by forward-looking public bodies working for the common good.

That ideal remained though the form of public ownership would be remodelled – firstly, with the creation of the Greater London Council in 1965 and a reconstituted board and, more radically, in 1973 with the creation of ten new water authorities nationwide based on river basins and catchment areas.  Thames Water, with a Board of 60 indirectly-elected local authority members, covered an area from Wiltshire and the Cotswolds to the Thames Estuary.

This was still a recognition that the rational organisation of national assets lay best in public hands.  And then the world changed. Mrs Thatcher privatised water supply in 1989 and Thames Water became Thames Water Utilities Limited.

The new company moved its head offices to Reading in 1992 and its New River Head HQ was converted into luxury flats.  The Research Building followed – another luxury development of 35 flats – in 1998.

But companies as well as flats can be bought and sold. Thames Water was acquired by the German utility company RWE in 2001.  They, in turn, sold off Thames Water’s British operations to Macquarie five years later.

Of course, a regulatory framework remains. Ofwat exists to protect consumer interests. But, to many, the arguments for public ownership of water supply remain as potent today as they were when the Fabians campaigned against the ‘water lords’ of the Victorian era.

Sources

(1) Sean Poulter, Daily Mail, 12 August 2013

(2) Oliver Wright, ‘Water companies told to stop siphoning off cash to foreign owners’, The Independent, 17 July 2013

(3) Quoted in CM Knowles, Municipal Water, Fabian Tract 81, February 1898

(4) Metropolitan Water Board, The Water Supply of London, 1937

(5) Sidney Webb, London’s Water Tribute, Fabian Tract 34, revised edition January 1898

(6) Quoted in John Broich, London. Water and the Making of the Modern City, 2013. Other detail and some quotations which follow are also taken from this source.

(7) British Medical Journal, ‘The London Water Act’, January 3 1903

The English Heritage listings have much more information on the architecture and design of the MWB New River Head Headquarters and Research Building.

My thanks to the helpful staff of the Bishopsgate Institute for access to their early pamphlets on London water and the MWB and for permission to use the images above.