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THE VIEW FROM NORWICH CASTLE
THE RISE T oil gas competed with coal gas.
he efforts of Taylor and
Martineau led to a wide uptake
of oil gas lighting in the British
Isles. For a period of 10 years,
Oil gas companies were established
AND FALL with the involvement of Taylor and
Martineau, including Liverpool (1823),
Bristol (1824), Colchester (1821),
Taunton (1823), Hull (1821), Plymouth
(1823), Whitby (1826), Edinburgh
(1823), and Leith and Dublin (1823).
Many of these oil gas companies
OF OIL GAS were located in ports and would use
fish and whale oils to make gas as the
petroleum-based oil widely used today
was not readily available.
The Norwich Gas Light Company
was said to have used resin dissolved
in volatile oil for manufacturing gas, as
opposed to whale and fish oils used at
most of the other oil gasworks.
Taylor and Martineau supplied the gas-
Professor Russell Thomas presents the third instalment of making equipment to these companies
a new booklet, serialised exclusively for Gi, which has been and exported the plant overseas, some of
produced for National Grid Property (NGP) to record the rich which was adopted in preference to coal
history of gas in Norwich. Here, he details how the public gas gas, for example in Amsterdam.
The pivotal moment in the battle
industry developed in the city between coal gas and oil gas came

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