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Though it
is thought that a mill in the area of Bramham, Clifford or Boston Spa had
gas lighting from about 1820, the earliest documentary evidence is when Dr
Haigh installed gas to light Bramham College about 1843. He soon found a way
of maximising his investment by providing gas in bulk to the Bramham
Consumers' Gas Company, formed in 1860 with the object of supplying the
village with gas lighting. The company a little later became part of the
Northallerton Gas Consumers' Company.
Eventually in 1897 the company built
its own gas works on the Wetherby (A1) Road, just north of the village, with
a house for the manager. During the 1908‑9 period it is recorded that `slot
consumers increased from 27 to 67'.
After much hard bargaining the
Bramham undertaking was sold in 1909 to the Boston Spa Gas Company for £720.
Within a year they had sold the land to a director for £220, dismantled the
gas apparatus, and closed down the operation, continuing to supply Bramham
from their own gas works.
One of the Boston Spa Company's
First World War economies was to stop the free supply of gas to the lamp
outside the village institute. There is no record of other philanthropic
street lamps, but the two paid for by the rate payers cost £2 a year each.
The supply of coal gas to Bramham
ended in October 1970, following the modification of gas appliances to burn
natural gas. Meanwhile the manager's house at the site of the A1 gasworks
was dismantled on the building of the first by‑pass.
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