London has lots of lamps that are lit by gas! Here is where you can spot them.
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| Pic credit: me. Three types of gas lamps commonly seen in London. On the left is a Windsor style lamp outside the National Portrait Gallery in Trafalgar Square which is lit with a gas flame. The middle and right pictures both show mantle-style lamps, middle is a Grosvenor lantern on New Row in Covent Garden, rightmost picture is an upright Rochester outside Theatre Royal Drury Lane but taken on Catherine Street (outside The Garden at The Lane restaurant). Westminster lampspotters' guide: PDF |
1a. London's gas lamps - focused area maps
These precise maps of specific areas of Westminster (where gas lamps were under threat, though 174 are to be retained and not converted to LEDs) are from The London Gasketeers and London Lamplighters.
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| Pic credit: The London Gasketeers and London Lamplighters' maps showing the precise positions of London's lamps that are lit with gas. More examples below. |
• Carlton House Terrace: https://thelondongasketeers.com/maps
• Covent Garden: https://thelondongasketeers.com/maps or https://www.instagram.com/p/ClI-x25IJ-6/
• Horse Guards and surrounding areas: https://www.instagram.com/p/CukGhnENZeM/
• Green Park: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cuore4Ft5_Z/
• The Mall https://www.instagram.com/p/CvEu5M0NSZN/
Instagram, for photos of individual lamps
The London Gasketeers | London_Lamplighters | WSuggLighting
(Tweet above includes a short video)I'd always heard there were still gas lamps near St James's Park, but never spotted one til today. This is Horseguards Road behind the Foreign Office. pic.twitter.com/tRj5jqjFW1
— Simon Belcher (@nimbos) October 12, 2018
1b. London's gas lamps - walks, photos etc
Guided walk
Old Westminster by Gaslight from Walks.com - every Monday
Self-guided
Gas lights in London - a pictorial walk from the Petroleum Philatelic Society International, including local items of historical interest and some photographs of stamps depicting same.
Hidden in plain sight: London's gas lighting from Look Up London.
Exploring London's last gas lamps from London X London. Note that the photo accompanying info about the patent sewer gas lamp is of the one further up the road outside the Coal Hole pub. If you were in the photo just turn 180˚, walk down the stairs and head towards the river, the Webb sewer gas destructor lamp is on your right.
London X London have also created a Google Map (the sewer lamp is marked in the right spot): https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1lPM9PBpW0BqxrI--TzZsILq_Dqhppg0
2. London's gas lamps - Google Maps map of wider London
There are 1,500 gas lamps in London and I'm adding some of them to this zoomable map. Currently there are about 50 there, plus 30 or so that I've not confirmed as gas-lit or which may have been converted to LED. All pic credits me / Google.
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| Google Maps map of gas lamps in London. Blue are lit with gas, orange = not sure etc. |
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| Map as above but zoomed in, showing purple (the one in St James' Park decorated for royal events) and green flame (the sewer gas destructor lamp on Carting Lane) lamp markers. |
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| Zoomed in: the blue map marker at Lazenby Court (near Garrick Street) has been selected, an info panel appears on the left. |
You can zoom in and click on any of the flames to find out more about that lamp (legend and info at the end).
3. Interactive map of London's gas lamps (historic)
British Gas used to have this map (link no longer works) on its website https://www.britishgas.co.uk/the-source/lamplighters/ according to this Londonist article.
Here's an archived copy of the 'Ye Olde Lamplighters Map of London' from Buckingham Palace to Covent Garden. The link at the top right saying 'Download PDF' no longer works which means the PDF doesn't seem to have been saved on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. The filename is Lamplighters_Map.pdf in case you have a copy and want to let me know about it :)
4. Background to the Google Maps map
In October last year I discovered, to my amazement, that we have several (~1,500) actual real-life gas lamps in London. I found out about it when 275 of the ones in Westminster were under threat of being converted to LED lighting and there was a campaign to prevent this (Westminster City Council has agreed to retain 174 gas lamps).
I didn't even know we still *had* gas lamps in London! Where should I be looking for them? https://t.co/1V6J96kaGp
— Jo Brodie, mastodon.social/@JoBrodie in extremis (@JoBrodie) October 31, 2022
I wanted to go and have a look at them. As someone very new to gas lamps I wasn't sure how obvious it was going to be which were definitely gas lit and which were replicas (its generally fairly obvious though if the lamp's been converted to bright LEDs and the gas-handling mechanism is completely absent). Have a look at Westminster's 'photos of lanterns' PDF to see what I mean. Page 1 shows three kinds of lanterns lit by gas, page 2 shows same kinds but converted to gas-effect LEDs.
Also there are lots of lamp posts in London and there are some streets that have a gas lamp on them but also has non-gas lamps, so information at the level of a street isn't much help - I needed more precision.
There are over 80 lamps listed on the Google Map (I created it with lots of input from helpful people on Twitter who suggested additions or corrections) of which over 50 are marked in a blue flame to indicate that I'm reasonably confident they're lit with gas. Red flame ones are those that have been converted to LED and orange ones I've not been able to determine. If you visit the map and click on any of the flames you'll find some information about them.
For some of the flame map markers I've found photos of the gas lamp on Flickr and, where the licence permits, I've added those in (with credit). I've also "driven" up and down streets (with a mouse!) via Google Streetview then zoomed in to see if a lamp has its gas mechanism in place. An incredibly useful resource has been the Instagram pages of The London Gasketeers, Sugg Lighting (who have been creating and repairing lanterns since 1837) and the London Lamplighters (the people who maintain London's gas lighting), all linked above.
5. Copy of the (quite long!) text that's on my Google Maps map
There's a lot of text there and it involves a bit of scrolling to see it when on the map. Here it is all at a glance (and also more searchable via Google, which the map isn't).
The map's short link is https://bit.ly/LondonGasLamps
You have my permission to use this map in any legal way :) I don't know how to make the map CC0 (public domain) but note that any linked images (e.g. on Flickr will have their own licences).
Click on any flame on the map for more localised info.
🔵 🔥 Blue flame = lit by gas
💔 Red flame = not lit by gas
🤢 Green flame = Carting Lane sewer gas destructor lamp, off Strand btwn Savoy and Thames
🍊Orange flame = gas status unsure
💜 Purple flame = lamp that was redecorated for the Queen's Jubilee then for the King's Coronation.
Links below - for desktop computer users: right click, open in new browser tab.
More precise maps of specific areas of London are available from The London Gasketeers on their website https://thelondongasketeers.com/maps (includes Carlton House Terrace) and their Instagram page (@TheLondonGasketeers https://www.instagram.com/thelondongasketeers/), specifically
• Covent Garden: https://www.instagram.com/p/ClI-x25IJ-6/
• Horse Guards and surrounding areas: https://www.instagram.com/p/CukGhnENZeM/
• Green Park: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cuore4Ft5_Z/
See also @London_Lamplighters (https://www.instagram.com/london_lamplighters/) on Instagram, the "Service and Repair engineers maintaining London’s Historic gas lamps" for additional photos and locations.
London gas lamp trails: https://www.ppsi.org.uk/ppsi_new/gas_lights.html and https://mappinglondon.co.uk/2016/lamplighters-map/ (though the PDF it links to has disappeared)
The lamps in Westminster WERE under threat (see https://thelondongasketeers.com/, @LondonGasketeer (Twitter) and @thelondongasketeers/ (Instagram), also Facebook, thelondongasketeers for more info) and https://linktr.ee/thelondongasketeers. Most (but not all) have had a reprieve and efforts are ongoing to get some unlisted lamps listed to give their heritage some protection, see https://www.facebook.com/thelondongasketeers/posts/pfbid0LoHuo5jTi8vW8NLWNbBzjagRWVz3kaekiqyu1iPwUJobHZPHaCCboRGs4zVAUioql and https://www.westminster.gov.uk/news/weve-listened-council-retain-174-heritage-gas-lamps-following-consultation for more.
I thought I'd go and see some gas lamps in Westminster borough with a pal while that's still possible so have made a map to help us track them down. This is where some of London's lamps are that are still lit by gas. Much of the data is taken from the internet so treat with caution. I've expanded beyond Westminster (those outside that borough don't seem to be under immediate threat).
Westminster City Council's review CLOSED on SUNDAY 20 NOV 2022 https://bit.ly/GasLampReview
Old map (archived) from British Gas https://web.archive.org/web/20170325052011/http://www.britishgas.co.uk:80/the-source/lamplighters/
Pics of the 3 main different kinds in Westminster (Rochester, Windsor & Grosvenor) https://www.westminster.gov.uk/media/document/photos-of-lanterns (opens as PDF).
Examples
GAS
upright Rochester - https://www.williamsugg.co.uk/products/upright-rochester-gas/, see also the similar Littleton https://williamsugghistory.co.uk/lighting/street-lamps/rochester-littleton-2/
Grosvenor https://www.williamsugg.co.uk/products/grosvenor-gas/
Windsor https://www.williamsugg.co.uk/products/windsor-gas/
ELECTRIC
Pembroke - https://www.williamsugg.co.uk/products/pembroke/
Search terms: where are the gas lamps in London? where can I see London's gas lamps, map of London's gas lanterns, are there gas lamps in London?