Lighting up London for 200 years

25 August 2025

3 minutes

Our People

Imagine a world before electricity and LEDs, you couldn’t just flick on the light switch or ask Alexa to turn on the lamp. Once the sun went down, homes, shops and streets across the UK had to rely on alternative sources of light to see.

Gas lamps were eventually introduced to light up the streets, and some still exist in London today. These lamps are looked after by a team of five British Gas engineers called the lamplighters.

Let’s rewind the clock to learn more on how it all started with the landmark gas lamps that can still be seen today.

British Gas Van With Lighting Up London Written On The Sid

Lighting up London for 200 years

Pre-1807

A Time of Darkness

Prior to 1800’s, there was limited need for street lighting in the absence of traffic. In the home and shops, people relied on fires, candle light and oil lamps to provide a light source after dark. However, the light provided by candles was inadequate for everyday activities, wax was expensive and they burned down quickly.

1807

The Start of an Era

In June 1807 , the first demonstration of public street lighting powered by gas happened on Pall Mall in London. An entire line of gas lamps were lit by engineer, Frederick Albert Winsor, to celebrate the birthday of King George III. Each lamp was fed with gas pipes that were made from the barrels of old musket guns that lit up the whole street with just one spark.

1812

Introducing the Gas Light and Coke Company

On Pall Mall, Frederick Winsor founded the Gas Light and Coke Company (GLCC) to provide gas lighting to the streets of London. Eventually, the company would expand into domestic gas supply. At the time, public gas supply was an unknown and entirely new commercial venture that can, in some ways, be compared to some of the most innovative start-ups of today. By the 1820’s, 50,000 gas lamps illuminated the streets off London – that’s 300 miles of gas pipe that was laid in wood formed from hollowed out trees.

GLCC was at the forefront of a new industry, navigating some of the toughest challenges such as figuring out how gas could be purified and conveyed safely to people’s homes or working out how gas charges could be levied and collected before the gas meter existed. The company had been successful in tackling these challenges and as a result, it grew and expanded significantly throughout the 1800’s into the British Gas we know today.

1813

The Oldest Gas Lamp Left in London

Westminster Abbey contains a total of over 60 gas lamps distributed throughout the grounds and perimeter. The lamps replaced the older oil models to better light the cloisters around the Abbey.

The oldest gas lamp left in London is mounted behind the Abbey in Dean’s Yard. It was converted to Gas in 1813 having previously burned whale oil.

Two of London’s most famous lamps are located on the Abbey’s West Gate – providing a backdrop to the coronation of King Charles and the wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton. As our celebrity lamps, the team put extra effort into keeping these tidy for their next television appearance. The Abbey is also home to the only lamp we know about that contains stained glass surrounding the mantle.

1860s

A New Sewage System

In the 1860s, London got a completely brand new sewer system designed by Sir Joseph Bazalgette. Part of this idea was to run a major sewer pipe underground through the embankment, for sewage to drain into the River Thames. A network of pipes throughout the city would carry sewage from drains through to this main pipe.

Prior to the sewage system being implemented, residents and landlords used to empty their lavatories manually by throwing it out their windows at night as there would be very few people out in the streets after dark. The introduction of gas lamps meant there were more people out and about in the dark, so the implementation of the sewage network was necessary to combat any unwanted collisions after dark.

One of the big challenges with the new sewage network is that it would cause a large build up of methane within the pipes, which is potentially explosive – not ideal for the capital city. Sewer gas destructor lamps were created to prevent this build-up of methane.

Invented by Joseph Webb, the sewer lamp has a dome connected to the sewer pipes and the hollow pole which allows the gas to travel up to the lamp. The flame of the gas lamp, that runs off the normal gas supply, then creates an updraft and draws the gases up the hollow pole and burns them off.

The last remaining sewer lamp is located just off The Strand on Carting Lane. It continues to burn off residential sewer gas – now given the slightly less nauseating name of biogas.

1910

Introducing the Mechanical Clock

Today, the lamplighters do not spend each evening lighting the gas lamps by hand, but the lamps are automatically illuminated by a mechanical clock. These clocks trigger the flame to go on and off at the right time each night, and each clock needs to be manually wound every fortnight by our lamplighting team. Before the mechanical clocks, a (much larger) team of lamplighters would work around London to light each mantle with a long pole.

1968

Electrifying Street Lights

While electric street lighting began appearing in the UK in the late 1800’s, it wasn’t until after WWI that electricity was much more widespread in homes and streets. Some areas retained their gas lamps for much longer and of course, some still remain today. After WWII, a decision was made to fully move over to electric street lighting for a multitude of reason, primarily efficiency and cost. It wasn’t until 1968 that the transition to electric street lighting was largely completed.

Many gas lamps remained in London with 1,100 lamps left across the capital maintained by our team. Lots of the remaining lamps are grade-II listed, preventing them from being transitioned over to electric lamps, to retain the history and heritage of the lamps and for aesthetics surrounding historic buildings.

2002

The Queen Mother Memorial

Before the Queen Mother passed away in 2002, she had specific instructions about where she wanted her memorial and what that memorial would be. She specifically asked for gaslit lamps around her memorial, which we look after today. These are our newest lamps, erected in 2009, but maintaining the older look and build of a traditional gas lamp.

The six lamps at the memorial on The Mall burn 24 hours a day, at her request, as it lights the way for soldiers when they’re doing changing the guard, especially during winter when it’s dark and dreary. During the changing of the guard, the army salute the royal statue as they pass.

2025

Protecting our Heritage for the Future

Arguably the biggest threats to the lamps today is delivery lorries and vans. London has a lot of very tight corners, designed for horse and carriage or smaller more manoeuvrable vehicles with lamps placed on the edges of the pavements. Lamps are regularly knocked down, dented or damaged by vans taking these tight corners and reversing.

Amidst the current focus on reducing carbon emissions and volatile global energy prices, many of the existing lamps are under threat. While the carbon emissions the lamps produce are comparatively negligible, the Lamp Lighting Team is always looking at ways to innovate, whilst preserving the heritage of the lamps. This could involve switching to hydrogen or bio-fuel as a means of powering the lamps in the future.