Beckton Gas Works

The works were located on East Ham Level, on the north bank of the Thames at Gallions Reach, to the west of Barking Creek.

The name Beckton was given to the plant and the surrounding area of east London in honour of the company's governor Simon Adams Beck (1803-1883).

The site to the west of Barking Creek was selected as it was possible to build deep water piers in the Thames, enabling direct unloading from steam colliers bringing coal from mines in the North-East of England.

The GLCC had a fleet of seventeen coastal colliers ranging from 1,200 to 2,841 gross register tons, and also chartered larger ships as needed.

[1] The plant had an extensive internal railway system of between 42 and 70 miles (68 and 113 kilometres)[12][1] and featured some unusual elevated sidings that also ran out on a number of piers into the Thames.

The Beckton Railway provided a link to the national network at Custom House, used for passenger traffic to the works and for transport of by-products such as coal tar.

[14] By 1876 a nearby company, Burt, Boulton and Haywood of Silvertown, was distilling each year 12 million imperial gallons (55,000 cubic metres) of coal tar to manufacture ingredients for disinfectants, insecticides and dyes.

Besides millions of gallons of road tar, products included phenol, the cresols and xylenols, naphthalene, pyridine bases, creosote, benzene, toluene, xylene, solvent naphtha, ammonium sulphate and ammonia solution, sulphuric acid, picolines, quinoline, quinaldine, acenaphthene, anthracene and dicyclopentadiene.

From 1989 to 2001 a dry ski slope, opened by Diana, Princess of Wales, was operated on the small remaining section (grid reference TQ431820), though the nickname pre-dates this.

The gasworks buildings were also used in a number of scenes representing a dystopian 1984 London in the 1984 film version of the George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Derek Jarman's 1986 promotional video for The Smiths 'The Queen is Dead' single was partly shot at Beckton Gasworks.

In the final hour or so of Full Metal Jacket, Stanley Kubrick's 1987 movie portraying the Vietnam War, Matthew Modine (Private Joker), Adam Baldwin (Animal Mother) and their platoon go into Huế, a Vietnamese city, to clear it of Viet Cong and snipers.

Kubrick had the whole gasworks selectively demolished and the art department then dressed the 'set' with latticework and appropriate advertising hoardings to make it believable.

According to Kubrick collaborator Leon Vitali, who worked on Full Metal Jacket, the gasworks were built by an architectural firm that also constructed much of Huế.

[22] Within weeks, British pop/rock trio The Outfield filmed multiple sequences for the video to the band's 1987 hit "Since You've Been Gone", from their album Bangin', at Beckton Gasworks.

Also, the 1995 TV series Bugs episode 'Out Of The Hive' shows the entire works in a scene where a car drives off an unfinished bridge in flames.

[24] Asylum, a 2000 film of Iain Sinclair and Chris Petit for Channel 4, was partially shot at Beckton Alps while it was still a dry-ski slope.