By legendary North Kensington campaigner, Meg McDonald…

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Stand in the small car park at the big North Kensington Sainsbury’s, look towards Ladbroke Grove, and you will see a long Regency style building opened in 1929 called Canalside House. Take a picture, remember it, because international property developer Ballymore plans to demolish this iconic building as part of the creation of a new high-rise neighbourhood on the site of the former Kensal Rise Gasworks.

Now look to your right and you will see the modernistic, white Kensal House built at the same time as Canalside House, finished in 1937, and dubbed the “Ghost House” by the children in the area as white buildings were so uncommon then.

GLCC

Both of these buildings are inextricably joined together by history and philanthropy because they were both commissioned, financed and built by the Gas Light and Coke Company (GLCC), a private company established in 1812.

The GLCC had gas works in many areas across London and the South East; it employed thousands of people in its heyday and was the biggest gas company in Europe, possibly the world, providing jobs; apprenticeships; pensions; a health care scheme and many social activities for its families and for the community.

Kensal House

When Kensal House was built, it was a revolution in social housing for poor families when poverty and destitution were predominant in areas of Kensington, particularly in the North. Tuberculosis and other illnesses were rife and, in those days, there was no NHS, meaning people had to pay for the doctor and their own medicines.

Kensal House was a first for modern living in social housing and was designed by Maxwell Fry and a committee of five architects, along with social reformer Elizabeth Denby who had worked with Fry on several public health projects including The Peckham Pioneer Health Centre or the Peckham Experiment.

An urban village in itself, Kensal House was the first modernised social housing block in Britain run by gas from the GLCC. Kensal House cannot be demolished because it is a grade 2* listed building, achieving this status in 1981, although in 2025 it needs a great deal of repair for its residents.

A more detailed history of Kensal House can be found in this Urban Dandy article: Kensal House: The Urban Village We Call Home

Canalside

Predating Kensal House, Canalside House opened in 1929 as offices for Kensal Gas Works at a time when the GLCC was rapidly expanding by absorbing smaller companies. Many offices and showrooms were built at this time to manage this large company and to sell gas and appliances.

Specially designed in a shape to be a screen for the gasworks and provide easy accessibility for its staff and visitors from Ladbroke Grove, Canalside House was built of London stock brick made from London clay. It has ashlar detailing and plasterwork to imitate ashlar stonework predominant in the Regency period. Real ashlar stonework can be seen on many municipal buildings, including libraries, churches and town halls. Some of London’s Knightsbridge and Mayfair townhouses have early examples of ashlar detailing. Many buildings built by the GLCC in the 1920s and 1930s were built in the Regency style, like the Kensington showrooms built in 1924 at 30 Kensington Church Street near York House Place by the bus stops with large arched windows.

Canalside House is now one of the last two buildings left from the GLCC era, and it has great local and historic significance in the community.

The two remaining Victorian gasholders on the site were demolished in 2021. The last ones standing, they were built by Samuel Cutler and Sons and were serviced by lifts for maintenance and cleaning. They were landmarks for the community for nearly 200 years.

The Kensal Gas Works were built on the land originally owned by Sir George Talbot before it was bought by the Western Gas Company in 1845 against local opposition.

The gasworks supplied gas to St Pancras, Marylebone, Bloomsbury, Hampstead, Paddington and Chelsea to the wealthier who could afford it. The bituminous coal (coal with a tar-like substance in it) used by this gasworks produced cannel gas which gave better lighting; today this type of coal is used to produce electricity.

By 1896, the Kensal Gasworks occupied all the land to the West of Ladbroke Grove between the railway and the canal. Coal was delivered from the Durham coalfields by 17 ships called colliers and then by canal and rail.

Mary Berry

The GLCC was founded by Frederick Winsor by royal charter on 30 April 1812, decreed by George the third. It took over the Kensal site in 1872. After absorbing many smaller companies, one of the last being the Brentford Gas Light Company in 1926, the GLCC supplied gas all over London and down to Southend. This expansion necessitated the need for more showrooms, offices, laboratories for the developing of science and technology, workshops to make appliances and gas pipes, training centres for apprentices and canteens for staff. For its employees, the GLCC provided a health insurance scheme, a pension scheme as well as many social activities for them and their family members, including day outings, parties, weddings, exercise indoors and outdoors, holidays and more.

The GLCC devised its own appliances, and many women were employed as demonstrators in the showrooms, including Mary Berry who worked for the London Electricity Board where she demonstrated how to use the ovens and make Victoria Sponge.

Demonstrations were organised by the GLCC for the Empire Marketing Board, the Ideal Home Exhibition, the Food and Cooking exhibition along with Health Week demonstrations for school children.

For the newly opened public hall and Turkish Baths in Bayswater, the GLCC developed a new type of gas-fired air heater by its workshops in Goswell Road for the Paddington Borough Council.

In the 1930s the Kensal Gas works were completely rebuilt and modernised. The GLCC company eventually provided for more than 3,000 different trades within the industry and produced more than 16,3000,000 cubic feet of gas per day.

At Kensal Gas works the coke yards were open to the public where people could buy coke for domestic fires. There are still some locals today who can remember going with old prams and other containers to buy coke from the gas works.

Many people were very poor, not having a gas supply in their homes and used their fires for cooking, boiling water and keeping warm. The poorest were even selling their urine for that extra penny to the leather and carpet industry to fix dyes and tan the leather.

In 1949 under nationalisation by the Gas Act, 12 area gas boards were created and North Thames Gas absorbed the Kensal Works which by then had 21,250 employees.

The 1972 Gas Act abolished the Gas Council and created British Gas, merging the area boards, and in 1986 Margaret Thatcher’s government privatised the gas industry again in the Gas Act of 1986 selling off British Gas which is now owned by the multinational company Centrica based in Windsor, Berkshire.

By this time Kensal Gas Board had already closed, with the site being sold off in 1970.

Canalside House, the Canalside Activity Centre and the Boathouse (providing homes for disabled people) and the public land they are on is administered by Kensington & Chelsea Council, including some of the Sainsbury’s car park; all this land is part of the proposed demolition by Ballymore.

Impact

The planned demolition of these assets is a further demolition of a diverse community’s heart…

Canalside House became a storage space for Notting Hill Carnival and in the late 1980s was turned into a hub for charities, community groups and local businesses. It has thus been used by different community groups for decades from the young to the old and its current resident groups are all from an African heritage.

The North Kensington community has been affected by so many of its community assets being closed and we now face even more going the same way. The young have had their youth centres closed, Canalside House and the Canalside Centre, are two more youth hubs; where can they go?

Ballymore can still build on the remaining site and Canalside House, the Boathouse and the Canalside Activity Centre could be saved. The council does not have to sell these assets used by so many people.

K & C and Ballymore are saving the old water tower, converted into a residential property and owned by one person, the designer Tom Dixon, so why not save the buildings and activity centre used by thousands of people adjacent to it?

Canalside House tells us a lot about our history; pre-war, post-war, and the history we are all creating now. We see the imposition of power, discrimination against the most vulnerable and a bleak future for young people. All in the pursuit of short-term, profit-led, destructive ideology.

Sign our petition here.

By Meg McDonald

with some input from TC @urbandandyLDN