The dead tell tales

Henry Atkinson is long forgotten in Hamilton, but Titirangi has a permanent reminder of this significant contributor to Hamilton’s development: a statue of him stands in the main shopping area. In 1895, Atkinson built a gasworks in Hamilton, laying pipelines to distribute the gas around the town.

The gas, produced from coal, was used for heating, cooking and lighting long before electricity and more than

80 years before the Taranaki natural gas fields had been piped to the Waikato.

Atkinson received an engineering education in England and after working on waterworks engineering projects in the United Kingdom, Russia and Portugal, he came to New Zealand in 1863. According to an on-line pictorial presentation (https:/

/westheritageconference.nz/wpcontent/uploads/2017/10/1.-FionaDrummond-Henry-Atkinson.pdf ), Atkinson supervised the establishment of the first Auckland gas works and was manager of those works for 34 years until his retirement in 1897.

But even before he retired, Atkinson had proposed to the Hamilton Borough Council his scheme to set up a gasworks in Hamilton, on land in Clarence Street.

He bought the land late in 1893, and by April 1895 the workshop was already up, the retort-house and storehouse for coal were under construction, and a large supply of bricks was on-site ready for the building of the furnaces and fixing the gasometer (Auckland Star April 9,

1895).

The project required an Act of Parliament: the Hamilton Gasworks Act was passed on August 30 1895.

The Act allowed Atkinson to construct the works on Allotment 322 in Clarence St, supply gas,