Now! Then! Connected to mains electricity from the Whitehall Road power station, Leeds City Council sells off the town hall’s (coal-fired) generation and storage plant

13 February 1896: Connected to mains electricity from the Whitehall Road power station, Leeds City Council sells off the town hall’s (coal-fired) generation and storage plant

Willans & Robinson triple-expansion single-acting engines, probably larger and different from the kit used at Leeds Town Hall (Anon 1902).

Electrician. 1896/02/07. Sale by Auction Get it:

Excerpt

Messrs Hepper and Sons have received instructions from the Corporate Property Committee of the Leeds City Council to sell by auction at the municipal building, Leeds, on Thursday, February 13th, at two o’clock, a large quantity of electric lighting plant, including engines by Willans and Robinson and Crossley, boilers by McLaren, dynamos by Mather and Platt and Paterson and Cooper, E.P.S. accumulators, and a quantity of apparatus and instruments, forming the complete installation which was some time ago erected at the municipal buildings, and which is now dispensed with as current is taken from the local electric supply company’s mains.

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations

Comment

WP on Whitehall Road is useful:

Leeds town council had conducted experiments with electric lighting in the mid-1880s.[1] The council had rejected a proposal in 1889 to provide electricity to the public as being too speculative.[1] The Yorkshire House-to-House Electricity Company Limited (registered on 26 June 1889)[2] applied for a Provisional Order under the Electric Lighting Acts to generate and supply electricity to the city. This was granted by the Board of Trade and was confirmed by Parliament through the Electric Lighting Orders Confirmation (No. 12) Act 1891 (54 & 55 Vict. c. cvi).[3] The company established a successful electricity supply system including a power station at Whitehall Road (53°47’43″N 1°33’07″W).[4] Electricity was first supplied in May 1893. In 1898 Leeds Corporation resolved to purchase the undertaking under Clause 59 of the Company’s Provisional Order. The purchase price offer was 40 percent above the cost of the Company’s system, and the transfer of ownership took place in 1898.[1]

Plant in 1898
The original plant at Leeds power station comprised compound and vertical condensing engines coupled directly and by ropes to Lowrie-Parker and Hall dynamos, and Ferranti and ECC alternators.[2] In 1898 the generating capacity was 1,500 kW and the maximum load was 1,010 kW.[2]

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Original

SALE BY AUCTION.-Messrs. Hepper and Sons have received instructions from the Corporate Property Committee of the Leeds City Council to sell by auction at the Municipal Building, Leeds, on Thursday, February 13th, at two o’clock, a large quantity of electric lighting plant, including engines by Willans and Robinson and Crossley, boilers by McLaren, dynamos by Mather and Platt and Paterson and Cooper, E.P.S. accumulators, and a quantity of apparatus and instruments, forming the complete installation which was some time ago erected at the Municipal Buildings, and which is now dispensed with as current is taken from the local Electric Supply Company’s mains. Some further particulars are given in our advertisement columns. Catalogues are now ready, and may be obtained of the auctioneers, East-parade, Leeds.

131 words.