Reading gas tower demolition leads to children's book and online art
As time runs out for one of Reading's best known landmarks two local residents have co-ordinated a creative farewell
Last updated 4th May 2021
If you live in Reading you can't help escape the presence of 'gas holder No.4' it has towered over the Newtown area in the east of the town since 1901.
In the coming months though - this familiar and somewhat comforting sight - will be no more. Only a few birds nesting in and around its structure are preventing its immediate demolition to make way for flats.
Many people might look at the tower and wonder why anyone would miss it but local residents Mary Chambers and Leslee Barron are certainly not amongst them.
Mary says:
"it's just one of those things that catches your eye so often because it looks different so often. Whatever the weather is doing or whatever the light is doing or whatever time it is it looks different all the time. It's just grabbed me so many times and made me look at it twice and say 'what's going on now?'
Leslee - a digital artist - who lives at the end of the road from the giant tower says it's a landmark that makes her feel welcome every time she arrives back in Reading on the train. She's originally from Sunderland:
"It's a bit like the Angel of the North it's got that effect for me, that familiarity. I think it's quite majestic it's like a crown, sometimes it's orange sometimes its silver sometimes black. Once I found out it was going to be demolished I started documenting it in its many moods."
Leslee shared her pictures on a Facebook page she set up called 'Cumberland Road gas tower'. At the same time a few streets away Mary was about to hit on her own way of paying tribute to the tower.
She takes up the story:
"My daughter looked out of the window one morning and she saw the moon behind the gas tower but it looked like it was IN the gas tower and she said 'oh it's stuck I must get my helicopter and go and rescue it!' and that gave me the idea for a children's story, I used several direct quotes from my daughter so she is the co-author!"
'Alina saves the moon' had been born, and soon Leslee was reading it online:
"I loved it, it was so enchanting and I couldn't stop thinking about it so I sat down and painted a picture of what I had in my head and I messaged Mary and said 'I love the story it's very visual for me' and she replied 'I'm glad you said that because I was going to ask you to illustrate it for me'."
But it didn't stop there, Leslee and Mary started an online art gallery for the wider community to share their pictures, paintings and video of the gas tower. They're now thinking about a new book to publish some of the work they've brought together online.
Mary says they've been encouraged by the reaction:
"People have been really positive about it and excited about it and the number of people who've written to us to say 'I've taken this photo, or I've done this painting, or done this and this....' there are lots of people out there who are interested in the gas tower and can see that there's something in it which is interesting and artistic and eye-catching"
It's perhaps fitting that a tower which was taken for granted as a functional part of Reading's industrial past is ending its days creating art and inspiring young people's imagination through story-telling. Ugly to some, magnificent to others. Beauty they say is in 'the eye of the beholder' - or in this case should that be 'gas holder'?
You can find out about the book and the online art gallery here: https://www.readinggastower.co.uk/home