
History is a moving target, not something which has a finite answer. Essentially what happens in a moment rapidly loses its component parts and re-assembly of the parts whether virtual or real is always open to interpretation. The passage of time makes the task more difficult. The distance from which we sit today relative to the events which took place at Parlington prior to its destruction over the early decades of the twentieth century, enable many theories to be expounded. An unlikely candidate for this months comment is a gas meter!
The story opens when I discovered a dusty and rusty old gas meter in a store room at Lotherton Hall. Clearly quite ancient I was puzzled because at no time was gas ever supplied to Lotherton, in fact the family were early adopters of a generator to give them power from electricity! So my conclusion was that it came from Parlington, I could not envisage any other answer. I already knew that Parlington had its own gas supply from a coal gas manufacturing plant alongside the Gamekeeper’s cottage. However gas was later supplied to Aberford from Garforth gas works, on the low side of the railway bridge, on Long Lane, and the route of the gas main passed along Parlington Lane. It seems natural to conclude that the gas plant at the gamekeeper’s was superseded and the supply provided by the gas company in Garforth. Therefore a gas meter would have been installed.
Taking aside the question of ownership of the meter, it seems feasible that as things were wound down at Parlington, leaving only two cottages within what had been the west wing, the gas supply was terminated, not to be re-installed until 2013! To the top right is a red seal inscribed GR 11 [George V 1911], so it must have been in use at Parlington beyond that date, evidence of people working on dismantling pieces of the hall for installation at Lotherton run to the period after the Great War, so perhaps it was moved around the 20’s. Being a family who abhorred waste perhaps they took the gas meter to Lotherton fully expecting gas to be eventually provided there! But it never was. So the meter remained in the store gathering dust and rust for the best part of a century, before I cast my eye over it and produced this hypothesis.
From a practical perspective it is not a topic of great import, but it highlights how you can establish a theory based on a simple conjecture drawn from an old gas meter forgotten in a store room. Turning to the object itself, the meter was made by Alder & Mackay of Edinburgh and Bradford, and registered 17th December 1864, no doubt its certification. Its final reading 88,600 cubic feet, but that’s enough of this hot gas!