The Coal Research Establishment lies at the heart of the sleepy Gloucestershire village of Stoke Orchard. Surrounded by pretty country cottages the brutal industrial architecture of the research sheds and towering chimneys could seem very out of place in its rural setting, but set back from the main street behind some landscaped gardens and non descript office block the remains of the Coal Research establishment are relatively unnoticed. The establishment was set up in 1950 by British Coal's director of research Jacob Bronowski to investigate alternative technologies to improve the value of the energy produced from burning coal along with completely new methods of using the coal won from the countries coalfields.

One of the process required to convert solid coal into a liquid fuel is conversion into a gas through a chemical process called gasification. Once the coal has been converted into a gaseous state it can be further processed into liquids but the gas itself can also have its own uses. burning this gas can be more efficient than burning the solid coal releasing more of the energy contained within the coal, Gasified coal is commonly used in power generation. The CRE was a pioneer in coal gasification initial studies were successfully concluded in the 1950's using coal seams at Newman Spinney, but the the project was abandoned by the NCB for economic reasons. Improved gas control systems and processes developed for the North sea oil and gas fields lead to a further round of research which proved the thin deep coal seams found in Britain could be economically exploited for coal gasification. Gasified coal is also the key to clean coal technologies where the carbon emissions generated as coal burns could be neutralised or trapped. One of the CRE's major projects in its later years was the pursuit of clean coal which would trap the carbon in a usable form that could be exploited in other chemical processes ore as a fuel itself.

When the government decided to privatise the coal producing divisions of British Coal in 1994 the CRE was left in a difficult position the newly privatised and in many cases cashed strapped operators, were unable to fund the CRE's research work and the government was unwilling to spend public money on supporting the coal industry so less than a year later the research operations at Stoke Orchard ceased.

I first read about the CRE in a book about the 1984/85 miners strike and finding a planning application which showed the site still existed I knew I would have to go and visit. The site today is still remarkably complete the front part of the site is used today as a trading estate with the former office building in use by new occupants but at the back of the site the research buildings have been left untouched some parts are just as they would have been left thirteen years ago. I met up with Immortal Owl who secretly was hoping to find the Ford Torino unfortunately he would be disappointed. It didn't take long to find a way onto the site, as it was Sunday the trading estate was deserted and we were left to our devices looking round.

Despite the CRE's interest in large high profile projects like coal gasification and Liquefaction much of its day to day work was far humbler, our first stop after crossing the large overgrown car park was a set of semi detached houses at the back of the site. Built to test prototype domestic coal fired boilers and fires, the houses themselves looked just like normal set of 70's Semi's until you realise they have far more chimneys than is really needed. Each room was equipped with a fireplace and flu even the garages sadly neither of which hid a coal powered car.

The site is split into by a small stream so we left the experimental houses behind us and made our way over a metal bridge towards the large scale test buildings. Initially we were quite disappointed all the buildings were locked tight and it took quite some time to find an open door which didn't lead to empty storerooms. The first bit of proper coal technology we came across was an experimental Hartley and Sugden sectional boiler, the boiler its self was a standard small scale boiler but it had been linked up with a range of heat exchangers and gas filters to remove sulphur and nitrous oxide from the exhaust gasses allowing poor grade coals to be burned efficiently smokelessly.