Catalogue description Records created by the Fuel Research Board and Fuel Research Station

The first research establishment to be set up by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research was the Fuel Research Station established at East Greenwich, London, in 1919. The Station was recommended by the Fuel Research Board, which had responsibility for the promotion and co-ordination of research into fuel, and which had been set up in February 1917 by the Committee of the Privy Council for Scientific and Industrial Research as a result of negotiations between the Coal Conservation Committee of the Government's Reconstruction Committee and the British Association's Committee on Fuel Economy.

The Station, at the direction of the Board, was to carry out a practical survey of the indigenous supplies of fuel (especially coal) resources of Great Britain, and an experimental investigation of more economical and efficient methods for the preparation of coal and its solid, liquid and gaseous products. In particular, research on other methods of extracting oil from coal than was obtainable as a by-product of gas and coke manufacture, were to be investigated. Methods of coal and oil consumption were also to be examined.

From 1927 the Station also undertook investigations of atmospheric pollution formerly conducted by the Air Ministry. In 1947 its work in relation to the coal survey was transferred to the National Coal Board.

In 1958 the Fuel Research Board was replaced by a steering committee of the Research Council and the research station closed down, its work being either terminated or transferred to the new Warren Spring Laboratory. A Scottish branch of the Station set up at Thorntonhall in 1949 subsequently became a branch of the Warren Spring Laboratory.