This film is part of Free
World's Greatest Gasworks
It’s a gas gas gas as George V and Queen Mary visit Beckton's giant coal gas plant - where 60 years on Stanley Kubrick would build his Vietnam.
Overview
This film shows the 'before' picture: one of Europe's biggest coal gas plants, occupying some 550 acres of East London. 60 years later, Stanley Kubrick visited the same site with his art director and a wrecking ball to turn the location into the devastated city of Huế at the height of the Vietnam War for his film Full Metal Jacket (1987).
The visit by the King, complete with a ride on one of the site's many steam locomotives, was to inaugurate a new coal handling plant. The competition of North Sea gas reserves led to the site's closure by 1970. After many years as an eyesore and a film location - the opening of For Your Eyes Only (1981) was also filmed there - redevelopment of the area has left only the faintest of traces that the works ever existed.
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