By Dr Kathy Davies, Archives By-Fellow, Lent 2025.
Until the late 1960s, Britain powered its homes, industries, and empire with coal. Coal consumption reached its peak in the postwar period but by the end of the century the national energy landscape had dramatically changed. Over 90% of households used gas-fired systems and Britain was a net exporter of natural gas.
The postwar transition was the most significant change in modern British energy history. From the highest levels of national infrastructure and governance, to how people go about their everyday lives, its impact was profound.
My research focusses on national energy narratives and policies and how these (dis)connect with lived experiences of energy use and environmental change. As Archives By-Fellow for Lent 2025, I consolidated my work on energy transition in relation to everyday life.
Selling energy transition in postwar Britain
My research largely focussed on the Papers of Sir Kenneth Hutchison. Hutchison was a key player in the gas industry in the immediate postwar decades, making crucial contributions to the industry’s research and innovation agenda.
Through highly effective advertising and PR campaigns in the 1960s, Hutchison also laid the social and cultural foundations for the domestic transition away from coal fires and towards gas. These early efforts were propelled by the discovery of gas in the North Sea in 1965, which entrenched the UK’s energy pathway to the twenty-first century.
Hutchison’s approach to selling energy transition is captured in a booklet, ‘The Case for Gas’, which was presented to an industry conference in 1961. These ads spotlight the significance of women in energy transition.
These advertisements also featured in a presentation I delivered to undergraduate students as part of a teaching session at the Archives Centre with Professor Helen McCarthy in January 2025. Contributing to this teaching was one of many highlights in my short time at Churchill.
Connecting energy policy and environmental politics
The opportunity to live in college gave me the time to explore new material. The most fruitful new explorations were in the papers of Baron Noel-Baker. As a Labour MP for over 36 years, Minister of Fuel and Power for a short period in the 1950s, and MP in the Midlands for most of his political career, his papers hold a wealth of material on smoke-abatement initiatives and policymaking, integral to historic energy change.
These sources have informed my recently published chapter, ‘Breathing Clean Air’, in a serialised book project funded by South Yorkshire Sustainability Centre. These collections also inform my current work as the first Postdoctoral Visiting Fellow in Environment and Sustainability at the British Library.
I ended my By-Fellowship with a public lecture and a pop-up exhibition at Churchill College in March 2025. Thank you to Dr Cherish Watton-Colbrook (Archives Assistant) who co-curated and assembled the display.
Beyond the By-Fellowship
One of the most valuable gifts of the Archives By-Fellowship was having time and space to think. I completed three publications in Lent 2025 and have started a new journal article on advertising energy change. These successes have propelled my longer-term research ambitions. Future goals include curating an exhibition – ‘HIGH ENERGY’ – that will plait together the social, cultural, scientific, industrial, political, and economic threads of energy change in Britain.
I have also started work on a new project, ‘Fatal Fuel and Power’, which will uncover and assess the place of gas and electricity in histories of murder and suicide in Britain – this predominantly impacted women. These are heavy, heavy stories that have huge social and cultural significance, and I’d like to thank Professor Sharon Peacock (Master of Churchill College) and Dr Lotte Reinbold (Fellow, Selwyn College) for the questions and conversation that brought this research need to my attention.
Thank you
Thank you to everyone at Churchill Archives Centre for their support throughout my By-Fellowship; to the Archives Committee for the opportunity; and to Churchill College for the warm welcome to Cambridge. The time was extremely productive and the experience thoroughly enjoyable. It was a significant stepping stone for me as an early career historian and I am extremely grateful to have been given the chance.