For over 100 years the peninsula was dominated by the gasworks which primarily produced town gas , also known as coal gas . The gasworks grew to , the largest in Europe , also producing coke , tar and chemicals as important secondary products . The site had its own extensive railway system connected to the main railway line near Charlton , and a large jetty used to unload coal and load coke . There were two huge gas holders , of 8.6 and 12.2 million ft3 ( 240,000 m3 and 345,000 m3 ) . The larger holder , originally the largest in the world , was reduced to 8.9 million ft3 ( 250,000 m3 ) when it was damaged in the Silvertown explosion in 1917 , but was still the largest in England until it was damaged again by a Provisional Irish Republican Army bomb in 1978 . Originally manufacturing gas from coal , the plant began to manufacture gas from oil in the 1960s . Its peak production of 400 million ft3 per day ( 11.3 million m3 ) in the mid 1960s is believed to have been the largest of any single site in the world . The discovery of natural gas reserves in the North Sea soon rendered the complex obsolete
Silvertown explosion
Silvertown explosion
Greenwich Peninsula