Goldsworthy Gurney was born in Treator Cornwall on the 14^th February 1793. His unusual Christian name was taken from his godmother who was a maid of honour to Queen Charlotte. In Cambourne whilst on holiday he was most impressed and fortunate to see Richard Trevethick’s early experiments with steam engines mounted on wheels driving vehicles. 

After his medical education and marriage, in 1814 he settled in Wadebridge Cornwall practicing as a surgeon, but also became interested in chemistry and mechanical science.

He moved with his family to London in 1820 and there expanded his scientific knowledge and started giving a series of lectures on the elements of chemical science to the Surrey Institution.

Gurney was one of the first, if not the first  person to give serious thought to the construction of a vehicle  propelled by steam to provide travel on the common roads. He soon started work on his steam carriage  and in 1825  took out Patent 5170  to register  his progress  with the carriage project.  In 1826  he moved to Albany Street and took over the premises 'The Regents  Park Manufactory' of an American inventor and engineer called Jacob Perkins who was deeply involved with the construction of a 'steam gun'. The noise of which didn't sit well with the neighbours.

In 1830 Gurney  leased a plot of land in Bude from his friend Sir Thomas Ackland and set about the construction of a new house to be built amongst the sand hills.  The original house called "The Castle" still stands but has been extended over the past century. The original part of the house is to the left of the turret.

The Castle  Bude  Cornwall

Gurney's inventions included the:-
 
“oxy-hydrogen” blowpipe, where an intensely hot flame was created by burning a jet of oxygen and hydrogen together.

an instrument of musical glasses,

the construction of a steam carriage for use on the common roads.

the high-pressure “steam-jet” as applied to road or rail vehicles; which could also be used for the extinguishing of fires in coal mines; applied to blast furnaces for the making of iron; and for purging underground sewers.

He improved the problematical lighting of theatres which used "limelight"  with his "Bude Light".  Using a standard flame producer such as an oil lamp and by adding oxygen directly into the flame he produced a dramatically increased bright white light. These type of lights were fitted in The House of Commons and also in Trafalgar Square where replicas of the two styles originally used can still be seen. They have recently been refurbished.
                                                    

The “Gurney Stove” another invention which he patented in 1856 was extensively used to heat a wide variety of buildings. Many of these stoves are still in use to this day.

Gurney was associated over many years with the heating and ventilating of the Houses of Parliament. His stoves were used in the original heating and ventilating of both Houses of Parliament, and later in 1852 he introduced a new method of lighting and ventilating to the new Houses of Parliament. In July 1854 a paid appointment was made for him to become superintendant of the heating, lighting and ventilating which lasted from 1854 to 1863.

He then retired from public life, and in August 1863 was knighted by Queen Victoria in recognition of his inventions and discoveries. Tragically later in that year he suffered a stroke which left him with partial paralysis, so he moved back to Cornwall living at Reeds near Bude.

He died at Reeds on 28^th February 1875.   

With acknowledgments to “The Dictionary of National Biography”.

September 1852. Dr David Boswell Reid was sacked as Ventilator to the  House of Commons.

It was time to invite Goldsworthy Gurney a Cornish inventor and one of Reids rivals to have a go. This Gurney did with much gusto that he very nearly took the place of poor mad, deluded, tortured Guy Fawkes as the man who came nearest to blowing up Parliament. Gurney apparently had a predilection for gunpowder; he set off 60 pounds of it in the House of Lords to test their air supply – ‘by flashing small portions in rapid succession . . .              I watched the first appearance of the smoke in various parts, its apparent quantity, and noted the time it took in coming and going out.

Naturally, Gurney turned the whole system round and instead of drawing air in through the Clock Tower and the Victoria Tower, he drew it in from ground level, and expelled it through the towers. Both Towers had large furnaces at the bottom to provide the up-draught, and small turrets that had three fish tails gas jets burning inside to help the upward flow of air. The scheme did not do much good; the commons was still uncomfortable – Sir Henry Verney kept a pair of worsted stockings and gaiters in the House to try and keep his feet warm – and, above all, the Thames still stank.  

One earnest seeker after pure air suggested that fountains of fresh water should play in all the corridors and rooms of the Palace, on the peculiar assumption that the water would absorb the smells. Not surprisingly no one took up the idea. Gurney suggested dredging deep channels parallel to both shores of the Thames into which the sewage was supposed to drift, but MP’s doubted if it would work, and insisted that the old remedy should be continued – pouring ton after ton of lime into the water to try and purify it. Gurney busied himself being scientific; he hung pieces of paper soaked in acetate of lead in the Chambers of the Lords and Commons, in their Libraries in the corridors and on the Terrace. They proved that there was sulphurated hydrogen in the air, which probably impressed the committee no end as they sat in their room behind curtains soaked in disinfectant. Yet somehow the smell had to be kept in check. Goldsworthy Gurney had an idea.

Gurney believed that vitiated air could be burnt off in flares, rather on the lines of a North Sea gas flare. He wanted to close off all the open sewers in London, and erect a series of flares to get rid of the gases. So why not have one on the top of the Clock tower at Westminster? MP’s were willing to give anything a try at this stage and gurney went ahead. He arranged for the main Victoria sewer to be connected to the flues in the Clock Tower  which carried the vitiated air from the Palace, on the theory that the gases could then be flared off from high above the building. Unfortunately the flares would not light. Next, Gurney put a coal fire at the base of the Clock Tower and tried again; this time the gases burned. One day though when Mr Joseph Bazalgette, the chief engineer at the Metropolitan Board of Works, was examining the pipe that led from the main sewer to the Clock Tower, he discovered that there was a leak from a fractured coal-gas pipe into the sewer, and only a trap-door in the sewer was stopping the coal-gas from reaching the furnace at the bottom of the Clock Tower. There had already been one small explosion, although no one was hurt and no damage done. If the full blast of coal-gas and sewer gas had reached the furnace, then the chances are that the Clock Tower would have taken off for the moon, and the rest of the Palace would have been destroyed with it.

Gurney, who so nearly blew up the Palace of Westminster, died knighted and respected in his bed. Guy Fawkes, a bumbling plotter of ludicrous incompetence, died in excruciating agony on the scaffold not far away, in Old Palace Yard. The furnace that Goldsworthy Gurney built remained there for many years, and the Clock Tower itself retained its function as the worlds most famous, if most unknown chimney.

With acknowledgments to the book
'The Great Palace  The Story of Parliament' 
by Christopher Jones  BBC 1983