Missing Iron Work

[Anonymous]

Could anyone tell me why most of the old houses in the north had there iron railings taken away during in the war years, but when you see pictures of the same in the south they seem to have got away with this legalized defacement?

 

[Anonymous]

I didn't think they did. There were lots of iron park and house railings removed in the war. Maybe they had started collecting those closest to the iron foundries and worked outwards.

A look at Nigel Watts' (an occasional poster here) house, which I think is in London, may be of interest. It looks like most of the street had the railings removed. The same had happened in every street of Victorian houses where I grew up, in West London. I can't recall a house that had kept it's railings.


RAILINGS

 

[Anonymous]

Many railings did disappear in the south also. Of course, all this architectural ironwork never actually made it for munitions - it was a great con, to make people feel they were contributing to the war effort. The metal wasn't, apparently, of high enough quality, and tons and tons of the stuff was dumped out at sea.

 

[Anonymous]

Where did you find that information, Evelyn? I find it highly questionable. Even if the metal was unsuitable for certain weapon components, I really can't believe it was so useless as to be totally unusable for anything, at a time when raw materials were so vital to survival.
I suspect that story may be apocryphal.

 

[Anonymous]

No, it was a TV prog a couple of years ago, tracking down what actually happened to various pieces of architectuarl heritage. I think The Euston Arch featured... may even have been Dan C, can't recall, but it was well researched stuff.

 

[Anonymous]

Do a google

iron railings war effort

and there are a number of interesting links which turn up!

 

[Anonymous]

I did that, it found this:

http://www.christopherlong.co.uk/pri.wareffort.html

I'd suspect that most of the railings had been recycled and the remnants dumped towards the end of the war. There must have been many thousands of tons collected. Scrap metal can introduce unknown contaminants (e.g., layers of lead-based paint) that may make it cheaper to use clean raw ore.

I was impressed by some of the decoartice ironwork around Kings Cross in Sydney. I hadn't realized until then how similar buildings in London had been defaced by the removal of the ironwork.

 

[Anonymous]

Where I live, in Islington, North London, there are many streets and squares of terraced and semi-detatched houses dating from the late 18th Century through to the 1860s. Most houses of this era have basements, with an "area" at the front - i.e. a sunken light well between the house and the street, or between the house and the small front garden.

Where there is no front garden between the pavement and the area, original railings have generally survived. The reason for this is pretty obvious; they are needed for safety reasons.
If the original railings were removed another set would be needed to stop people falling down and getting seriouisly injured.

However, where there is a front garden, and no such safety issue, the railings between the garden and the street often did not survive. Many park and churchyard railings were also removed, including some very grand ones.