Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
An interesting London fact!
Mainly in South London, but I'm sure I've seen some around Harringay...
Local historians claim hundreds of thousands of Londoners walk past the fences every day completely oblivious to their “fascinating history”, More than 600,000 were built during WW2 so that Air Raid Protection officers could carry injured people during German bomb raids. After the war they were used to replace the railings that had been removed and melted to make war items.
They were made from steel so that they could be easily washed down after use.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I knew about the demand for donations of cast iron, including railings, but this part of the story is a new for me. Thanks. (I think that whilst it's true that the population was encouraged to donate their iron towards the war effort, little if any of it was actually used for the declared purpose).
The following version of what 'really happened is from the the London Gardens Trust:
Faced with an oversupply (of of donated iron), rather than halt the collection, which had turned out to be a unifying effort for the country and of great propaganda value, the government allowed it to continue. The ironwork collected was stockpiled away from public view in depots, quarries, railway sidings. After the war, even when raw materials were still in short supply, the widely held view is that the gaovernment did not want to reveal that the sacrifice of so much highly valued ironwork had been in vain, and so it was quietly disposed of, or even buried in landfill or at sea.
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Permalink Reply by Don on
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Extraordinary! The campaign that Hugh refers to of course explains why many early- and mid-Victorian terraces (especially in older squares in places like Islington and bits of Bloomsbury) don't look quite right architecturally, as their railings were taken to be melted down.
Am I right in thinking, though, that one problem was that, although the campaign urged people to hand over railings for production of Spitfires, it was always a bit of a con, because aircraft fuselages were aluminium, not cast iron?
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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People were asked to hand in their aluminium pots and pans. Those who did were a bit miffed to find aluminium pots and pans available in the shops all through the war
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Permalink Reply by Richard Woods on
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As they say - not many people know that! Boom boom!
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