Cast Iron
Rock House was built with internal and external cast-iron piping in a time of plenty, in the cast-iron age of the 18th and 19th century when buildings were paeans to this solid, extremely heavy, material. For a while, designers and architects went potty for the stuff. Viaducts, station roofs and vast exhibition halls such as The Crystal Palace in London were masterpieces of iron and glass.
Whole bridges were constructed of the stuff – the Iron Bridge in Shropshire, designed by Abraham Darby, is made entirely from cold cast iron and stands as a testament to our industrial past. At one time, Ironbridge was manufacturing most of the world’s cast-iron products. Those were the days, as they say. Before the arrival of those vast smoking factories, we had to make do with wooden gutters made from cedar with lead lining – Alastair has fashioned something similar for the deranged plumbing at his Tudor House on All Saints Street.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, as our manufacturing started its downward descent, cast iron got increasingly expensive to use quite so liberally (which is bad news for me) and we moved over to steel gutters before the 1960s revolution and the advent of aluminium. Now, over 70 per cent of residential gutters and downpipes are made from seamless aluminium gutters. They can even be made to colour co-ordinate with your building. Yellow? No problem. The shades are baked onto the metal. They have a lifespan of about 20 years, which is better than the plastic alternatives that can buckle under the weight of water and detritus.
Now that the scaffolding is up not only can we see for miles down the coast, we can also see that almost all of our guttering is ‘chronically fatigued’ as one contractor put it. It is also ancient, Grade II listed, from 1835, with all the use of a perforated pinafore. The good news is that it can be salvaged. Unless it is actually smashed, cast iron is almost indestructible – the Iron Bridge has been standing since 1779 and still does a sterling job. The bad news is that it’s timeconsuming, back-breaking work rubbing off the corroded rot and repainting it. Still, it will look lovely when it’s finished, or it would do if the seagulls would let anyone near it.
Next week: Celebrity outbreak
Whole bridges were constructed of the stuff – the Iron Bridge in Shropshire, designed by Abraham Darby, is made entirely from cold cast iron and stands as a testament to our industrial past. At one time, Ironbridge was manufacturing most of the world’s cast-iron products. Those were the days, as they say. Before the arrival of those vast smoking factories, we had to make do with wooden gutters made from cedar with lead lining – Alastair has fashioned something similar for the deranged plumbing at his Tudor House on All Saints Street.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, as our manufacturing started its downward descent, cast iron got increasingly expensive to use quite so liberally (which is bad news for me) and we moved over to steel gutters before the 1960s revolution and the advent of aluminium. Now, over 70 per cent of residential gutters and downpipes are made from seamless aluminium gutters. They can even be made to colour co-ordinate with your building. Yellow? No problem. The shades are baked onto the metal. They have a lifespan of about 20 years, which is better than the plastic alternatives that can buckle under the weight of water and detritus.
Now that the scaffolding is up not only can we see for miles down the coast, we can also see that almost all of our guttering is ‘chronically fatigued’ as one contractor put it. It is also ancient, Grade II listed, from 1835, with all the use of a perforated pinafore. The good news is that it can be salvaged. Unless it is actually smashed, cast iron is almost indestructible – the Iron Bridge has been standing since 1779 and still does a sterling job. The bad news is that it’s timeconsuming, back-breaking work rubbing off the corroded rot and repainting it. Still, it will look lovely when it’s finished, or it would do if the seagulls would let anyone near it.
Next week: Celebrity outbreak