whilst walking in London,
I come across fences like this, with strange, 'bumps' in them, do the bumps add to the strength of the structure, or are they just supposed to be aesthetically appealing? as it happens neither, the railings were once stretchers, used to transport the
wounded during World War II, these
stretchers were originally made so that Air Raid Protection officers could
carry injured people during bombing attacks in the Blitz, over 600,000
stretchers were built from steel to enable them to be easily disinfected in
highly-feared gas attacks,
when the war ended there was a large surplus of
stretchers and many of London's housing estates had had their original railings
removed to serve the war effort, the LCC set about replacing them through
clever re-use of the ARP stretchers, so now I know what the 'bumps' were for! the Stetcher Railing
Society is dedicated to preserving London's stretcher railings, they
have pictures and a handy map for finding them, top photograph Flickr user Sarflondondunc, bottom photograph Museum
of St John.
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