chs newsletter 64

1The CHSNewsletter is

published by theChartered Institute

of Building onbehalf of theConstruction

History Society

No. 64 October 2002

CHS CONSTRUCTION HISTORY SOCIETYNewsletterISSN 0951 9203

Editor: Malcolm Dunkeld, 147 Leslie Road, London N2 8BH, to whom all copy should be sent. All other correspondence should be addressed to The Secretary, Construction History Society, c/o Library & Information

Services Manager, The Chartered Institute of Building, Englemere, Kings Ride, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7TBE-mail: [email protected]

EDITORS NOTEMalcolm Dunkeld (CHS Committee member) has been appointed thenew editor of the Newsletter. All articles for publication should besent to:

Address: 147, Leslie Road, London N2 8BH, United Kingdom

Email: [email protected] or [email protected]

Tel. No.: 020 8883 7003 / 020 7815 7292

THE FUTURE OF THECONSTRUCTION HISTORY SOCIETY HENTIE LOUWI took over the role of Chairman of the Construction History Society

(CHS) managementcommittee at its rst meetingfollowing the 17th AnnualGeneral Meeting of theSociety, and I would like touse this as the rst publicopportunity to thank BobMcWilliam, the previousChairman, for six years ofexcellent service to the causeof the Society. Together withPeter Harlow, the previousSecretary, he steered theCHS through an importantdevelopment phase. It is nowup to us, myself, the newSecretary, Michael Tutton,Malcolm Dunkeld, the Vice-Chair, and other members ofthe committee to continuethis good work. I sense that

we have reached an important point in the Societys history, with newchallenges to face up to; how effective we are in responding to thesewill determine the future role of the CHS as a cultural agent.

The committee is keen to take a proactive stance in developing therole of the CHS to its full potential. As a eld of study, constructionhistory is coming of age and with the organisational structure that hasbeen established over time the CHS is well placed to make a lastingcontribution, nationally and internationally. As a committee webelieve that we could achieve our objectives, as set out in theSocietys new brochure, with air and imagination, but we are underno illusion as to the difculty of some of the tasks that we have setourselves. These can be summed up as follows: How to get the message that construction history matters across

to the building industry within this country.

How to consolidate and secure the intellectual foundations ofconstruction history as a eld of study through the promotion ofresearch, debate and teaching.

How to become more active in the international arena andcollaborate with others with similar objectives across nationalboundaries.

First and foremost are the problems associated with a lack of criticalmass. With a membership of approximately 270, one that, moreover,has remained static for several years now, we are severely hamperedin fulfilling our agenda of raising general awareness of theimportance of the cultural heritage residing in historic constructionprojects. We need more members, both institutional and individual,and the committee alone cannot achieve this. All members of theSociety could and should make a contribution in this respect. Withsuch a self-evidently positive cause, and such a large potentialaudience, it seems entirely feasible to aim for a membership of 500within a year or so. Membership fees are too low to present anyobstacle to recruitment, better publicity seems the key, and word ofmouth is the most effective long-term means of recruitment. If allmembers of the Society set themselves the target of each bringing oneextra member into the Society this gure is well within our reach.

The committee in turn will strive to make this an attractive andinteresting group to join. Our journal and newsletter already fulltheir respective functions as mouthpieces for the Society and itsideals admirably. The annual lectures are always of a high standard,but do not attract the audiences that they deserve, even though usuallylinked to the AGM. The forthcoming one, by Dr. Janet DeLaine onthe Baths of Caracalla is set, appropriately, in the Roman remains atBath. Hopefully this interesting theme and venue, and the excellentprogramme of linked visits arranged by Malcolm Dunkeld, will bringa larger attendance, also to the AGM. We do need a more activeparticipation of members in our affairs in order to remain alive as aSociety.

The committee is also working to establish a regular pattern for visitsand symposia for future years, with wide-ranging themes and broadappeal across our memberships interests. The last two symposia, thejoint one with the Society of Architectural Historians on the role oftechnology in architectural history, organised by myself and held inMarch 2001, and the recent one on the training of craft skills, held inhonour of SPAB and organised by Michael Tutton, were both verysuccessful and are indicative of our determination to cater for thedifferent aspects of our operational brief. We do however need to havemore of these to attain and maintain a high prole in the subject area.Likewise, the visits to buildings and structures of historical interest:following Jack Smales excellent contribution as organiser, AlanPalmer had organised a very successful series of visits. Unfortunately,he is no longer able to full this role, and Andy Jackson, whoorganised the popular visit to St Jamess Palace, Marlborough Houseand the Chapel Royal in July, is standing in on a temporary basis. Dueto their very nature these visits can only take small numbers at a time

chs newsletter 64 24/03/03 3:02 pm Page 1

and in order to give more people a chance to attend, we need to havemore of them spaced regularly throughout the year. There is noshortage of venues, but we require someone with energy andenthusiasm to take on this task on behalf of the committee.

We have only modest nancial resources at our disposal, but as acommittee we constantly seek to use whatever funds we have leftafter meeting our standing commitments like the journal, newsletteretc., to sponsor as many as possible individual enterprises that seemto further the Societys cause. So, for example, we are currentlysponsoring the above-mentioned symposium on training, theforthcoming AGM and other ventures that are mentioned below. Wehave this year, also allocated extra funding to set up and maintain aweb site for the Society, and intend to establish an electronic imagebase as soon as is feasible. We believe that small amounts of moneyused judiciously serve to stimulate creativity and future growth andwe look forward to receive suggestions and requests for support frommembers as well.

The second task we as a committee set ourselves is mainly achievedthrough ensuring that the channels that have already been created forfacilitating academic debate, and to encourage research, conservationand dissemination of skills and knowledge related to the eld ofconstruction, are operating to the highest possible standards. Theprincipal vehicles for achieving this aim are our annual refereedjournal, Construction History, and the symposia organised to explorerelevant themes. Regarding the former, the Societys agship in theacademic world, it was gratifying to see the latest volume, no.17(2001) maintain its usual high standards of scholarship andproduction. We congratulate the editors, Robert Thorne, Chris Powelland Simon Pepper on this achievement. In this particular instance thecommittee saw t to grant extra funds to support the translation of anarticle from German into English, which proved to be an excellentchoice. One other related venture that the committee is currentlyexploring is the running of a CHS Summer School, which will addanother dimension to our capacity to promote the subject.

The promotion of construction history as a eld of interest goesbeyond publication and academic debate, so the committee, inaddition to its sponsorship of the symposium on the preservation oftraditional craft skills, also allocated grants to support the publicdeposits of relevant archives to local libraries and other repositories,and towards an exercise that The CIRCA Trust plans to run, utilisingtrainee university students to help complete cataloguing its archives.As was reported in CHS Newsletter no. 63, CIRCA now holds theCHS archive and library, formerly housed at the Chartered Instituteof Building. We wish to encourage members to make use of theTrusts facilities, and to donate relevant material to its collections.

The nal major task concerns CHS participation in the growinginternational movement to promote the study of construction history.It is widely acknowledged that the Society played a pioneering rolein identifying and advancing the cause of construction history andour journal, Construction History, is still the only refereed journal inthe eld internationally. It would seem a pity if this leading positionis lost now that the movement is gathering momentum abroad.Moreover, as the study of construction history continues todemonstrate, technology respects no boundaries; to understand itsprogress in the past as much as in the present one cannot approachit from a parochial perspective. The committee therefore, as a rststep, decided to give as much support as our resources permit to theFirst International Congress on Construction History, organised byour Spanish colleagues in Madrid, 2024 January 2003 (for detailssee CHS Newsletter no. 62). We agreed to sponsor the conferencefees of three members (to include a student, if available) as anencouragement to attend the meeting. Hopefully there will be asizeable British presence at an event that could have a signicantimpact on the way that construction history studies develop in thefuture.

At the meeting delegates will publicise the Societys activities, sellour literature and over and above direct participation in the debateson the topic, seek, with colleagues from other countries, to establisha network for future international co-operation. This might includethe promotion of Construction History as the main internationalpublication to promote academic research in the subject in a senseit is already fullling that role de facto, but it would be advantageousto gain the ofcial support from the international community in theeld. Another enterprise we wish to support is the setting up of aninternational forum for the promotion of the study of constructionhistory on a comparative basis, through independently fundedresearch projects, seminars and symposia. There will be anopportunity to discuss these issues at the AGM in Bath, but thecommittee would welcome comments from individual members aswell.

Hentie Louw, School of Architecture, University of Newcastle uponTyne, NE17RU. Email: [email protected]

EARLY STRUCTURAL STEEL INLONDON BUILDINGS

The advent of the employment of rolled-iron joists into buildingart, with its later development of complete steel-framedconstruction, marks an era upon the threshold only of which wenow stand Nothing in architectural history can compare inimportance with this development since the re-discovery andapplication of the dome to buildings of magnitude byBrunelleschi and Michael Angelo at the Renaissance. (ArthurBeresford Pite (18611934), 1902)

If steel begat the Skyscraper in New York and Chicago in the latenineteenth century, it also brought about a revolution in architecturalform in London, less vertically dramatic, yet equally important andcompelling. The origins and development of American steel-framedconstruction are familiar stories, the great achievements told andretold, yet the British and specically metropolitan contributionto this global revolution in construction technique remains scarcelyunderstood and narrated. Ask any architectural historian what the rststeel-framed building in London was, and they will probably answerThe Ritz Hotel(19045). This most iconic of all early British steel-framed buildings is of vital signicance to our own narrative, but inmany ways it has stolen the limelight, distorting our understandingboth in terms of the assumptions we make and the questions we askof this fundamental epoch of architectural and construction history.The Ritz in some senses represents the closing stages, and not thebeginning of an opening chapter; it also embodies but one threadwithin a multi-contextual sequence in which engineers, architects andspecialised contractors attempted to harness the structural andeconomic potential of a new material to provide better buildings fora new age.

One of the most significant aspects of the highly publicisedconstruction of the Ritz, Selfridges and a number of Edwardian steel-framed ofce buildings was their contribution in forcing a newBuilding Act for London which ofcially recognised and sanctionedsteel-frame architecture, nally achieved in 1909. Once legislativechange had caught up with technological progress, the ood gateswere ofcially open, ostensibly to a tide that carried a new era ofbuilding construction which has continued through to the present. Yetin order better to understand how this situation had come about, weneed to look back into the later 19th-century, a period which saw thechangeover from iron to steel as the pre-eminent structural material.Full skeleton construction was but one outcome of this, for theincreasing uptake of constructional steelwork in the 1880s and 1890simpacted in various ways on a wide range of new or improvedbuilding types: theatres, hotels, banks, ofces, churches, mansionblocks, clubs, department stores, industrial buildings, and so forth.

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Certainly, the substitution of iron for masonry in certain loadbearingsituations had initiated many decisive changes in the formal andspatial composition of many of these building types through the 19thcentury, but the advent of structural steel had lasting and moreprofound impact. The interior of a typical late Victorian theatre,where steel-cantilevered balconies enabled, for the first time,sightlines wholly unobstructed by supporting columns, is but onedemonstration of this. On a purely quantitative level, steel wasalready having huge impact by the early 1890s when The Buildercould note:

Iron and steel are every year taking a more important place inarchitectural designs, large hotels, theatres, banks, andwarehouses being constructed with a metallic framework, whicheconomises space. The low price of steel has encouraged suchmethods.

By then, metal, in the form of mild steel, was routinely entering intothe construction of virtually all major metropolitan buildings to adegree that would have been both implausible and untenable in theeras of both cast and wrought iron. Architects and builders, who ageneration earlier might have shied away from exploiting metalstructure on economic or philosophical grounds now saw it as anindispensable aid to creating large, safe, well-lit, non-combustiblespaces.

Driving this change was a fundamental shift in the structural trade, inwhich British manufacturers had nally woken to the fact that a vastmarket existed for rolled structural steel shapes for use in buildingsof all kinds, a market that hitherto had predominantly been met byContinental suppliers and merchants in rolled (wrought) iron. Byinvesting heavily in the basic open-hearth technique, which yielded asteel especially suited for structures, and in powerful rolling plantcapable of working the white-hot metal, a handful of English andScottish companies were able to wrestle control of the trade from theContinental producers by mass producing a stronger, lighter andmore versatile product. Dorman Long moved into open-hearthstructural steel in 1886 and The Frodingham Iron and SteelCompany, The Glengarnock Iron and Steel Company, theLanarkshire Steel Company, and The Leeds Steel Works all followed.Mass production of structural sections, especially deep I-beams, had

never been feasible for British producers of wrought iron, due tolimitations in the technology and expense of producing the metal. Insteel, it was a natural corollary, and the 1890s saw an explosion in therange of sizes and shapes of rolled shapes manufactured for use inbuildings and engineering structures. The advent of exural membersin steel, produced in bulk at competitive prices, revolutionised theBritish building industry of the 1890s. By the start of the decade,steel suppliers and fabricators were competing for advertising spacein periodicals such as The Builder. I-sections, in all sizes, trulybecame a commodity, more so than the wrought-iron members of the1850s to 1880s, which as often as not had required further post-rolling fabrication to enable them to be used in strenuous, demandingsituations, as opposed to functioning merely as the backbone offireproof flooring systems. Open-hearth steels enhancedmetallurgical properties when compared to wrought iron mostnotably its greater consistency and strength ensured that thecommon rolled joist or beam became the most versatile, standardstructural member available to the builder, architect and engineer,supplanting the built-up girder for most applications.

By the turn of the century, British manufacturers were collectivelyrolling over 170 different shapes, but such needless and wastefulelaboration of variety in sections, as the merchant H. J. Skelton putit, was soon pared down by the Engineering Standards Committeewho enforced standardisation in 1903. Rationality in design, fasterdeliveries and keener competition all beneted the consumer, andquickened the uptake of constructional steel.

The potential utility of structural steel in building construction hadbeen realised very early on. The rst steel beams in the world wererolled to order in Shefeld for the headquarters of the London andCounty Bank, Lombard Street, completed in 18612 to designs byCharles Octavius Parnell (18071865). Occupying one-half thedepth iron would have required, these Bessemer members were usedfor the upper oor girders, thus enabling the whole of the space onthe ground-oor [to be made] available for the working of theestablishment. As early as c.1877, Sir William Siemens (18231883)employed 20ft-long steel beams presumably produced by the open-hearth method to support the terrace over the billiard room ofSherwood, his country home near Tunbridge Wells, Kent. In hisown words, by lling in between each girder with cement and tilingand lead, I was able to gain 18 in. in height, and obtained a perfectlydry room, whereas before I had considerable difculty in keeping thewater out. This simply shows how, by the use of this strongermaterial, advantages in convenience and even in cost may beobtained. Both these examples, whilst illustrating the higherstrength-to-size ratio of mild steel beams, are in a senseconstructional anachronisms, for it wasnt until the mid-to-late1880s, when steel beams started to become an ordinary article ofcommerce that architects, engineers and a growing array ofspecialist contractors began exploiting constructional steelwork inearnest.

In some early instances of the substitution of steel for wrought ironduring the transitional period of the 1880s, when steel was stillrelatively expensive, it was because of its perceived re-resistantperformance. Alfred Waterhouse (18301905) chose to use W. H.Lindsays patent steel decking for the Brook Street extension(18858) of the Prudentials Assurance Companys chief ofcebuildings in Holborn Bars, which obviated the need for supportingiron stanchions, whose fireproof qualities were coming underincreasingly sceptical scrutiny. Ironically, such was the shallow depthof this non-combustible floor structure that difficulties wereexperienced in covering it with a sufcient depth of concrete such thatthe oor and ceiling heights could be related to the existing building.Waterhouse persistently used this proprietary decking (commonlyused for bridges) at the same site into the mid 1890s, as well as atsome of his other metropolitan showpieces, including the NationalLiberal Club (18847). This 100ft-tall structure has load-bearing

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London and County Bank, Lombard Street (18612, demolished 1965)


external walls, but a signicant proportion of the interior loads aretransmitted directly to the splayed concrete footings by Lindsayspatent steel stanchions. Each of the principal rooms, measuring some97ft by 35ft and stacked one upon the other, are reliant on thesedetached stanchions, positioned 4ft in from the walls. Encased in cokebreeze concrete and dazzling Burmantofts faience, their purpose wasto diminish the bearings of the girders which take the weight of theoor above, besides lightening the load on the walls.

The Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square (1883, demolished 1936)was the rst theatre to make extensive use of structural steel. Itspredecessor burnt down in 1881, and the design team for therebuilding, which included Alexander Kennedy (18471928), wasshaken by the spectacle of the great iron girder which was builtacross the proscenium, measuring some 60ft by 5ft, lying in festoonsacross some unbroken cast-iron stanchions like a piece of tripe, showing well the relative effect of the heat on cast and wrought iron.Kennedy, both a consulting structural engineer and Professor ofEngineering at University College, London and his young assistant,Thomas Hudson Beare (18591940), provided a more incombustiblestructural solution in steel and concrete. By all accounts this was atriumph of what might best be described as proto-cage construction,consisting of a largely self-supporting iron and steel-framed rotundathat rose four storeys and lent support to the steel tiers thatcantilevered out from the front and party walls. This rebuilding, ofunique construction, was completed in record time: building workstarted on 23 April 1883, and the Alhambra was re-opened on 3December the same year. The substitution of mild steel for wrought-iron cantilevers was an early and obvious use for the newer material,whose superior resistance to fatigue was especially useful in suchdemanding situations. Kennedys design did not fully develop thepossibilities of steel construction in terms of unobstructed sight lines the balconies were supported at mid-point on visible iron columns

National Liberal Club, Whitehall Place (18847)

The Alhambra Theatre, Leicester Square (1883, demolished 1936)London Coliseum (19034), showing sweeping tiers (below)

reliant on advanced cantilever construction (above)

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but nevertheless paved the way for the form. The rst theatre toexploit fully the technology was the Royal English Opera House(now the Palace Theatre) in Cambridge Circus (188991), where inthe auditorium, the three tiers of cantilevered steel balconiesprojected further forwards than had hitherto ever been tried.

Throughout the 1890s and 1900s London led the world in this aspectof theatre design, with architects and consulting engineerscollaborating closely. Theatre architect Frank Matcham (18541920)even took out a patent in 1902 for his own advanced cantilevermethod reliant on a giant curved principal girder which hesuccessfully applied to the London Coliseum, built 19034.

London-based constructional engineers Richard Moreland & Sonfabricated and erected this steelwork, as indeed they did for a greatnumber of metropolitan and provincial theatres of the 1890s and1900s, frequently employing their patented slender Solid SteelColumns to minimise visual obstruction.

By 1902, when Sven Bylander, the American-trained structuralengineer for the Ritz, the Morning Post and Selfridges, arrived inLondon, the city was awash with steel, and metropolitan architects,engineers and builders were ably versed in constructional steelwork occasionally employing it in a deliberately conspicuous,celebratory fashion Yet a colleague of Bylander is said to havelikened this to ironmongery, noting that builders, in usingsteelwork in building simply piled one piece on top of another, stucka few bolts in and called it constructional steelwork.

Certainly only a handful of fully steel-framed multi-storeycommercial buildings had gone up, but this was not through lack ofexpertise or ability, it was rather the lack of necessity. One clearexample of this is the London work of Charles Vivian Childs (.18901913), a structural engineer who cut his teeth designing thesteel skeletons of high-rise buildings in America during the early1890s, including the Carnegie Building, Pittsburghs firstskyscraper. Dorman Long enticed him across the Atlantic in 1894to become their Chief Engineer, as which he designed the semi-

steel frameworks for, among others, the Bovril Building, Old Street(18949, demolished), and the magnificent eight-storey HotelRussell, Russell Square (18961900). Childs adapted his owntechniques of skeleton framing to what he saw as the standardEnglish practice in large commercial buildings, that of supporting theentire weight of a basically bearing-wall building on heavy girdersplaced at the level of the rst oor. Such techniques opened up theinterior of the ground oor, the principal space, which was all thatwas deemed necessary at the time. Under the 1894 London BuildingAct, it was both uneconomic and impracticable to invoke fullframing. Why it became more needed in the mid-1900s owes asmuch to the examples set by the Waring-White/Bylander enterpriseas it does to a changing architectural and cultural milieu.

Looking at the development of Londons buildings in the periodc.18801909 from the perspective of the introduction and mass-adoption of structural steel reveals a rich and complex, yet largelyuntold story. It touches on such fundamental issues as the relationship

5R. A. Bungalow Briggs All Saints Mission Church, Pentonville

(19012, demolished) a boisterous exposition of the aesthetic possibilities of unconcealed steelwork

Hotel Russell, Russell Square (1896-1900), showing steel portal frames in construction (below)

which supported the upper oors (above)


between building technology and architectural form, the nature anddegree of American inuences, the genesis of the professionalconsulting engineer and architect-engineer dynamics, philosophicalattitudes to iron, steel and framed construction, and the effect of theLondon Building regulations. Architectural historical treatments ofthis era have focussed on the architects and craftsmen, tending toneglect the constructional aspects and the critical role of engineersand engineering contractors professionals who had already becomeindispensable on the great majority of building projects.

Jonathan Clarke, English Heritage, Architectural Survey, 55Blandford Street, London W1H 3AF. Contact details: Tel: 020 72088226 email: [email protected]. Jonathansnew book, provisionally titled A Discreet Revolution: EarlyStructural Steel in London Buildings, is intended for publicationthrough English Heritage in 2003.

TREASURE IN THE HILLSThe treasure in question is that of footloose twins CIRCA andWICCAD. Not minor Saxon kings, but the none-too-tersely namedConstruction Industry Resource Centre Archive, and the WesternIndustrial Collection of Conservation Artifacts and Documentation.The hills are the Cotswolds, the stomping ground of Royals (and JillyCooper), about a hundred miles down the line from Paddington,where the steep scarp falls away to the Severn. The place is Stroud,a battered former woollen town where supermarkets have replacedmills, but where beech woods are never far away. It is a place whereyou would not expect to nd an archive of construction history but,when you think about it, seems right for one. The place stands on acusp, geologically, economically and socially: Cotswold stone (andmanicured villages) up the road, indigenous brickwork (and industry)down the road; one-time watermills one way, and engineering,plastics, brick and tile making the other. And plenty of retired folkwaiting in those villages to be recruited as voluntary helpers.

The story starts in the mid-1990s with a construction historiansGotterdammering in the shape of disposal of some uniquedocumentary collections. It was a time of shameful and acceleratingthreat and dispersal (skipping) of the libraries of the likes of PSAand BRE. As sometimes happens, the break up of an old order longtaken for granted leads to emergence of fresh young enterprise.Heroic and sometimes desperate attempts are made to pick up thepieces of the old and to strike off in new directions. The rule thatnature abhors a vacuum applies as much to libraries as to physics. Soit was that, as professionally run construction collections dissolvedbefore our unbelieving eyes, amateurs arose and strove to meet thethreat of loss. They were sustained by nothing but their enthusiasm(and perhaps a sense of outrage). Thus CIRCA and WICCAD wereborn; a small group of keen-eyed opportunists on a shoestring,succeeding where and when they could. It was a tough time and therewere problems. After a great deal of toil, tears, white vans and threedifferent homes, things are beginning to settle down.

A visit to the archive at Kimmins Mill reveals all. At one end ofSainsburys car park stands the listed stone-built structure. Its verysurvival depended on a planning condition to conserve it afterneglect, in exchange for approval of a new supermarket. The mill,beleaguered among the ranks of parked Gloucestershire RangeRovers, is an unadorned box of a building, eight bays long and veoors high. Any suggestion of dourness is avoided by the use ofattractive local Painswick limestone and the presence of a cluster oftrees towards the far end. This is not a satanic mill. At the woodedend of the site industrial archaeological excavations have begun toreveal the arrangements around the missing waterwheel and a wharfforming part of a link to the nearby Stroudwater Canal. On the gableover the modest entrance is xed a stone boldly declaring the date ofconstruction, 1849.

To be greeted at the door and admitted by curator John Keenan is toenter a world remote indeed from supermarkets. Here are bay uponbay and oor upon oor of subfusc, tightly crowded spaces.Windows are few and small (and anyway undesirable among light-sensitive collections), headrooms are low and sounds mufed.Picking a way along narrow gangways between jumbo-sized stacks,shelving and containers is to recall life in a sort of congenial mine:heavy superimposed strata of documents, an occasional fault, on oneoor even (honestly) some in situ narrow gauge rail line. Lessimpressionistically, the ground oor contains meeting space, localhistory society accommodation, work space and displays. Acollection of building materials and components exhibits tiles, bricks,locks, structural ironwork (c.1820) and other assorted items. A climbup steep wooden stairs reveals loosely classied construction booksof great variety and varying antiquity, British and foreign journals,pamphlets and beyond them bays, gangways and stacks withoutnumber. Working up through the oors of this construction treasuretrove reveals a bay devoted to computers and elsewhere a displayabout the surprisingly diverse local industries (plastic model railwaybodies, pianos, cloth for military uniforms and snooker tables, aninterwar car maker, breweries). Back among the archives there ishere a section on engineering, here material on 1960s prefabrication,here surveying and here the history of social housing. Passing fromone section to the next, always accompanied by the indefatigablecurators enthusiastic and detailed explanations, a thought occurs. Itis that the archive achieves by a process of compression what the liveconstruction industry so seldom manages: to bring together a greatsprawling and fragmented industry and unify it into a single whole.On the topmost level the timber oorspan of the mill (29 ft., old style)is seen to advantage. This is the resting place of a stack of cardboardboxes the size, perhaps, of two semi-detached houses. And extraracking, some plan chests and more.

Making ones way downstairs, reeling at the quantity of materialvisible, there comes the curators coup de theatre. It takes the form ofan artfully arranged setting of the gigantic boardroom table and set ofchairs once belonging to Wimpeys. Casually laid on it as if by chanceare original interwar papers relating to the rise and rise of thatcompany and its redoubtable chairman Sir Godfrey Mitchell. Ashrine-like space contains a portrait of him in oils: an icon forconstruction history.

This is not the place to attempt a comprehensive statement of theholdings at Kimmins Mill. An inkling of the scope of what has beensaved from the skips can be gained from some recent accessions:

archive on dam building from engineers Arup RKL of Sutton. hard copy library from W.S. Atkins of Epsom George Atkinsons (Committee member, Construction History

Society) collection relating to his work at BRS and with CIB

These items join earlier acquisitions from the likes of architectsFitzroy Robinson, the Construction Confederation (National Builderarchive 192192), Manchester University architectural pamphletlibrary, Morris Singer (bronze founders for Barbara Hepworth, HenryMoore and many others), Highways Agency (models of bridges androad schemes), CIBSE and Barbour Index. Some of the smallercollections have been used to make displays: Bruce Martinscollection on standards, Malcolm Burrows nineteenth century bill ofquantities documents, Eric Corkers work on metrication and GordonReeds collection on transport of materials. The archive is organisedon the following lines:

Level 1. Materials library in conjunction with the conservationdisplays.

Level 2. Book library, research positions and rest areas inconjunction with the Stroud Heritage Forum.

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Level 3. Project documentation specifications, bills ofquantities, drawings and images as well as lm, video, sitephotographic albums and surveying equipment.

Level 4. Educational, design and guidance documents, books,government publications, standards, technical documents byprofessional and trade bodies, university and research reports,and professional and trade journals.

Level 5. Company and product based documents: trade literatureand company publications and product selectors.

Some rms have deposited material at Kimmins Mill on the basis thatthey may retrieve it as required. This cuts costs to the rms in termsof ofce oor space rental and management, and greatly benetsCIRCA. It is hoped that more arrangements of this sort will be madein future. In all, the archive has amassed over half a milliondocuments and occupies a total of nearly three miles of shelving.

The collection needs work doing on it. This does not prevent italready being useful: researchers can and do make use of it as aresource. Work on building conservation, the academic study ofconstruction history, as well as national press and television havealready beneted. There are plans, too, to stimulate educational use.But at this stage of the project perhaps the question should not bewhat can it do for me, but rather what can I do for it? What is needednow that holdings are in place and the archive has a home isconsolidation. To reach its potential, the priorities must surely bemoney and volunteers. The venture needs and deserves resources andattention.

Emerging from the maze of caverns and by-ways back into thesunlight, with the dedicated Keenans descriptions still following, isto realise that the loss of such masses of material to the skips isunthinkable. Much has been achieved, but much still remains to do.The challenge moves from collection to organisation and indexingand thence to publicity. It calls for the promotion skills of a JillyCooper, up there on the hill, to bring to this important constructionhistory endeavour the recognition it has earned.

Contact details:Curator: John KeenanTelephone: 0117 968 7850 (evenings)Fax: 0117 962 6614Orange mobile 07966 22 75 75 (daytime)Address: 3 Cranleigh Gardens, Stoke Bishop, Bristol BS9 1HD

Archive postal address: Kimmins Mill, Meadow Lane, Dudbridge,Glos. GL5 5JP

Article by: Christopher Powell, Editor Journal of the ConstructionHistory Society, Welsh School of Architecture, University of Wales,Cardiff

SEVENTEENTH-CENTURYBRICKLAYERS CONTRACTS:WRENS CITY CHURCHESIntroduction

The Great Fire of London started on 2 September 1666 and burnedfor four days. By 6 September most of the City of London within itsmedieval walls had been destroyed including some 13,200 houses1and eighty-six of its one hundred and six churches.2 Rebuilding theCity was of utmost importance and the Crown and the City set aboutthe task as quickly as possible. In 1670 a tax was levied on coal to

fund the rebuilding of St Pauls Cathedral and the repair andrebuilding of the city churches and a commission was created tooversee the distribution of this money. One of the rst acts of thiscommission was to appoint Dr Christopher Wren as its architect.

Over the next thirty years, fty-one churches were rebuilt with Wrenand his ofce responsible both for their design and the supervisionof their construction. As he was required by the commissioners,Wren dutifully kept a record of the building contracts in two modestquarto books which survive in the Guildhall Library (MSS 25 542volumes 1 and 2). These provide vital clues to the nature ofbricklaying practice in England. at the time.

Late-seventeenth-century London was a hive of building activity.Evidence suggests that the ancient guild rules that had sought tocontrol the supply of building craftsmen had been in decline before1666, but after the Great Fire they were nally and unceremoniouslyswept away. The rebuilding of the city required a huge inux oflabour from outside the metropolis and created a climate in whichjerry building proliferated. All parties regularly sought legal redressand in such a litigious climate there was an inevitable increase inboth the frequency and the complexity of building contracts.

Survival

On making their rst contracts with the church commissioners thecraftsmen signed an afdavit at the beginning of the book statingthat they understood the contract they were entering into was withthe church commissioner and not with Wren personally or itsofcers, who in turn could not be held in any way nanciallyresponsible for the outcome. The resulting list provides us with auseful set of signatures for the craftsmen involved, showing thatmost were literate. There were, however, exceptions, the mostnotable of which was John Fitch, one of the most importantbricklayers in the capital, who signed with his mark. The individualcontracts were entered under the church in question and each wasthen signed at the bottom. The entries in the books represent theofce copies. The craftsmen no doubt took away duplicates for theirown reference.

The City Church contracts are by no means complete. Although theentries in the book are original, there are obvious omissions both inbrickwork contracts for individual churches and from churcheswhich are completely unrepresented. Missing contracts are difcultto justify because there is no obvious pattern. Earlier contracts arenot much better represented than later ones so it cannot be the casethat contracts were initially entered carefully and that, in time, thiswas done less scrupulously. One possible suggestion is that thebooks only contain contracts actually made in the ofce. Accordingto this theory, if a contract was drawn up outside the ofce, forwhatever reason, it would have been made on two separate pieces ofpaper. One copy would have been kept by the craftsman while theother would have been returned to the ofce, but the returnedcontract would be loose rather than bound in the books and,although doubtless they were kept together, the detached copieswere easily lost. A loose copy of a contract which might be used asevidence of this practice is currently inserted in the MS 25 542/2. Itis, of course, equally possible that many of the contracts that do notsurvive never existed. In these cases work had simply proceededwithout them, on gentlemens agreements. Whatever the case thenumber of surviving City Church contracts is disappointingly low.Of the fty-one churches rebuilt in the period only seventeencontracts mentioning brickwork or bricklayers survive. It isimportant to remember, however, that most of the churches werebuilt in stone or at least were stone-faced (see list in Appendix 2). Ofthose which were outwardly of brick (listed in Appendix 1), all butthree contracts survive.3 All the surviving contracts for brickworkare summarised in Tables 1 and 2.

7


It will be seen that a number of brick buildings are omitted fromTable 1. This is because the brickwork was not carried out bybricklayers but by stone masons. This discovery, that stone masonswere actively involved in bricklaying in the late seventeenth centuryis one of the most important facts to emerge from examination of theCity Church contracts.

In the Mechanick Exercises, Joseph Moxon begun by saying:

Whether the White Mason, which is the Hewer of Stone, or theRed Mason, which is the Hewer of Brick, be the most Ancient, Iknow not; but in Holy Writ, we may read of the making of Brick

before we read of Digging or Hewing of Stones; therefore wesuppose the Red Masons or Bricklayer to be the most ancient4

This identication of red and white masons is unusual and does notappear elsewhere, but if in Moxons time the book was publishedin 1703 the distinctions were particularly blurred perhaps is notsurprising. Table 2 lists the masons contracts, which specifybrickwork. Most notable in the list of buildings of this type is St.Benet Pauls Wharf, a church built entirely in brick.5 Bricklayers alsoundertook tiling work in the seventeenth century and one contractsurvives on this, (see Table 3).

8

Table 1. Surviving Bricklayers Contracts from the City Churches

Church Date Work Craftsman Ms. Ref

All Hallows Bread Street 5 August 1671 Brickwork on Edward Goodman 25 542/2 p. 12neighbouring dwelling

St. Andrew-by-the Wardrobe 15 October 1685 Brickwork of the church Thomas Harris 25 542/2 p. 56and tower

St. Benet Fink 13 December 1670 Brickwork of the church Nicholas Wood 25 542/1 p. 210

St. Edmund the King 16 August 1670 Brickwork of the church Morris Emmett 25 542/2 pp. 8586the younger

St. James Garlickhythe 1 August 1677 Brickwork of the church Thomas Warren 25 542/2

St. Mary Abchurch 17 May 1681 Brickwork and tiling of John Bridges 15 542/2 p. 141the church

St. Mary-le-Bow n.d. Brickwork of the church Anthony Tanner 25 542/1 p. 26

St. Michael Wood Street 10 April 1671 Brickwork on the south Joseph Lemme 25 542/1 p. 237side of the church

St. Anne and St. Agnes 8 March 1676/7 Carpentry and Brickwork* John Fitch 25/542/1 pp. 111112

St. Michael Bassishaw 10 May 1676 All work* John Fitch 25 542/1 pp. 181185

Note: indicates work by Great including Bricklayers work

Table 2. Stone Masons Contracts containing brickwork clauses

Church Date Work Craftsman Reference

All Hallows Bread Street n.d. Masons work in rebuilding Samuel Fulkes 25 542/6 p. 6the church

St. Antholin Bridge Row n.d. Masons work on the church Thomas Cartwright 25 542/2 pp. 107108

St. Augustine Old Change n.d. Masons work on the church Thomas Strong 25 542/2 pp. 124125

St. Benet Pauls Wharf n.d. Masons and bricklayers work Thomas Strong 25 542/2 p. 99

St. Clement Eastcheap n.d. Masons work on the church Edward Strong 25 542/2 pp. 159161

St. Lawrence Jewry 6 December 1671 Stone and brickwork of Edward Pearce 25 542/1 pp. 200201the tower

St. Stephen Coleman Street n.d. Brickwork in the bonding Joshua Marshall 25 542/2 pp. 1415courses within stonework

Table 3. Contracts for tiling works carried out by bricklayers

Church Date Work Craftsman Reference

St. Michael Queenhithe n.d. Tiling of the roof of the church Thomas Warren 25 542/1 p. 173


Basic Form of the Contracts

All contracts which were entered in the City Church contract booksshare a similar basic structure: so masons contracts and carpenterscontracts have features in. common with bricklayers and glazierscontracts. All the contracts start with an opening paragraph namingthe parties, the craft and the church involved. This is virtually alwaysof a standard form. A typical example is the opening paragraph of thecontract for brickwork for St.-Mary Abchurch:

1681 May 17 Item. It was agreed by the Rt Hon.ble the Comersappointed by Act of Parl for rebuilding the Parochial] Churchescr with John Bridges Cit. & Bncklay to rayse & rebuild thewalls of the Church of Abbchurch in the manner following & forthe rates and prices herein expressed.6

In every contract there follows a section of variable length listing thetypes of work to be carried out and the appropriate costs. Most itemsare listed by rate, i.e. with a measure and a price for each unit, forexample rods of brickwork at 2s. 6d a rod.7 Some items are listedwith a price for that item in which case a detailed description of theitem in question is usually given. An ornamental door case might belisted in this way, but it is less common in brickwork.

The contracts end in a variety of ways the simplest is with a signatureafter the nal rate. Sometimes other stipulations are added. Inmasons and carpenters work it is common to nd a clause statingthat the instructions of drawings of Sir Christopher Wren and hisservants must be followed. More rarely a clause is added giving adate by which the work must be completed. Sometimes the contractsare witnessed.

Length

The number of different prices and rates determines the length. of thecontract, varying from half a page to four or ve pages. A typicalbrickwork contract takes up about a page. Contracts for masonry andcarpentry are slightly longer, averaging two to three pages, whilethose for plumbing, painting and glaziers work are usually shorter(averaging about half a page).

St. Benet, Pauls Wharf, where Thomas Strong was contracted to doboth masons and bricklayers work at an unknown date. The churchwas consecrated in 1684

Notable Omissions

Like all good building contracts, the City Church contracts aimed toensure a level of quality in the end result. In brickwork contracts thiswas limited to stipulating the type of brick to be used and specifyingthe mix for the mortar. Other things which would seem crucial to ustoday were not mentioned. There is, for instance no reference to typesof bonding in the contracts. Some churches were built in Flemishbond8 and others in English9 but it does not seem to have beenthought necessary to stipulate this in the contract.

Likewise although there are frequent instructions that the brickworkshould be done well and workmanlike there are no references to thesizes of bricks or depths of courses. Such matters were taken as reador ordered directly on site.

Common Clauses

Common clauses cover such matters as wall construction, bricktypes, mortar, vaulting, and rates and prices.

Wall constructionWalls in City Churches rebuilt after the Fire were made up in variousways. Stone walls were usually made up of two skins of ashlar and acentral core of rubble taken from the ruins of the original church.Such walls might be bonded at intervals with brick courses. This wasthe form of construction used at St Edmund the King. If ashlar wasnot required the rubble walls might be faced with brick, as was thecase at St Michael Bassishaw:

The walls of the Church to be taken downe to ye old pavement,the rubble to be sorted and screened, & ye walls to be rebuilt withstock bricks on all the outsides, & the coare with the sd rubbishin courses of two foot & a halfe or there abouts, and upon everysuch course to be bonded with. good clamp bricks in 4 courses,the jambes of ye windows to be rubbed and gaged.10

Alternatively, of course, the walls could be solid brick, as is the casein churches like St Benet Pauls Wharf.11

Brick typesNo contracts survive for the making of bricks for the City Churches the bricks were invariably supplied by the bricklayers themselves,presumably predominantly purchased from merchants in the City.Stock bricks were universally specied for external work, oftenwith added stipulation that they should be well-burnt and notsamel. The sources of such bricks are never mentioned. Bricks forrubbing and gauged work are not specied separately. Samel (under-red) bricks might be forbidden for external work, but their use onthe inside of walls was not specically ruled out.

MortarMortar, where specied, was normally only required to consist ofgood lime and sharp sand well made up. The use of rubblefrom the ruins in mortar seems to have been controversial. In thecontract for St James Garlickhythe the use of skreened rubbish in

9St. Benet, Pauls Wharf, where Thomas Strong was contracted to do both masons and bricklayers work at an unknown date.

The church was consecrated in 1684


the mortar is expressly forbidden on outside walls, but in the contractfor St Michael Wood Street it is only stated that a good proportionof sharpe sand must be included with it when mixing, while in thecontract for St. Edmund the King the mortar was to be one part limeand two parts of Screened Rubbish. The contract for St. Benet Fink,the only one to provide mortar proportions, species that the mix oflime to sand of 1:2 must be used.

Vaulting

The ceiling of Wren Churches were usually vaulted in timber andplaster, but windows and crypts required arches or vaults of brick. Anumber of contracts specify brickwork for vaulting providing twostandard stipulations:

That the walls of the vaults should be a brick and a half thick

That the center of the vault next the Crowne should be allheading bricks

The contracts for St. Benet Fink and St. Mary-le-Bow specify that thefourth part of the diameter next the Crowne should be laid in thisway. The bricklayers were expected to nd scaffolding for vaultingwork but not the centering.

Rates and Prices

Bricklaying contracts provide useful information on late-seventeenth-century building costs. Typically, brickwork on the CityChurches seems to have been paid for with the bricklayer nding allMaterials, Scaffolding, workmanship [and] Labour. This meant thatrates were higher than would have been the case for labour alone to

take into account these items. Virtually all work on the City Churcheswas carried out by Measure, the craftsmen being paid periodicallyaccording to the amount they had completed. On other projects in theperiod it was not uncommon to pay workmen by the day and providethe materials, but such a system was open to abuse. The modernsystem of carrying out work for a single lump sum paid in stages(By Great) was used in the seventeenth century, but does not seemto have been commonly applied to brickwork.

The standard measure of brickwork. was the rod, which was 272square feet of wall, assuming a wall one-and-a-half bricks thick.Walls of other thicknesses had to be reduced to their equivalentvolume in one-and-a-half brick thick walls, a fact that was almostalways stipulated in the contracts even though it was commonpractice at the time. The difcult calculations involved in this and allthe other pricings were done by a Measurer. These individuals,whose existence is rarely noted, were specialists with a strongmathematical background who were called on site periodically tomeasure the work and were predecessors of the modern quantitysurveyor.

Rubbed and gauged brickwork was more expensive and was pricedby the foot, The contracts for St Edmund the King, St MichaelBassishaw and St Michael Wood Street explicitly state that per footis running measure rather than square feet. This was presumablythe normal practice for measuring gauged work, but some care needsto be taken in interpretation as square feet (normally referred to asper foot specied measure, were also used at the time formeasuring many sorts of work.

Prices included in the contracts are summarized in Table 4 below:

10

Table 4. Prices of Bricklaying Work

Work Churches Rates

Ordinary brickwork St. Mary Abchurch 5 5s. 0d. per rodSt. James GarlickhytheSt. Andrew WardrobeSt. Michael BassishawSt. Benet Pauls Wharf

Ordinary Brickwork St. Mary-le-Bow 5 10s. 0d per rodSt. Michael Wood StreetSt. Edmund the KingSt. Benet Fink

Ordinary brickwork in the tower St. Andrew Wardrobe 5 8s. 0d. per rod

Ordinary brickwork in Coines and Arches or fascias St. Michael Wood Street 9d. per foot running measureSt. Edmund the King

Fascias and any plaine rubbed and gaged work St. Mary Abchurch 10d. per foot

Various types of rubbed brickwork all specied St. Michael Bassishaw Between 8d. and 6s. 0d. per footand priced according to complexity

Plaine vaulting St. Benet Fink 5 15s. 0d. per footSt. Mary-le-Bow

Tiling St. Michael Queenhithe 1 18s. 0d. per sq. (100 sq. feet)

Tiling St. Mary Abchurch 2 0s. 0d. per sq. (100 sq. feet)


Endnote

The contracts of the City Churches raise a number of issues thatwarrant further research. Some things are clear: stone masons playeda part in bricklaying which has not been hitherto noted or discussed;bonding seems to have been relatively unimportant to the architect asdoes the exact source of the bricks to be used; and there seems to beremarkable agreement in the rates paid to bricklayers over severaldecades. The part played by the architect in the overall process is lessapparent and this can probably only be determined by lookingbeyond the contract.

How typical were the City Church contracts? This is the majorquestion that remains to be answered. Many contracts for brickworkwill no doubt survive for private houses, mostly now in county recordOfces. I would be most interested to hear from anyone who hascome across any brick contracts from the seventeenth and eighteenthcenturies that might shed further light on the subject.12

11

Appendix 1

The notable City Churches in Brick

Church Date of Contract Work specied Bond used inCraftsman (reference to Tables) exposed brickwork

St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe 15 October 1685 Brickwork (prices) Flemish bondThomas Harris (T1, T4)

St. Anne and St. Agnes 8 March 1676/7 Brickwork Flemish bondJohn Fitch (T1)

St. Benet Pauls Wharf n.d. Mason to do brickwork Flemish bondThomas Strong (prices) (T2, T4)

St. Clement Eastcheap n.d. Mason to do brickwork RenderedEdward Strong (T2)

St. James Garlickhythe 1 August 1677 Brickwork (prices) Flemish bondThomas Warren (T1, T4) Lower part rendered

and stone

St. Mary Abchurch 17 May 1681 Brickwork (prices) Flemish bondJohn Bridges (T1, T4)

St. Mary-le-Bow n.d. Brickwork (prices) English bondAnthony Turner (T1, T4)

St. Michael Bassishaw 10 May 1676 Brickwork (prices) Unknown(demolished 1899) John Fitch (T1, T4)

St. Peter Cornhill No contract survives Flemish bond for the(subject to substantial recladding) tower; rest is rendered

St. Stephen Coleman Street n.d. Mason to do brickwork unknown(destroyed by bombing 1940) Joshua Marshall (T2)

Note: church has been substantially rebuilt after bombing during World War 11.

A full list of churches and other buildings by Wren and the current state can be found on the Internet atwww.arct.cam.ac.uk/Campbell/phd/status.html.

St. Mary-le-Bow was bombed during the Second World War and has been heavily restored. The original contract with

Anthony Turner for the brickwork is not dated


Appendix 2

The Stone-built City Churches: the following churches wereoutwardly of stone, though often with brick in parts or as a core to thestone-faced walls. Those churches marked * have a contractspecifying brickwork, which may be located in the tables to thisarticle.

All Hallows Bread Street (T1, T2), All Hallows Lombard Street,All Hallows the Great, Christchurch Newgate, St. Alban WoodStreet, *St. Antholin Budge Row (T2), *St. Augustine OldChange (T2), St. Bartholomew by the Exchange, *St. Benet Fink(T1, T4), St. Benet Gracechurch, St. Bride Fleet Street, St.Dunstan in the East, *St.Edmund the King (T1, T4), St. GeorgeBotolph Lane, *St. Lawrence Jewry (T2), St. Magnus the Martyr,St. Margaret Lothbury, St. Margaret Fish Street, St. MartinLudgate, St. Mary Aldermanbury, St. Mary-at-Hill, St. MarySomerset, St. Mary Magdalene Old Fish Street, St. MatthewFriday Street, St. Michael Cornhill, St. Michael Wood Street (T1,T4), St. Mildred Bread Street, St. Mildred Poultry, St. NicholasCole Abbey, St. Olave Jewry, St. Stephen Walbrook, St. SwithunLondon Stone, St. Vedast Foster Lane.

Notes and References

1. S. Porter, The Great Fire of London, 1996, p. 712. P. Jeffery, The City Churches of Christopher Wren, 1996, p.183. Contracts are missing for St. Mary Abchurch, St. Nicholas Cole

Abbey, and St. Peter Cornhill

4. J. Moxon, Mechanick Exercises, 1970, reprinting original of1703, p. 237

5. T.P. Smith, The Church of St. Benet, Pauls Wharf, City ofLondon, and its Brickwork, BBS Information, 79, February2000, 98

6. MS 25 542/2 p. 141

7. A fuller explanation of rod is given below, in Rates and Prices

8. For example, surviving exposed brickwork at St. MaryAbchurch, St. Michael Paternoster, St. James Garlickhythe, St.Benet Pauls Wharf, St. Anne and St. Agnes, and St. Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe is in Flemish bond

9. Most notably St. Vedast Foster Lane and St. Mary-le-Bow, bothearly churches

10. MS 25 542/1 p. 181

11. Smith, 2000

12. Paper submitted February 2001. The research for this article wasundertaken as part of a two-year project looking at seventeenthcentury brickwork, under the direction of Prof. Andrew Saint atthe Martin Centre, University of Cambridge. The research wasfunded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board.

Dr. James W.P. Campbell, Queens College, University ofCambridge, Cambridge CB3 9ET. Tel: 01223 335511 or email:[email protected]

125TH ANNIVERSARY OF THESOCIETY OF PROTECTION OFANCIENT BUILDINGSCongratulations are due to Mike Tutton (CHS Secretary) fororganising and hosting an excellent conference at the RIBA tocelebrate the 125th anniversary of the Society for the Protection ofAncient Buildings. The objectives of the conference which took

place on the 21st September were to examine the history of craftskills training and SPABs contribution, relating the present trendsand analysing them in the light of the future role of the BuildingSkills Action Group and the Construction Industry Training Board.Over 100 delegates listened to a morning session (chaired by RogerMears of SPAB) and an afternoon session chaired by Sir WilliamMcAlpine, the patron of the Construction History Society.

The conference began with a message from Baroness Blackstone,Minister of State for the Arts (read by Michael Tutton), whichstated:

I am very sorry not to be with you today at this importantconference on rural craft skills, one of the many celebrations thisyear of the 125th anniversary of The Society for the Protection ofAncient Buildings. I recall well our discussions on this topicwhen I met the Joint Committee in February. It is right that thereis a debate in the historic environment about the severe lack ofskills in repairing and conserving historic buildings.

Our Historic Environment Statement A Force for Our Future recognised that training in traditional craft skills is essential toensure the conservation and repair of historic buildings. Ithighlighted the need to address the current lack of skills andencouraged an integrated approach to conservation training,ensuring the necessary skills are fostered and passed on fromgeneration to generation.

I know that much work is being undertaken by English Heritage,the Building Skills Action Group and their partners in the sectorto take forward this challenging agenda. I particularly welcomethe formation of the National Heritage Training Group under theauspices of the Construction Industry Training Board. Thisinnovative approach, involving all sides of the industry, will, Ihope, lead to exciting results.

The conference today is evidence also of the concern felt by allwho care for and about our heritage. I wish you well during, whatI know, will be a stimulating and thought-provoking day.

The session began with a talk by Malcolm Dunkeld (CHS and SouthBank University) on the history of craft training (a full text version isshown below) who commented on the durability of theapprenticeship system as a method of training craftsmen. Malcolmalso noted that craft training has interesting cultural and politicalmeanings.

Next was Sharon Goddard of the Heritage Lottery Fund who gave astimulating summary of HLF research, which highlighted a numberof shortfalls in training, particularly in the built heritage sector.Sharon outlined how HLF is responding to this situation, includingchanges made to policy and in grant application materials which aimto encourage craft skills training.

John Fidler (Director of Conservation at English Heritage) describednational initiatives currently under development that should unlocksignicant resources to encourage lifelong vocational training. Hewent on to show how grant-aiding bodies such as English Heritageand the Heritage Lottery Fund can encourage investments in training.

The morning session continued with Emma Simpson who, unusually,is a woman bricklayer who specialises in conservation work. Her talkattracted rapt attention as she described what attracted her to being acraftsman (person!), what obstacles there were to fullling thisambition and how things can be improved to attract young peopleinto craft training.

James Ayers the well-known author and specialist in Georgianarchitecture and building techniques described how the skilled use

12


of traditional building tools is often more effective in achieving highquality work than modern mechanised alternatives. James also gaveinteresting biographical details as he described his early craft trainingin stone (provided by his father) and how this knowledge of practicehas underpinned his literary work.

David Alexander Head of Conservation at The Landmark Trust described the Trusts work and gave some interesting case studiesthat showed how young people can be involved in buildingconservation after a relatively short training period.

Alistair Collins talk also attracted rapt attention as he described therole of the CITB in overcoming the shortfall of traditional buildingcraft skills. He emphasised that the CITB is very keen to assist theHeritage and Conservation sector to tackle this problem.

The morning session was completed by Peter Hailstone an expertin the chemistry of lime mortars who has his own company andemploys conservation craftsmen. Peter described what qualities anemployer looks for in a craftsman, the most outstanding being a deepinterest and curiosity in the work they are doing.

The afternoon session began with a talk by Marianne Suhr (TechnicalPromotions Ofcer for SPAB) that explored why school leavers areso reluctant to enter the building trades. The answer lies in providinga better image for the industry, better on-site facilities andworthwhile remuneration.

Ingval Maxwell (Historic Scotland) presented a fascinating paper oninitiatives to overcome craft skills shortages in conservation work.He argued that to be successful in building conservation requires atriumvirate of knowledge, skills and appropriate materials to bebrought together. Ingval then outlined how Historic Scotland hastackled this problem.

Another interesting talk was delivered by Christine Wall (CHS) onthe little known involvement of women in successfully bridging thegap in construction skills during the two world wars. After the wars,however, government, employers and unions expeditiously ejectedwomen from their jobs in favour of the returning troops. It wasntuntil the 1970s that equality legislation and an active feministmovement combined to provide wider training opportunities forwomen in the construction trades. Christines talk (summarisedbelow) was illustrated with revealing images from the Imperial WarMuseum and London Women and Manual Trades archives.

Jeff Orton and Tim Ratcliffe gave a joint lecture on how the arts ofbuilding (in particular plastering) are in decline and are now a majorcause of concern. This serious message was made all the moreeffective by a talk delivered in the style of a stand-up comedy routine.Jeff is a highly skilled plasterer and Tim an architect and member ofthe SPAB Technical Panel.

Andy Lawson who works for British Waterways pointed out thatthis organisation owns many historic buildings and structures (canalsand bridges) and therefore has important responsibilities inpreserving these for the community. British Waterways hasestablished a Heritage Skills Centre in Warwickshire where staff aretrained in conservation craft skills. The centre has become sosuccessful that outside organisations (including schools) undertakecraft skill training there.

The nal talk at the conference was delivered by Ian Constantinides,founder and owner of St Blaise the UKs leading historic buildingrepair contractor. Ians talk was chaotic, full of verve, with interestingideas about the philosophy of conservation. He contends that ndingcraftsmen who have both the manual skills and the intensity ofintellectual knowledge to sympathetically work on historic buildingsis the major problem in building conservation today. Ians company

inculcates these skills by maintaining traditional trades in-house,without subcontracting.

The conference ended with a question and answer session, and ashort summary by Sir William McAlpine.

Overall the conference was a great success and the CHS is to becongratulated on organising and participating in the anniversarycelebrations for SPAB. CHS gratefully acknowledges support andsponsorship from the CIOB, Heritage Lottery Fund, The LandmarkTrust, CITB, Historic Scotland, English Heritage, Institution ofStructural Engineers (History Study Group), Institute of HistoricBuilding Conservation, RIBA, British Waterways (Heritage SkillsCentre) and SPAB

PAPERS DELIVERED BY CHSMEMBERS AT THE 125THANNIVERSARY OF SPAB(1) Malcolm Dunkeld (CHS and South Bank University)

Id like to talk this morning about the history of craft skills trainingin this country. In common with other speakers, Ive got 20 minutesto do this and therefore would like to make 2 points on this subject thats 10 minutes per point!

The rst relates to the constancy of the apprenticeship system as away of training building and other craftsmen. By way of analogy,take this building one of the most famous buildings in the world the Colosseum in Rome commissioned by Vespasian in AD 70 andfinished by his son Titus 10 years later. It was the largestamphitheatre in the Roman world and despite suffering fires,earthquakes and being used as a quarry for 400 years with stones andmarble being used for other buildings in Rome, it has survived tomodern times.

The building is clearly intelligible and tangible it can be seen andtouched it is nearly 2000 years old and gives a wonderful insightinto Romes physical past.

In 1914 W.L. Westerman undertook a study of apprentice contractsand the apprentice system in the Roman world. One of the documentshe uncovered and translated concerned an agreement that was signedon the 28th August AD 36, about 35 years before work started on theColosseum: it doesnt concern a building craftsman, but rather aweaver. On this date Thamounion apprenticed his minor sonOnnophris to a weaver named Abaros for a period of 2 years.Onnophris was to serve and do all the tasks assigned to him involvingthe art of weaving. Abaros and I quote on his part, was tothoroughly teach the boy the art of weaving as he himself knew it.Onnophris received no wages, but Abaros was to pay four drachmasper month in lieu of food.

From the information about tax obligations Westerman estimates thatOnnophris was about 13 years old when he began his apprenticeship.If Onnophris failed to attend on all days during the period, theequivalent number of days had to be made up at the end of the term.Alternatively, Abaros was to be compensated for absences at a rate ofone drachma per day. The penalty for Onnophris not completing thetwo year term was 60 drachma. If Abaros failed to teach the boy, hewas subject to the same penalty himself.

Onnophris wasnt the rst apprentice, but his contract with theweaver Abaros is one of the earliest apprentice contracts that remainsintact. What is interesting is that for the next 1900 years theapprenticeship system was the main way of training craftsmenthroughout Europe.

13


The dening feature of the apprenticeship contract is the mutualobligation of the two parties the apprentice serves the master for aspecied period and the master teaches the apprentice the trade. As inall contracts the parties have both common and conicting interests.The common interest is for the apprentice to learn the trade toincrease his future productivity. The return on this investment inteaching and learning accrues to both parties to the master duringthe period of apprenticeship and to the apprentice after completingthe apprenticeship. The conict arises because the training detractsfrom the immediate usefulness of the apprentice. The apprenticewould typically prefer more training than the master would want togive. The task of the contract is to resolve this inherent conictwithout adversely affecting the incentives to teach and learn.

In the Middle Ages and up to the 18th century the apprenticeshipsystem was intimately tied up with the guild system. A guild was anassociation of masters in a trade that promoted the common interestsof the master craftsmen. The guilds had an effective monopoly on thetrades they represented. They could prevent non-members practisinga trade, restrict admittance to their ranks and enforce a code ofbehaviour among their members. They often prescribed commonterms of apprentice contracts, played a role in enforcing these terms,limited the number of apprentices a master could employ, supervisedthe training of apprentices, regulated the transfer of apprenticesbetween masters and limited membership of the guild to those whohad undertaken an apprenticeship.

The dominance of this method of training begins to break down in the18th century under the pressures of industrialisation and political andeconomic liberalism. In some countries notably France itcompletely disappears, whereas in England with the repeal of theStatute of Articers in 1814 the legal basis of apprenticeship isremoved. But the concept of apprenticeship remains. So instead ofbeing the main way for employing young people and training skilledworkers, it now begins to co-exist with other training arrangements.

At the turn of the 20th century many commentators predicted theimminent demise of the apprenticeship system, but it still managed tosurvive. For example, in 1925 there were an estimated 350,000apprentices in Great Britain (the highest level of apprenticeships inthe century), but this represented only one-seventh of young peopleemployed in industrial occupations at that time. Throughout the 20thcentury and until now, the decline in apprenticeship as a form oftraining has continued but, and this is signicant, it has not ended.Currently more than 1 million young people each year enter into asimilar agreement to learn a trade in Europe, North America,Australia and New Zealand.

In the modern world the nature of that apprenticeship is more diverseranging from practical on-the-job training supplemented by off thejob vocational education to school based vocational education with afew brief periods of practical work experience. In between comemany other arrangements.

Apprenticeship is a social arrangement that is much less tangible thana building and therefore more hidden. However, like the Colosseumit has endured for thousands of years and is similar in longevity to theRoman Catholic Church. It has survived the rise and fall of greatempires, the abolition of the guild system in the 18th and 19thcenturies, the industrial revolution during the 19th century and theexpansion of general education and institutional forms of vocationaltraining during the 20th century. Survival of a training system forsuch a long period of time suggests it is adaptable to changingcircumstances and that there is something about that is worthwhile. Itteaches skills used by craftsmen; it can be a more relevant way oflearning for those who dont like a school environment; it can offeradult role models to young people; it can be good for the economy.

The main disadvantage of the apprenticeship system is that training

takes place in an environment in which the question of how to dothings sometimes take precedence over why things are the waythey are. Some argue that it teaches the skills of the present ratherthan the future, and leaves the apprentice much less well equipped toacquire skills in later life. If the apprenticeship system is to survive and as weve seen it is a remarkably hardy plant it must resolvesome of these contradictions.

My second point about the training of craftsmen is that, despiteappearances, it is a highly politicised process. Politicised in the senseof being discussed in the community and a view taken of it bypowerful political and social interests in society. One way of deninga craftsman is to adopt an attributes approach whereby the skillsnecessary to be, say, a carpenter are identied and once a person hasacquired these skills, they become a certied craftsman. Thisapproach to dening a craftsman is somewhat technical and neutraland avoids any discussion of what it means to be a craftsman. Theattributes approach is favoured by organisations such as theConstruction Industry Training Board.

Even a cursory investigation of craft training and craftsmanship showsthe topic to be much more complex and politically contested than theattributes approach suggests. For example, there is the issue ofintellectual snobbery and the idea that certain forms of work warrant anelevated social position when compared to others. This idea is expressedby Plato, who in the Republic describes a model city ruled byphilosopher kings people who have received a high level ofintellectual training (particularly in science and philosophy), and becauseof this, are more virtuous and wise and therefore have the right to rulesociety. This idea continues with Kant and his hierarchies of knowledgewhereby philosophy is the epitome of intellectual achievement whereaspractical knowledge has the status of the Neanderthal funny to look at,but nobody in their right mind would want to be like that.

The torch of intellectual elitism continues with the BloomsburyGroup in London that early 20th century group of well-heeledfriends (Virginia Woolf, Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster, AdrianStephen and so on) that had connections in high places and viewedtheir own pursuits love of the written word, ne art, discussion ofpolitics and economists as evidence of their superior cleverness andwho viewed 99.5% of the population as stupid and philistine. Thiselitism is also a post war phenomenon and continues to the presentday. The basic message being that working with your hands, bydenition, makes you stupid.

Other views of craftsmen and their training take on a romantic orpoetic or fanciful feel. For example, this is Harold Osborne aphilosopher mark you writing in the British Journal of Aestheticsabout craftsmanship:

it involves a genuine pride in the process of production itself, apride which drives a man to make whatever he makes as well asthey can be made, even beyond the economic considerations ofreward. This impulse, which lies at the roots of finecraftsmanship, is now recognised by anthropologists to haveexisted from the earliest stages of human activity it is thisimpulse, this cult of excellence, which through the centuries ofprehistory and history led to the perpetuation of traditions ofcraftsmanship, the rich store houses of know-how and skill.

This is an idealised view of what craftsmanship is, similar to the Artsand Crafts Movement, began in the 1860s by Ruskin and Morris,with the idea that machines dehumanise the worker and leads to aloss of dignity because it removes him from the artistic process andthereby nature itself. As Ruskin said all cast from the machine isbad, as work it is dishonest.

Yet another function of craft training apart from the acquisition oftechnical skills is as a rites of passage or transition stage from the

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world of childhood to the world of work. Many societies have suchrites. The prolonging of adolescence in Western society due to suchfactors as late marriage and long periods of education can lead tointergenerational conict so many t and active young peopleappearing on the stage: will they be productive and integrate intosociety and take society forward, or will there be conict and anarchy(settle on your land, touch your wife, run off with the inheritance,burn the house down etc.)

The cultural aspects of craft training are nicely exemplied in this18th century print by William Hogarth entitled The FellowPrentices at Their Looms and taken from a series of prints on thetheme of Industry and Idleness. 18th and early 19th centuryapprentices were famous for their idleness not in the sense oflaziness, but rather as Peter Linebaugh explains in terms of theirrefusal of discipline, subordination, or obedience. Such attitudesobviously pose a threat to order, hierarchy and property. In Hogarthsprint there are two apprentices: the one on the right who is diligent,honest and hardworking and, by implication, will inherit the world.The one on the left is drunk at work and, above his head, are pagesfrom Moll Flanders he is of necessity licentious, debauched andheading for a sticky end.

So craft training has an important social context and meaning thatbelies the attributes approach to dening this process.

Finally, since we are at the professional institution of architects theRIBA I would like to end on the connection between design and themaking of things. It is not commonly known that Oscar Wilde was anactive member of the Arts and Crafts Movement. For example, in1908 he visited America and gave a series of lectures on the theme ofArt and the Handicraftsman. His lecture notes are still in existenceand this is an extract:-

ours has been the rst movement which has brought thehandicraftsman and the artist together, for remember that byseparating the one from the other you do ruin to both; you rob theone of all spiritual motive and all imaginative joy, you isolate theother from all real technical perfection.

This is particularly relevant to building because, with the rise of thearchitect to social prominence and dominance of the buildingprocess, the position of the craftsman has been downgraded to that ofmechanic. As you know, todays architects receive a highly technicaland formal education that is separate from the craft of building.Indeed, in this country the last time there was integration betweendesign and build was during the Middle Ages when even prestigiousprojects like cathedrals were designed and built by mastermasons. Years of cutting stone allowed them to acquire a feeling for

form in stone the ability to shape subtle and complex shapes.

Perhaps it is time that building craftsmen acquire design skills andare allowed to use them and that architects get their hands dirty in theworkshop and on site during their education.

References

Cerny, G.P., How to hang an apprentice: the moral problem ofindustry and idleness re-examined in Victorian illustrated ction,Unpublished D.Phil., Oxford, 1999

Claridge, A., Rome: an Oxford Archaeological Guide, 1998Morton, R., Construction UK: Introduction to the industry, 2002

Osborne, H., The Oxford companion to craft, 1975Smits, W., The Economics of the Apprenticeship system, 2001Van Gennep, A., The Rites of Passage, 1909 (English translation1960)Wilde, O., Essays and Lectures by Oscar Wilde, 1908

Malcolm Dunkeld, South Bank University, Faculty of the BuiltEnvironment, Wandsworth Road, London SW8 2JZ, Tel: 020 78157292 or email: [email protected]

(2) Christine Wall (CHS and University of Cambridge)

Women Constructors in the Twentieth CenturyThere were three distinct periods in the twentieth century whenwomen trained and worked in the construction industry on the toolsin signicant numbers, the rst of these was the 191418 War. Itshould be stated from the outset that, despite the inspiringphotographs, most of them shot for government propagandapurposes, women were not welcomed into the building industry orfor that matter, any skilled work traditionally done by men.Employers were initially reluctant to take women on and the tradeunions were highly resistant to the idea.

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William Hogarth (16971764)Fellow Prentices at their Looms


Thousands of women signed up for employment in the rst fewmonths of the First World War but were ignored until the acutemanpower crisis late in 1915. At this point, the government came toan agreement with the unions that allowed women into skilled malejobs only with promises of keeping their wages low and getting rid ofthem at the end of the war. Recruitment was initially aimed atmunitions production and the unions concerned added the provisothat women were allowed to do only parts of a skilled job customarilydone by a man, thus semi-skilled men were promoted to skilled jobsand women taken on into semi-skilled jobs. This ensured that womenremained in subordinate positions and could not earn a fully skilledwage. While this was true particularly for the engineering trades,where being able to set up your own machine and grind your owncutters was a clear mark of skilled status, it is less clear how skilldemarcation operated in the building trades. Despite theseconstraints, there was very soon widespread publicity praising thespeed with which women learned manual skills, their diligence,productivity and the high quality of their work.

In 1917 the Labour Department of the Ministry of Munitions stagedan exhibition of photographs of women at work. It was reviewed bythe Building News under the title Women as Constructors fromwhich the following quote gives a taste of the surprise that menexperienced at the sight of women doing building jobs.

women architects, even before the war, we knew, but thatwomen bricklayers, carpenters, woodworking machine operators,and, indeed, workers in almost every branch of the buildingtrades, would have attained in a couple of years to a skillunsurpassed by men was a development which few wouldhave predicted.

But the admiration gained in some quarters was tempered withconsternation from the trade unions. It is, to some extent,understandable why trade unionists were so antagonistic to womenentering skilled jobs. Firstly, in some cases, women weresuccessfully doing jobs after short training courses that hadpreviously required a full apprenticeship, and secondly, employerswere paying them a third of male wages. Women were also freeingmen from employment only to be conscripted into the terribleexperience of trench warfare. The ambiguity of their position was notlost on some women. However, there was little support from men,despite the fact that the TUC had supported equal pay since the1890s.

The presence of women working in skilled building jobs was brief,the Restoration of Pre-War Practices Act, passed in 1919, saw themajority of women ejected from their jobs and directed back to

traditional employment at this time mainly in domestic service,shop work and clerical jobs. The predictions of the Building Newsjournalist, quoted below, writing enthusiastically in 1917 were notfullled.

It is in our opinion, extremely unlikely, that, having thus provedtheir capability, women will consent to be shut out of eldshitherto monopolised by men if denied the right to work sideby side with men in any capacity they will enrol themselvesunder captains of industry of their own sex, and men who declineto accept them as allies will have to look to it when they have tocompete with women as rivals.

We have no apprehension in regard to the result. In the artswoman has long proved her equality, to say the least. In the craftsshe will spur men on to wholesome competition.

The Building News, 28th March 1917

A very similar story is true for the experience of women in theSecond World War. State policies delayed the recruitment of womeninto male jobs until the very last available man had been employed,then young, inexperienced women were recruited in favour of olderwomen with experience from the First World War. There wereexceptions to this, however, and the Imperial War Museum archiveshold a photograph of Agnes Smith, fty year old mother of ten, whowas forewoman in a Greenock shipbuilding yard where she hadforty-ve women workers to look after.

The construction industry appears to have been far more conservativein its recruitment. Although initially suffering a major shortage ofunskilled labour because labourers were not designated as a reservedoccupation at the beginning of the war and thousands of them signedup, women were not called on to ll the gap. As war contracts forfactories, workers housing and airelds increased so did the need forskilled labour. Government training centres were opened where six-month courses in the different construction trades were taught, but, asin the previous war, there was vigorous debate between the unions,employers and the state on what constituted fully skilled status. Thecraft unions were resistant to government trainees, known asdilutees, because they had not served apprenticeships and it wasagreed that they were not be paid a skilled wage until they had beenworking for some time. I have found no evidence that any womenwere trained in Government training centres, they were howevertaken on by desperate employers and trained on the job. For exampleBovis, in 1941, started training women as bricklayers, carpenters andpainters.

There are altogether far fewer photographs and accounts of womenin building during the Second World War, in fact they are completelymissing from the indexes to the industry journal The Builder

16Woman bricklayer building houses for war workers

Women painters at work on a Ministry of Supply site building houses for war workers


throughout the war years apart from one short item in 1944 thatreported on a conference entitled Women in the Building Industry.Here, one of the speakers described how even though she had beenborn and bred in the building industry it had been extremelydifcult to persuade her father to let her train and work as a builder.The conference resolved unanimously that, in the light of thelooming housing crisis, the government should provide training forwomen in building trades and that trade unions should introduce thenecessary changes to their rules and practices to enable theemployment of women trainees.

This call from women already working in the industry was ignored.At the end of the War and facing an acute labour shortage, theMinister of Labour, Ernest Bevin, demanded that all men up to theage of 60 with any experience of building register for reconstructionwork and refused to recruit any women into the skilled trades, despitetheir recent war experience.

The Census returns, however, reveal a different story, that somewomen did indeed manage to retain their jobs in the industry thesewere predominately women painters and decorators who managed tostay on for another three decades before they nally gave up theirpaintbrushes. Their numbers dwindled and by the end of the 1960sthe number of women in the industry was alm

chs newsletter 64

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