As I walk to work I pass many house flanked by walls pitted by sad little dimples, a reminder of iron railings salvaged during the Second World War and largely never replaced.
The thing is I always wonder quite how this salvage was carried out. Was it a compulsory thing with a glorified rag & bone man from the home guard clearing a whole street of its railings at once? Did people object? Was it a more voluntary thing where you would donate your railings to the war effort? Would neighbours frown if you were sentimentally attached to your railings? Would they excuse you if a couple of your sons were off fighting the war?
Some of the surviving railings near where I live are fantastic. It makes me sad that there are so few Victorian railings left, especially as it appears that a huge number were never used and just went to waste. Although its true to say that the dimples that remain are a reminder of the history of the war effort and that remarkable collective sacrifice that we can't imagine today.
Links
BBC war memories archive Brief remark on this site suggests that the railings were collected in an organised way.
Some old duffer who sensibly hid his gates down a well
2 comments:
Lovely as they are, no railings were used in a constructive fashion - whether when fashioned into lumps and shot at people or when used to enclose what once was all common land...
Yes, this is a good point. I didn't mean it was a shame these weren't bullets or ships for killing people.
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