WW2 Collection of Iron Railings

Scrap Metal Poster (University of Washington)

In common with almost every town and city across the country, at the start of WW2, the often decorative iron railings that had surrounded many properties and gardens since Victorian times were collected from 1939 onwards to aid in Lord Beaverbrook's collection of iron for the war effort. It was not just iron that propaganda claimed was needed for the war effort - aluminium pots and pans were also collected - ostensibly to manufacture aircraft.

It was intended that the iron would be used in blast furnaces to produce steel for wartime usage. Much of this ironwork however did not make it to the furnaces for steel - far more iron was retrieved than actually required, estimated as being around 74% of the collected material ; a large quantity was stored and/or dumped in quarries, railway depots and depots across the country - the estimated excess of iron was around one million tons by wars-end.

Collection proved to be a great unifying tool across the population, so the removal of railings was carried out almost constantly - the effort certainly worked well from a propaganda perspective. Post-war much of the collected iron was quietly disposed of, either by dumping at sea or simply burying it.