Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers Structures & Buildings 158 October 2005 Issue SB5 Pages 321–339 Paper 13908 Received 07/07/2004 Accepted 01/03/2005 Tom Swailes Lecturer, University of Manchester, UK Joe Marsh Senior Lecturer, University of Manchester, UK Keywords: buildings, structure & design/ conservation/history Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain T. Swailes CEng, MICE, MIStructE and J. Marsh MSc The aim of this paper is to stimulate a wider interest in the built heritage of industrial Britain amongst civil engineers. Britain has a greater number and variety of iron roofs than found anywhere else in the world. From the tentative iron roofs over the attic workrooms of the first iron-framed factories, this paper traces the development of greater spans using arch and truss forms to meet the needs of a diverse range of building types, among which the railway station passenger train shed is most significant. The confused issue of design and construction responsibilities for some of the great roofs of the nineteenth century is partially unravelled. The paper shows how innovations in iron roofing were at first introduced by a handful of structural ironwork contractors, further advances being made by a small group of specialist engineers expert in the analysis, design and detailing of structural works in iron. 1. EARLY WORKS IN IRON—ADAPTATION AND INNOVATION The structural use of iron in Britain dates from Roman times, when beams of forged wrought iron were used over bathhouse furnace stoke holes.1 In medieval Britain, lintels of cast iron were likewise used for their heat resistance in blast furnaces built for smelting iron. These were specialised structural uses of an expensive commodity, which gradually became available in large quantities and at lower cost mainly as a result of two eighteenth century innovations. First, in 1709, Abraham Darby I of Coalbrookdale smelted iron using coke as the blast furnace fuel instead of charcoal. 2 Next, from 1776 onwards, the Boulton & Watt steam engine with separate condenser was used to deliver a more powerful air blast to the furnaces.3 By 1779, while the Iron Bridge in Coalbrookdale (Fig. 1) signalled the structural potential of cast iron, other uses of the material were already well established. In that year, for example, the Wilkinson works began the casting of several miles of cast iron pipes, each about 9 ft long and 12 to 24 inches in diameter, for supplying Parisians with ‘Monsieur Perrier’s water’. 4 Providing columns in the early 1770s for the galleried churches of St Anne and St James in Liverpool5 was a small matter to the makers and exporters of cast iron pipes, cannon and steam engine cylinders. Iron rails for mineral railways were possibly made at Coalbrookdale as early as 1667. 6 The spandrel rings of the Iron Bridge that ‘copied’ the weightrelieving barrel rings of the 140 ft span stone arch Pont-y-tyStructures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Fig. 1. The Iron Bridge, Coalbrookdale (1779, 100 ft (30.48 m) span). With iron spandrel rings Pridd of 1756 7,8 can be seen in the roof of King’s Cross Station (Fig. 2).9 During construction of the original laminated timber arches at King’s Cross in 1850–52, inadequate attention was paid to the arch abutments, a supporting wall was pushed outwards and emergency strutting was required to restore stability. Although the timber roofs at King’s Cross were eventually replaced with iron, the attic rooms of several midnineteenth century Yorkshire textile mills are still bridged with laminated timber arches, generally springing from near floor level. 10 Later it became apparent that Victorian engineers struggled with the problem of providing adequate abutments to large iron arch roofs. There was considerable interest in the analysis of arches and in one key paper both the masonry arch at Pont-y-ty-Pridd and the roof to St Pancras Station were used as examples. 11 The great 240 ft span St Pancras arches, tied beneath rail level, form the longest single-span iron roof in Britain. A carpentry influence is apparent in the dovetailed joints of the Iron Bridge, and it is from the carpentry tradition that trussed forms of iron roof developed. Blacksmith’s wrought iron had been used in the joints of the ‘rational’ forms of timber truss popularised in Italy by the renaissance architect and writer Palladio and brought to Britain by architects Inigo Jones and Christopher Wren. 12 The great era of timber framing in Britain was over by the end of the eighteenth century, with native oak in structural sizes scarce and imported softwoods used increasingly for building. The use of timber became restricted Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh 321 considerable engineering challenge, and required a material stronger than wood. 2. ROOFING THE FACTORY The earliest reported iron roof was, unremarkably, at an ironworks, but its details are unknown. A visitor to the Carron Works in Scotland in the early 1770s simply noted in his diary that the drying room (for drying foundry sand moulds) had a low circular cast iron roof and a floor also of cast iron. 15 The desire for fire-resistant forms of construction in late eighteenth century factories extended from the walls, internal framing and floors, to the roof. 16 A ‘Plan of iron framing for a roof where there are two pillars to support it. . .’ was sent by Charles Bage to William Strutt, probably in early 1797, the year in which Bage’s ironframed flax mill at Ditherington in Shrewsbury was completed. Bage used this form of ‘attic truss’ roof in a later extension to the Ditherington Mill (Fig. 3). Strutt chose a similar solution for the attic schoolroom in his Belper Mill, recorded by the precocious 18-year old John Farey Jr in 1809 17 for Abraham Rees’s vast Cyclopaedia 18 (Fig. 4). Fig. 2. King’s Cross Station (1852, two 105 ft roof spans). Detail of original laminated timber arch Historical documentary with iron spandrel rings. (Source: Bancroft,9 detail from Plate 7) (1 foot = 0.3 m) evidence and the evidence of a structure itself are quite often at variance, and it to the floors and roofs of stone masonry or brickwork should be noted that the Farey drawing does not match the buildings. ‘Carpentry manuals’ popularised the new trussed present day roof details. Hesitancy in providing iron roofs that roof forms and skilfully crafted oak-pegged carpentry joints bridged the full width of a building was soon overcome. were rendered obsolete by the arguably cruder but effective use According to William Fairbairn, in early nineteenth century of ironwork. 13 Composite trusses of timber and iron, well Manchester, ‘during the rapid extension of the cotton suited to industrialised production methods, remained popular manufacture’ most mills were covered with over-arching cast until the early twentieth century. A truss, like a beam or tied iron roofs (Fig. 5). 19 A splendid surviving example in Beehive arch, carries a gravity load without exerting any outward Mill in the Ancoats area of Manchester dates from around 1825 thrust on its supports. Brunel used a timber beam reinforced (Fig. 6). 20 Philips and Lee’s iron-framed Salford Twist Mill, with wrought iron plates in a clever balanced cantilever built in 1802, had cast iron king post trusses of 12 ft 6 inches arrangement to the 1843 roof at Bristol Temple Meads Station, span. 21 14 creating the illusion of a medieval hammerbeam roof A 72 ft span was achieved without visible ties, but for the much Most early iron structures were of cast iron, but the industrialised greater spans built over the following 30 years, the design of production of wrought iron, strong both in tension and ties and their connections for very large forces presented a compression, was greatly improved by the introduction of the 322 Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh Fig. 3. Ditherington Flax Mill extension, Shrewsbury (c. 1810). Attic room to extension Fig. 4. North Mill, Belper (1803–04). Attic schoolroom: from ’Sections of one of Messrs. Strutt’s COTTON MILLS at Belper in Derbyshire’. (Source: Rees, 18 detail from Plate XIV) Fig. 6. Beehive Mill, Manchester (c. 1825). Cast iron arch to attic room puddling process, patented by Henry Cort in 1784. By the first decade of the nineteenth century, with naval blockades periodically restricting the supply of timber from the Baltic ports, inventors tried to exploit the structural potential not only of cast iron, but also of wrought iron in rolled plate and bar forms. The year 1809 was unusual in that three patents for iron roofs were registered: by Charles Norton, a Birmingham builder; Thomas Botfield, a Shropshire ironmaster; and John Cragg, a Liverpool ironfounder. 22–24 The impact of these inventions, as with so many, was mostly local and short-lived. The John Rennie papers in the National Library of Scotland include an 1811 drawing of a cast iron truss roof designed by Charles Norton for the Paddington Engine House of the Grand Junction Waterworks Co. 25 The Botfield roof, of iron plates riveted together, was praised by a correspondent writing to the editor of the contemporary periodical Gentleman’s Magazine, but only one example is known to survive, hidden beneath a conventional roof covering in Shropshire. 26,27 The iron churches of St. George’s, Everton and of St. Michael-in-the-Hamlet, Aigburth, are well known to architectural historians through the involvement in their design of Cragg’s friend Thomas Rickman, the pioneer gothic revivalist architect. 28 Another patentee, Thomas Pearsall of Willsbridge in Somerset, ran a mill for rolling and slitting wrought iron. 29,30 The failure of a patent wrought iron roof in the London Docks in 1813 was a factor in Pearsall giving up the business. While scientific thinking is apparent in some designs from this period, a little knowledge proved to be a dangerous thing and no substitute for experience. As John Seaward, an early member of the Institution of Civil Engineers put it: 31 . . .while we are dismayed with the frequent occurrence of failure of Iron Roofs, it is extremely rare to hear of any accident happening to a roof of timber: although the latter are frequently constructed by ignorant untaught men, while the others are generally the production of superior education and intelligence. Fig. 5. Cast iron arch to mill attic room (from c. 1804 in Manchester). (Source: Fairbairn, 19 p. 205, Fig. 16) Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 For trusses, it was logical to use expensive wrought iron for the tension members and cast iron or timber for the struts and rafters, although there are many exceptions to this rule (Fig. 7). 32 Adjacent to the arched attic room in Beehive Mill (shown in Fig. 6) is a trussed roof of similar span, with wrought iron angle struts (Fig. 8). A well-proportioned roof on a building for the Cromford and High Peak Railway, probably constructed by Butterley & Co. in the late 1820s, has a timber tie (Fig. 9). Joseph Glynn designed an all-iron roof for the Butterley Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh 323 Fig. 9. Cromford & High Peak Railway terminus building roof (c. 1829) Hill open-air museum in Coalbrookdale where it houses a working wrought iron rolling mill. Fig. 7. Iron roof: Letter Sorters Office, General Post Office, St. Martins-le-Grand, London (1827). (Source: Davy, 32 p. 273) Fig. 8. Beehive Mill, Manchester. Trussed iron roof (c. 1825) Smithery around the same time (Fig. 10). In ironworks buildings and engineering workshops, reheating furnaces and forges were a fire hazard and iron framing was quite common. One of the best surviving early examples, built in 1814 as the Smithery at the Woolwich Arsenal, is preserved at the Blists 324 Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 3. THE SIMPLE TRUSS PERFECTED William Fairbairn claimed credit for introducing a particularly efficient iron roof truss in 1827 (Fig. 11). Later called the Polonceau truss after a French railway engineer, the form was, as Fairbairn wrote: 19 ‘very generally adopted . . . for large buildings, railway stations, and other structures where the span does not exceed 50 feet’. The single-bay Haymarket Station train shed, now at the Scottish Railway Museum in Bo’ness, was built with trusses of this kind around 1843, with struts (marked b in Fig. 11) of cast iron. 33 Equally popular was the wrought iron ‘king and queen rod truss’, modelled on the 1837 Euston Station roof designed by Charles Fox, an assistant to Robert Stephenson on the London and Birmingham Railway. 34–36 Fox had family connections with the mill-owning Strutts and in early childhood was a regular visitor to the ‘manufactories in Derby’ and an enthusiast for all things mechanical. 37 Fox had been a pupil of John Ericcson, co-designer of the locomotive ‘Novelty’ that competed against ‘Rocket’ at the Rainhill trials. 38 In late 1838 Fox left Stephenson’s employment and Bramah, Fox & Co. was established as a specialist structural ironwork contractor, becoming Fox, Henderson & Co. around 1841–42. Their largest roof to the Euston pattern was of 132 ft span, at Liverpool’s Tithebarn Street Station (later Exchange Station 39 ), with ‘turned and fitted’ or ‘precision-engineered’ connections reminiscent of machinery details (Fig. 12). 40 Fox was not himself an advocate for the long-span roof, preferring multiple spans of up to 50 ft, for example as erected by his firm for the passenger train shed at Manchester’s London Road Station (now Piccadilly Station) in the early 1840s. 41 Fox’s first partner, John Joseph Bramah, supplied structural ironwork for alterations to Windsor Castle in 1825 42–44 and afterwards was a successful contractor for iron bridges and roofs on numerous railways. 45,46 From Bramah’s Pimlico Works he produced the ‘magnificent shedding’ at Birmingham Station in 1838, ‘built on the same plan as that at the Euston Square terminus but . . .more spacious’. 47 Bramah soon afterwards moved to the Midlands where he financed several firms. Bramah, Fox & Co., based at the purpose-built London Works in Smethwick, specialised in Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh Fig. 10. Roof over the Smithery at Butterley Iron Works (late 1820s, 40 ft (12.2 m) span). Structural ironwork details, delineated (i.e. drawn) by Joseph Glynn. (Source: Tarn, 157 detail from plate XLIX) known Horseley Works, but did not live to see a return on his outlay. 49 When he died aged only 48 on 13 September 1846, his capital investment in businesses in the West Midlands was estimated to be over £300 000. 50,51 Bramah’s most notable roof covers the Houses of Parliament. This durable but heavy trussed roof makes far more extensive use of cast iron than its comparatively flimsy train shed contemporaries. John Weale noted in 1844: 52 The whole of the work is deserving of commendation for the workman-like and correct manner in which it [is] executed, and reflects much credit upon Messrs. Bramah and Cochrane, who have Fig. 11. Roof truss form introduction (c. 1827) claimed by William Fairbairn. Later called the Polonceau truss. (Source: Fairbairn, 19 p. 206, Fig. 18) had the execution under their care. That for the river-front portion of the building was prepared at their works at Woodside, near Dudley; and the roof over the House of Peers, &c. at the Horseley Iron Works, another of their establishments. wrought iron forge, fabrication and general engineering work for the railways, while Bramah, Cochrane & Co., established in 1840, were more concerned with castings and foundry work. 48 In 1844 Bramah took over and improved the wellStructures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 4. THE LONG-SPAN PIONEERS From 1841 a number of large iron-framed engineering workshops and shipbuilding slip roofs were erected for the Admiralty in the Royal Dockyards. Most were constructed by Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh 325 lengths then welded together, with difficulty, using a process devised by Turner. The warm and humid internal environment necessary for conservatory or hothouse plants affected the Kew Palm House ironwork to such an extent that its most recent restoration involved complete dismantling, cleaning, repair and replacement of parts, prior to repainting and reassembly. 62–64 Glazing bars of aluminium were used in place of the corroded originals, although the use of recycled rolled wrought iron might be preferred now. The success of the railways led the competing companies to build larger station buildings. Richard Turner used plated deck beams for the ribs of the long-span arched trusses to the roof at . Liverpool Lime Street Station Fig. 12. Tithebarn Street Station, Liverpool (1850, 132 ft 8 in. (40 23 m) max. span). (Source: Dempsey, 40 Plate LXII, Figs. 1 to 9) (Fig. 13). 65,66 The rib joints were made with riveted fishplates. The contemporary train shed at Newcastle Central Station comprised three tied Fox, Henderson & Co. (five roofs) and by the London firm arch spans of about 60 ft, designed, in concept at least, by the Baker & Son (eleven roofs). 53–57 In the design of such roofs it architect John Dobson. 67 Thomas Charlton, the engineering was ‘customary to calculate upon a total weight of 40 lbs per superficial foot’ 58 (1.92 kN/m2 ). As fully iron-framed foreman for Hawks, Crawshay & Co. (ironwork contractor for the Newcastle High Level Bridge) devised a method by which prefabricated kits of parts, buildings of this kind could be taken the webs for the riveted wrought iron boiler plate and angle down and re-erected if needed elsewhere. Most recently, the arch ribs could be rolled into a segmental shape. 68 Around this 1845 Woolwich Boiler Shop was moved to Chatham. 59 A notable feature of these sheds was the use of corrugated time, the forging and forge-welding of wrought iron was wrought iron cladding on an unprecedented scale. The material revolutionised by the Nasmyth steam hammer, an was afterwards used extensively in the many iron buildings indispensable tool for iron making and working. 69 exported to provide temporary accommodation for hopeful ‘gold rush’ participants in California (1849–50) and Australia There were arguments about cost, and opinions amongst (1851–52). 60 engineers differed on the merits of longer spans, but they While slips were roofed in iron for the building of wooden ships under cover, wrought iron was increasingly being used for the hulls and framing of the ships themselves. Shipbuilding applications of wrought iron deck beams were patented in 1844 by Kennedy & Vernon of Liverpool and such beams were soon afterwards used by the Dublin engineer Richard Turner in the construction of the Palm House in London’s Kew Gardens. 61 Beams for the arch ribs were rolled in 12 ft 326 Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Fig. 13. Richard Turner’s Liverpool Lime Street Station roof (1850, 150 ft 6 in. (45.87 m) span). (Source: Dempsey, 40 Plate LXII, Figs. A and C–G) Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh certainly gave greater flexibility for track layout changes and removed the need for intermediate supports. The vulnerability of cast iron columns to impact damage was demonstrated by several accidents. At the Bricklayers’ Arms Station in London, a train shed with three trussed spans of around 50 ft had collapsed over a length of 400 ft in mid-1850 after the buffers of a carriage on a turntable fractured a supporting cast iron column. 70 This ill-fated roof built by Fox, Henderson & Co. had suffered a partial collapse during construction in 1844. It was only completed after two undamaged principals were erected side by side and subjected to test, one of them failing under a load equivalent to 60 lb/sq. ft (2.87 kN/m2 ). 71,72 William Denison of the Royal Engineers published a report of the test, along with another on a pair of Euston-type wrought iron trusses intended for the Woolwich Dockyard boiler house. Turner’s Liverpool Lime Street roof was soon exceeded in span by Fox, Henderson & Co.’s great roof at Birmingham New Street Station designed by Edward A. Cowper 73 (Fig. 14). Robert Bow assisted with the graphical analysis used to determine the member forces in the cross-braced ‘bowstring’ trusses 74 (Mr Taylor, a ‘simple mechanic’ with Cochrane & Co., has been credited with the invention of graphic statics 75 ). Joseph Phillips devised a moveable temporary staging that allowed the roof to be constructed above existing railway lines without interrupting the traffic. 76 The form of the roof principal was probably developed from a wrought iron tied arch bridge, also designed by Cowper. 77 This in turn was similar in form to Squire Whipple’s 1841 American patented ‘arch truss’. 78 Giving proper credit to inventors has long been a difficulty, and there were much earlier claims on the ‘bowstring bridge’ idea. 79 Regardless of its parentage, Fox, Henderson & Co. energetically promoted ‘their’ bridge as a safe alternative to Horseley’s trussed cast iron girders, understandably no longer trusted after the collapse of Robert Stephenson’s bridge over the River Dee at Chester in May 1847. 36 the Victoria Lily. The Lily House had ‘ridge and furrow’ roofing carried by light wrought iron trussed beams of 31 ft 3 in. span between cast iron columns that served as rainwater downpipes. 80 William Barlow, Engineer for the Midland Railway, gave Paxton some help with the preparation of his outline designs for the Exhibition Building. 81 With construction well under way, the detailed design by Fox, Henderson & Co. was criticised for its reliance for lateral stability on frame action, and diagonal bracing was inserted at the insistence of the Building Committee. 82 A rebuttal by the contractors of allegations of a variety of strength and stability problems took the form of a Society of Arts lecture presented in the building by Professor Cowper, father of the senior designer for Fox, Henderson & Co. Professor Cowper’s younger son Charles later contributed a ‘scientific description’ to one account of the building, which can be compared with the official account. 83,84 Meetings at the Institution of Civil Engineers during January 1851 were taken up with discussions of a paper on the subject. 85 To allay public concerns about the strength of the gallery floors, load tests were carried out. The Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal was unimpressed, saying an experiment on the full-scale model gallery ‘for inapplicability and utter uselessness as a test, surpasses anything in the annals of engineering jugglery that ever came under our observation’. 86 The building was never tested by severe weather during its short life and its safety remains the subject of academic speculation. 87 The literature on the building structure forms excellent case-study material for civil and construction engineering students. The laminated timber arched transept, a late amendment to the original design, was improved upon when the Exhibition Building was taken down and re-erected in modified form as the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. The lateral thrust that had caused problems with the timber arches at King’s Cross Station (see Fig. 2) was minimised by using very deep cross-braced iron trusses in the shape of an arch, but of sufficient flexural stiffness to render abutments unnecessary. 88 Fox, Henderson & Co.’s best known surviving work is Brunel’s Grade I listed train shed at 5. THE ARCH BUTTRESSED Paddington Station, completed in 1854. 89,90 One Victorian In the context of this paper, the building for the Great Exhibition of 1851 is of interest for the contemporary engineer admired the way in which the side spans at Paddington discussions about its strength and stability. The inspiration for acted as buttresses to resisting the lateral thrust from the main the vast glazed timber and iron structure was a small building span, though twentieth century survey work found the columns at Chatsworth designed by Joseph Paxton for the cultivation of out of plumb (they were replaced with steel) and remedial tying is visible over platform 1. 91 At York Station, where the 1877 train shed built by the Leeds firm of Butler & Sons is superficially a copy of that at Paddington but without the transepts, space constraints led to the localised use of cast iron portal frames in place of brickwork buttresses (Fig. 15). At Paddington, a width of 240 ft was covered in three spans and at York 234 ft in four spans. As York Station is on a curve, when it was opened the four spans proved Fig. 14. Birmingham New Street Station roof (1854, 212 ft (64.62 m) max. span). Elevation of inconvenient as the ‘columns 118 principal with added tie. (Source: Dawson ) came in the way, and made it Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh 327 Walmisley as Resident Engineer. 100 Andrew Handyside & Co. of the Britannia Foundry in Derby became the leading builder of long-span iron roofs. Without the in-house ironwork design and detailing capabilities of Fox, Henderson & Co., specialists like Ordish were brought in for ‘design and build’ projects by Handyside’s and other ironwork contractors. 101 Fig. 15. York Station (1877, roof spans of 81 ft (24.68 m), 2 3 55 ft and 43 ft). Cast iron ’buttress frame’ to side span difficult for the guards to see from one end of the train to the other, or to observe the signals’. 92 6. THE AISLED IRON HALL—1851 REPRISED The pattern of arched hall with galleried aisles established by the building for the Great Exhibition was widely imitated, as was the idea of the exhibition itself. The Edinburgh contractor C. D. Young & Co. supplied columns and other cast ironwork for the Irish Industrial Exhibition in Dublin in 1853, designed and built the temporary Museum of Art and Science building at Kensington Gore in 1856 93 and the Manchester Art Treasures Exhibition building in 1857. 94 The Manchester building, with an arched hall (span 102 ft) 704 ft in length, was offered for sale but there were no buyers and it was sold for scrap. In the post-Crimean War depression the many bankruptcies included Fox, Henderson & Co., crippled by a £70 000 loss on the Danish Railways. 95 Of the former staff of Fox, Henderson & Co., it was Rowland Ordish who made the greatest contribution to the further development of structural ironwork. He had been involved in the preparation of drawings successively for buildings for the Great Exhibition, Birmingham New Street Station roof, and the Crystal Palace. 96 In Copenhagen with Fox, Henderson & Co. in mid-1855, probably in connection with their ill-fated Danish Railways work, he left the firm before it failed and in January 1856 he was chief draughtsman at Somerset House, in the Director of Works Department of the Admiralty under Colonel Greene. 97 It is not known if he had any input to the detailing of Greene’s famous iron-framed boat store at Sheerness, though interestingly Fox, Henderson & Co. had obtained the contract for extending an existing boathouse there in mid1856. 98 In March 1858 Ordish became an engineer in private practice and in the following month patented an improved suspension bridge. The Albert Bridge over the Thames at Chelsea is a modified form of the patented bridge designed by Ordish and built by Andrew Handyside & Co. 99 with Arthur 328 Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 As a structural ironwork designer and detailer, Ordish found a professional home in the Society of Engineers, becoming its President in 1860. 102 He was in partnership first for a short period with a Mr Dewdney (probably the same who sailed for North America in March 1859 and later became LieutenantGovernor of British Columbia 103 ). A more fruitful partnership was with W. H. Le Feuvre, at offices in London at 18 Great George Street, where they had the structural ironwork contractor Charles Young as a next-door neighbour. 104 An Ordish obituary recorded ‘the number of pupils, foreign as well as English, who have passed through his office, and the majority of whom have since made their mark in positions of trust and importance’. 105 Without formal professional training, Ordish was an intuitive designer who appreciated the facility in structural analysis possessed by young German engineers. One of them, Carl von Wessely, presented a paper to the Society of Engineers that, in effect, catalogued the iron arch roofs by Ordish and explained the basis of their design. 88 The resistance to spread of the arch roof over the Winter Garden at the 1865 Dublin Exhibition, with ironwork by R. & J. Rankin of Liverpool, depended on flying buttresses and rigidly framed side bays without diagonal bracing (Fig. 16). 106, 107 The building was taken down and re-erected in enlarged and modified form in London near Battersea Park in 1884, to the designs of Bell, Miller & Bell. 108 Derby Market Hall, completed in 1866, but with side galleries and remedial tying added since, Fig. 16. Dublin Exhibition Building Winter Palace (1865, 50 ft 6 in. (15.39 m) main roof span). (Source: Humber, 107 detail from Plate 24) Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh the elaborate calculations for seven weeks. 113 Defending the design of the building against a critic, am Ende explained what might otherwise be a puzzling feature: ‘the reason why the engineers did not place the abutment frame under the springing of the arch is that this space was wanted for the visitors to the hall’. 114 As a result of an analytical investigation of column moments due to frame action and unequal or ‘pattern’ loading on the gallery girders, the columns were detailed as pin-ended. Fig. 17. Market Hall, Derby (1866, 86 ft 6 in. (26.36 m) main roof span) is an excellent surviving example of the work of the Ordish and Le Feuvre partnership (Fig. 17). 109 The last of the great iron arched halls, and the most sophisticated in structural engineering terms, is Olympia (170 ft span), completed in 1888 as the second National Agricultural Hall (Fig. 18). 110 The ironwork contractors were Andrew Handyside & Co., as they had been in 1862 for the Agricultural Hall in Islington, now the Business Design Centre. 111 As joint engineers, former Ordish assistants Arthur Walmisley and Max am Ende published separate accounts of aspects of the building design. 112 Stresses in the statically indeterminate roof arch and braced side bays were determined using the principle of work, with am Ende’s assistant engineer Mr L. Mertens labouring over 7. VARIATIONS ON A BOWSTRING THEME Resurgence in station roof building came in the early 1860s as the fortunes of railway companies revived and lines were extended into central London. For the long-span roofs at Cannon Street 115 (190 ft span) and Charing Cross (166 ft span), John Hawkshaw, the Engineer for the South Eastern Railway, followed the Birmingham New Street bowstring truss pattern. 116 Joseph Phillips acted again in the role he had played for Fox, Henderson & Co. at Birmingham, taking charge of site erection works for the ironwork contractors Cochrane & Co. On high masonry walls, these roofs were not regarded as things of beauty and by 1903 were considered a maintenance liability. 111 On 5 December 1905, with a repair and maintenance gang at work on the Charing Cross roof, a principal tie failed and six people were killed in the resultant progressive collapse. 117 The tie had failed at a scarf weld between the plain round bar and a threaded end (Fig. 19). Following a painstaking examination of the bar, William Kirkaldy concluded that the failure of the 412 in. diameter bar had been the result of an internal manufacturing flaw that could not have been detected by surface examination. This disturbing finding led to the speedy replacement of the Charing Cross roof with a simple construction of ridge and furrow roof on trusses and to the installation of additional ties to several other station roofs, including that at Birmingham New Street. 118 Fig. 18. Olympia, Kensington, London (1886, 190 ft (57.91 m) main roof span). (Source: Walmisley, 110 details combined from Plates 65 and 66) Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh 329 Fig. 19. Charing Cross Station (1864, 166 ft (50.60 m) span). Details of tie bar defects found after collapse. (Source: Pringle 117 ) Manchester Piccadilly Station has a fine surviving train shed roof of the bowstring truss type, the two easternmost spans of which (95 ft each) were completed in 1866 by R. & J. Rankin (Fig. 20). A partial collapse of the roof during construction is of particular interest for background information given about its design and construction in the report of Captain Tyler, the Inspector for the Board of Trade. At the planning stage, the engineers for the two railway companies who shared use of the station disagreed on the number of spans. Sacré, for the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway Company, preferred a single span and Baker, for the London & North Western Railway, preferred a double span. The matter was referred to a third engineer, Thomas Harrison, whose preference of two spans was adopted, with agreement that a fourth engineer, William Dempsey, should be instructed to prepare the quantities and drawings for the work. A fifth engineer, Lewis Moorsom, 119 was involved in some aspects of the station remodelling but denied any involvement in the design of roof. Dempsey had over 25 years’ structural ironwork experience: he had spent ten years with Fox, Henderson & Co., four years with Bramah Cochrane & Co., two with Robert Stephenson on the Britannia Bridge and the remainder as an independent consulting engineer. 120 Erection of the roof was not supervised by any of these engineers, but by local architects Mills and Murgatroyd, already involved on site in connection with other works. At Liverpool Lime Street, the Darlaston Iron and Roofing Company replaced Richard Turner’s pioneering roof with two warren-braced bowstring spans (Fig. 21). The designs of the first of these great roofs at least was to the approval of William Baker, Engineer for the London and North Western Railway, but some research is needed to determine who worked out the roof details, given Baker’s known efficiency at delegating design work. 121 The principal ties or bottom chords to each span comprise multiple eye-bars or links, one of which ‘with an amended form of weld’ was tested for Baker by David Kirkaldy in 1870 (Fig. 22). 122 Precision instrumented testing was in its infancy and Kirkaldy as its leading exponent provided a means for experimental verification of design details that had not previously been available. At the time this was not universally appreciated and in a letter accompanying the report of the test results for the links, Kirkaldy felt moved to write that for four years he had been ‘subjected to a great deal of annoyance, persecution, and pecuniary loss from the 330 Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Fig. 20. Manchester Piccadilly Station (1866, two spans at 94 ft 3 in. (28.72 m), c. 1881 two shorter spans added) Fig. 21. Liverpool Lime Street Station (c. 1875, 195 ft (59.44 m) max. span) ignoble and underhand proceedings of ‘‘the Steel Committee’’, alias a ‘‘Committee of Civil Engineers’’, alias ‘‘Messrs. Barlow, Berkley, and Galton’’. . .’ To the later span at Liverpool Lime Street there are four eye-bars per tie, rather than the heavier pair of tie bars apparent to the earlier roof. The drawing for the 1875 roof specifies steel pins and ‘each link of tie bars to be forged solid, without welds’ (Fig. 23). 110 One architectural critic described the Lime Street Station roof as being too low to be impressive and compared it unfavourably with St. Pancras Station train shed, but this is an opinion that few engineers would share. 5 Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh Fig. 22. Liverpool Lime Street Station (c. 1867, 215 ft (66.53 m) max. span). Tie bar link test details. (Source: Kirkaldy 122 ) A simple rationalisation of a braced roof framework is consistent with the thinking of a modern day engineer, using truss analysis to determine which members are in tension and which are in compression. Sometimes this is too simplistic as prestressed tension members were used in iron roofs to a significant extent. Keyed and cottered connections provided a means for tightening tension members to brace roof frameworks although control of the prestressing force was intuitive and not always successful. 123 In the Broad Street Station roof built in the mid-1860s by Andrew Handyside & Co, each principal resembled a queen-post truss but was, as Arthur Walmisley explained, ‘designed to act as a tied arch braced with tension rods’. Another tension-braced bowstring roof fabricated in Britain and apparently erected in Brazil by local labour was recorded in a remarkable early set of construction progress photographs (Figs. 24 and 25). 124 The photographer was commissioned by Charles Vignoles, who as engineer for numerous concurrent railway projects never set foot in Brazil but appointed his son Hutton as Resident Engineer. 125 Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 The roof in Brazil collapsed during construction due to causes unknown, but the failure of a superficially similar and incomplete roof at Huddersfield Station in 1885 was undoubtedly due to a complete lack of wind or stability bracing. 126 From the 1840s onwards, a large number of detailed drawings of structural ironwork for roofs were published. Just one year before the Huddersfield roof collapse, a reviewer of Arthur Walmisley’s book Iron Roofs wrote: ‘design as to type may be here found ready to hand, and the only work left to one called upon to build a roof is judicious modification of any of the roofs, here illustrated, to suit circumstances’. 127 Of Broad Street Station roof, probably the prototype for the Huddersfield roof, Walmisley noted ‘the whole roof is well secured by wind-ties, which the construction here adopted renders especially necessary. . .’ At Huddersfield, although the roof principals were more ‘rational’ than those at Broad Street Station in terms of the arrangement of compression and tension internal bracing members, an engineer acting for one of the accident victims found the struts to be seriously undersized and the ties oversized. 128 As a lesson on the risks of the careless use of standard designs, the case remains relevant today. 8. THE ARCH TIED John Fowler introduced an alternative tied arch arrangement for the two-bay roof for the London, Chatham and Dover Railway at Victoria Station, erected in 1861 by Horseley & Co. (129 ft span). 129 The tie is raised up towards the braced arch rib by inclined suspension rods (Fig. 26). Fowler’s assistant on this and many other major works was William Wilson, another former Fox, Henderson & Co. man. 130 Howard & Ravenhill’s patent tie bars (with bar and eyes rolled in one piece, without welds) were specified for a similar roof built in 1869 at Aberdeen (102 ft span), but since replaced. 131 In 1873 Fowler used the same form again at Liverpool Central Station (160 ft span), but with a circular steel tie of 3 in. diameter—not ‘mild’ steel, given the specified breaking stress of 46 tons/in. 2 (711 N/mm2 ). 99 The largest roof to this pattern, at Glasgow’s Queen Street Station (170 ft span), completed around 1880 and recently refurbished, has a steel tie of 314 in. diameter, with forged ends, and 134 in. diameter steel suspension rods Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh 331 Fig. 23. Liverpool Lime Street Station (c. 1875, 195 ft (59.44 m) max. span). (Source: Walmisley, 110 detail from Plate 37) Fig. 24. Bahia Station, Brazil (c. 1862). Roof during construction. (Source: Vignoles 124 ) (Fig. 27). 110 The 38 m span trusses to the 1878 roof at Bristol Temple Meads Station have a braced curved rib with Polonceau-type bracing beneath. In the 1980s, non-destructive testing of the Bristol Temple Meads roof gave little information on the condition of the 89 mm wrought iron tie bars with 332 Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Fig. 25. Bahia Station, Brazil. Debris from the collapse of the roof. (Source: Vignoles 124 ) scarf-welded ends. A length of tie was removed and tested to destruction, and additional temporary ties were installed as a safety precaution to support the weight of a scaffold slung beneath the roof for repairs and painting. 132 In reporting the refurbishment work, the magazine New Civil Engineer Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh Fig. 28. St. Pancras Station, London (1866, 240 ft (73.15 m) span). (Source: Spon and Byrne, 149 p. 2809) Fig. 26. Victoria Station, London (1862, one 129 ft (39.31 m) roof span, one 127 ft (38.71 m)). Arch rib and wrought iron tie bar details Fig. 27. Queen Street Station, Glasgow (1878, 170 ft (51.81 m) span). Arch rib and steel tie bar details. (Source: Walmisley, 110 detail from Plate 45) unfortunately described the architect Matthew Digby Wyatt as the designer of the roof. In fact, the civil engineer Francis Fox, a former assistant to Brunel, designed the roof to the ‘gothic’ profile required by the architect, and supervised its construction. 133 Britain’s longest single-span iron roof is at the Midland Railway’s St. Pancras Station (span 240 ft), opened in 1868. Here the open webbed arch rib springs from ground level and is tied across within the floor. In January 1866 the journal Engineering produced a drawing by Ordish and Le Feuvre, with William Barlow’s permission, of the still-evolving design (Fig. Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 28). 134 While Barlow as engineer for the railway company had overall design responsibility, he publicly acknowledged that Ordish refined the design and worked out the details for the ironwork fabricated and erected by Butterley & Co. 135, 136 It will be apparent by now that piecing together individual contributions to a design is difficult, particularly with someone like Ordish, an apparently introverted figure who worked out of the limelight on many projects, sometimes for an architect or a structural ironwork contractor. In 1876–77, Andrew Handyside & Co. built two nearly identical arched roofs on similar principles to St. Pancras, one in Glasgow and the other in Manchester. According to his obituary in Engineering, Ordish was involved in the design of Glasgow’s St Enoch’s Square Station (198 ft span), 97 but he gets no mention in a paper on the project by Charles Hogg, the Resident Engineer. 137 Hogg describes John Fowler and James Blair as the engineers, with William Crouch taking over after the death of Blair in mid1876. Some details of the roof were recorded for posterity prior to its demolition in 1973 to make way for a shopping centre. 33 The design of Central Station in Manchester (span 210 ft), 99 now the Greater Manchester Exhibition Centre (Fig. 29), has been attributed both to John Fowler 138 and to the Engineer to the Cheshire Lines Committee, Lewis Moorsom, who almost certainly supervised its construction. 110 9. A DOME FOR THE ARCHITECT? The design of a train shed was the responsibility of the Engineer for the railway company, albeit as a supervisor of others carrying out the detailed work. Architectural input was often confined to a hotel building fronting or alongside the train shed. In contrast, iron domes were usually on top of architect-designed buildings and although various parties might help with the structural details, the architect would generally give little publicity to design contributions by others. Several examples prove this point. The 140 ft diameter domed British Museum Reading Room was conceived by the principal librarian Anthony Panizzi, and completed in 1857 by the builders Baker and Fielder to the detailed design of the architect Sidney Smirke. 139 No engineer’s name is associated with the roof, although some contemporary accounts mention Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh 333 erection the key design requirements, architects were either engaged to add decoration or left to criticise from the sidelines. John Grover, a former Fox, Henderson & Co. employee, assisted Captain Francis Fowke of the Royal Engineers, both an architect and engineer, with the detailed design of the buildings for the International Exhibition of 1862, staged a year later than planned because of political uncertainty in Europe. 141 The buildings included two domes of 163 ft diameter. 142 Again, the problem of roof spread was not properly appreciated prior to construction, and it proved necessary to call in Ordish as a structural ironwork specialist to design bracing to stabilise the distorted iron-framed domes prior to their completion. 143 Fig. 29. Manchester Central Station, now GMEX (1878, 210 ft (64 m) span). Wrought iron arch rib details ‘the assistance of Mr Fielder’. The Leeds Corn Exchange has a spectacular oval domed roof (major axis span about 127 ft), with ironwork by Butler & Co., but no engineer’s name is associated with the design of the roof alongside that of the architect. The 139 ft diameter dome formed with latticed wrought iron ribs at the Royal Devonshire Hospital in Buxton (completed in 1880) is regarded as one of the chief works of the architect Robert Rippon Duke. 140 However, circumstantial evidence points to the involvement of others in its design, including a reference to Buxton Sanatorium in just one of the several obituary notices for Rowland Ordish. The structural ironwork contractors for the Buxton dome were R. & J. Rankin of Liverpool, and it seems quite possible that they were renewing a working relationship with Ordish that had begun at the 1865 Dublin Exhibition, or earlier. The 1851 Exhibition had established a precedent for the engineer-led design and management of construction for large-scale temporary buildings. With economy and prefabrication for rapidity of 334 Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Being ‘from the same stable’ as the earlier exhibition buildings, the engineering aspects of the Royal Albert Hall are better known today than is the case with most public buildings. Francis Fowke died after establishing the design concept for the building, to be succeeded by Colonel Henry Scott, another architect–engineer, who took the work through to completion in 1871. 144 Scott was guided by a committee of advice that included the leading engineers John Hawkshaw and John Fowler. The wrought iron roof, an oval on plan (span 219 ft on the longer axis), was fabricated by the Fairbairn Engineering Company in Manchester, and is superficially a threedimensional version of the bowstring truss roofs formerly at Cannon Street and Charing Cross Stations (Fig. 30). In fact, the structural action is more complex. The feet of the ribs sit in cast iron shoes fixed to a perimeter ring beam, with arching action brought into play by a system of wedges fitted after erection of the ironwork but prior to the covering of the roof (Fig. 31). In 1903 Ewing Matheson wrote that ‘the problem of the roof made a tour round Westminster’, before finding its solution in the hands of Ordish ‘with the co-operation of Max am Ende’. 111 Matheson failed to mention John Grover, whose name appears as designer alongside Ordish in contemporary accounts of the roof, as well as against amendments to some of the original drawings still in the possession of the Royal Albert Hall. Britain lagged behind Europe in the later engineering development of domed roofs, having perhaps led the way with Fig. 30. The Royal Albert Hall (1871, ellipse on plan, 219 ft 4 in. 3 187 ft 1 in. (66.85 m 3 57 m)). Wrought iron roof framework. (Source: Spon and Byrne, 149 p. 2797) Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh Fig. 31. The Royal Albert Hall. Rib foot and cast iron shoe details bridging trusses were used for the 1879 roof Glasgow Central Station (210 ft span): 110 ‘Cunningham, Blyth and Westland being always reluctant to experiment with arches of large span’. 153 The principal trusses sat beneath the valleys in the manner of ‘Paxton’ roofing (Fig. 32). An interesting contemporary variation was used in the expansion of Carlisle’s Citadel Station (155 ft span), like Glasgow Central Station planned by the engineer B. Hall Blyth and built by the Glasgow firm established by William Arrol in 1868. At Carlisle the bridging trusses sit beneath the ridges, with the valleys slung between by balanced cantilever trusses (Fig. 33). The roofed area at Carlisle is now much reduced and at Glasgow Central Station only a small part of the original iron roof remains after successive enlargement and remodelling campaigns that ended in 1890, under George Graham, and in 1906, under Donald Matheson, his successor. 154 the design of early domed conservatories. 145 In his 1866 ICE Presidential address, John Fowler had unfavourably compared the theoretical education of British civil engineers to that of their French and German counterparts. 146 Certainly the latter were proficient in their use of structural analysis and this led to stylistic differences between British and continental structures. This can be illustrated by examination of late 1860s roof designs for gasholders. The wrought iron ‘Schwedler’ dome of 144 ft diameter for a gasholder in Berlin is a clear application of more advanced structural engineering thinking than Thomas Kirkham’s more traditional solution based upon radial trusses for a 228 ft diameter gasholder at the Fulham gasworks. 147, 148 Fowler and his contemporaries believed that British engineers still led the way in practical matters. One large and innovative continental roof by a British engineer is very much an example of design driven by construction practicalities rather than by a desire for ‘structural optimisation’ or minimum weight. For the 1873 Vienna Exhibition, the civil engineer and shipbuilder John Scott Russell provided a huge inverted cone roof of riveted wrought iron plates. 149, 150 The rim of the cone, 344 ft in diameter, was stiffened with a wrought iron box girder and supported on 80 ft tall cast iron columns. 11. THE END OF THE IRON AGE From the late 1880s there was a very rapid shift in the leading industrial nations to the use of mild steel for building purposes instead of wrought iron. Although the adoption of mild steel for structural purposes involved a great shift in technology on the part of the producers, for the designers and fabricators it was ‘business as usual’. Early long spans in structural steel included the main hall of the Mines and Mining Building for 10. THE PARALLEL CHORD TRUSS—ECONOMY PREVAILS From the early 1860s, parallel chord trusses of the kind patented by James Warren in 1848 were shipped overseas in large quantities as prefabricated kits of parts for wrought iron bridges. 79 This new bridge-building technology provided an alternative to the arch for long-span roofs. A second Horsley & Co. roof at Victoria Station, built in 1861 for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway but since replaced, bridged the platforms with deep wrought iron trusses of about 125 ft span, supporting simple trusses at right angles of around 50 ft span. 151 At £17 per 100 sq. ft (‘£17 per square’, to use the abbreviation of the time), Robert Jacomb-Hood’s roof was twothirds of the cost of John Fowler’s adjacent tied arch spans for the London, Chatham & Dover Railway. Fig. 32. Glasgow Central Station under construction (1882, 213 ft 6 in. (65 m) roof span). (Source: Walmisley, 110 Plate 7) Robert Jacomb Hood wrote in 1858 that ‘the greatest advance in station-works during the last few years has been the roofing over, in one span, of the lines and platforms’. 152 He and a number of other railway engineers were not seduced by the attractions of the arch and adopted parallel chord trusses for long-span roofs from the outset. The longest span wrought iron Structures & Buildings 158 Issue SB5 Fig. 33. Carlisle Citadel Station (c1876, 154ft 6in (47 m) span) Development of long-span iron roof structures in Britain Downloaded by [ University of Manchester Library] on [01/12/18]. Copyright © ICE Publishing, all rights reserved. Swailes • Marsh 335 the 1892 Chicago International Exposition (230 ft span). 155 The further development of long-span roof forms from this time took place outside Britain, particularly with the construction of new and larger railway stations in Germany and the United States. As the American architectural historian Carroll Meeks put it, ‘elephantiasis took over every aspect of railroading, including the terminals’. 156 18. 19. 12. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors are grateful for help and advice provided at the Institution of Civil Engineers by the Head Librarian Mike Chrimes and the Archivist Carol Morgan. The notation [JGJ] against references below indicates those found through the John James card index in the ICE Archives. Dr Ron Fitzgerald of Structural Perspectives Ltd and Lawrance Hurst of Hurst, Peirce & Malcolm have provided useful information on ironframed domes. The authors have gained access to several interesting roof spaces by taking part in visits organised by the Institution of Structural Engineers History Study Group and by the Newcomen Society. REFERENCES 1. TYLECOTE R. F. The Prehistory of Metallurgy in the British Isles. The Institute of Metals, London, 1986, pp. 165–167. 2. RAISTRICK A. Dynasty of Ironfounders: The Darbys and Coalbrookdale. Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1953. 3. INCE L. The Boulton and Watt Engine and the British Iron Industry; Wilkinson Studies, vol. 2. Merton Priory Press, London, 1992, pp. 81–89. 4. BARKER R. John Wilkinson and the Paris Water Pipes; Wilkinson Studies, vol. 2. Merton Priory Press, London, 1992, pp. 57–76. 5. PEVSNER N. 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