The Economist - USA (2021-12-18)

The Economist December 18th 2021 Holiday specials 13

corrugatediron

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own the deep lanes that lead to Dartmoor’s gran-

ite uplands, in England's West Country, a weather-

beaten gap has grown in the hedge marking a Saxon

field boundary. One day this winter a battered sheet of

corrugated iron appeared, lodged in the gap as if it had

blown in. In reality, the middle-aged brothers who

farm nearby are probably responsible: their sheep

have a habit of busting into others’ fields. In the chill-

ing wind the sheet quivers, like a living thing.

Rusted corrugated iron melds with autumn’s russet

colours, just as the corrugated roofs of nearby barns sit

comfortably in Dartmoor’s weather-worn landscape.

For decades, corrugated iron has been used by farmers

for lambing sheds, shepherds’ huts, shelter for farm

machinery and much more.

Too often, corrugated iron (in fact, more usually,

steel) goes ignored. Tastemakers have looked down on

it, though that is changing. Invented in the early 19th

century, its spread represents a revolution that is play-

ing out still, on a global scale. Sheets of corrugated iron

marked the first wide-scale building material that did

not spring from what lay, in terms of stone, clay and

timber, around. It represented the first widespread use

of steel in buildings. Corrugated iron is light, and easy

to transport and assemble. That enabled the first mass

production of prefabricated buildings—introducing

the flat-packable concept a century before ikea.

From the mid-19th century, some of the biggest

waves of human migration and settlement were indi-

visible from the corrugated iron that people often

brought with them. The metal enabled life in places

that were otherwise inhospitable because of climate,

terrain or paucity of local materials for shelter. It is,

The rise and rise of an unfairly ignored building material