The Economist December 18th 2021 Holiday specials 15
east London has passed through the hands of several
denominations. Now the building stands for sale, pre
sumably destined to become homes for hipsters.
After God, in the story of corrugated iron, comes
war. In 1916, halfway through the first world war, a Ca
nadian engineer in the British Army, Peter Nissen,
came up with a halfcylindrical building for billeting
troops or storing equipment. A handful of men could
put up a Nissen hut in four hours, transforming sol
diers’ comfort. In the second world war, a larger ver
sion, the Quonset hut, evolved in America. Hundreds
of thousands were made. Two Nissen huts, joined end
to end, underwent an apotheosis on Scotland’s Orkney
Isles at the hands of Italian prisonersofwar. The Ital
ian Chapel features a rood screen fashioned from steel
reinforcing rods, and lanterns made of cornedbeef
tins. A painted Madonna and Child rise behind the al
tar. The walls and ceiling are covered with trompe l’oeil
depictions of saints and Italian landscapes. The ornate
whole is a masterpiece of suffering willed into hope.
Across the poor world, tin still lies at the heart of in
formal settlements: urbanisation rolls out sheet by
corrugated sheet. As well as representing shelter and
adaptability, corrugated iron serves both as currency
and community glue. Tin has less obvious adapta
tions: leave plastic bottles of water on top of a tin roof,
and the reflected light and radiation will help kill bac
teria in the water. Stick the same bottle through a hole
in a tin roof, and you have an instant solar lamp.
In the rich world, tin has acquired a hipness that ac
knowledges its backstory and its “authenticity”, to
employ a muchabused word, in pursuit of a simpler,
more essential way of living. In particular, a handful of
Australian architects, notably Glenn Murcutt, Richard
Leplastrier and Ken Maher, celebrate the tradition of
corrugated iron in a modern context. Mr Murcutt’s
buildings “touch the earth lightly”, a phrase he bor
rows from ancient aboriginal precepts. Mr Maher’s
Olympic Park Station in Sydney, built to bring specta
tors to the 2000 games, has a spectacular vaulted roof
that pays homage to Australia’s corrugated tradition,
Mr Maher says, while leaving the traveller with a po
werful sense of emerging into the light. A long way
from that quivering sheet in the Dartmoor hedge,but
all the more reason to allow your eye, next time youare
out and about, to settle on the humble, unsung tin.nnational craze for the weekend “bach”, a Kiwi dacha,
was born. Baches are among New Zealand’s most icon
ic buildings—largely because of tin.
Back in Britain, corrugatediron churches for the
new settlements in Australia, Burma, Canada and be
yond were designed to seat hundreds of congregants.
Before shipping, they would be erected to check noth
ing was missing. The occasion was public and festive.
Services and even dances were held inside.
Churches for export also primed a new domestic
market for corrugated churches, chapels and mission
halls. These are Britain’s “tin tabernacles”. The radical
structures were the antithesis of the medieval stone
parish churches that till then had embodied religion,
the English landscape and a paternalistic social order. the ripple effect
Two broad forces were at work. The first was a popula
tion on the move, a consequence of an intense period
of population growth and industrialisation. Poor, rural
classes flocked to new centres of industry and mining.
In the other direction, prospering middle classes
sought distance from satanic mills and miasmic air by
looking to the new suburbs. The demand for new plac
es of worship followed. There was also a moral and so
cial upheaval, typified by improving education, a
growing awareness of class and a wave of religious “re
vivals”. Paternalism was there, in places, but with the
new religiosity came a questioning of the established
church. Iron churches, writes Nick Thomson in “Cor
rugated Iron Buildings”, were the “perfect synthesis of
industrial ability and social or spiritual need”.
The catalogues of the ironmakers were swift to ca
ter to the new trend. Church kits offered gothic win
dows and belfries. They started at under £100 (about
£12,000 ($15,800) today), including shipping to the
nearest railway goods station and erection on ready
made foundations. Landowners and industrialists
were persuaded to part with a scrap of ground, and
within weeks, the structure would be up. The cost per
soul must have seemed a bargain.
In today’s postindustrial age, populations have
moved on again, mainly to exurbia. Many of the sur
viving tin tabernacles float in empty quarters, at a rural
crossroads or under the overgrown boughs of aban
doned orchards. One landmark in Shrubland Road in↓Buenos Aires,
Argentina (left) and
Zeila, Somaliland
After God, in
the story of
corrugated
iron, comes war