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The Soul of Iron and its Revelation in Construction

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DOI: 10.1515/9783035622317-005

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LANGUAGES OF CONSTRUCTION

The soul of iron and its revelation in construction

Bill Addis

The soul of a material

The idea that a material has a soul often underlies a sculptor’s or a jeweller’s purpose [ 1]. Many traditional
craftsmen in the construction industry – stone masons, carpenters, metalsmiths – also talk of their feelings
about a material – an intimate understanding of its properties, what it is capable of, its strengths, its limits.
One of the very few engineers who has articulated his feeling for materials, and his constant aim to express
the inner nature or soul of the materials he worked with, was the Irish engineering Peter Rice, one of the
engineers who crafted the Centre Pompidou in Paris, with its huge, cast-steel gerberettes, for example [ 2].

A construction material communicates something of its inner characteristics when observed by someone. Just
what it may communicate will vary according to who is observing. To an architect, a material used in a
building may convey solidity, delicacy, hardness, softness, brightness, colour. To a craftsman or engineer, it
can convey these things also but, in addition, it will convey something about how the material was formed
into its final shape, how one piece is connected to another, how it performs its structural duty, and how it is
used in combination with other materials. These four types of characteristic set the structure for this paper.

How iron is made and formed into components

Iron became commercially viable for widespread use in construction during the 19th century only because of
the ever-increasing quality and quantity of iron made for the manufacture of all the artefacts that fuelled the
Industrial Revolution – water wheels, machine tools, factory machinery, steam engines and boilers. However,
there were two qualities of iron that particularly attracted builders and engineers to use it in buildings as a
replacement for traditional construction materials. They were its high stiffness and strength in compression
and tension, and its resistance to fire, especially compared to timber and masonry. Gradually, during the
period between about 1750 and 1860, iron came to replace traditional materials for each structural element of
a building – the walls, floors, foundations, facades and roofs, as well as to provide overall stability and
resistance to wind loads.

Before considering the way iron has been used, which give clues to its soul, it is important to understand the
physical and engineering properties of the material. The iron that has been used in buildings at different
periods of history was one of three alloys of the chemical element, iron, combined with different proportions
of carbon, from nearly zero to about 4%. It is truly remarkable how minute differences in the quantity of
carbon affects the mechanical and chemical properties of the resulting alloys (Table 1). Most significant is that
wrought iron and steel are both ductile and equally strong in tension and compression, while cast iron is brittle
and relatively weak in tension. The dates of their first use reflect the times when progressively higher furnace
temperatures were first achieved.
Table 1. Properties of the principal alloys of iron.

Table 1 Wrought iron Grey Cast Mild steel

Iron

Proportion of carbon % 0.02 - 0.05 2.5 - 4.0 0.2 - 1.0

Temperature to manufacture Deg C 1000 1130-1200 1500
First use in Europe c.1500 BC 14th C mid-19th C
First use in European c.500 BC 1770s 1870s
buildings
Fracture behaviour Ductile Brittle Ductile
Tensile strength N/mm2 280-370 120 350-450
Compressive strength N/mm2 240-310 600-800 350-450
Stiffness (Young's modulus) kN/mm2 155-220 85-90 210
Castability - Very good Good
Corrosion resistance Good Very good Poor
Internal structure Fibrous Crystalline Amorphous
Weldability Possible Difficult Very good

Cast iron

The process of casting had been used since ancient times for large bronze artefacts and was used for making
canon in the 14th century, first of bronze and soon of cast iron as a cheaper alternative. First a full-size model
of the artefact is made in wood, called the pattern. This is embedded in sand and the mould is split at pre-
determined places to allow the pattern to be removed. Molten metal is poured into the void through holes
made for the purpose and entrapped air is allowed to escape through other holes.

Ancient founders had also devised the technique for producing partially-hollow components such as large pots
and statues. Inside the large void which defines the outside surface of the artefact is placed a core of clay, held
in place by a few clay or metal supports. This leaves a thin void between the inside surface of the mould and
the outside of the core. After casting, the core was chipped out using hammer and chisel. There was thus
nothing new about the technology needed to produce the first building components made of cast iron in the
late eighteenth century.

The advantage of the casting process is that it is possible to make nearly any shape you want. It is also very
easy to make many identical components using the same wooden pattern. This quickly encouraged engineers
to seek effective ways of ensuring they were using as little iron as possible and the shapes of columns and
beams soon corresponded to their structural duty.

As furnace technology was improved so the price of cast iron came down and it began to be used for non-
military applications from the late 17th century including agricultural implements and domestic items such as
cooking pots and fire backs. Perhaps the earliest use of cast iron as a structural material was in 1752 in the
Cistercian monastery at Alcobaça near Lisbon, not far distant from the Portuguese navy’s canon foundry. Six
columns, 1.8 metres tall and 180 mm in diameter, support wrought-iron beams 2.75 m long and 140mm deep,
on which is built a brick chimney some 12 metres tall [ 3]. However, this was an isolated example and the
mainstream use of cast iron began only in the 1790s in the English Midlands.

These various processes lead to visible characteristics in iron components which can be recognised or read by
someone who understands these processes. And it is up to the designer of the components to decide whether
the characteristics are deliberately accentuated to make them more visible or, perhaps, played down to hide or
disguise them. Ultimately, these characteristics are the clues to the soul of the cast iron and, in turn, they also
vary according to the particular method of casting, as well as when it was made):
 the shapes and sizes that can be made by casting – volume, thickness, length, the nature of curves,
hollow sections, etc.;
 the surface texture, depending on the type of mould (different sands, clay, free surface);
 the sharpness of detail, depending on the viscosity of the liquid iron;
 evidence of fettling;
 the three-dimensional and sculptural qualities of cast iron components (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Detail of cast-iron foundation for aqueduct, Longdon-on-Tern, 1796. Engineer: Thomas
Telford.
Figure #1 Source: Bill Addis

Wrought iron

Until the late 18th century wrought-iron components were made using forging hammers, hand held or driven
by water wheels. Short lengths of bar could be forge-welded together to make longer bars. The first rolling
mills, powered by water, were made in Sweden in the 1750s to produce square and rectangular sections.
Within a few decades wrought-iron plates of a square metre or so in size could be rolled and joined using
rivets to make the boilers for steam engines.

Rolled wrought-iron sections for use in the construction industry, in the form of an L or a T, were first made
in the mid-1840s. by riveting together lengths of these sections together with flat plates, large girders and
columns could be built up to form an I-section or a rectangular box section. This technique remained the
standard practice using wrought iron and, from the 1870s, steel, right up to the early 1900s when large rolled
I-sections became available.
The various means of producing wrought iron led to its characteristic appearance, sizes and shapes:
 the various shapes and sizes made by hand forging / machine forging / mill rolling;
 the surface texture – hammer and tool marks, grain (from a rolling mill);
 radii of curvature achieved by bending or from the rolling mill;
 the sharpness of detail such as reentrant angles.

How iron components are connected

Cast iron

When used in compression (in arches) adjacent components could simply by geometrical interlocking. When
some resistance to rotation or tension was needed, a dovetail might be used, such as in the Iron Bridge at
Coalbrookdale (1779), or an interlocking method, made tight using wedges (Figure 2). The latter method was
used at the Crystal Palace (1850-51) for connecting the cast iron girders to the column (Figure 3). From the
1820s bolts had become more common in iron machines and their use was soon adopted in construction.
Being very brittle, cast-iron components were hardly ever connected using rivets since the hammering impact
during riveting was likely to fracture the cast-iron component. For two rare exceptions, see Figure 10, below.

Figure 2. Detail of roof truss, Custom House, Dublin, c.1820. Engineer John Rennie. Cast-iron
diagonals in compression; vertical and horizontal wrought iron ties in tension.
Figure #2 Source: Bill Addis
Figure 3. Detail of connection between cast-iron girder and column. Wedges of either oak or cast iron
(small, diamond-shapes labelled T) were made tight using hammers. Column sections above and below the
connector section were fixed using four (wrought-iron) bolts with nuts.
Figure #3 Source: Addis 2006.

Wrought iron

Wrought iron is ductile and become much more ductile when heated to a red heat – 500-600°C. Forge welding
of short wrought-iron pieces was mainly used since Roman times to create long members of relatively small
cross section for use as ties for many purposes and, from the 1750s, in roof trusses [ 4]. From the mid-
eighteenth century, the forging was often carried out using water-powered forges and, from the 1820s, using
steam-powered forges [5]. Each process left its own imprint on the iron.

The riveting of iron plate developed from the mid-eighteenth century with the growing use of iron boilers for
steam engines. Holes were punched in the iron plate and perhaps hand-reamed to make a more precise hole.
Rivets were heated to a red heat, placed in the hole and hammered by hand ( Figure 4). A hand-closed rivet
bears the signs of this process. From the 1840s hydraulic riveting machines were developed which forged the
rivet to form a standard, smooth surface which conveyed an image that was different from a hand-closed rivet.
Nevertheless, many locations were not suitable for hydraulic riveting and hand riveting survived until the
twentieth century [6].
Figure 4. Riveting wrought-iron boilers for a ship, c.1850.
Figure #4 Source: Abbott 1851, 727.

How iron is suited to different structural actions and forms

Cast iron

Iron was very expensive and from the earliest day, in the 1770s, there was considerable economic advantage
in using as little as possible. This was different from the traditional materials – stone and timber – which iron
replaced, both of which were cut down to size, rather than built up from (theoretically) nothing [ 7]. The great
advantage of cast iron was that it could be made into any shape, in particular, the most efficient shape. The
very earliest uses of cast iron in the 1770s, for example in stationary steam engines and rails for wheeled
trucks, have structural forms entirely unknown in traditional materials, and must have appeared very unusual.
It would be more than a decade later when such forms were used in buildings or bridges and put on show to
the public and non-mechanical engineers [8].

Being very strong in compression and relatively weak in tension, cast iron was best suited for columns, and
for voussoir arches such as the many elegant bridges by Thomas Telford. The earliest columns in the 1790s
were of solid round sections or of a cruciform section, both being easy to cast. By 1800 the technique for
casting hollow columns had been developed and circular hollow sections – a more efficient structural cross
section – began to be used; these also had the advantage of being used to distribute steam through the building
for heating and cleaning purposes. The first H-shaped column section was not built until the mid-1840s
(Figure 5a). This chain of development illustrates how engineers came to learn how best to use this new
construction material – how to understand and reveal its soul.

Figure 5. Evolution of sections of (a) (top) cast-iron columns and (b) (bottom) beams, c.1785-1845.
Figure #5 Source: Addis 2013.

When used for a beam, cast-iron could be cast as a structurally-efficient shape, reflecting the bending moment
diagram in the longitudinal elevation, and with the lower (tension) flange of the beam thicker than the upper
(compression) flange. The structural ironwork from Armley Mill (1803) is typical of its day. It has a hog-
backed beam with an inverted-T section. In plan, the sides are parallel. As well as giving a structurally
efficient form to the beam, the casting includes also the means by which two adjacent beams are linked at
their ends. Each beam spans between two columns and each beam has a C-shaped cup locates with the circular
column. The beams are tied together by a wrought-iron ring that fits over a D-shaped spigot on each beam.
Furthermore the casting includes three holes on the upper side into which wrought-iron ties between parallel
beams are fixed, and also two brackets to which pulleys or shaft bearings, forming part of the system by
which mechanical power is distributed throughout the factory, are fixed using bolts (Figure 6). It will also be
noted that the cast iron column has bespoke forms at each end, for the footing and location of the column
above, as well as intricate details for supporting the beams, and a cast-in outlet pipe and flanged end to enable
the steam distributed through the columns to be tapped off for use on the factory floor. Such components were
an entirely new concept in building construction and revealed the nature of the new material in every detail
and, not least, in their overall size, being much smaller than the timber equivalents that would have been used
a decade earlier.
Figure 6. Armley Mill, Leeds, 1803. Structural ironwork.
Figure #6 Source: Fitzgerald 1988, 132.

Between about 1795 and 1830, the cross sections of beams were a variety of quite-efficient inverted T or Y
sections. Nevertheless, some engineers were feeling that the properties of cast iron could be exploited even
more effectively. One type of development was to improved the quality of the iron to achieve greater strength
and, in particular, to remove the inclusion of particles of impurities in the iron which could initiate a fracture
at a stress much lower that the full strength. Also motivated by the need for economy, William Fairbairn and
Eaton Hodgkinson conducted a large number of tests on many different forms of beam during the 1820s,
culminating with what they called the ‘rational beam’ [ 9] (Figure 5b).

The resulting structural ironwork for a factory was noticeably more economical (around 30%) (Figure 7). The
beams, especially, were more slender and, for the first time, were thickened towards mid-span in plan view –
this to resist the lateral loads that could be imposed by the brick arches, especially during construction or in
the event that a brick arch collapsed, and would resist any tendency to lateral buckling due to overloading of
the beam. The cross section of the beam was an I-section – indeed the first I-section – with an upper flange, to
resist lateral bending and buckling, and with a lower (tension) flange six times the area of the upper
(compression) flange, reflecting the ratio of compressive to tensile strength of cast iron.
Figure 7. Orrell’s Mill, 1834. Structural ironwork with Fairbairn / Hodgkinson ‘Rational beam’.
Figure #7 Source: Fitzgerald 1988, 141.

Wrought iron

The wrought-iron tie revolutionised roof trusses and led to the introduction of a new vocabulary and a new
language of structures – the statically-determinate structure – in which all members act either in pure tension
or pure compression, and the connections between them are pin joints which ensures that no bending could
arise in the truss members. Apart from the new lexicon of details, the very lightness of the structures were a
great contrast with traditional timber roof structures.

For columns and girders, the versatility of the riveting process was astonishing. Even knowing how it was
done, it is today hardly possible to imagine the effort and skill involved in achieving many riveted structures
from the nineteenth century. Using the riveting process, it was possible to make an almost infinite variety of
shapes, from an I- or H-shaped cross section up to a few metres deep, to a fish-belly girder of almost any size
from a few metres in length, to many tens of metres. Again, this was an entirely new language of structures,
which first became familiar to the public in railway stations from the 1840s. It also led to spans of
unprecedented size such as Fairbairn and Stephenson’s Britannia bridge (1845-49) which had two main spans
of 140 metres (Figure 8).
Figure 8. Detail of riveted wrought-iron box girder for the Britannia Bridge, 1848. Engineers: William
Fairbairn / Robert Stephenson.
Figure #8 Source: Clarke 1850, 937.

How iron is used in combination with other materials

As already noted, iron is usually used in combination with other materials. Neither cast nor wrought iron by
themselves fulfil the performance requirements of bridges or buildings. Just as the inner characteristics of iron
are expressed in the components for which they are used, so too their characteristics are conveyed implicitly
in how they are used in combination.

A common example which reflects the inner characteristics of both cast and wrought iron was to use the two
materials in combination, making best use of the best characteristics of each. The weakness of cast iron in
tension was combined with the strength in tension of wrought iron, both in roof structures (Figure 2) in a long-
span, or heavily loaded beams (Figures 9 and 10). This combined use became a fundamental aspect of the
language of iron construction from the early 1800s until the 1860s when cast iron fell out of use for most
applications, because of its weakness in tensions and, in particualr, it brittleness.
Figure 9. Cast-iron beam, reinforced with wrought-iron trussing roofs. Warehouse, Portsmouth
dockyard, 1844. Span 11.8 metres, 84 cm deep, bottom flange 33 cm. Wrought-iron trussing rods 11 cm by 5
cm.
Figure #9 Source: Bill Addis.

Figure 10. Cast-iron beams reinforced with wrought-iron, c.1845.

Figure #10 Source: Bill Addis.

A similar structural combination involving both cast and wrought iron was the common use of both materials
together with timber in a wide variety of roof structures [ 10]. An equally common combination of materials
was found in the iron (mainly wrought iron) and glass structures that characterised much construction in the
1820s to 1900s – including countless glass houses, railway stations, museums, covered shopping arcades,
early glazed facades, such as the Crystal Palace in London [ 11]. The use of glass to enable iron to be used to
create the building envelope demonstrates equally the inner characterises -the soul – of both iron and glass.

Each of the many combinations of cast and wrought iron with other materials – timber, glass, brick, stone,
concrete – developed its own unique language of structural design, with its own vocabulary of details, and
forms of individual components and whole structures.
What drove these developments in the UK?

It is, finally, worth reflecting on what drove these various new developments in using iron, from its modern
beginnings in the 1750s to its full maturity in the 1880s. Fundamentally, it was, first of all, to provide
structures with improved properties – greater strength and stiffness, longer spans, new functions (e.g. the non-
loadbearing building envelope). There were also other benefits, including resistance to fire and corrosion,
economic manufacture of identical components, by means of casting and the many industrial processes
developed for wrought iron. Deliberately expressing the characteristics – the soul – of the materials only
developed as users learned about the new material and took it, so to speak, to new places undiscovered by
uses of the traditional materials which iron replaced. In the transitions from the older technologies to the
newer ones, we see patterns familiar in other design revolutions [ 12].

Conclusion

All materials have their characteristics that their users are able to exploit for function reasons and to learn to
use part of a design aesthetic, sometimes personal, sometimes. As Wittgenstein so clearly showed us, the
words, syntax and grammar of a language earn their status and meaning by virtue of how they are used, used
in a language game – they have no independent existence [ 13]. So also with construction languages. The
purpose of language is to communicate, and the precise nature of the language depends on who is
communicating what and to whom. In the case of architects and their buildings, they are primarily
communicating with the users of the building, by means of space, materials, colour and so on. The are also
communicating to a more-technically educated observer who will better understand the historical and
contextual aspects of a design. In the case of constructors and engineering designers it is often less obvious
any meaning’ or soul is being communicated; often it may be to other constructors and engineering designers.
Many non-technical observers are likely not to be aware of the significance of exactly what they are seeing in,
for example, a trussed cast-iron beam, as in Figure 9. But the messages are there, none the less, for those able
to read them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbott 1851
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construction of marine steam-engines of the largest class, Harper's New Monthly Magazine II (XII), May
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W. Addis: Structural Engineering - the Nature of Theory and Design (Chichester 1990).

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B. Addis: Building: 3000 years of Design, Engineering and Construction (London & New York 2007).

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Lauriks 2012
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List of image captions

Figure 1. Detail of cast-iron foundation for aqueduct, Longdon-on-Tern, 1796. Engineer: Thomas Telford.
Figure 2. Detail of roof truss, Custom House, Dublin, c.1820. Engineer John Rennie. Cast-iron diagonals
in compression; vertical and horizontal wrought iron ties in tension.
Figure 3. Detail of connection between cast-iron girder and column. Wedges of either oak or cast iron
(small, diamond-shapes labelled T) were made tight using hammers. Column sections above
and below the connector section were fixed using four (wrought-iron) bolts with nuts.
Figure 4. Riveting wrought-iron boilers for a ship, c.1850.
Figure 5. Evolution of sections of (a) (top) cast-iron columns and (b) (bottom) beams, c.1785-1845.
Figure 6. Armley Mill, Leeds, 1803. Structural ironwork.
Figure 7. Orrell’s Mill, 1834. Structural ironwork with Fairbairn / Hodgkinson ‘Rational beam’.
Figure 8. Detail of riveted wrought-iron box girder for the Britannia Bridge, 1848. Engineers: William
Fairbairn / Robert Stephenson.
Figure 9. Cast-iron beam, reinforced with wrought-iron trussing roofs. Warehouse, Portsmouth dockyard,
1844. Span 11.8 metres, 84 cm deep, bottom flange 33 cm. Wrought-iron trussing rods 11 cm
by 5 cm.
Figure 10. Cast-iron beams reinforced with wrought-iron, c.1845.

List of image sources

Figure #1 Source: Bill Addis

Figure #2 Source: Bill Addis
Figure #3 Source: Addis 2006.
Figure #4 Source: Abbott 1851, 727.
Figure #5 Source: Addis 2013.
Figure #6 Source: Fitzgerald 1988, 132.
Figure #7 Source: Fitzgerald 1988, 141.
Figure #8 Source: Clarke 1850, 937.
Figure #9 Source: Bill Addis.
Figure #10 Source: Bill Addis.

References
 1 Rücklin 1897; Siepmann-Wéber 2004; Gentille 2009.
2 Rice 1994; Addis 1994, 116-128.
3 Addis 2007, 246-247.
4 (cross reference to Sasha’s paper on Russian iron roofs); Addis 2007, 254-258, 309-313.
5 Abbot 1851.
6 Collette 2014.
7 Addis 2010.
8 Addis 2013.
9 Hodgkinson 1831. Skempton 1956. Addis 2013.
10 Espion (et al.) 2018; Vandenebeele 2018.
11 Guedes 2008; Sutherland 1997; Thorne 1997.; Lauriks 2012.
12 Addis 1990; Addis 2003.
13 Addis 1990, 60-72.

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