Heavenly metal: London’s railings
Harry Mount tours the Tottenham factory that’s replaced miles of railings ripped out of 40 London squares during the war
David Sugarman has changed the face of London. In the past 23 years, his family-owned factory has returned elegant railings to no fewer than 40 London squares. David, 61, has built gates for the Royal Albert Hall and Buckingham Palace and installed balustrades at the back of Downing Street to conceal Tony Blair’s air-conditioning unit.
This summer, his company, Metalcraft, set up in 1960 by his father Lewis Sugarman, has made copies of John Nash’s 1817 railings round St James’s Square. He’s also erected railings around Gloucester Square and Hyde Park Square for their owner, the Church Commissioners. When I visit his factory in Tottenham in north London, he’s in the middle of recreating the railings around Hanover Square.
Those four jobs alone involved over 900 yards of beautiful, period-style railings returned to the city. In his career, David has laid miles and miles of railings around our loveliest garden squares.
The original railings were crazily ripped out during the war, in an admirable, doomed attempt to melt them down to be made into munitions to help the war effort. In 1941, in St James’s Square (pictured, opposite), the railings were replaced by a wooden fence, William III’S statue was removed for safe-keeping and the Auxiliary Fire Service dug up the square for vegetables.
‘The iron wasn’t of the right quality,’ says David. ‘So they were dumped – some say in the North Sea.’
After the war, dull, utilitarian railings were installed in St James’s Square. When Metalcraft installs new railings, the old ones are resold, stored, reused by the client elsewhere or recycled.
Sugarman, a civil engineer, took over his father’s business in 1987. In 1997, he installed the company’s first railings in
Bramham Gardens in Earl’s Court.
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea then commissioned his railings for Bina Gardens, Bolton Gardens and Gledhow Gardens. Commissions started to pour in. Metalcraft has now made and fitted more railings around more London squares and gardens than any other British company.
The railings projects for the squares tend to cost around half a million pounds each and take six months to install. The railings are made in a process that’s barely changed since John Nash’s railings more than two centuries ago.
Often, all David has to go on is a pre-war photograph of the original railings. At St James’s Square, he copied a single surviving ‘dog rail’ – a short, low rail between the tall railings to keep dogs out. This surviving dog rail was dug up by the square’s gardeners. You can spot it today – it’s the only green rail in the square, surrounded by black railings.
Some pre-war railings survive in other squares, too, particularly where they protected a lightwell and so couldn’t be removed for fear someone might fall in.
The railings vary enormously from square to square. During the Victorian era, there were hundreds of foundries in London and they made thousands of railing features: pineapples, flowers, balls, fleurs-de-lis, artichokes, urns – such as the ones in St James’s Square – and spearheads. David shows me spearheads for railings in Park Crescent by Regent’s Park (pictured, bottom left).
Each railing gets three layers of paint: light grey, dark grey and black. According to legend, railings were painted black in mourning when Prince Albert died at the early age of 42 in 1861. Camden Council bucks the mourning trend – their railings are in Dulux Heritage Green.
Once a photo – or original dog rail – has been located, designs are drawn up in the Tottenham factory and sent to the foundry, Ballantine Castings, in Bo’ness, Scotland. All the components for the railings are manufactured in Britain.
Models of the railings are made in wood and then cast in iron in a sand bed. Thanks to 3D printing, models can also be quickly made in resin. Laser cutting is used for ultra-intricate designs.
The components are then shipped down to London to be assembled in David’s factory.
How thrilling it is to see things actually being made in London by the 26 employees on the 30 jobs that are being done at any one time.
I saw the bases for the Hanover Square railings, in lovely, shiny, new iron. Next to them are 1930s railings, with pretty iron trellises, being restored for the old Nestlé factory, now a residential development in Hayes, west London.
In one corner lie some plainer structures: stairs and Juliet balconies for a Travelodge in Stamford Hill. In another corner are the iron pilasters that will support the period lamps of Hanover Square – these have hollow tubes, so electric wire can run through them.
I watch a welder, careful to avoid ‘arc eye’ from looking at his torch. He’s binding the railings to horizontal holding bars (pictured, top). Another worker hammers panels of railings together.
The length of the railings and the depth of their bases have to be carefully worked out. In St James’s Square, the north end is 24 inches higher than the south end. That has to be taken into account before the railings are slotted into lead-lined mortices in reconstituted Portland Stone bases (made in Leeds). The tops of the railings must be level.
It’s a tricky job, combining heavy metal with a light touch – but David loves it.
‘If those railings hadn’t been ripped out during the war, they could have lasted for hundreds of years more,’ he says. ‘It’s a joy to do work that will last well into my grandchildren’s lifetime.’