Dorset’s corrugated iron buildings are celebrated in a new book, Faith Eckersall reports

There’s a strange thing about tin buildings. Once you’ve had the first one pointed out to you, you start to see them everywhere. Michael Russell Wood certainly does. So much so that he’s written a book about them: Dorset’s Legacy in Corrugated Iron.

“It just crept up on me,” he confesses.

“It started with the so-called Tin Tabernacle, St Saviours at Dottery near Bridport, and I was talking to people about that and it inspired me to do something about it.”

And what he did was photograph as many of the county’s corrugated iron buildings as possible, travelling the length and breadth of Dorset capturing homes, barns, churches, village halls and even a retired hospital on camera.

The idea of building in corrugated iron came after Henry Robinson Palmer patented the stuff in June 1829 and a French engineer worked out how to make it rust-proof by galvanising it with zinc.

Uber-architects like the great Augustus Pugin derided them but engineers soon realised they could build relatively vast spaces and manufacturers realised they could prepare kits to be shipped abroad and thrown up in the colonies to create instant schools, churches or offices for bureaucrats.

Michael’s favourite is the Mission Hall at Highwood near Wool, which is on private land. “It was intended to be a place of worship for farm labourers of the immediate area who could not easily get to the parish church at East Stoke,” he explains.

“Now it’s still charming, it’s been carefully restored by a private owner and he’s made a beautiful job of it, it’s a sweet building.”

Corrugated iron appears to have been the material of choice for many a new church builder and constructor of village halls, with Ibberton boasting a particularly fine example, all painted in a tasteful sagey-grey, although Michael’s book also shows a splendid construction at Evershot. And then there are the one-offs, like the Isolation Hospital and Nurses Bungalow off Soldiers Road at Arne, whose patients once included the 1930s novelist R F Delderfield, but are now National Trust holiday homes.

Chettle Stores gets an honourable mention, as does the Museum Inn at Farnham, almost as famous for its black and white tin extension as its cuisine.

But, for sheer beauty, can anything top the magnificent Colonial House at Sherborne, whose elegant, verandahed facade is redolent of Barbados or Jamaica?

“I do love that one, “admits Michael. “Its owners love it too and have done it up with such care.”

  • Dorset’s Legacy In Corrugated Iron is £12 from The Book Shop, South St, Bridport or direct post free from the author’s website dorset-legacy.co.uk