Building and wall construction - interpretation of prototype photo

[Mol_PMB]

I'm hoping someone can help me with the interpretaion of a photo to work out the construction of a building and a wall.

 

I am modelling a representation of a real location, selectively compressed.

I've perhaps made it difficult for myself because I have only one photo of the place I'm modelling!

 

I've made good progress on boards, track and scenery and now it's time to start thinking about the backscene and the low-relief buildings. Here is part of the photo of my location:

 

The wall you can see on the left will run along the layout, about 40mm from the backscene. Behind that I would like to represent the large shed in low relief, and some stacks of timber.

 

However, both the wall and the large shed appear to be of unusual construction to my eyes. I'm trying to interpret the photo and struggling a bit because I can't relate them to structures I have seen elsewhere. Can anyone help?

 

 

The Wall:

This looks like a brick wall, but it has verticals on it. Are those concrete posts with bricks between? Or are they timber battens fastened to the bricks? Or something else?

The wall also looks like it has rectangular holes in it, possibly with some sort of lintel across. They're not all at the same height, and one appears to have been crudely increased in size to make a doorway. Am I seeing this right?

 

The Shed:

It looks really odd because all the joints in the cladding line up with each other vertically - that's not normally a strong way to build something.

I am guessing it is a timber-framed building with timber cladding, and it might have been prefabricated in panels.

Does that seem plausible? Has anyone seen examples of buildings with similar construction that I might be able to copy for the details?

For sizing the building, are they likely to be 8-foot planks?

 

The premises was a sawmills, and was built in the mid 1950s. In case you're interested, it's Morgan Wallwork sawmills in Higher Irlam, near Manchester.

 

Here's my rake of timber wagons on the layout, waiting for me to make the wall and sheds!

 

Sorry for the odd question but sometimes many heads are better than one for a puzzle like this. I'm kind of hoping someone will say, 'Oh, there's a building just like than down the road from me'...

 

Many thanks,

Mol

 

 

[Paul H Vigor]

16 minutes ago, Mol_PMB said:

I'm hoping someone can help me with the interpretaion of a photo to work out the construction of a building and a wall.

 

I am modelling a representation of a real location, selectively compressed.

I've perhaps made it difficult for myself because I have only one photo of the place I'm modelling!

 

I've made good progress on boards, track and scenery and now it's time to start thinking about the backscene and the low-relief buildings. Here is part of the photo of my location:

 

The wall you can see on the left will run along the layout, about 40mm from the backscene. Behind that I would like to represent the large shed in low relief, and some stacks of timber.

 

However, both the wall and the large shed appear to be of unusual construction to my eyes. I'm trying to interpret the photo and struggling a bit because I can't relate them to structures I have seen elsewhere. Can anyone help?

 

 

The Wall:

This looks like a brick wall, but it has verticals on it. Are those concrete posts with bricks between? Or are they timber battens fastened to the bricks? Or something else?

The wall also looks like it has rectangular holes in it, possibly with some sort of lintel across. They're not all at the same height, and one appears to have been crudely increased in size to make a doorway. Am I seeing this right?

 

The Shed:

It looks really odd because all the joints in the cladding line up with each other vertically - that's not normally a strong way to build something.

I am guessing it is a timber-framed building with timber cladding, and it might have been prefabricated in panels.

Does that seem plausible? Has anyone seen examples of buildings with similar construction that I might be able to copy for the details?

For sizing the building, are they likely to be 8-foot planks?

 

The premises was a sawmills, and was built in the mid 1950s. In case you're interested, it's Morgan Wallwork sawmills in Higher Irlam, near Manchester.

 

Here's my rake of timber wagons on the layout, waiting for me to make the wall and sheds!

 

Sorry for the odd question but sometimes many heads are better than one for a puzzle like this. I'm kind of hoping someone will say, 'Oh, there's a building just like than down the road from me'...

 

Many thanks,

Mol

 

 

The brick wall may represent the remains of a previous industrial building that occupied the site? The walls of said building being reduced in height to form a boundary wall for the timber yard? This may explain the apparent ports and door?

 

The shed: timber yard sheds often looked a bit rough. I guess as long as they did the job they didn't have to look pretty? And that's part of the charm of such locations. 

[Mol_PMB]

Thanks - that’s a really good point that the wall could be the remains of a building! I’ll have a look at the old maps and see if there is any evidence of a building there (the location was previously a farm). 

Cheers,

Mol

[Wheatley]

The wall appears to be double skinned, i.e. a full brick wide judging by the shadow in the 'doorway', and the 2nd and 3rd uprights from the wagon don't appear to go all the way to the top of the wall. My guess therefore is that they are battens fixed to the outside of the wall, not uprights with brick infill. 

[Mol_PMB]

Very helpful observations - many thanks!

 

I've had a look at the old maps I can find online, and it does look as if there were some structures here in the days of the farm - maybe animal pens rather than proper buildings, but something.

This is from the National Library of Scotland, dated 1904-1908, when there was just a farm and a single line railway alongside the canal. Below the wording 'Boarded Barn Farm' in the field with trees (orchard?) there are a network of walls on the south-east boundary:

This is from old-maps.co.uk, dated 1967, by which time the sawmills had been built, and the loops added to the railway:

I have tried to crop the maps so they show the same area, as far as possible, and I think those walls fall in the same location as the southernmost of the two cranes marked on the map (just south of the southernmost big shed) which is the area seen in the photo.

 

So it is plausible that this wall is the remnant of an older structure which would explain the odd features.

It also means that the boundary along the rest of the site would probably be different! Any thoughts on what we're looking at on the right-hand edge of the photo above - there are some planks leaning against a wall of some sort, which I think is spaced a few feet away from the shed?

It looks quite similar to the wall in the foreground - maybe the whole orchard (?) was walled?

 

I'll have to go for another search in the undergrowth of the present site to see if there are any clues not buried under the A57.

A little further north-east the remains of an old boundary fence still exist, and it's concrete posts with wire mesh and barbed wire on top. But that's not what we're looking at alongside the sawmills.

 

Thanks again for your contributions!

Mol

 

[GWR_Modeller]

Hi,

The older map shows the railway on a embankment and also slightly further NW another change in ground level, in between was the course of the old river, perhaps now a seasonally or ocassionally flooded area used for pasture?  A parcel boundary line runs along the bank and all the buildings/pens are on the higher ground.

 

On the newer map the railway embankment is not shown and the photo shows ground levels which imply the land has probably been infilled at least in part.  A remnant of the old property boundary can be seen at the north east end at right angles to the UD Bdy and also at the corner of the margarine factory.

 

Imagining a line between the two suggests any remnants of the old building/pens are too far away from the railway to be the wall in the photo.

 

I find the side by side feature of NLS are very useful, although in this case they do not offer the newer map you have used and their newer maps of this area are smaller scale.  Also unfortunately Britain from above has views of the lard factory but facing in the wrong direction.

Regards,Paul

PS very nice modelling.

[Mol_PMB]

Many thanks for the detailed analysis, and I think you're right that the old building would have been too far away.

NLS does have a map of an intermediate date, after the river course was filled in and a single loop laid here; there was also a curved siding serving (I think) the construction of the housing estate on the opposite side of the A57. I've also scoured Britain from Above and also not found the ideal shot. However, there is an aerial view of the Margarine factory looking NE published in a book, which I had forgotten about until just now! I've attached a crop from the background of that photo which is from the 1930s, so intermediate in period between the two maps above. I think this does prove that the wall of the orchard was too far away.

There is a train of empty wagons, probably heading from Partington steelworks to Irwell Park wharf. Just by the distant loco is the diverging curved siding which runs to the road.

This was before the sawmills were built and the third track added. Sadly as you have noted NLS does not have the 1960s edition of this location.

I have contacted Historic England and have a list of unpublished aerial photos of this area (there are several). Unfortunately they have a massive backlog of orders to process and COVID restrictions are preventing them making progress, so they are not accepting more orders at present. I'll have to be patient.

 

 

As for the big shed, this is a modern photo of a much smaller building but I think it shows the same constructional features - overlapping planks, a wooden bead up the corner, corrugated roof. Hard to see in this photo but there is a vertical joint half way along the wall on the left-hand side, similar to that in the big shed at the sawmills.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DGO]

I might be wrong but I don't think the wall is brick, either block or some sort of stone, the buttressed walls below the timber building also look like they are not brick, given it was built in the 50's I'm going with concret blocks, they would probably have had concrete lintels above the openings. 

 

Also I think the boards might be only 6ft that would give a width of 24ft which is easily spanned with a single timber for the almost flat roof, the windows in the front wall look square with a width roughly 2/3rds of one board, which would make for a 3.5-4 ft square window, if they were 8ft then you would be looking at about a 5.5 ft per side window which would be pretty big Windows appear to be 7 boards high which if they used 6" boards would make them 42" Assume they were built on a simple doubled up 2x4 or 2x6 frame with 24" between centres which makes it easy to stick a 42" wide window in and only have to cut 2 verticals 

[Mol_PMB]

35 minutes ago, DGO said:

I might be wrong but I don't think the wall is brick, either block or some sort of stone, the buttressed walls below the timber building also look like they are not brick, given it was built in the 50's I'm going with concret blocks, they would probably have had concrete lintels above the openings. 

 

Also I think the boards might be only 6ft that would give a width of 24ft which is easily spanned with a single timber for the almost flat roof, the windows in the front wall look square with a width roughly 2/3rds of one board, which would make for a 3.5-4 ft square window, if they were 8ft then you would be looking at about a 5.5 ft per side window which would be pretty big Windows appear to be 7 boards high which if they used 6" boards would make them 42" Assume they were built on a simple doubled up 2x4 or 2x6 frame with 24" between centres which makes it easy to stick a 42" wide window in and only have to cut 2 verticals 

Those are really good observations - many thanks. It's great how having some different eyes looking at the photo picks out things I had missed.

 

For example I had not noticed the buttresses on the wall at all. I had seen some planks leaning up against the wall in a couple of places and my brain had sort of assumed that all the diagonals were leaning planks, But you're absolutely right - in front of the timber building the wall is buttressed.

 

I have done a rough scaling of the building footprint off the 1967 map, which indicates that the timber building is about 85' long and 25' wide. Given the map scale and my rather crude measuring on-screen that's not too accurate, but it does tally well with your estimated width of 24'. On the other hand, if the boards are the same length on the building front then the overall length doesn't match so well.

 

For the model, I may want to scale the length down a bit anyway - an 87' building would be 2' long in 7mm scale. I've just been out to play with a couple of boxes to get a feel for size. Together these boxes represent a building about 28' high and 80' long, which may be close to the actual scale size. It doesn't look completely out of proportion but it's pretty big compared to the rest of the scenic part of the layout which is less than 6' long:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Nearholmer]

Is it the remains of a WW2 ‘utility’ building of some sort? The construction looks basic enough. If they are battens fixed to it, they might even suggest something to support camouflage. It might have had the roof taken off as partial demolition to regain use of the space.

 

Bomb shelter? The ones at the primary school I attended were basic block structures with flat concrete slab roof (which would have squashed the occupants like flies in the event of a direct hit).

 

Firing wall, giving a field of fire across the canal?

 

 

Edited March 23, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Mol_PMB]

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Is it the remains of a WW2 ‘utility’ building of some sort? The construction looks basic enough. If they are battens fixed to it, they might even suggest something to support camouflage. It might have had the roof taken off as partial demolition to regain use of the space.

 

Bomb shelter? The ones at the primary school I attended were basic block structures with flat concrete slab roof (which would have squashed the occupants like flies in the event of a direct hit).

 

Firing wall, giving a field of fire across the canal?

 

 

Very interesting thoughts! The dates would be right and your logic is good. Thank you.

I'll see if I can find any reference to wartime developments in this area. It's not far from the CWS Margarine factory or the housing estate (which was built pre-war) and of course the canal would have been a strategic transport artery.

[Mol_PMB]

The attached photo is the wall of my garage. Why? Well I think the wall in the sawmills photo may well be the same sort of very variable bricks. My garage was built in the late 1930s and is less than 2 miles away from the former sawmills, so it is perhaps representative of the cheap / utility grade of bricks from the local brickworks in wartime.

[Nearholmer]

The margarine factory would have been very important during the war, especially as the government food stores were being established (it was their ‘architecture’ that I had in mind when I first thought ‘utility building’). 
 

Something to do with shipping-out marge by rail, given that all the food stores were rail-served?

[Mol_PMB]

You're right. The Margarine factory was rail-connected to the MSC Railway and had extensive sidings and its own locomotives too.

This shows the Margarine Factory; the sawmills site I'm modelling is just off the right-hand side of this photo (and about 30 years later)

https://www.britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EPW031101

[Nearholmer]

My knowledge of the geography of Irlam is nil, but this seems to be an a CWS site nearby, highlighting the importance of defending these places. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/442657

[Mol_PMB]

40 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

My knowledge of the geography of Irlam is nil, but this seems to be an a CWS site nearby, highlighting the importance of defending these places. https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/442657

That's a very nice example, thanks for finding it and linking here.

The various CWS sites at Irlam were all linked to the MSC Railway, I have considered modelling a lard tank wagon in due course.

[DGO]

Re the Bomb shelter idea, most bomb shelters were not really intended to protect the occupants from a direct hit but would do very well against bomb splinters from a near miss, typically they were of concrete construction with sometimes some earth or sandbags added later to give further protection. 

 

The alternate idea of it possibly being some sort of firing point might also be valid, some areas had disguised pillboxes and a location overlooking both rail and canal might well have merited a disguised firing point, after the war some walls might have been left standing and timber from the timber yard added to form a structure.

 

Lastly there's no way that building is over 80 ft long, more like 42-48ft but maybe the walls at ground level are 85ft in length, these early OS maps only tend to show what's at ground level so perhaps the block wall and the buttressed wall were built as one long wall ? But only about half needed the wooden shed over the top.