Different buildings
(TWA), then being used by the London County Council (LCC) at Morris Walk in Greenwich, they would receive immediate loan sanction. The West Ham councillors were overjoyed:
their borough housed the Royal Docks, the largest gas works in Europe and the Northern Outfall Sewer, and it had suffered the worst bomb damage in London, losing 27% of its housing stock. They immediately found sites for a further five blocks. To round numbers up to 1,000, West Ham built a series of TWA houses. Why shouldn’t they have believed the enthusiastic spokesmen from the Ministry when they were backed by the formidable Dame Evelyn Sharp – the first woman to hold the post of Permanent Secretary in any Ministry? Weren’t their words trustworthy? Two county boroughs of Essex, West Ham and East Ham, merged in 1965 to become Newham with the creation of the Greater London Council (GLC). Ronan Point was the second of the blocks to be built and work started on Monday, 25 July 1966. The following Saturday, the chairman of Newham’s Housing Committee and West Ham Football Supporters’ Club sat in the Royal Box at Wembley, as England won the World Cup. England’s captain Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst – the only player ever to score a hat trick in a final – and Martin Peters were all West Ham players. The housing chairman was a very popular man: each year he handed out Cup Final tickets.
Corner cutting
During the construction of Ronan Point, plumber Cyril Willson, while fitting out a bathroom on an upper floor, noticed that no drypack mortar had been placed under any of the walls and was concerned that the weight of the building was being carried on the nuts on the locating bolts. When he pointed this out, he was told by an engineer in charge that the structure could go all the way to the top resting on the nuts. His evidence was discounted at the inquiry. He had raised safety issues about another London site and had been sectioned under the Mental Health Acts. It took many years for the truth of what he was saying to emerge. The TWA system had two steel bolts sticking
out of the top of every wall panel, which served a dual purpose. They enabled panels to be lifted into place and located the panels within the building. The nuts on the bolts could be raised or lowered to get the correct datum level for the next wall panel. Once this had been agreed, a mixture of sand and cement with minimum water content (hence its name ‘drypack’), was rammed under the wall. When this had hardened, the nuts were loosened so the entire weight of the wall rested on the mortar bed. At least, that was the theory, but as with many building industry theories, it was abandoned on site by building workers striving to increase their piecework take home pay.
FOCUS
www.frmjournal.com JULY/AUGUST 2018
17
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