Geoff Brambles, of Kendal, considers the fate of iron railings, ripped up during the Second World War, supposedly to help the war effort.

IT IS now more than 70 years since the end of the Second World War. Throughout the land the evidence for the physical damage done by aerial bombardment has been erased by the slow and fitful, but pretty thorough, rebuilding that followed.

It is a great irony, then, that the self-inflicted wartime damage to our townscapes, whether bombed or unbombed, remains to this day.

What is this damage and why was it done?

It arose from a combination of motives - the need to ensure adequate supplies of essential raw materials for the war economy, and the equally pressing need to maintain morale in the civilian population at a time of existential peril.

With an eye on each of these priorities the government embarked on a scrap drive, with iron being high on its shopping list.

An obvious target lay in the iron railings, that in those days were a prominent feature of the urban landscape, particularly around prestigious buildings such as churches and fronting the gardens of Victorian and Edwardian residential streets.

These were attacked with exemplary vigour, leaving only stumps projecting above the tops of low walls from which most of them had been taken.

The feeling of personal, altruistic sacrifice that this engendered in the populace was, correctly, perceived by the government to be valuable and, no doubt this mood was used for the encouragement of waverers.

In this way many miles of iron railings vanished from the nation's streets, changing their character, most would say, for the worse.

But what actually happened to the railings?

Discovering their fate - or at least trying to - has become an entertaining hobby for those historians (most, I hope) with suspicious minds.

It has been claimed that some/many/most (delete to taste) were simply stacked away in council depots to await removal to the eager mouths of blast furnaces, but never collected for that final journey, their work as morale boosters done.

Whatever the truth - and there may be elderly Kendalians who know what happened to Kendal's lost railings, - we are left with an overlooked legacy of iron stumps that offer the observant passer-by a daily reminder of the exigencies of war.

But we can also rejoice at what survived, such as the gates of the parish churchyard and the art nouveau-ish railings outside the library.

Thank goodness that, even in those days of extreme danger, lines were drawn.