Special places: Wales

Tin tabernacles and other buildings

Alasdair Ogilvie’s delightful photo essay for Pentagram Papers shows an aspect of corrugated iron prefabricated buildings that is new to me — the use of these buildings at home.

In Britain, between the 1860s and the Great War, the country underwent extensive increases in the production of coal, iron and lead, triggering large population movements into previously isolated and rural areas, such as South Wales and County Durham.

With no existing infrastructures, these newly created communities had an urgent need for churches, chapels and schools. Corrugated iron buildings fulfilled this demand. The quantity of “Tin Tabernacles” built also reflects the missionary efforts of the Anglican Church, at the time in competition with the Nonconformist movements — Methodist, Wesleyan and other dissenters.

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