I thew this up on Instagram a couple of weeks ago (if you don’t follow us there, please do!) and it seemed rather popular, so we’ll post it again here.
Have you ever noticed some strange looking railings outside a number of Kennington estates? Well they are actually stretchers left over from WW2 and have found a new life. The smaller ones were probably used for children. An early form of ‘up cycling’.
Related to the communal air raid shelters in Kennington Park? http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/london/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9087000/9087660.stm
I know the ones in Harleyford Road (near the Oval) well. I don’t think these stretchers were ever actually used much, thank God, simply held in reserve by the Civil Defence Corps in case of mass deaths from poison gas or nuclear strike. The CDC was disbanded in the 1960s.
Just done a quick google search, and to my amazement find that there’s a Stretcher Railing Society! Link below. You don’t get more “niche” than that!
https://www.stretcherrailings.com/about
Ahhh..I did wonder if the steel removed for the war effort was in a way ‘returned’ but just reshaped in the form of stretchers.