IRONWORKS AND IRON MONUMENTS FORGES ET MONUMENTS EN FER I( ICCROM i ~ IRONWORKS AND IRON MONUMENTS study, conservation and adaptive use etude, conservation et reutilisation de FORGES ET MONUMENTS EN FER Symposium lronbridge, 23-25 • X •1984 ICCROM rome 1985 Editing: Cynthia Rockwell 'Monica Garcia Layout: Azar Soheil Jokilehto Organization and coordination: Giorgio Torraca Daniela Ferragni Jef Malliet © ICCROM 1985 Via di San Michele 13 00153 Rome RM, Italy Printed in Italy Sintesi Informazione S.r.l. CONTENTS page Introduction CROSSLEY David W. The conservation of monuments connected with the iron and steel industry in the Sheffield region. 1 PETRIE Angus J. The No.1 Smithery, Chatham Dockyard, 1805-1984 : 'Let your eye be your guide and your money the last thing you part with'. 15 BJORKENSTAM Nils The Swedish iron industry and its industrial heritage. 37 MAGNUSSON Gert The medieval blast furnace at Lapphyttan. 51 NISSER Marie Documentation and preservation of Swedish historic ironworks. 67 HAMON Francoise Les monuments historiques et la politique de protection des anciennes forges. 89 BELHOSTE Jean Francois L'inventaire des forges francaises et ses applications. 95 LECHERBONNIER Yannick Les forges de Basse Normandie : Conservation et reutilisation. A propos de deux exemples. 111 RIGNAULT Bernard Forges et hauts fourneaux en Bourgogne du Nord : un patrimoine au service de l'identite regionale. 123 LAMY Yvon Approche ethnologique et technologique d'un site siderurgique : La forge de Savignac-Ledrier (Dordogne). 149 BALL Norman R. A Canadian perspective on archives and industrial archaeology. 169 DE VRIES Dirk J. Iron making in the Netherlands. 177 iii page FERRAGNI Daniela, MALLIET Jef, TORRACA Giorgio The blast furnaces of Capalbio and Canino in the Italian Maremma. 181 CASINI Isabella La Fondation d'etudes et recherches sur la Maremma Toscane de Capalbio. 227 GERBER Piotr Industrial relics in the Walbrzych cokeries region. 235 VOGEL Robert M. Casting about and forging ahead : The preser- vation and restoration of historic iron-working sites in the United States. 251 BORSI Franco The architecture of iron in Florence and Europe. 275 MARESCA Paola The cultural matrices of the architecture of iron and utility in Tuscany. 283 MATTEI Marco The Florence Museum of contemporary art in the old "Galileo" factory. The re-use project. 291 BUSSELL Michael N. Structural appraisal of existing iron & steel construction. 305 NIEUWMEIJER George G. Conservation problems arising from the lack of structural understanding in the 19th century. 317 ZORGNO TRISCIUOGLIO Anna Maria The Paderno Bridge on the Adda : Italy's greatest example of 19th century ironwork architecture. 333 GUERRIERI Catia Register of the document file existing in the archives of the Soprintendenza ai Beni Ambien- tali ed Architettonici of Florence and Pistoia concerning the pavilion of 'La Meridiane. 365 TAMPONE Gennaro The pavilion of the Palazzina 'La Meridiana' in Boboli Gardens, Florence. 377 ROZPEDOWSKI Jerzy Iron bridges in the Lower Silesia region. 409 iv INTRODUCTION The symposium, "Ironworks and Iron Monuments: Study, Conser- vation and Adaptive Use", was held at the Institute of Indus- trial Archaeology in Coalbrookdale (Shropshire, England) on 23-25 October 1984. The meeting was organized by ICCROM in collaboration with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and with the co-sponsorship of TICCIH (The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage). Until recently, ICCROM's interest in the preservation of the industrial heritage could not materialize into promotion of actual programmes because of limited resources in funds and staff. Only in 1980 did the availability of a few E.E.C. research fellowships allow implementation of a field research programme (study and preservation of two blast furnaces in Central Italy), which permitted us to establish a first contact with problems existing in this comparatively new domain of conservation of cultural property. In particular it soon became apparent that, in this field, there is a relative scarcity of information on conservation techniques and conservation ethics; several ideas that are familiar to the community of specialists devoted to the conservation of more traditional types of cultural property (art, architecture, etc.), are not at all evident to those who study the preservation of industrial heritage, and it is not clear whether they can be transplanted into the new field without modification, in view of some objective differences (size of buildings, necessity of adaptive use to ensure pres- ervation and justify costs, significance of the monument to the public, etc.) at both the conceptual and practical level. It must be considered, for instance, that an important role in the drive for the preservation of the industrial heritage was played (and still is played) by the historian's interest in reconstructing the technology of the past and the public's desire to see it in action. Whereas such attitudes have a deep influence on industrial conservation, they have a marginal one in the conservation of art and architecture. The ICCROM research group therefore reached the conclusion that the implementation of some programme allowing an exchange of ideas between "conservationists" and "industrial archaeol- ogists" (each category actually having a multidisciplinary composition: historians, archaeologists, architects, chemists, engineers, etc.) would be very much in keeping with the stat- utory aims of the organization. As the ICCROM competence was, for the moment, limited to ironworks, this topic was chosen for a symposium, but it was also decided to enlarge its scope and include the structures and monuments that were built with the metal the ironworks v produced, following in this the example set by the main activities of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum. The second section of the programme was meant to stimulate greater interest among architects and engineers and to yield more information on actual conservation projects. The idea of the symposium was gradually refined and brought to the planning stage through a series of informal discussions with Neil Cossons (Director of the Ironbridge Gorge Museum at the time), Barrie Trinder (Deputy Director at Ironbridge) and David Crossley (of Sheffield University) when they came to Italy to help the ICCROM research team set up a plan of studies of the local ironworks. (This plan, incidentally, should be implemented starting in 1985 and constitute the second phase of ICCROM's involvement in the conservation of industrial heritage.) As TICCIH also provided guidance in identifying possible speakers and participants for the meeting, ICCROM could not have enjoyed better support for finding access to a new domain. Notwithstanding these favourable conditions, the outcome of the project only in part corresponds to the aspirations of the organizers, but this is rather logical for a first attempt. In a majority of the written reports, the industrial heritage is considered mainly under the viewpoint of technological history, while the actual problems of conservation of the buildings themselves were less represented; this is also due to the fact that several of the conservation/rehabilitation cases discussed are still at the study level and have not yet reached the stage of design and execution. Further action to improve contacts and increase attention to the actual conservation problems appears therefore to be required; this might take the form of interdisciplinary work on a conservation project or of another meeting dedicated to the discussion of several conservation/adaptive-use pro- grammes. In particular, the problem of conservation ethics (i.e. the allowable extent and modes of restoration and reconstruction, compatibility of modern use with the integrity of the monu- ment, etc.), which is seldom faced from the standpoint of the instrinsic historic or aesthetic value of the object itself (which is, instead, the typical angle of the "conservationist" approach), should be more strongly emphasised in the future. Fortunately, at the Coalbrookdale meeting some of these shortcomings were offset by the visits planned by Barrie Trinder, as well as the evidence provided at all levels by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum itself, with its brilliant examples of accurate archaeological investigation and rigorous presentation and protection of the uncovered, ruins (e.g. the vi Coalbrookdale and the Blists Hill furnaces) and of faithful conservation of monumental structures (the Iron Bridge), near which some reconstructions of the techniques are made available to the public on a reduced scale (museum) or even at full size (the new wrought iron plant). These provided an extremely good basis for informal discussion and confrontation of the attitudes of the specialists from various branches. Unfortunately, such discussions did not find their way into the published proceedings of the meeting, because a strenuous schedule of presentations and visits fully occupied all the official time available in the three days. A11 papers are reproduced here as presented by the authors with no editing at all, as rapidity of diffusion and low cost are usually top priorities for ICCROM. The authors themselves are responsible for the choice and presentation of the facts in their papers; therefore, the views they express represent only their personal opinion and must not be construed as statements made on behalf of ICCROM. vii INTRODUCTION Le Symposium "Forges et monuments en fer; étude, conservation et réutilisation"