CAST IRON HOMES AT £200.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 22 November 1924, Page 15

CAST IRON HOMES AT £2OO.

PLANNED IN ENGLAND.They ave built of cast-iron plates, bolted together, with concrete on the outside and plaster covering in the interior. Cast-iron castles are. bidding for a place on the English landscape. Being brand new castles at only 1000 dollars a-piece, they aren’t quite in a class with their mediaeval predecessors, and they’re not palatial, but every. Englishman’s home is his castle, and this type has been designed as \a means of relieving the housing shortage. J. Potter, a Rotherham foundry nroprietor. is inventor of the cast-iron Ifouse. He has submitted a model to the Rotherham Housing Committee, and expects to build six specimen buildings for trial, if the Ministry of Health endorses the proposition. They are built of cast-iron plates bolted together, with concrete o,n the outside and plaster covering the interior. They are capable of springing up like mushrooms. Potter says that if houses of this kind were erected throughout the country all foundries would he fully employed, and work would be available for thousands of semi-skilled men.

Another designer of the “cheapest dwelling puzzle” has appeared in the person of Lord Weir, but- the odds at present are on Peter, because the Weir specimen is of steel, and costs about £3OO. The Health authorities here and in Scotland have agreed to have experts examine the steel model at Weir’s works in Cathcart. The originator claims that it is damp-proof. It is of the bungalow type, with three apartments, plus bathroom and stove room.

The cheap house boom is a reflex not only of the dwelling shortage and the unemployment surplus, but algo of an alleged monopoly in building materials and high prices of cement, brick and other supplies.