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Otago Witness, Issue 4057, 15 December 1931, Page 47

The iron on the roof of the old house at North Egmont is 80 years old and is still in remarkably good condition. The story of its origin was told at a meeting of the North Egmont Committee last week. Visitors to the house may have noticed that the corrugations are unusually wide (says the Taranaki Herald). Mr T. C. List said that when in England recently he was travelling in North. Yorkshire with the head of an iron and steel _ works at Middlesbrough, and the peculiar corrugations of the iron on a building caught his eye. It was stated by the Englishman in explanation that the iron was made during the Crimean War bj’ his father’s men, who worked night and day to provide iron in responce to the appeal by Florence Nightingale for more hospitals. The men had hammered out the iron in laminations, no machinery being used. Some of the iron subsequently’ came to New Zealand and Australia. It reached New Plymouth, where is was first used on the roof of the old military headquarters on Marsland Hill, and was later taken to the mountain, where it was used for the roof of the old house. Mr F. Atmore remarked that he had examined the roof, which, with a coat of tar, would , last for a long time.