Lord Beaverbrook's railings

Wandering around Edinburgh, you often see these rusty railing stumps in the sandstone garden walls of Victorian and Edwardian houses. Some gardens (like this one) have replaced the stumps with pre-fab jobs.

At the start of World War Two, Lord Beaverbrook who was the 'Minister for Aircraft Production', ordered the tearing up and melting down of the country's entire stock of iron railings in case vital supplies were cut off by the Atlantic blockade. The iron was meant to be used for manufacturing a variety of military hardware, from guns to bombers.

By 1944, one million tons of iron railings had been collected for smelting. It was never used since its quality was too low a grade.

Now, I'm sure Lord Beaverbrook was a jolly fellow whom we've got a lot to thank for, but this legacy is not one of them.

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-Scotsman newspaper article from 2002
-Wikipedia entry for Lord Beaverbrook
-House of Lords transcript from 1943