Originally Posted by
BarbiesBoyfriend
All along my street are the lead filled holes on top of the walls where the old railings were. Don't suppose they will ever get replaced.
They're not lead-filled (lead was also in desperate short supply in the war, needed for batteries, etc) but just where the wrought iron railings were sawn off and ground flush.
Originally Posted by mr fish
I remember reading that, as a lot of the metal collected (particularly iron railings) was of very poor quality, it was dumped in the irish sea after the war.
Somewhat unlikely, the iron-based products would be put through the blast furnace at the steelworks along with other scrap and raw iron ore. What comes out of the other end is just plain iron, and you start again. Shortages of iron and steel continued in the UK well into the 1950s. Aviation does not use a lot of this but the railway, which uses a large amount for both track and vehicles, suffered substantially.