C O N T E X T 1 3 0 : J U LY 2 0 1 3 41 PAUL LATHAM Restoring Drake’s concrete house A local authority, building preservation trust and housing association have worked together to bring an innovative, show-piece concrete house from the 1870s back into use. Charles Drake worked as a manager for Joseph Tall, who patented a standardised method of forming concrete walls using timber shuttering. In 1868 Drake, aware of the commercial possibilities of using glazed iron shuttering, set up a rival business and patented his Concrete Building Apparatus. The use of flanged plates of iron, enamelled or glazed on the side facing the wall, and slotted wrought-iron vertical channels enabled continuous vertical casting of a concrete wall, exactly the same principle as modern slip-form concrete construction today. Drake had extensively experimented with different forms of mass concrete for use in his apparatus. His mix consisted of Portland cement mixed one part to nine with cheap aggregates such as gravel, colliery slag, broken stones, broken tiles, fired clay nodules or chimney cinders. No sand fines were used.About a third of the mix consisted of air void.The material possessed exceptional thermal, fire and vermin-proof properties, and had the advantage that it could be erected rapidly and cheaply using unskilled labour. Analysis of the material at Lordship Lane revealed that it consisted of some 50 per cent burnt clay nodules, 30 per cent void and the rest a coarse, carbonated Portland cement. It required cement rendering to exclude dampness. Drake is credited with working with a number of notable architects, including FP Cockerell at Down Hall in Harlow and GE Street at the Masters House, Marlborough College. But despite cost savings of 50 per cent over traditional brick construction, Drake’s Concrete Building Apparatus was not to revolutionise Visual anomalies (due to previous structural trauma) have been treated as part of the story that the concrete house had to tell.They have been left only lightly patinated with sooty water so as not to completely hide the restorers’ surgical efforts. Drake’s house in the 1920s.
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