Context 161 - September 2019

C O N T E X T 1 6 1 : S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 9 45 ANTHONY CLARKE The iron roof at the Albert Dock Conservation work on Jesse Hartley’s roof at Liverpool’s Albert Dock highlighted how the brief to design fireproof buildings led to him developing a stressed-skin roof. This summer saw the 35th anniversary of the reopening of the Albert Dock in Liverpool. While much has been written about the general restoration works undertaken in 1984, very little attention has been given to the original roof structure over these warehouses. Regrettably, risk aversion and commercial considerations required much of the dock’s roof to be replaced. But there was a desire to retain the original roof in two of the warehouses. In 1982 I was part of a team at WG Curtins, consulting engineers, in Liverpool (now called Curtins). Our task was to undertake a structural inspection of these Grade I listed warehouses with a view to converting them to multiple uses. This was not a small task as there are 120,000 sq m of floor spread across five warehouses and the former dock traffic office. The structure was in very poor condition as the buildings had lain derelict for 12 years and had hardly been used for warehousing since the 1920s. The survey found that the original roof structure comprised curved pitches constructed with slender wrought-iron trusses supporting overlapping iron plates. Despite there being no waterproofing membrane the wrought iron was in a reasonable condition given its age. It is common to find wrought iron used in long-span Victorian roofs: the 153 ft clear span of the Conservation work on Jesse Hartley’s roof at Liverpool’s celebrated Albert Dock has highlighted how the brief to design fireproof buildings led to him developing a stressed-skin roof. The completed roof at the Maritime Museum