Exactly 40 years ago, eighteen floors above the streets of Canning Town, Mrs Ivy Hodge decided to make herself a cup of tea. This turned out to be a ghastly error. The match Ivy struck beneath her kettle ignited a gas leak, hurling her headlong across the kitchen. The force of the blast blew out the concrete walls of her brand new council flat, setting off a terrible chain reaction. Catastrophic structural failure caused the entire southeast corner of her tower block to collapse - wall by wall, flat by flat - sending 22 sitting rooms plummeting to the ground. With just one match Ivy had unwittingly killed four of her fellow Ronan Point residents, altered government housing policy and brought about the premature demise of the Modernist architecture movement. It's dangerous stuff, tea.
Ivy survived, but her early morning brew exposed a fatal flaw in Newham's building plans. Mid-60s architects believed that stacked-up living was the future, and newly created Newham council had taken this philosophy very much to heart. They'd been busily building up into the sky, replacing acres of pre-war slums with stark concrete tower blocks. But construction workers here on the Freemasons Estate had cut corners, failing to bolt together the prefabricated concrete sections with due care, and relying rather too heavily on gravity. One blown-out wall was enough to destabilise this unfortunate house of cards, and Ronan Point's downfallwas inevitable.
The disaster could have been far worse. It being before 6am, very few of the kitchens and sitting rooms beneath Flat 90 were occupied. One woman who'd been sleeping on the couch overnight managed to scramble to a narrow ledge along the inner wall, and was rescued from the rubble by her husband. The four flats above Ivy were more seriously damaged, but fortunately these were still unoccupied because Ronan Point had only opened back in March. And even the offending gas stove survived. When the residents moved out so that the block could be rebuilt (yes, rebuilt, not demolished), Ivy took it with her.
The Canning Town collapse had several ramifications. A ban was placed on the supply of gas to high rise blocks. Legislation was passed requiring any new towers to be able to withstand much stronger explosions. And the tide of public opinion started to swing away from head-in-the-clouds elevated boxes back to communal lowrise living. You didn't see Mary, Mungo andMidge much on TV after the early 70s, did you? Newham council took a little longer to come back down to earth. Ronan Point was finally demolished in 1986, along with its eightsister blocks on the Freemasons Estate. Not a trace remains.
Today a carpet of two- and three-storey dwellings covers this part of Canning Town. Families live in council houses with their own garden and a car parking space out front, next to scrappy patches of grass where wandering dogs relieve themselves. There are bland brick tenements and pebbledash terraces, plus shuttered shops in a peeling parade offering everything from bread rolls to betting slips. Take a walk up Freemasons Road from the ExCel Exhibition Centre and you'll probably be passed by several kids on bikes and the occasional tartan shopping trolley. Look out for the clenched fist sculpture outside the credit union, and smile at the portraits of "Leslie" and "Ethel" carved into the pavement between Leslie Road and Ethel Road. It may not be nirvana, but it's a lot more desirable than Ivy's 60s skyline. And, if you fancy a cuppa, a lot less dangerous.
Exactly 40 years ago, eighteen floors above the streets of Canning Town, Mrs Ivy Hodge decided to make herself a cup of tea. This turned out to be a ghastly error. The match Ivy struck beneath her kettle ignited a gas leak, hurling her headlong across the kitchen. The force of the blast blew out the concrete walls of her brand new council flat, setting off a terrible chain reaction. Catastrophic structural failure caused the entire southeast corner of her tower block to collapse - wall by wall, flat by flat - sending 22 sitting rooms plummeting to the ground. With just one match Ivy had unwittingly killed four of her fellow Ronan Point residents, altered government housing policy and brought about the premature demise of the Modernist architecture movement. It's dangerous stuff, tea.
