The London Street Fences.

The fences can be recognised by the two “V”s at each end, which raised the stretcher slightly off the ground.

What everyday object has the most interesting history or background? These London fences look so strange for a special reason.

There are housing estates in London that have pretty ugly fences and you wonder who designed them. If you look closely, you'll see strange curved pipes around the edges. But they're actually good for something. Well. They were.

These "fences" were once stretchers.

London street scene during the World War II.

During the war, when wounded were carried away, they were placed on these steel scaffolds. It wasn't comfortable and there was a lot of complaining about it. But it was easy to clean them and they were not so heavy because of the grids.

London's fence-stretch in action.

After the war one had masses of such stretches, which were now useless. And since many fences were no longer available in London, because all available metal had somehow been misused for the war, they came up with a "recycling idea". And they built fences from the stretchers.

The stretchers could be made quickly and in high numbers because they were made from a single material.

The stretchers were placed on the curved poles on the ground. And so the London fences are silent monuments of the war. Around 600000 of the stretchers were made, leading to a surplus following the end of the war.

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