W.B. McKay

My father-in-law was a civil engineer who worked on water schemes and it is thanks to him that I was introduced to the early editions of W.B. McKay's Building Construction some years ago. The most attractive feature is the sheer volume and quality of drawings with which it is illustrated. These show construction details and processes in such clarifying detail.

Many practitioners still have a copy of the old McKay beside their desks, because it is an intensely practical textbook. His grandson, Neil McKay, tells me that architectural students are still urged to beg, steal or borrow the books. This facsimile publication should avoid the temptation to break the law! Building Construction was regarded as a classic at McKay's untimely death in February 1958, when he and his wife were killed in a road accident.

William Barr McKay came from Consett, County Durham and started his career in architectural training before 1914. He also qualified as a structural engineer, becoming a member of the Institute of Structural Engineers in 1927, and he served on the institute's council.

He spent most of the First World War with the Royal Engineers, and much of that in France. When he was demobbed went to Leeds College of Technology, becoming head of its building department when it was established. He became the first honorary secretary of the Yorkshire Educational Association for the Building Industry. In 1928 he moved to Manchester to become Head of the Building Department at Manchester College of Technology, where he remained until his retirement in December 1956. One of his early successes was to establish a degree course in building.

The first volume of the original three-volume Building Construction was published in 1938, and the next two volumes were produced over the next six years. After McKay's death, his son J.K. McKay was responsible over the next 30 years for reprints of the books, as well as undertaking the huge task of updating them to take account of modern construction methods and metric measurements.

His obituary in The Builder magazine describes him as being an excellent and gifted teacher, but also hot-headed and impetuous, and goes on to say that 'no story about him is incredible and most are probably true'.

Building Construction was one of the last of the traditional textbooks to be published before the building design and construction process became industrialized. The urge towards fast-track building processes has led to the design process of many buildings been driven by the technology, and this in turn has led to a reduction in the craft skills available. Those of us who work with traditional building materials often seek in vain to find modern textbooks to explain details of joinery, stonemasonry or leadwork. It is all here in McKay, brilliantly illustrated by his drawings, which are second to none in their quality.

McKay was part of a tradition of works such as Jaggard and Drury's Architectural Building Construction and The Architects Library: Building Construction. Both books have very good illustrations, but none surpasses the quality of those by McKay. But all three show building as a craft. Portland cement was becoming much more common in use for mortars and renders, but there is full discussion of the limes: fat lime, poor lime and the hydraulic limes. The construction textbooks of the first half of the twentieth century remain true to the pattern of those of the late nineteenth century, such as John Parnell Allen's Practical Building Construction of 1893.

The value of old construction books is in informing us of methods of construction which are no longer current in modern construction. For instance, pre-war building construction textbooks have detailed information on traditional carpentry and joinery. We erroneously tend to think that timber-framed partitions have no structural role in a building. Up until the 1930s, trussed partitions were still being described – and presumably still constructed. They were built to carry floor or roof loads, and a misunderstanding of their role and purpose may well have catastrophic results.

Stonemasonry and brickwork are dealt with in great detail in these books, and they remain valid source books for information of this kind. Architectural stonemasonry is covered in all the principal pre-war textbooks, including the construction of medieval stone vaults - groin, rib, lierne and fan. In contemporary construction the 102 mm facing of brick cavity wall has led to the supremacy of stretcher bond. There is a wealth of other brick bonds which are ignored nowadays. Looking at construction textbooks from the late nineteenth century onwards, the history of the cavity wall can be traced. It was introduced as a means of reducing dampness, but quite soon its thermal insulation qualities were recognised as a way of equalising the effects of the extremes of summer and winter temperatures.

By the end of the Second World War, there was a palpable change taking place. New materials and wartime economy were having their effect. R. Greenhalgh's Building Repairs was published in 1945. By then, Portland cement mortar was the favoured product, asbestos cement corrugated sheeting and rainwater goods were popular - and steel tube had largely replaced fir poles for scaffolding. One would not argue the case for keeping timber scaffolding, but the other changes in the post-war years heralded the industrialization of the process of building. More standardized components and the loss of traditional skills have led to many unfortunate repairs to historic buildings, and it is only in the last decade that this problem is being addressed, and the shortage of traditional skills is beginning to be reversed.

Volume 1 of McKay's Building Construction covers masonry and brickwork, carpentry and joinery, slating and plumbing at the elementary level. Volume 2 goes into greater detail on masonry and brickwork, and covers drainage. Drainage details have changed substantially over the last half-century, but McKay describes the drainage systems the practitioner will often find. Volume 3 covers carpentry and joinery in greater detail, including the conversion of timber. Roof coverings are covered, including tiling, stone slating and shingling.

The book, incorporating all three volumes, describes construction at the craft level, and while adjustments have to be made for modern practices, the drawings and text combine to give an unparalleled level of understanding of the traditional forms of construction the practitioner may encounter in many other buildings.

Henry Russell and the publishers would like to thank the family of W.B. McKay for their support for this reprint, and for providing an illustration of the author.