Actually having nothing at all to do with tin, these early prefabs became possible when Henry Robinson Palmer invented the "Corrugation and Galvanisation" of sheet iron in 1828. The California gold rush of 1849 and an Australian gold rush of 1851 sparked a boom in corrugated prefab buildings. "Manufacturers mass-produced structures, from as small as a pigsty to the magnitude of a cathedral, deliverable to anywhere accessible on the planet. In 1854 alone, it is estimated that some 30,000 buildings were shipped to Australia." The industrial revolution and colonial expansion created a need for churches, chapels and schools all over the Empire.

But as Neil Young put it, rust never sleeps, and most of these buildings have disappeared. Photograper Alasdair Ogilvie has toured the world for twenty-five years, documenting " buildings existing and now vanished - churches and chapels, missions and homes, schools and smoke houses.This is the vanishing world of Tin Tabernacles & Others." View (and purchase) at ::Tin Tabernacles via ::Shedworking

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