When you hear the expression that something has a cast iron finish it means that it is solid and reliable.
Cast iron gutters are exactly that and no other guttering looks as solid and permanent as ones made with this metal.
Another well-known expression is that if it isn't broken don't fix it.
Cast iron gutters again, are an example of something which works well and has no need to be changed for any other material.
Cast iron guttering has been installed around the roofs of houses for hundreds of years.
Some of the great stately homes of England have literally miles of this type of guttering around the roof tops.
Last year the whole gutter system at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire was repainted and it took three men most of the summer to achieve this.
Aluminium and PVC are popular gutters but nothing quite looks as good as the solidity of cast iron.
This metal which was first used in Europe in the fourteenth century became the most widely used metal in the manufacture of machines, bridges and ships.
Many other metals like the widely used aluminium were not even known to man until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Although steel was being produced in small quantities up until the eighteen fifties it was a very expensive process.
At this point an industrialist and inventor in England discovered a process which reduced the cost of converting the iron into steel and began mass production in a method still used today.
At almost the same moment in history the first all iron steamship was being built in Bristol.
This ship named the Great Britain is now in dry dock in Bristol and is one of the greatest tourist attractions in the country.
It wasn't long before ships were being made of steel and that other metal aluminium which coincidentally was also just about being developed at this time.
Steel hulls for ships allow them to be built to an almost limitless length whereas there is a finite length that a wooden boat can be built at around a maximum three hundred feet.
Just behind aluminium, iron is the fourth most abundant element on earth and both these materials are used in hundreds of manufacturing processes.
Cast iron guttering is just one use for iron but the invention of an efficient way of making steel gave another dimension to iron usage as the metals are both derived from the same material but steel has some better properties over iron.
Steel is lighter, tough and crucially it is flexible where iron is brittle and very unyielding.
Depending on the amount of carbon introduced into the process of turning iron into steel, it also can have the added property of being rust proof.
There is no reason why gutters cannot be made of steel instead of iron but the extra cost of steel and the fact that it gives no extra advantage means that iron gutters are the better option.