Ronan Point

Ronan Point was a 22-storey tower block in Newham, East London, which partly collapsed on 16 May 1968 when a gas explosion blew out some load-bearing walls, causing the collapse of one entire corner of the building. The incident killed four people and injured 17. Although casualties were relatively few, the spectacular nature of the failure – caused by both poor design and poor construction – led to complete loss of public confidence in high-rise residential buildings, and major changes in UK building regulations resulted.

Ronan Point, named after Harry Louis Ronan (a former Chairman of the Housing Committee of the London Borough of Newham), was part of the wave of tower blocks built in the 1960s as cheap, affordable prefabricated housing for inhabitants of West Ham and other areas of London. The tower was built by Taylor Woodrow Anglian using a technique known as Large Panel System building (LPS), which involves casting large concrete prefabricated sections off-site and bolting them together to construct the building. The precast system used was the Danish Larsen & Nielsen system.

Construction started in 1966 and was completed on 11 March 1968.

At approximately 5:45 am on 16 May 1968, resident Ivy Hodge went into her kitchen in flat 90, a corner flat on the 18th floor of the building, and lit a match to light the stove for a cup of tea. The match sparked a gas explosion that blew out the load-bearing flank walls, which had been supporting the four flats above. It is believed that the weakness was in the joints connecting the vertical walls to the floor slabs. The flank walls fell away, leaving the floors above unsupported and causing the progressive collapse of the south-east corner of the building.

The building had just opened, and three of the four flats immediately above Hodge's were unoccupied. Four of the 260 residents were killed immediately and seventeen were injured, including a young mother who was stranded on a narrow ledge when the rest of her living room disappeared. Hodge survived, despite being blown across the room by the explosion—as did her gas stove, which she took to her new address.

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse, the government commissioned an enquiry, led by Mr. Hugh Griffiths, Q.C. It reported on dangers caused by pressure on the walls from explosion, wind, or fire, finding that although the design had complied with the current regulations,

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