Early Prefab Structures for Fast Housing pre 1900

The Moody - Gosset House is a corrugated iron prefab house sent to British Columbia's Colonel Moody in 1859 from the Hemmings Iron Company in England. This house is a very rare example of the easily constructed corrugated iron buildings which were shipped out to gold rush and new frontier towns in the thousands beginning around 1840.

Iron houses were exported to California for the Gold Rush of 1848, and to Australia for the Gold Rush and for fast housing for settlers. In the single year of 1854 it is estimated that more than 30,000 of these house were exported to Australia.

Most of these buildings were exported as basic homes, but stores, hotels, churches and rail stations were also shipped from England to be assembled overseas. The majority of this type of prefab building ended with the onset of the Crimean War.