The history of scaffolding

How old is scaffolding?

As old as people have wanted to work above head height, but the oldest evidence is thinner than it is often made to sound. In the Lascaux cave in south-west France, some figures are painted where the wall meets the ceiling, 2.5 to 3.5 m above the floor, in the Hall of the Bulls, the Axial Gallery and the Apse. The French Ministry of Culture’s Lascaux site records that André Glory, who studied the cave between 1952 and 1963, claimed to have found stalagmite-encrusted sockets for interlocked beams used to paint the Great Black Bull in the Axial Gallery (Ministry of Culture: access to the walls). Later researchers extended his observation to the whole gallery but had reservations. The ministry’s own conclusion is careful: scaffolding was used for certain pieces, the idea should not be extrapolated widely, and scaffolds or perches cannot be excluded in certain specific and rare cases.

How old is that staging? The ministry’s dating page lists radiocarbon results from 15,500 years before present (charcoal tested in 1951) to 18,600–18,900 years before present (a reindeer antler tested in 1998 and 2002). So the honest answer is: some staging, in a few places, roughly in that range.

The first clear picture of timber staging around a piece of work comes from Greece. The Staatliche Museen zu Berlin keep an Attic red-figure drinking cup, the so-called Foundry Cup (Erzgießerei-Schale, inventory F 2294), in their Antikensammlung and date it 500–475 BC (museum record). Its outside shows a bronze foundry. On one side a larger-than-life warrior statue stands in a large wooden frame while two workers polish it with strigils. The museum calls it a frame, not a scaffold, but it is exactly what a scaffold does: it holds the workers at the height of the work.

What are putlog holes, and why do old walls have them?

Look at a castle or a medieval church tower and you will often see a grid of small square holes. These are putlog holes. A putlog is a short horizontal timber whose inner end sits in the wall while its outer end rests on a ledger tied to upright poles, and the deck boards lie on the putlogs. The Museum voor de Oudere Technieken (MOT) in Grimbergen, Belgium, explains the method in its page on wooden scaffolding: the holes were made in the wall during construction so the putlogs could rest in them, and were usually filled afterwards against water. Some buildings left them open in the facade, and restorers sometimes reuse them for a new scaffold.

The putlog scaffold is still with us. A single-row scaffold that bears on the wall it serves, known in UK practice as a putlog scaffold, follows the same idea with steel tubes and a flattened blade on the end of the putlog.

How did bamboo and timber pole scaffolds work?

For most of history a scaffold was poles lashed together with rope. In Europe that meant timber, in South and East Asia bamboo. The material changed with the region, the method hardly at all: uprights in the ground or on sole boards, horizontals lashed across them, boards on top, and a lot of skill in the knots. The MOT notes that the parts of a wooden scaffold were largely joined with rope because rope could be reused and was cheaper than nails, and that in its region scaffold uprights were still round timber until about 1950, when metal took over.

Bamboo never went away. In Hong Kong it is still the everyday material on high-rise facades, but that is changing. In March 2025 the Development Bureau said metal scaffolding would be used on at least half of new public works contracts and cited 23 deaths in bamboo scaffold accidents since 2018, as Scaffmag reported. After the Wang Fuk Court fire in Tai Po in November 2025, the chief secretary said a complete switch to metal should be made in suitable working environments (AP report). The same report counts about 2,500 registered bamboo scaffolders in the city.

When did steel tube and coupler scaffolding appear?

The change from rope to steel fittings happened in Britain in the first two decades of the 20th century. According to the company timeline published by SGB’s successor BrandSafway:

• 1905: Daniel Palmer-Jones founds the Tubular Scaffolding Company.
• 1909: the Scaffixer coupling device is introduced to replace rope fixings.
• 1918: the Universal Coupler arrives, marking the move from timber and rope to steel tubes and couplers.
• 1919: the business becomes Scaffolding Great Britain, SGB.

The Universal Coupler became the industry standard and, in improved forms, is still the basis of tube and fitting work. Scaffmag’s history of the trade (2016) adds that Palmer-Jones’s firm won a contract for the remodelling of Buckingham Palace in 1913. In the United States the industry has its own founding story: Safway says it was founded in Milwaukee in 1936 by Reinhold Uecker, a stonemason who turned to steel scaffolding after a fall from a faulty wooden platform (Safway’s 80th anniversary release).

Where did frame scaffolding come from?

Tube and coupler is flexible but slow, because every node is a loose fitting and a spanner. Prefabricated frames, with the standards and the transom welded into one piece, trade that flexibility for speed. SGB’s timeline dates its first frame access system to 1944. German approvals show the same idea spreading on the Continent: the Hünnebeck BOSTA 70 facade frame, for example, was first approved by the German building authority DIBt on 25 February 1971.

Frames suit long, plain facades: you set out bays along the wall and stack frames lift by lift, with far fewer loose parts than tube and fitting.

Who invented cuplock and the modular systems?

The next step was to keep the speed of frames and get back some of the freedom of tube. Two answers came in the 1970s.

• Layher Allround (1974). Layher’s milestones record the Allround system in 1974: a rosette on the standard and wedge-head connections that replaced tube and coupler for complex structures. The same page dates the company itself to 1945 in Gueglingen-Eibensbach and its Speedyscaf facade frames to 1965.
• Cuplok (1976). SGB introduced Cuplok, where ledgers and braces lock into cups on the standards at fixed intervals, so one hammer blow fixes several members at a node with no loose fittings. Its timeline calls it still a leading access solution today. Cuplock-type systems are now made by many manufacturers.

When did aluminium arrive?

Layher dates its move into steel and aluminium tube products to 1957 and offered Speedyscaf frames in both steel and aluminium from 1965; SGB’s timeline lists aluminium towers in 1975. Lighter parts matter because a facade scaffold is carried up by hand, piece by piece, often by a crew of two or three. Aluminium frames, decks and mobile towers now sit next to galvanised steel in most manufacturers’ ranges.

Which rules and standards shaped scaffolding?

Once scaffolds became a product, they got standards.

• BS 1139 (1964). The British Standards Institution published BS 1139:1964 Metal scaffolding on 8 June 1964. It was later split into separate parts for tubes, couplers and other components.
• BS 5973 (1993). The UK code of practice for access and working scaffolds in steel was superseded by BS EN 12811-1 on 16 June 2004.
• HD 1000 (1988). The European harmonisation document for service and working scaffolds made of prefabricated elements was withdrawn in December 2003 and replaced by EN 12810-1.
• EN 12810 and EN 12811 (2003/2004). These now define facade scaffold systems and the general performance requirements, including the load and width classes used on every European site.
• OSHA Subpart L (1971, revised 1996). In the US, scaffold rules were adopted as OSHA standards on 29 May 1971, and the rewritten Subpart L was published on 30 August 1996, effective 29 November 1996.
• TG20. For UK tube and fitting work, the NASC’s TG20 guidance sets out compliant configurations; TG20:21 moved it into an online eGuide that produces compliance sheets.

What these rules require on site today is set out per country in scaffolding regulations by country, with the UK detail in UK scaffolding regulations and TG20 and the US detail in OSHA scaffolding requirements.

Scaffolding history timeline

How did scaffold planning go digital?

For most of the 20th century a scaffold was planned on paper: a sketch of the elevation, bays counted by hand, a material list typed from memory. The manufacturers were first to change that with software for their own systems, and multi-brand tools followed; our guide on what scaffold software does explains what each kind of tool covers.

The method underneath has not changed since the putlog days: measure the wall, divide it into bays, stack lifts to the working height, tie it back and protect the edges. What has changed is how fast you can test the options and how exactly you can count the parts. ScaFix runs that putlog-era sequence on screen, from wall length to bays, lifts and a parts list for a chosen system, as a planning aid rather than a structural design.

The rules and dates above are history and planning information, not structural approval. A scaffold is built to the manufacturer’s instructions, a TG20:21 compliance sheet or a design, and a competent person must inspect it before use (Work at Height Regulations 2005, regulation 12; in the US, 29 CFR 1926.451(f)(3)).

Frequently asked questions

Sources

Primary sources used for this article, with the date each was read.

• French Ministry of Culture, Lascaux: Access to the walls (site under maintenance on 23 Oct 2026; read in the Internet Archive copy of 10 Jan 2026) (read 23 October 2026)
• French Ministry of Culture, Lascaux: Dating the figures (read in the Internet Archive copy of 5 Jan 2026) (read 23 October 2026)
• Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Antikensammlung: Erzgießerei-Schale, F 2294 (read 23 October 2026)
• MOT Grimbergen: Wooden scaffolding (read 23 October 2026)
• BrandSafway (SGB): Our history (read 23 October 2026)
• Scaffmag: Reaching for the sky, a potted history of scaffolding (2016) (read 23 October 2026)
• Layher: Milestones (read 23 October 2026)
• Safway celebrates 80 years strong (press release) (read 23 October 2026)
• BSI Knowledge: BS 1139:1964 Metal scaffolding (read 23 October 2026)
• BS 5973:1993, superseded by BS EN 12811-1 (read 23 October 2026)
• Genorma: HD 1000:1988 (read 23 October 2026)
• Federal Register, 30 August 1996: Safety Standards for Scaffolds Used in the Construction Industry (read 23 October 2026)
• Construction Management: NASC updates TG20 scaffolding eGuide (2021) (read 23 October 2026)
• Scaffmag: Hong Kong to phase out bamboo scaffolding (March 2025) (read 23 October 2026)
• AP: Bamboo scaffolding helped build Hong Kong’s skyline (November 2025) (read 23 October 2026)
• DIBt approval Z-8.1-54.2, Hünnebeck BOSTA 70.pdf) (read 23 October 2026)
• legislation.gov.uk: Work at Height Regulations 2005, regulation 12 (read 23 October 2026)
• Cornell LII: 29 CFR 1926.451, general requirements for scaffolds (read 23 October 2026)