Places of Worship Fred Dibnah's Magnificent Monuments

All my working life, I've been involved

with church towers and steeples.

This is one of the finest in the land: St Warberg's in Preston.

It's 311 feet high.

They reckon it's the tallest church steeple in England.

Not the tallest cathedral one.

Such a beautiful needle point.

Big nut and bolts holding t'top on.

Otherwise, it would blow away in the wind.

I think, really, getting to the end of my days as a steeplejack,

I think it may be the last big steeple I'll ever mend.

Man has been using stones to build places of worship

for thousands of years. The origins of the oldest

are shrouded in mystery. The best-known is Stonehenge.

But not far away, at Avebury,

I went to see one that was built on an even grander scale.

This is one of the oldest megalithic monuments in Europe. It's older than Stonehenge.

It were developed, so they say, somewhere roundabout 2500

to 2200 BC.

The whole site covers a vast area.

You can actually see some of the earliest examples

of building and construction work in all of Great Britain.

This great trench covers three-quarters of a mile

and is 15 feet deep.

It's one 'eck of an achievement,

for four-and-a-half thousand years old, eh?

Its huge size and the depth of the ditch...

It will have lost depth,

when you think of all the years and the erosion and the washing of the stuff back down the hole.

Yes, we know from excavations

we can only see the top third of the ditch.

A lot of in-fill has slumped in over the centuries.

Now then, how did they do it, so long ago?

Well, simple tools, Fred, but well-organised labour.

What have we got here?

The most important tool that survives

is the red deer antler pick.

They could have had other tools, wood and basketry, that wouldn't survive.

But this is the one so widely found

on these early prehistoric sites.

But it's important not to think of it as a pickaxe.

It hasn't got the weight.

It's not like how WE use a pickaxe.

On prehistoric antlers, the back of the coronet

is often heavily battered, on worn examples.

It suggests they used a mallet to drive the point in,

then used it as a levering tool.

These ox shoulder blades are sometimes found on these sites.

They've always been cited as the equivalent of a shovel,

but it's questionable whether they would shift enough material

-and whether you'd have enough leverage.

-How many stones

do you think there were in the whole circle, all together?

We think there were 98 stones, 98 or 99, in the outer circle.

Then there are the smaller features of two inner circles.

Each stone stands in a pit, about three feet deep.

They're really just balanced in position

and held by smaller chock stones.

It's very similar material to Stonehenge.

They are the same. Sarsen stone, it is.

The difference is that these aren't shaped.

They're selected for shape, perhaps, but not worked and shaped like they are at Stonehenge.

Is there any estimate at all

of how many men were involved in this operation?

It's very difficult to estimate,

because we don't know the length of time it took

to complete a monument like this.

We can't define it as less than a hundred years, or something.

There's no written record, in any shape or form.

-Not at all.

-There's nothing.

They just left us with this big circular trench.

A mystery.

Avebury has been an important place of worship for 4½ millennia.

As well as the pagan stone circle,

there's also an early Christian church.

St James's dates from the time the Anglo-Saxons were first

converted to Christianity,

but it was much altered and added-to in the Middle Ages.

It's quite rare to find one that's remained completely unaltered.

To see one of the few that remain,

I travelled up to Escomb in County Durham.

This Saxon church at Escomb is one of the oldest churches in all of Great Britain.

It was built from the remains of an abandoned Roman fort at Binchester, somewhere in the locality.

No-one really knows who built it,

how long ago it was built or why it was built in this particular spot.

One of the people who helps to keep the church alive

is Lillian Moody. She knows every inch of it.

The actual corners of the building, if you look,

-slope slightly inwards...

-Yes, indeed.

-..for maximum strength.

Crow step gable end, isn't it? In architectural terms.

There's a Roman altar stone...

-up there. Can you see it?

-Yes, I can.

With a rosette. They think that it's Mithras.

Mithras was very popular with Roman soldiers,

being the god of courage and bravery.

Now, the doorway is beautiful.

The jambs are interesting, the big stones going in,

and then two small ones.

There are bits of tile underneath that take the play up.

-Can you see the plaster?

-Yeah.

-That's original Anglo-Saxon plaster.

-It were all over that once.

The churches were plastered inside and out.

Now, if you have a look here, Fred...

The chancel is not keyed in.

No, it isn't. It's just leaned on.

Clagged on, as we say in Durham.

-Just propped up against it?

-Just propped up.

Well, Lillian, does anybody really know how old it is?

Not really.

There's no records at all.

We THINK about 675.

Now, it could be 20 years either way.

The roof, Fred, if you notice, is extremely high.

-Not the original.

-It would be a thatched one at the beginning,

-made with reeds.

-Yes, probably.

-The most important thing is this arch.

-It's Roman, in't it?

The Romans knew how to build arches,

but the Saxons had lost the art and didn't know.

So, they had to bring that rounded part intact.

That, where it's a rectangular cut...

The Romans used it to put a tool in, a lewis, to lift the stone. The Saxons didn't know why.

The Romans were more advanced than the Saxons.

Really, they were marvellous engineers, when you think of what they've done...

In the Middle Ages, their engineering skills began to appear.

At Chester Cathedral, most of the building work

was done between the 11th and 15th centuries.

BELLS CHIME

It started its life as a Benedictine monastery.

It was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1540.

A year later, he gave it back to the Church

as the cathedral for the newly-created diocese of Chester.

So, what we've got in here are some of the best-preserved monastic buildings in England.

So, this is the cloisters.

This is where the monks lived - their domestic quarters.

This is very much as the monks would have seen it.

This is, of course, a new roof.

Yeah, the roof is later. This is 1527.

The earlier one was wood

and they replaced it with this stone ceiling.

Up here, you can see clearly where the later roof has been pushed through

into the earlier work.

On the ledge would be a trough of running water.

The monks washed their hands there before their meals.

And they're big lumps, aren't they?

Normally, they're quite small pieces.

-They're almost like great flagstones.

-Yes, slabs of stone.

The carved bosses, as well, are big chunks of stone.

'Going into the cathedral itself

'is very good for seeing the way a great cathedral like this has changed over the centuries.'

This is the main part of the building.

This is the north transept.

I think here really shows just what a mixture this building is.

-Norman arches and Gothic arches...

-Absolutely.

The one on the left is about 1092, part of the original Norman church.

On the right, it's about 1300, part of the later rebuild.

It looks like a real mixture,

but they didn't seem to mind how it looked.

I suppose the reason for the thick walls

on the Norman bits is the semicircular arch.

They needed thicker walls to take the thrust.

As against the Gothic job, which...

-All the weight's downwards.

-You can do more with a Gothic arch.

You can go higher, you can vault unequal spaces. It's more flexible.

A lot of people must wonder how they built arches.

It's pretty simple, when you think.

They had support from below

and built a wooden curve, the same form as the inside of the arch,

started from each side and worked their way to t'centre.

It's one reason why woodworkers were so important.

They didn't just do nice carving. They helped to build the structure.

When you think of a growing ceiling,

that must have been a work of art of woodwork, before the massive stones.

They had to get it right to take the weight, not only the shape.

I wonder how they felt taking the wood away!

'I decided to put it to the test.

'This is a demonstration of building an arch.

'Arches have been around for thousands of years.

'The earliest ones, they used earth for the centring.

'They built outside walls,

'piled a load of muck up and put timber on top of it,

'put the masonry over the top of that, then dug the muck out.

'I suppose, in early days, before Medieval times,

'that would be the only way that they could work it out.

The wooden bit in the middle, like this bit down here,

is known as the centring. Of course, when the thing's set,

we can withdraw these wedges,

down here.

Hopefully, the wood will become slack.

Then the arch will stay in position.

I'm very confident that it WILL stay in position.

I'm not worried about it at all.

Like...so.

That's what all good bricklayers do at brew time.

I'll come back after lunch and take the middle out.

The Middle Ages was the great age of cathedral building.

They've left us with some magnificent monuments

to the skills of the medieval builders and stonemasons.

One of the grandest of them all is York Minster.

It was started in 1220

and it took 250 years to complete.

One of the great engineering advances of the time was

the introduction of the flying buttress.

This was an half-arch, which transmitted the thrust of the roof

from the upper part of the wall onto an outer support.

Really, the invention of the flying buttress...

People may go to cathedrals and think they're a bit ornamental,

but really they're very important.

When you go in these great cathedrals, stand on the main aisle

and look down and there's all these great windows.

Have you wondered why it doesn't collapse,

when you see two great rows of pillars, with arches on top,

then great tall windows, up to t'ceiling nearly?

And then, of course, the groin stone roof.

Where does all the shove and thrust go?

In actual fact, when they invented the side aisles, with groin roofs,

they built the buttresses outside in t'rain

and put as much weight on them as they could.

They built these little half-arches in a ways, like a flying buttress, that holds together

the solid bits in-between the windows.

Although they look big and strong from outside,

they're an unbelievably fragile piece of building.

When you look at the stonework on the outside of York Minster, it's amazing, the detail.

You know, the mouldings, the niches,

the beautiful statues, the window openings

and the tracery in the windows.

The detail around this great west doorway is summat else.

I mean, it's brilliant.

People say, "Pity they can't do it now."

But I'm afraid they're wrong.

Most of that up there were made in a yard,

just round the back of the Minster.

Before they chisel away at the stone, detailed drawings have to be done.

From the drawings, they make a template,

which the stonemason uses to carve out the basic geometric shapes.

-Can I have a go?

-Certainly.

You won't hit me if I break it, will you?

Thank you. Right...

They reckon Michelangelo could shift more rock in a day

than two normal men.

This is the geometric masonry,

which is very disciplined,

going to definitive lines in the stone.

It goes straight in the building.

For embellishments of flowers or leaves,

it goes into the carvers' workshop.

Now then, good afternoon, Martin.

-Hello, Fred.

-I can see now

the three stages of making them beautiful leaves on the side.

It must take a long time.

How long does it take to do three leaves?

There's probably another week's work there.

When people walk by York Minster,

they don't appreciate the effort that's gone into it.

How do you go about making these?

Heck of a tricky operation.

A touch delicacy, in't it?

Once the form of the leaf's shaped, you know where the reference points are.

Then you can begin to dig behind with smaller chisels.

Sometimes, to get behind, you can use a drill.

When it's finished, it will go into the southwest door.

We met a man downstairs who's making one a week.

They're knocking them out as fast as we're putting them in.

I can see originally it were longer. It went right through.

You've cut it off where it's still good.

They were a lot bigger than the ones we're putting back in.

We can't put that size stone in, because we just can't lift them

to where we want them at the front. They pushed them straight back.

This is it: the great moment.

We're now going to strike the arch.

It's had an hour or two to settle down.

It is still a bit green, but I don't think we'll have any bother.

Success! Ha ha ha!

The Romans and Normans would have done it out of stone,

but men like Brunel used lots of bricks.

It looks quite precarious and weak in its present state,

but if it has pressure coming on it from all the way around the sides,

the top and ten to and ten past, it goes even stronger.

You'll never crush it.

You need immense strength and weight to destroy an arch.

That's how they got their arches to stay up,

but how about a huge dome, like the one on St Paul's Cathedral in London?

During the second half of the 17th century, a great new cathedral was

constructed in the City of London

to replace an earlier one, partially destroyed by the Great Fire of London.

St Paul's Cathedral, designed and built by Christopher Wren, is something else.

In its heyday, it must have dominated the skyline of London.

It's a great pity now that

you can't see it very well, for all the modern buildings surrounding it.

Before he could build it,

he had to get rid of the remains of the old one.

Believe it or not, he tried explosives, but he upset the neighbours,

so they used a battering ram instead.

During the 35 years it took to construct it,

Wren used the finest craftsmen, the best materials

and supervised the books.

Every Saturday, he came to have a see how things were going. Later,

when they got high, he were craned up in a basket

to the top to survey the dome and all its goings-on.

The sections that carry the staircases...

'Martin Fletcher is the Clerk of Works, responsible for the upkeep of the whole structure.'

It was all about the embellishment of stonework. As you can see,

at the west end of the cathedral is how HE wanted it.

Just white and stone and plain.

And then along come the beautifiers.

ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS

All this mosaic work was only done at the end of the 19th century.

It's very different from the plain, unadorned white that Wren had intended.

All of the eight pillars carry a base weight, which includes the dome, the colonnade,

down to the drum bells... 63,000 tons on those eight columns.

What's this say? It's in Latin. I never went to a proper school.

You and me both, but the whole thing about it is...

It says, "If you want to see a monument to Sir Christopher Wren, just look around you."

Yeah, that's a true fact, in't it?

St Paul's Cathedral really is a wonderful building.

When you stand there in London and look at it,

you imagine it's just a big dome, but it isn't really.

There are three domes. When you're stood in the bottom,

you see a beautiful dome, nicely painted, when you look upwards.

But on t'topside of that, there's a big cone that holds up the lantern on the top.

Then, stuck to the outside of that,

there's a load of timber roof trusses that hold yet one more dome,

which of course has got the lead on top of it.

These stone corbels support the framework on this great cone,

which is perfectly straight. You see, looking at that,

the greatest area of thrust of the whole lot

is here, on top of these pillars.

With all this pressure, how do you stop

the whole thing pushing out on itself and collapsing?

Wren came up with an ingenious solution.

He put a great wrought iron chain all around the dome

and sunk it into a band of stone that went all round the perimeter.

It was leaded in, as well, by buckets and ladles of molten lead.

When you think back to the 17-odds,

the methods of melting lead wouldn't be quite as good as what they are today.

You can imagine a little lad, with a pig's bladder,

furiously pumping some bit of a coal fire, or charcoal,

a crucible stuck on top of it, full of lead.

They would pour it in. It had set, so the next lot wouldn't adhere to the other lot.

This has been, really, part of its downfall.

Now they're repairing the chain and the masonry around it.

But even now, you see little of the chain.

All you can see of it are the bits they've got exposed

in the section they're working on.

-This is it, then?

-This is the chain.

What they did was come up to this height,

they cut a chase in all the way around, 150 metres round.

The chain was forged,

pockets were dropped in for the couplings,

and above every column, going all the way round,

you have two knuckles on there, which are cramps. It's like a fork.

That goes right the way back to the base of the cone,

with another two chains, so that's your restraint.

What's happened, over a period of years,

where they used to pour the lead,

because it hits this fairly cold, it laminates.

Any moisture has got into the chain.

As you know, if you get a little bit of rust in there, it swells up,

blows the stone out of the front, resulting in these huge fractures.

When you think how old St Paul's is,

it's a credit to Christopher Wren.

The architecture and engineering involved in it are something else.

It's interesting that, over the centuries,

a lot of our best architects, builders and craftsmen

have reserved their finest work for places of worship.

They didn't just save it for churches as grand as St Paul's.

This is St Margaret's Church

at Bodelwyddan, near Rhyl in north Wales.

I've always greatly admired it.

They call it the Marble Church,

because of all the different types of marble used in the interior decoration.

Altogether, there are 14 different varieties of marble in this church

and there's an amazing richness of craftsmanship throughout the whole place.

Just look at the quality of the carvings and the stained glass.

The bit that I really like is the steeple.

You know, the spire. It's a work of art.

The guy who designed it has the top ¾ of the steeple resting on eight stones.

How did he know that they'd take the weight?

Because they're so fine.

The whole steeple, the tower itself,

with its double pinnacles on the corners and flying buttresses

that hold them all together, and all the lovely, fine tracery...

I passed by here, years and years and years ago.

I stopped one day and had a look at it - beautiful steeple.

I always wanted to have a closer look and get inside, where we are now.

It's interesting, because you can see the eight stones up above,

that takes the weight of the top ¾ of the steeple.

If you look to t'top, you can see the iron crosstree

that the great nut and bolt comes through

to hold the top on the steeple.

I think I'll go outside now and have a look round on the verandah.

You can actually see the lovely curve

of the barrel shape of the steeple.

When you're half a mile away, it looks perfectly straight.

It's actually barrel-shaped, like a barrel of beer.

These lovely pinnacles on the corners,

with slender supports fretworked out, and flying buttresses that join one to the other.

Lovely bit of stonework, really.

Next week, we'll be looking at places of work, new and old.

Subtitles by David Van-Cauter BBC - 2000

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