Pleasure Palaces Fred Dibnah's Magnificent Monuments


Pleasure Palaces

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I don't think there are many better pastimes

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than spending time in the back garden doing this.

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RIVETING

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Yeah, you can't beat a bit of riveting.

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Of course, if you get 'em wrong, they're a hell of a job to get one out!

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I don't suppose riveting

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would be everybody's idea of a good time.

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A day at the seaside or an amusement park would be a bit more like it for most people.

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What people enjoy doing in their spare time varies a lot. In this programme,

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we're looking at different places

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that have been built for leisure and pleasure.

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As well as Blackpool, I'll be going to places like theatres and museums.

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Starting with one of our earliest and best-preserved places of pleasure.

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The city of Bath is very important.

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It has the only hot springs in the country.

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And this is what made it very important to the Romans.

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The Romans developed Bath

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into a city of leisure and pleasure.

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They built around the hot springs

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a wonderful system of baths... and what we can see here, in fact.

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The thing is, along with Hadrians's Wall,

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it's one of the grandest monuments

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that the Roman Empire left behind.

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The main feature is the great bath,

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which is still fed from the hot springs

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by the original Roman plumbing.

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A masterpiece of early civil engineering.

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The hydraulics that control the water flow

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show a detailed knowledge of the art of taming springs.

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The channels that carry the hot water through the baths still function today

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as the Roman engineers intended them to do.

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The baths were a meeting place.

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Roman Britons would come here in the afternoon to chat.

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They knew how to enjoy themselves,

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all that time ago.

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Another amenity that Romans introduced to Britain were theatres.

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When they left, the theatres disappeared.

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They never really made a comeback until the Tudor age.

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In Tudor times, this area south of the Thames

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was London's Theatreland.

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It was known as Bankside.

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It was the home of Shakespeare's Globe.

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The theatre was destroyed by fire and no trace of it was left.

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What we see today is an authentic reconstruction that's only 200 yards away from the original.

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It was the vision of an American actor, Sam Wanamaker, who was involved in the project

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from the cutting of the first trees.

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To get the wood, they had to travel all over the country

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to find trees of the right size and shape.

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Peter McCardy is the carpenter

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who was responsible for the whole timber-frame construction.

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If we look at the timber structure here,

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these posts actually reflect the bays inside.

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The basis of timber construction

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is breaking the structure up into a series of bays.

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If we look at these joints,

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we can see we've got these curved braces.

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We look for a tree with that natural curve.

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This is good, this lovely angle.

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In buildings that are polygonal, like this,

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or indeed, in buildings that weren't square in plan,

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and quite a lot of medieval buildings weren't square in plan,

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they would shape the posts to the angle of the building.

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This is shaped approximately to 162 degrees.

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Peter, when you started,

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there couldn't have been much left of the original.

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The Globe theatre suffered from fire.

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-Being timber...

-The thatched roof.

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The thatched roof led to the demise of the first Globe theatre.

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They fired a live cannon during a performance of Henry VIII.

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Some of the wadding went onto the thatch.

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It caught light and the whole thing was razed to the ground.

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That created a problem for anybody who wanted to do a reconstruction.

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There was nothing to work from in the way of any tangible physical evidence.

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There's a number of drawings of the theatres that were done at that time.

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I've got one here on the end of a peg.

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That shows you how big the illustrations are that we've had to work with.

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The building as we see it,

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and the timbers and joinery details,

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have had to be based on careful research of other buildings

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which have got similar features and characteristics.

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Like the joints for the mortice and tenons

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and all the usual joints pegged together.

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Quite interesting, how you've...

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how it really looks as though it's been sawn with a pit saw.

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In 1987 they discovered the archaeology of the Rose theatre foundations.

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And then in 1989 they excavated the Globe theatre site.

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And it's from those two pieces of information,

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and these drawings, that we've got the overall size of this building.

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100ft diameter and a 20-sided polygon.

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Each of these bays represents

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a facet on the building.

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There are 20 around the whole circle.

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The building is really dealt with

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in two-dimensional planes.

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So you don't fabricate

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a 3-D structure, you simply fabricate flat walls.

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Once they'd done this, they'd have to take it all apart

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to transport it to the site.

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And then piece it all together again.

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It must be one of the biggest timber prefabricated buildings ever made.

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There are various, really interesting refinements that these carpenters evolved

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to ensure that when the timbers were put together,

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they came together with the right angles.

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-If you didn't have the right angle in this building, they wouldn't meet.

-Too long or too short!

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You might miss, like this.

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I spent from being 15 years old till I were 22 as a joiner.

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It's wonderful, how it's been done.

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I don't think it could have looked a heck of a lot different when it were first built.

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The principles in Sam's conception for this project were to do as accurate

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a reconstruction as possible.

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Peter Street was the original builder

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and I like to feel that if he was standing here instead of me,

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that he would feel comfortable,

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as though it was one of his buildings.

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What would have made him feel at home is not just

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a structure that would have been familiar,

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but the whole design and decoration of the building.

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The curtains, the painting of the stage

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and the marbled columns have been recreated

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by craftsmen and women to make it look as it would have done in Shakespeare's day.

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By the 18th century, the design and decoration of buildings

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had become so important that a whole city was built in one style.

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It was at this time that the old Roman city of Bath

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was transformed into the most popular leisure resort in England.

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It became the summer capital of polite society.

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The place to go to take the waters and socialise.

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Towns have usually grown up

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in a fairly higgeldy-piggeldy sort of way.

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But Bath is an example of a town whose whole look

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was designed for gracious living.

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It was a Yorkshireman, John Wood,

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whose vision helped to change the face of Bath.

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Queen's Square is a perfect example of a design layout,

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with all the houses in it built to the same proportions

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and of the same stone.

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His grandest project,

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the Circus,

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has 30 houses built on a curve, and a paved square.

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When he died, his work was carried on

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by his son, whose greatest work, the Royal Crescent,

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has been called the finest crescent in Europe.

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Like his father, the young John Wood was influenced

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by the classical style of Ancient Greece and Imperial Rome.

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Another imperial age left us with some of

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our grandest monuments.

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The age of Victoria

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and the British Empire was at its peak.

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The Great Exhibition was held in 1851

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to demonstrate the industrial supremacy

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and the prosperity of Britain.

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It was a great success.

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The profits were used to establish

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an area of museums

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in South Kensington.

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The grand facade

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of the Victoria and Albert Museum

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was built between 1899 and 1909,

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to bring uniformity to a group of buildings

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devoted to the decorative arts.

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Aston Webb, the architect,

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wanted to bring the outside into the museum in quite a clever way.

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What he wanted to do was to create a buffer zone, if you like,

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using Portland stone,

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which he used on the outside face.

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He decided to bring what is normally used outside into this first area.

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It works quite well.

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In the other part of the entrance,

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you have the walls rendered.

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The soft plaster brings you into the envelope of the museum.

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All this lovely marble, as well.

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In the entrance here, he wanted to use several marbles.

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The floor is Carrara marble,

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also with black Italian marble

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and also Romanian red marble.

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I've got a table in my back kitchen with that pink marble on.

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-Believe it or not!

-When we take it up,

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we'll let you have that slab!

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As you get into the museum,

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you can see the way the decoration and the materials used

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were designed to complement the exhibits.

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So this staircase was the one that led up

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to the original ceramics galleries.

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As we walk up the staircase, the whole structure

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is clad in ceramic tile.

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If you look on the staircase, the decoration here

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endlessly repeats the marrying together of science and art.

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S and A, not V and A for Victoria and Albert.

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That's what S and A is there for.

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If we carry on up the staircase,

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you can see above the handrails

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are the painted panels.

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It's almost like a jigsaw,

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how it all fits together.

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Little hexagonal pieces.

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They're cut up into smaller pieces that look like

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mosaic tesserae.

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The vitrified tiling was also carried up into the ceiling, too.

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You can spend a day just admiring the decoration

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without looking at any exhibits.

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For me, the most exciting bit

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was being able to get up into the roof

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to see what some of the original buildings

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would have looked like.

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We've now got inside the roof void of the south court.

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As you can see, it's had inserted into the south court, in 1952,

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a modern suspended ceiling.

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Getting into the void, you can see

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the original roof structure.

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Yeah. And the beautifying.

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And the beautifying.

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It was a bolted iron structure with a glass roof.

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Very similar to the construction of the Crystal Palace.

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The walls are still decorated

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with the original paint scheme.

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-Gold leaf.

-Highly decorated.

-Yeah, beautiful.

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See the plaster there,

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how it's stuck to the laths,

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which are all the gentle curve of the arch.

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Even down to the decoration running along the eye sections

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of the girders.

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Every single surface has been gilded or painted or stencilled.

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You see the flanges there, riveted,

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-joining the pieces together.

-Yeah.

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-They were certainly good with the rivets!

-Absolutely.

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One of the original aims of the museum

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was to inspire British designers and manufacturers.

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So there's a collection of

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plastercast reproductions

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from some of the world's greatest

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buildings and monuments - put together

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for the benefit of art students

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who couldn't afford to go abroad

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to see them for themselves.

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They include the door of a cathedral

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and Trajan's column from Rome,

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which they had to chop in half to get in here.

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At building monuments, the Victorians were best.

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From London I went to see

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one of the most famous.

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This magnificent monument on Princes Street in Edinburgh

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was erected in remembrance

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of Sir Walter Scott, the famous Scottish writer.

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I don't know why - there's 287 steps to t'top of this monument -

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through all my career of being a steeplejack,

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I've always found it easier

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to go up a straight, vertical ladder

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to t'top of anything, really.

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Shortly after Sir Walter Scott's death,

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it was decided that they should build a monument in his remembrance.

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So it were put out for a competition.

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There were quite a few eminent architects who wanted the job.

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But George Meikle Kemp, a joiner from Midlothian,

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submitted his first drawing.

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Of course, because of his humble beginnings

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and the fact that he were only a joiner,

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they turned him down.

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But there were nobody really happy on the committee

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with what they'd received on the first attempt.

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So a second batch of drawings were put forward by all the architects.

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But Mr Kemp applied again under an assumed name.

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They picked his drawing and he got the job.

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He supervised the whole thing from the beginning but not to the end,

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because when it were halfway up he went to see the main contractor.

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It was a terrible, foggy night.

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Whether he'd had a wee dram, nobody knows.

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But he fell in the canal and drowned.

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His brother-in-law actually finished off the construction.

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The capstone were placed on the top by Kemp's son.

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Mr Kemp would have been proud to see the end product.

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But it weren't finished after four years.

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The 30-ton block of marble

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that had to come from Italy for the statue of Sir Walter,

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they dropped it in the harbour in Italy.

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They managed to get it on a boat and when it got to Leith,

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in Scotland, they had no gear to get it off!

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It took another two years before the statue were completed.

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Recently, there's been quite a lot of restoration work done on it.

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They used exactly the same stone,

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but of course it will never get as black as what the rest of it is.

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There won't be the same amount of smoke in Edinburgh as there was.

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I'd have daubed a bit of mud on it

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to make it blend in with the other.

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It's something I tried when I was redoing

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some of the stonework on my house.

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When I bought this house about 40 years ago,

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it basically were a two-up and two-down.

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As my family got bigger, I'd got to do something about it.

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So I built as much on it again.

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In all the wonderful buildings we've been looking at,

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even castles and all that,

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they've all been messed about with and extended one way and another.

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Even kings were great DIY men.

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Extensions were done to the house in the days of the Earl of Bradford.

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But they didn't do a good job.

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They omitted all the beading and the fancy work.

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When I did it, I thought I'd try and reproduce

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what they did in 1854.

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When I first did the moulding and the fancy bits,

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the little square pieces

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were a very white material.

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They stood out like a sore thumb.

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So I made a mixture of mud and water out of the garden,

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and painted them. God and the rain has done the rest.

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They're now quite a good match with the moulding.

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Not far from me is a Victorian monument of a different kind.

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And one that's become one of

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the country's most famous landmarks.

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Blackpool Tower were built in 1894.

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It's really an imitation of the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

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It helped transform Blackpool

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into one of the biggest and busiest tourist resorts in all of England.

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The tower is 518ft high.

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And what you've got to remember is when it were built in 1894,

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there were no aeroplanes and no skyscrapers.

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Most Victorian people

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had never been far off the ground.

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To actually have the experience of being 500ft up in t'sky

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and being able to see 30 miles

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must have been an unbelievable attraction.

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The tower were completed by the famous railway bridge builders

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Enan and Froud, from Manchester.

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On this maintenance level, it gives you some idea of what it's all about.

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It's four latticework towers,

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all leaning inwards.

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And braced together with these big

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three-inch diameter diagonal tie rods.

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They stabilise the whole structure.

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They tell me, in a 70mph gale,

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it only moves an inch at the top.

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The North pier is even older than the tower.

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It were designed by a gentleman called Eugenius Birch.

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That's some name, innit?

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He decided that he would build it out of cast iron stanchions,

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instead of the much stronger wrought iron.

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His argument against the wrought iron

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were if a ship crashed into it, it would bend and twist it.

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If a ship crashed into his cast iron stanchions,

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it would bust a few and they'd be able to replace them.

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I think that were a good idea. I do indeed.

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The pier was opened in 1863.

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In 12 months, it attracted a quarter of a million punters

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who paid a penny a piece to get on it.

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The pier company tried to attract

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a higher class of holidaymaker.

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They only had two kiosks.

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One sold tobacco and the other sold boots. There were no beer.

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Not long afterwards came the Central pier,

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which catered for the working classes who came here on trains.

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A great venue for open air dancing

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and loud music that went on into the night.

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A stark contrast to the middle classes on the North pier.

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By the beginning of the 20th century,

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Blackpool had become firmly established

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as Britain's favourite seaside resort.

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It attracted millions every year.

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After fresh air, the piers and the promenade during the day,

0:21:590:22:03

the evening was the time for the fun of the theatre.

0:22:030:22:07

Blackpool became a centre for popular entertainment.

0:22:070:22:11

Theatres were springing up all over the place.

0:22:110:22:15

This is the grandest of all the grand theatres, the Grand.

0:22:150:22:19

Designed by Frank Matcham, it took only nine months to build.

0:22:190:22:24

How did he do it with all this beautiful plaster?

0:22:240:22:27

Very quick. They'd be hard-pressed in this day and age to accomplish the same thing.

0:22:270:22:33

It's amazing how Matcham managed to get 1,200 people in such a small space.

0:22:330:22:40

His great thing were his lavish interiors.

0:22:400:22:43

All this beautiful ornamental plasterwork,

0:22:430:22:46

and lots of different sorts of styles.

0:22:460:22:49

Matcham used the cantilever design

0:22:490:22:51

to support the circles.

0:22:510:22:53

Basically, what that means is the girders came out of the wall

0:22:530:22:58

and radiated into the centre of that great curve,

0:22:580:23:01

which gives the whole thing great strength.

0:23:010:23:05

It must have bent a bit

0:23:050:23:07

when a pop band were on and kids were jumping up and down.

0:23:070:23:12

They've been pulling in the crowds in Blackpool

0:23:120:23:16

for over 100 years. The latest attraction

0:23:160:23:19

is as impressive for its engineering

0:23:190:23:22

as it is for the excitement of riding on it.

0:23:220:23:26

This is the latest engineering feat here on the front at Blackpool.

0:23:260:23:31

The Pepsi Max Big One is the biggest rollercoaster in the world.

0:23:310:23:36

It's 235ft high.

0:23:360:23:38

And the carriages go at 85mph.

0:23:380:23:41

That's fast. I think I'm going to have a go.

0:23:410:23:45

Goodbye. I'll see you later.

0:23:460:23:48

In about two minutes.

0:23:480:23:51

I don't know whether I'm going to like it.

0:24:010:24:04

You might see my breakfast!

0:24:040:24:06

I nearly gulped!

0:24:090:24:11

It would be better if it had strings on.

0:24:360:24:39

You don't need a hair brush!

0:24:540:24:56

I want to meet the man who first commissioned it.

0:25:030:25:06

He must have been very brave.

0:25:060:25:08

Aye.

0:25:080:25:10

One of the mechanics told me...

0:25:130:25:16

I said, "It's a bit bumpy. It could do with some springs."

0:25:160:25:20

He said, "As the morning wears on, it gets smoother. The wheels get soft."

0:25:200:25:25

Polystyrene or polypropylene. Poly summat or other.

0:25:250:25:29

Having just got off the Pepsi Big One,

0:25:330:25:36

it must be a nerve-racking business, being in charge of a place like this and a machine like that.

0:25:360:25:42

This is Jim, who's in charge.

0:25:420:25:45

Them lot up there don't really know what's going to happen to them.

0:25:450:25:49

They're going to love every minute.

0:25:490:25:52

And as for nerve-racking,

0:25:520:25:54

it tests you at times, I tell you!

0:25:540:25:57

It's quite scary, really.

0:25:570:25:59

That's the idea. To scare the pants off people.

0:25:590:26:02

But do it safely. That's what it's all about.

0:26:020:26:06

How many tons of iron is there?

0:26:060:26:09

There are 2,700 tons of steel in that.

0:26:090:26:11

Most of it was manufactured

0:26:110:26:13

and supplied not far from here, in Bolton.

0:26:130:26:16

Robert Watson's. The structural steel fellow.

0:26:160:26:20

All the steelwork came from a company in Southampton.

0:26:200:26:24

The biggest and best in England.

0:26:240:26:27

I can't see anything in Europe

0:26:270:26:30

going bigger than that at the moment.

0:26:300:26:33

Frightening to think of anything bigger.

0:26:330:26:36

We'll hold the record for a while.

0:26:360:26:38

The track's two pieces of tubing.

0:26:380:26:41

A little bit more than that!

0:26:410:26:43

A steel tube track, that's right.

0:26:430:26:46

Our engineers walk that track every day.

0:26:460:26:49

You were on the first run.

0:26:490:26:51

The wheels take a while to warm up.

0:26:510:26:54

But it will be better now.

0:26:540:26:56

Let's go back.

0:26:560:26:58

-Then it gets to stage where it just keeps going.

-Let's go back!

0:26:580:27:03

This is the third time round on here this morning.

0:27:090:27:13

That's it. I'm ready.

0:27:130:27:16

My hat's gone!

0:27:290:27:31

I should have riveted it on.

0:27:310:27:33

It's funny, wherever I go, whether it's a place of entertainment,

0:27:390:27:44

or somewhere much older

0:27:440:27:46

and quieter and more peaceful, I always look at things

0:27:460:27:50

and wonder about the men who built them.

0:27:500:27:53

And about the great vision of the architects and engineers

0:27:530:27:58

who helped to create that wonderful, rich heritage of buildings

0:27:580:28:02

that we have in this country today.

0:28:020:28:05

What a credit they are to the men who built them.

0:28:050:28:08

Subtitles by Sally Gray, ITFC, for BBC Subtitling - 2000

0:28:200:28:24

E-mail us at [email protected]

0:28:240:28:28

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