The Industrial Landscape Fred Dibnah's World of Steam, Steel and Stone

One of the earliest recollections I have as a small boy, is on a summer's evening,

the many chimney stacks that stood up round Burnden Park

and smoke drifting out the tops of 'em.

To me, it were quite romantic, you know,

bit unhealthy, but quite romantic.

And then on a winter's night, where they had a nightshift on in a big mill.

When you went and looked through the windows, the hundreds of yards of line shafting

all howling round, all like chromium plate.

Fred Dibnah will always be remembered for his passions for steeplejacking and steam

and for his love for the industrial landscape

that surrounded him when he was growing up in Bolton in the 1940s.

It appealed to him a great deal, the Bolton of the 1930s and 40s and 50s.

Really because it was his own territory,

it was something that he was familiar with.

See the boilers!

If he could've turned back the clock he would have lived in those times,

in the 30s or 40s being something like an engine driver

in a weaving mill, spinning mill, something like that,

but it was, it was at the very root of Fred that was engrained into him

and part of his psyche and who he felt he was.

As Fred was growing up Britain was still the most urbanised and industrialised nation in the world,

accounting for a quarter of world trade in manufacturing.

It is an era that is almost forgotten. But Fred reminded us of it.

As a small boy I were always over-inquisitive, you know

like climbing over fences and getting in places where you shouldn't really be.

And I used to discover all sorts of things, you know,

quite close by to where I lived...

A beautiful water wheel with a tree growing through it

but they still had a steam engine, you know,

so the steam engines and the water wheels, for a brief period worked side-by-side.

Fred would wander round the streets, I'm sure, and wander into boiler houses and engine houses

and he'd talk for hours and listen.

He had a gift of listening as well as talking.

And gaining friendships and acquaintanceships, particularly with old men, old knowledgeable men.

With his younger brother, Graham, he'd go to play down by the old mill lodges.

We'd go fishing and our kid and his mate were for ever making rafts

and sailing on these rafts, like

and on t'lodges...and we had really good times.

And he used to make in the old factory at the bottom...

He used to make a lot of like, dens

and we used to go and sit like, and have a quick cig and what have you.

But when it come time for demolishing the chimneys,

he sat there on t'bank of these lodges

all day, from getting up in t' morning, till they finished at five o'clock.

And he used to watch them all t'time,

knocking down these chimneys and he used to come home and say to me mother,

"I'm gonna be a steeplejack, I want to be a steeplejack,"

and my mother said, "You're joking. You must be mad."

Anyway, unbeknownst to us, that's what he were doing.

In the 60 years since then our urban and industrial landscape has changed dramatically

as whole industries have disappeared.

But Fred's memories stayed with him

and became the biggest influence on his life and work.

I remember as a lad of about 16 or 17,

eh, rather full of fear, climbing up the engine house steps

and looking at the thing going round through the window

and seeing the engine minder in an easy chair, snoozing. He wouldn't really be asleep,

he'd be listening for any strange change in the pattern of noise that were coming from the thing,

which of course donated something were going wrong, there were a different noise started appearing.

Steam comes through this big red pipe into the high pressure cylinder.

Well, when it's been dealt with in there,

it goes through another pipe underneath the bottom of the engine

and back into the low pressure cylinder.

When it's been finished with in there

it goes into the condenser where it's turned back into water again.

Now this is the piston rod that pushes the crosshead -

that's this bit that we can hardly keep up with -

that works the connecting rod that turns round the big end.

This is the big end - a lot bigger than the big end in your motor car!

He grew up with fantastic machinery to look at

and he could also see all the mills, all the mill chimneys.

It must have been, for him, it must have been absolutely fantastic

to have been growing up with the industry that was here.

We had engineering works and we had all the cotton mills.

Well, it's quite dangerous, really. It is, yeah.

Get trapped in between... You were piecing up like... Yeah.

The pieces ends up like there. Yeah.

And I bet you were somewhat of an expert knot-tier? Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Do they often break? Yeah. Yeah. If it's spinning bad they're breaking down all t'time.

And that's what you've got to do. Yeah. On here with piecework, you've got to keep them going. Yeah.

We used to get us wage in one wage packet

and then we used to share it on a Thursday. Yeah, yeah.

What with all the ones who cleaned all the... Oh, yeah. Between all the spinners? Yeah.

What they called piecers.

Like little piecers. That's right.

They were like apprentices. Yeah.

But... When it's coming out it's spinning. Yeah.

It's putting twists in. Yeah.

It's coming off this top... Yeah...yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you'll see it. All the wattles stop. Yeah.

Now, they go that way. Yeah. And then...

It's winding on. That's right!

Oh, they're brilliant. Very clever, eh?

Yeah, they didn't know what they were doing them men, did they when did this?

They used to say, in t'olden days,

"England's bread hangs on Lancashire's thread." Yeah.

And they spun enough before breakfast

to do the whole of England and rest of t'day were for the empire.

Fred's passion for the history of the places he showed us on TV

actually really raised public interest and made people want to go and visit.

There's so much of our industrial history around us

and it's part of what makes us what we are

and what made Britain what it is today.

Em...it's something that we should be interested in.

And Fred had a talent for making that really interesting for people.

This is Burnley and this is Queen Street Mill.

They were very famous for weaving and this is a great weaving shed

and if you really want to get the feel of what it's like in a steam-driven weaving shed

this, without a doubt, is the place to come.

WEAVING MACHINE CLACKS

It were all hustle and bustle.

All t'cotton mills were going, engineering works, gas works...

..very busy. Eh...

and you know, you went out t'work in t'morning,

get to t'bus stop and two buses'd go past - full.

You'd no chance of gettin' on 'em.

'Course there weren't as many cars then.

A time when you could knock on any door

and get a job and they'd say, "Can you start now?"

Going to work in t'morning in the 50s. I started in '53.

And everybody had clogs on and clump on t'bus at six o'clock in the morning - quarter to six,

catch six o'clock bus from Wigan.

Walking down Scholes Brew must have woken everybody up -

50, 60 men all walking down with clogs on.

Even girls going to work same in t'mills cos they started at six. Was like middle of t'day

especially on Market Square where all t'buses were.

There were hundreds of people knocking about.

Not like now, you go now at six o'clock in t'morning, there's nobody there.

They're all still in bed.

There's a super tale that comes to me mind.

One day I were mending a chimney and the engineer at the mill...

This particular engine were in a weaving mill similar to this

and you've heard how these gears roar and all that...

Well, if you can imagine they've repaired the engine and it's the middle of the night

and they set the engine on, just to see if everything works all right

and all the operatives appeared, or most of 'em, them who hadn't got an alarm clock.

Their lives were totally ruled by the noise of the gearing and the engine.

When the engine started they thought it was seven o'clock

and it were three o'clock in the bloody morning.

They all appeared ready for work at three o'clock in t'morning.

In an electrically-driven weaving shed,

there's only the electric motors and the looms making the racket.

Here, we've already got tons of racket

just from the bevel gears from the main shaft driven by the steam engine

driving all these line shaftings and the clack of the belts, you know.

Should imagine being 14 years old and arriving here on Monday morning

at half past seven, and being frightened to bloody death with it all.

I mean, it's unbelievably violent.

And there's only two looms actually working at this moment in time.

When all these machines were running

the decibels must have been unbelievable.

God knows! No wonder they were all deaf!

To the general public, unless you'd been in a mill,

you wouldn't know what was going on and he brought that out

and he brought out the hard work that a lot of these guys and ladies had to do.

I don't really think I would ever like to have worked in one of these places, you know.

Having actually experienced the noise of it all.

I'm really more interested in the mechanics of it all, you know,

the engines and the boilers that made it all go.

The biggest influence on Fred must have been growing up surrounded by

the Industrial Revolution and its products. There he was, a craftsman

with his day job as a steeplejack

and he therefore, went into lots of places, saw lots of things

when they were just sort of over the top and starting their decline.

And probably when they were at their most unfashionable.

The bad old days and when it was all going to be swept away

and we were all going to be living a life like in an American film.

And Fred, I think, was somebody who could...

see that that world and those people he was rubbing up against

had extraordinary stories to tell.

I think that really has been a very big influence upon him.

Hiya, Brian. Hello, Fred, are you all right? Stoking up!

Yes. Yes. Keep that big wheel going round upstairs. That's true.

When I were a kid there were bloody hundreds of these. There were three down every street

and now there's hardly any left.

It's still nice to see one that actually works, you know.

There's not so many left that work, is there? No, no.

What a lot of the people don't realise is the fact that these things used to blow up...

with unbelievable regularity at the turn of the century,

until they started with boiler inspecting and all of that.

They wouldn't bother then with boiler inspections. No, no.

They were so tight, the mill owners, they didn't like parting with inspection fees and all of that.

You need some more steam, you'd better put some coal on.

Well, there you go - there's a shovel for you. You'll have to excuse me if I miss the fire.

It don't wanna come off the shovel. BRIAN LAUGHS

I think I'll leave you to it, Fred and I'll go home for my tea now. DOOR CLANGS

Fred's a very passionate man. Anybody who knows him is overtaken by his enthusiasm.

He's not an easy bloke to disagree with.

You get carried along with his enthusiasm for the subject, the machines.

And you wanna see what it is that excites him so much.

That were exciting, weren't it?

BLAST FURNACE CONTINUES TO ROAR

When I were repairing a chimney

on foundries, I always used to stop work

and go and watch this performance of dropping the bottom out of the blast furnace.

It were always very exciting to me.

Fred was a great enthusiast and we always enjoyed his visits here.

He was so knowledgeable of the industry we try to interpret at Ironbridge.

He also lived through a large part of a century

when we started trying to knock down the Victorian monuments and he was part of that -

knocking down the great chimneys of the mills

and then began to value it.

And, of course, he was very much involved with the loving restoration of the steam machinery,

bringing it alive for a wide public.

And I think he did have that capacity to get to a lot of people

and bring the subject to life for them.

Ironbridge gorge in Shropshire

is probably the most important industrial heritage site in Britain.

It's regarded as the place where the Industrial Revolution started.

This is the world's first cast iron bridge.

Iron were so important round here

that this place was regarded as the beginning or the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

It wasn't just bridges they made here, you know,

they made here, in this valley, they made the first cast-iron wheels,

the first cast-iron plate rails,

cooking pots and even the first locomotive were made here.

As you can see there's one or two blow holes in the castings,

they weren't too particular. But really, on the whole,

the whole thing is beautifully done.

All held together with dovetails and cotters and iron wedges.

Very few nuts and bolts, you know.

It's suffered a bit here and there. There's the odd bracing piece has fractured

and there's been various attempts to rectify it with iron rods and what have you.

But the only way I think they could have cast these

is actually on the floor of the foundry...

and directly tap the furnace into the mould.

Perhaps that accounts for all the slag and the rough stuff, you know,

which normally they would scrape off the top of the molten metal.

At these museums on the Severn, they reckon the doors are full up,

people can't wait to get in these industrial museums.

I'm sure it's because Fred's made them think

and realise there's beauty in all this ugliness, if you like.

It weren't ugly. It's ugly to some people

but not to Fred and not to me. It's beautiful.

This thing here, made out of a conglomeration of railway lines

and bits and pieces, is the furnace where they actually got the iron hot

ready to put either through the rollers or underneath the hammer.

And it's a magical setup really,

because the heat that got the iron red hot, the waste heat that went up the flue to the boiler

which... That boiler is called the Rastrick boiler.

and it worked off the waste heat from the furnaces.

I remember all this lot going in Bolton where I live

and believe me, it were quite an exciting vision watching how it all went.

First of all, when the signal were given,

the guy crashed these big tongs into the fire,

grabbed hold of two hundredweight of red hot iron. Pull 'em out.

He gotta race off with sparks coming off his clogs - this way!

METALLIC TRUNDLING Bang!

And then...

The guy waiting here with these tongs, he got a hold of the end of it and smashed it into the rollers.

And then it went through and a man on the other side

did exactly the same and it come back this way.

As the tail end of the iron came out of here

the guy collared it with these things

and slammed it back into the next opening.

He actually knew our iron works when it was a functioning iron works in Bolton

and he used to tell us stories about how things went on at the iron works

which...some were very surprising, like the fact that there were broken arm chairs quite near the furnaces

where people would go and relax.

This lot here is actually the rolling mill that used to be in Bolton where I come from.

And I well remember seeing the thing work as, you know, as a reasonably young man.

And it were quite fantastic -

you had easy chairs and there'd be about six of 'em sat in easy chairs

and six of 'em shoving the iron into the rollers

and when they'd done so many passes and they were, like exhausted

the six sat down would jump up and take over

and the other six would flop into the easy chairs.

Some of them went straight to t'pub across t'road.

There's other things about this machine we've not really dwelled on.

In that great iron cage at the end,

there's a coupling that's quite a rocky fit on the shafts.

And if you put a piece in that weren't hot enough

it busted the coupling instead of the engine or the roll frames.

And as soon as it went bang! there were a helluva crack when it broke -

everybody immediately walked to the sink, washed their hands and went home

because they knew there'd be no more rolling that day.

This enthusiasm for industrial history took off after WWII

and by the 1980s it had become very much an accepted part of our heritage.

But people like Fred have been very important in changing public perceptions

and getting a new consensus

that the great machine shops, the factories,

the commercial buildings of the Victorian age

are a very important part of our heritage and should be conserved.

He was a good spokesman for that, I think.

Richard Garrett and Sons of Leiston, here in Suffolk, were one of the pioneers in heavy engineering.

And here in the Long Shop Museum,

is a grand collection of the products they made

in the actual building they were made in.

This place is rather wonderful and unique

because Richard Garrett manufactured portable engines in here

and the boilers came in at one end

and the big bits came in from the sides

and the small bits were made upstairs

and lowered down.

And when the boiler came in at one end

and all the bits kept going on

it slowly but surely progressed along and went out the other end

as a finished product ready for a coat of paint.

That were a long time before Henry Ford were about.

I think Fred's passion was his greatest strength and it came over

in everything he did - when he came here.

And that brought people into it. They wanted to learn more about it

because if somebody's that enthusiastic it just spins off onto everyone else.

It increased our awareness and got us visitors.

I'm forever getting people contacting me

or speaking to me in general and saying,

"Oh, saw you on the TV last night with Fred."

That helps us and raises the profile. It's great.

So what were them for? Anchor attachments on ships such as the Titanic. Yeah.

This is the Black Country Living Museum

where you can actually see

craftsmen doing things what they did

when this was one of the centres of industry in England.

Today we've got an awful lot of museums around.

It is sometimes difficult

to get people who've worked in the industries they portrayed

to come back again.

And I think Fred did quite a lot in raising the image of the worker

and their place and making it OK for people to go back

and to look on THEIR past as being important.

How would they go on with one as big as the Titanic anchor chain?

You'd have a chain maker, chain smith... Yeah..

..four or five men working hammers - two-man hammers. Yeah.

That's really important for museums as well,

that we need to get people who've been involved interested in what they've done

and realise that it's of great value

in heritage and historic terms.

Ladies used to do it, didn't they, a bit?

In this area by the 1920s,

there was something like over 6,000 people making chains

and a third of those being women. Yeah.

The Black Country Living Museum

we think has a role to play in the history of the Black Country

and therefore the cradle of the Industrial Revolution.

But telling that story's hugely difficult,

it's so complex, there's so many things involved

from steam, to canals to buildings.

And Fred helped us no end in his own way in putting it over.

And through his enthusiasm, almost convinced us we were doing the right thing.

I'm sure he did that with lots of other people.

If somebody was a volunteer in restoring a steam engine or anything else,

he could make you feel you're the most important person in the world for doing it and we owe him a lot.

So you don't fancy it for a living then, Fred? No.

FRED LAUGHS

I'd never get paid! Well, you was paid by the weight.

Well, there'd be no chance... I'd be a poor man at the end of the day.

We'll just do a few improvements on it. Wait a minute.

There's a big hole in it.

Another link for the chain for the Titanic.

No wonder it sunk!

Fred made industrial history fun.

But in the process, we got a lot of information from him.

Up until the 1850s,

they only really had cast iron, you know,

and they really needed something a bit tougher

and along came Henry Bessemer in

and he invented this thing - like a giant egg cup.

Basically, what it does is...

The molten cast iron is poured into the top of it

and then wind pressure at 25lbs per square inch

is blasted through the molten cast iron

which takes all the impurities out of it.

And when they run it off from here,

into ingots, it can be put underneath the steam hammer

and forged into big blocks that can be put through rolling mills

and made into things like railway lines

and wheels for railway wagons.

This is Kelham Island Museum here in Sheffield,

which Sheffield, as everybody knows, is a...is a world famous city for steel making,

still is, you know.

I think I'll go in and have a look round.

Sheffield's always been associated with quality steel products

especially like this here, Sheffield plate

and of course tools, you know.

They made all the best cutting tool in the world.

Tools for lathe turning, for surgeo for sawing your legs off and things like that

and, really, unless you've tried buying a pair of Taiwanese scissors

and comparing them with a pair of scissors made in Sheffield

you don't know you've lived, believe me.

It...it's... I've got a pair of scissors made in Sheffield

that I left on top of a wall for tw years once

and when I found them again they we rusted solid,

put a bit of oil on and they still cut to this day

better than the bloody Taiwanese ones do.

The feeling that we should be guilty of our past, our industrial might,

our empire, I think is beginning to fade.

I know it was politically incorrect for many years

but I feel certain that people like Fred Dibnah's portrayal of our industrial strength -

the characters, the people and the social history behind it

which for good or bad made us the country we are -

I think that was a very important contribution.

It's no longer, I don't think, something we should be guilty of.

We recognise the weaknesses and strengths of the past

but we don't need necessarily to be ashamed of them.

The subject need no longer be a taboo one.

Getting nearer.

Fred, he had a great saying,

"Everything I like in life is either heavy, dirty or dangerous."

And that weighed Fred up to a tee really

and I don't know where... I think he thought I were all three!

Going back to the steam engines of you know, my sort of childhood,

you meet people at steam rallies who thought this is a great big engine

and this is that and if they could only have seen some of the engines

that were in industrial places - like the one in Sheffield

is a magical piece of tackle.

I'm really looking forward to this,

this has got to be the biggest winding engine left in the world

and it were made about 1905

and it kept on running till 1970s

and I'm now going to do a demonstration

of how fast you can put it in reverse from full speed forward

into going backwards, here we go.

Did you like that?

I did!

Subtitles by Iain Black Red Bee Media Ltd

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