Great British Builders Fred Dibnah's World of Steam, Steel and Stone


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Can you manage? ..Oh, wonderful!

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In the olden days when they built these things, they always had a grand party on top with a brass band,

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when really this is best we can do, the old gramophone and the champagne.

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It's a bit sad really because,

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you know, I've knocked lots and lots of these things down

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and this really is the last one to be built in Bolton, hopefully, you know.

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And long may it stand.

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May it have many years of happy smoking.

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Fred Dibnah's work as a steeplejack involved a lot of restoration and repair work on great mill chimneys.

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It gave him real, first-hand knowledge

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of how huge structures like this had been built in the first place.

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By the middle of the 19th century,

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we were constructing some magnificent spinning mills with beautiful chimney stacks like the one behind me.

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This thing here is India Mill in a place called Darwen near Blackburn.

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It were constructed in 1875 and of course when it were first built it were even more ornate than it is now.

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It had loads of beautiful iron work round top which were removed in 1936, I think.

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Really, I think the man who designed it must have been to Venice,

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you know, because there's a tower there that looks almost identical.

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It would all be built from the inside off a platform in the middle,

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and as the walls went up the platform would be moved at six-foot centres up the middle.

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But at the top, the great stones, they weren't allowed to have a steam engine, a steam winch to pull them up

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because some of them were five ton maybe, a piece, and of course the overhang, you know.

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The way they kept them in position while they got more weight on top

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were to put great vertical tie rods down the middle,

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anchored into the brick work below so they couldn't fall off and then they built a bit more on, a bit more on.

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You can see how it goes back in, there's quite a few ton above the cantilever coping stones

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or the collar, as you might say, very interesting, you know.

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I wouldn't like to have to try and dismantle it the same way they put it up, you know, pretty difficult.

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And he could unfold a picture

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of how the chimney were constructed.

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I'd say to him, "Look, the chimney's made of

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"massive stone blocks, how they heck would they get the stone blocks up?"

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"Oh, they'd use so and so, they'd use a tripod on the top and it'd be all handraulic action,"

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as he used to call it. Pulling down, guys with plenty of muscles, they'd use a horse and a pulley wheel.

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In later years they'd use a miniature steam engine hauled to the top.

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The spire at Salisbury's Cathedral is the biggest in all of England

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and, of course, being a steeplejack,

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I've always had a great interest in church steeples and church spires.

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The thing is, finally I've come to rest me eyes on it.

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I'm afraid to say it doesn't impress me as much as I thought it would.

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Number one, I always thought it were 500 feet high and its only 404,

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and it doesn't really look as impressive

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as the one I'm presently repairing in Preston which is 100 feet less in height.

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I think it's because the one at Preston is much narrower

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than Salisbury and that gives it this wonderful impression of great height.

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Because he was up there doing the work himself,

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Fred knew what the challenges were that faced the builders of the great cathedrals of the past.

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This is St Margaret's Church at Bodelwyddan near Rhyl in North Wales

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and I've always greatly admired it, you know.

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Number one, they call it "the marble church" because of

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all the different types of marble that have been used in the interior decoration of it, you know.

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Basically, it's same stuff outside, but the bit I really like is the steeple, the spire.

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It's a work of art.

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The man who actually designed it must have known a lot about the material that the thing's made of,

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because he must have known how many pounds per square inch

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them eight corner stones would take or else he were a bit of a gambler.

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And it's a proper built steeple with a curve on the outside.

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If you stand right underneath the shadow of it and look up,

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you can see the distinct barrel shape of it.

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When you come far away, the trick of the eye, or something to do with perspective,

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it disappears and goes perfectly straight and looks like a needle point.

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Ever since I passed by here, years and years and years ago,

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I stopped one day and had a look at it, you know, beautiful steeple.

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

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

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that takes the weight of the top three-quarters of the steeple.

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The other interesting thing is you can see where they had all the timber in the walls when they built it,

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all the put logs across to put the platforms on

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as the spire progressed in an upwards direction.

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If you look right up to the top, you can see the iron cross tree in the top

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that the great nut and bolt comes through to hold the top on the steeple.

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

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It just shows you really, it wasn't just industrial history, he was interested in architecture as well.

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He just loved knowing how things had been constructed

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and he was fascinated with the men that did the work.

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Fred was always a great admirer of the ordinary working man,

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and the skills that they built up in the same way that he did.

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Quite beautiful, i'nt it? You can see there's evidence of

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steeplejacking activity of long ago

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up there in the copper rods in the corner plates.

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Mr Firs from Nottingham.

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These lovely pinnacles on the corners with the slender supports,

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you know, fretworked out and the flying buttresses that join one to the other,

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lovely bit of stonework really.

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The fact that he knew what he was talking about

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and the folks liked Fred for himself

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and they liked the way the programme was put together,

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they were learning how things were done without realising it.

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They didn't realise that they were watching the programme

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to learn how these buildings were being put together.

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They just liked the way Fred explained it.

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At the end of the day, they would go away so much the wiser.

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Fred served his apprenticeship as a joiner and,

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at Stokesay Castle in Shropshire,

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he was able to draw on these skills

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to explain the medieval construction technique of jettying.

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When you get up here on the second floor,

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all the walls are timber framed and filled in with lath and plaster.

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It must have been a very important room for the family, and if you had friends round,

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wonderful views of the countryside out through these lovely windows.

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But you must have felt a bit vulnerable if there were any enemies about.

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I rather think that when this bit was stuck on top of here, you know, they were more peaceful times.

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This timber framing, this window frame that I'm stood in,

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protrudes out as much as four feet over the stone walls down below.

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It's a technique developed in the Middle Ages known as jettying

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and of course this north tower here at Stokesay Castle is one of the earliest examples of it.

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Joists to the beams used to support a floor or the floorboards.

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With this business of jettying, they actually protrude over the wall.

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I'm stood in the area where immediate below me there's the outer stone wall of the tower proper,

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then there's about four feet of the joists protruding out into space,

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but when I stand over here, I'm actually stood on top of the moat.

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There's nothing in-between me and the moat, only these floorboards.

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I could show you better if we went downstairs

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and outside and climbed up the ladder to underneath the jetty.

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Now, really, the idea of the jetting is

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you can get a room maybe as much as eight or nine feet bigger

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than you would inside the actual stone walls.

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With the stone walls being very thick and the timber framing very thin

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with the laths and plaster inserts in-between,

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you can really see why they did it, you know.

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They could gain maybe as much as four or five feet all the way around the room, which is quite a big item.

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Must have been a bit draughty because you can see great quarter-inch gaps

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in the floorboards, you know.

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Had thick carpets down they must have had.

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The joists, the actual floor joists,

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are the ones horizontal, sticking out,

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they go straight across inside from one wall to the other.

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Then there's the stone corbels

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with the vertical props which are braced by these 45-degree members

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which in turn are mortise and tenoned into each end and pegged

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so they give the final overhang a bit of extra support, as you might say.

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I think as Fred developed his TV programmes,

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one of the big changes I saw was from "Here's something interesting"

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to "Here's how you should do it, or how it worked."

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I remember clearly his descriptions of how people built cathedrals

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which I thought I knew about until he was able to explain them.

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I'm sure that got over to a huge number of people who never really thought about it before.

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The thing that distinguishes these great Norman Cathedrals

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from the Saxon buildings they replaced

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is their sheer size and scale.

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Of course, the Normans brought these ideas and building techniques

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all the way from France

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and of course left us with these magnificent pillars and arches.

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Fred takes us to the heart of buildings, he shows us,

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not just the grand scale of places like Ely Cathedral,

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but then he helps us understand how they were constructed,

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how they're still standing today.

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We take so much for granted about our great cathedrals, castles and palaces,

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but he shows us the men and women

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who helped to build them bit by bit to make them beautiful.

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This is a demonstration of building an arch.

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

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is what's known as the centring.

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Of course, when the thing's set, we can withdraw these wedges down here

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and hopefully the wood'll come slack and then,

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you know, the arch will stay in position.

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It's...

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

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I'm not worried about it at all.

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Even though it's waggling about now!

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We'll come back after dinner and take the middle out

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and hopefully it'll stay up.

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I'm fairly confident, I think it will do.

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I'm not really a bricklayer, you know. I'm only a sort of...

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self-taught mechanic, in a way.

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Right...

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now, that's what all good bricklayers do at brew time.

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I'm off now, we'll come back after lunch and take the middle out.

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This is it, the great moment, we're now going to strike the arch.

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Aye, success!

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I don't know what Mr Brunel would have thought about it

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but I'm quite pleased, yeah.

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It looks terribly fragile in its present state

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but if you imagine it being contained at the bottom and at ten to and ten past on the top,

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the more pressure you put on the thing, the stronger it becomes.

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I'm going to attempt to sit on top of it and see what happens.

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I don't think it'll fall down but you never know.

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Here we go.

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I can't really get high enough up, you know.

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How's that?

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Well, as you can see, that were one arch down at ground level.

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The thing is, basically you get the principle or the idea

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of how they actually built arches from that disaster.

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If I'd used a bit more cement in the mortar, it would have stayed up.

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But how did they go on building summat like this behind me?

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You know, three tiers or arches, and all quite slender, really,

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Must have waited a fair time for the mortar to go off

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before they struck the centring out, not quite like what we did.

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His particular contribution was in conveying and explaining

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in an immediate way how things were put together.

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I've seen several TV programmes on which people have tried to explain the principle of a Gothic vault,

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but Fred's the only person I've seen building one in his back garden.

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That was particularly good.

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There's the other one where he demonstrates with a model crane

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how the lantern of Ely Cathedral is put together.

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This magnificent lantern, which is over 200 feet high

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and weighs 200 tons, made of wood and lead,

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is hanging precariously over this great void.

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This really is my personal idea

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of how they managed to get it up all them years ago.

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To raise up these great bauks of timber, which I think are about 60-odd foot long,

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there'd be maybe 50 or 60 blokes on the end of the rope

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that controlled the set of rope blocks

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that raised the real weight of the thing.

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Of course, as it came up, it'd have other guy ropes on

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and men pulling the bottom out and keeping the top in the right shop.

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When they got it in a position where they could anchor it to the stonework

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the next stage of the game would be

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everybody would be holding onto the ropes

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while some intrepid character crept out onto the stonework

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and shoved in the big iron pin.

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This would have to be repeated

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eight times all the way around, or 16 times really,

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cos there's two for every corner

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and of course the next piece would come up in the same manner with the rope blocks.

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Here again somebody would have to pin it to the masonry.

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Then...with the aid of a couple of planks,

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chucked out on here for somebody to go out on,

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it'd be pretty easy to secure the corner there together.

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So you see how real strong it is. I'm pressing down fairly hard on this corner

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and there's not a lot happening, it's pretty tough.

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So if they did that 16 times all around,

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it would be easy then to lace it up with planks from one to the other

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and then construct what I've called the foundation ring for the lantern proper.

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Once they'd reached that stage, they'd reached the stage of stability

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where they'd realised the thing couldn't collapse.

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Up until then it must have been very precarious

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and they must have been a bit, you know, excited and uptight while they were doing.

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I know if I had to do it, I would.

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I mean, you can't compare it so well with modern steel structures

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cos, you know, you can cantilever out for miles, like the Forth Bridge,

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but things like this, they didn't know whether it were going to start creaking and collapse

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till I reckon they'd got that big octagonal shape ring in.

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It's a matter of looking, and Fred was very good at looking and understanding.

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You've only got to see how he approached the technology

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of the medieval carpenters who put up the octagon at Ely Cathedral

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and quite clearly he's really in there,

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getting into their thought processes,

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understanding how they had put those things together

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and what sort of machines they needed to make it work,

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and how they put a rope here and a rope there,

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and what order they put those great timbers up in, in just the same way

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as he would be understanding how an engineer would assemble a steam engine.

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I think that's a lovely thing to be able to do.

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Really, a simple way to explain it all is like a crossroads.

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If you imagine houses coming up to each corner of the crossroads

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and something shoving on the bottom corners of them,

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you've got to shove a row of houses out the way before the thing can go downwards.

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In a way, down below here we've got the nave and the transepts, which in actual fact is a crossroads

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and of course the main thrust is on the end corners of the walls,

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so you've got to shove out the way the whole length of the cathedral.

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It would never come to that, but that's in theory what it is,

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before this block can actually descend.

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It's all very cleverly done really, you know.

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When you think it's so old and what have you, it's a credit to them how they managed to do it.

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All for the glory of God.

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And he very often said, a thing I liked about him,

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"That's a great credit to them."

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And you felt he really meant it.

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There was somebody who centuries before had created this thing and he was there appreciating it.

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Anyway, Jonathan, tell me which is Cardinal Wolseley's bit?

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From that gable and the gate house to the other gable,

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that's all Wolseley's material, and then Henry VIII added these arms.

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That one's a toilet for 28 people.

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This wonderful, diagonal sort of diamond brick,

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it's quite beautiful, that.

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If you look closely at the Tudor stuff, you see it doesn't quite carry through the whole facade.

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-I've been straining me eyes at it. It's all a bit different, isn't it?

-Yes, very irregular.

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-There's no proper symmetry about it, is there?

-No.

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This new brickwork in the middle, how come that's nice and pink?

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-Alarm bells ring when you see a completely different colour brick.

-A rebuild of some sort.

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It's an 18th-century rebuild and reface of that gatehouse

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because Wolseley built too quickly for his foundations to last long

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and originally that gatehouse had two wings on each side, which made the centre part the lower

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and they were taken down in 1777 after cracks were seen.

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So now it's reversed its original appearance.

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It looks like a podium now, doesn't it?

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Yeah, the chimney stacks, they're summat else, aren't they? Every one different.

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None are Tudor, the ones you see, but they're faithful copies of Tudor designs.

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I wonder how they got...that beautiful twist on them, you know.

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That's an interesting thing, you know.

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I read somewhere about a stick, you know, up the middle.

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I think that's how they built them. A pole in the middle, a template on it and move the template round

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because you only need about two or three types of brick.

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It's economical to get a spiral - just move the next course round.

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Yeah, it's a good way of doing that, it's quite simple and practical, if you think about it.

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And made a wonderful skyline. When all the pinnacles are there,

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all the lead caps on the turrets, it must have been a wonderful view from afar, and with gilding on top of it.

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All painted as well.

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Sometimes, when we stand in front of a great palace like Hampton Court

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it's hard to take it all in.

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We can see it's so complex and it's built up over so many generations, but Fred leads us through it.

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He shows us how each space functions and the people who helped build it

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and then we can understand it and enjoy it more.

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-You're a man who works with your hands, Fred.

-Oh, yeah.

-How would you make something like that?

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That particular panel, it'll be about...what is it?

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12 inches by maybe 23 inches long or thereabouts.

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It would initially start off as a piece of oak on a bench

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and the guy would cut in vertically down the edge of the panels.

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They must have had a bit of a gauge to know they were at the right depth.

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Same at both ends and then the timber in-between all the folds

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would be done with like concave and convex moulding planes and small grooving planes.

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-So you groove the whole length and that's done in an instant?

-Yeah.

0:22:460:22:50

That looks to me as though it could have been done same as masonry

0:22:500:22:54

-with an hammer and chisel, you know, cos it's all a bit up and down.

-I see, right.

0:22:540:22:59

That's the sort of effect to get it to look like folded up material.

0:22:590:23:04

I had a friend once, God bless him, he's dead and gone now, but he actually played the fiddle

0:23:040:23:10

in the Halle Orchestra but he were a budding woodworker.

0:23:100:23:14

His favourite timber were oak, and before he died,

0:23:140:23:17

he promised me he'd learn me how to make linen-fold panelling

0:23:170:23:20

and he did all his house with it.

0:23:200:23:23

It was quite magnificent, the doors, panelling and everything.

0:23:230:23:26

It were very effective and looked very nice.

0:23:260:23:29

Aye, this is Henry VIII's bit, is it?

0:23:290:23:32

this hall was rebuilt by Henry VIII on the site of Wolseley's.

0:23:320:23:36

I'm researching that at the moment and it seems almost certain

0:23:360:23:40

that Wolseley's hall was actually longer, bigger by area.

0:23:400:23:44

It's 39 feet wide and 114 feet long

0:23:440:23:47

and this was the great ceremonial entrance room,

0:23:470:23:51

so it's decked with tapestries,

0:23:510:23:53

each costing as much as an armed battleship to make,

0:23:530:23:56

-took about four years.

-Blooming heck.

0:23:560:23:58

So it's a show-off room, designed to impress you.

0:23:580:24:01

I mean, this magnificent roof is summat, and I've always thought that they designed that

0:24:010:24:07

because they couldn't get any big lumps of timber really.

0:24:070:24:11

If you think of the size of an oak tree, as compared with later architectural feats

0:24:110:24:17

of big engineering works with 60-foot long beams, you know,

0:24:170:24:21

I mean, there's no bit of wood up there that's more than maybe ten feet or 12 foot long, is there?

0:24:210:24:28

You're limited by the length of trunk a tree can provide for a beam.

0:24:280:24:32

If you imagine spanning 40 feet, you'd need a beam of immense depth.

0:24:320:24:36

I've seen that myself in industrial premises in Lancashire, you know.

0:24:360:24:41

To get across here it would be maybe two feet deep by nine inches thick

0:24:410:24:46

with a queen post and two vertical posts heavily braced up with iron rods to accomplish the same thing.

0:24:460:24:53

And if you imagine the feeling of lightness and space you want to get within this hall,

0:24:530:24:58

if you have beams coming across, you've spoilt it already, I think.

0:24:580:25:02

In Westminster Hall in the 1390s they pioneered this technique,

0:25:020:25:06

using a hammer beam and building it straight out from the wall like a cantilever, so that can support

0:25:060:25:12

a vault just under the central section of the roof.

0:25:120:25:15

So it's a very light construction, like the underside of a ship.

0:25:150:25:19

Yeah, and when it is all bolted together, the weight's basically

0:25:190:25:24

straight down on the walls instead of trying to shove them out.

0:25:240:25:28

It is a very elegant engineering solution, and this is one of the latest cos Westminster was 1390s,

0:25:280:25:33

this was 1530s, so it's quite late on in history.

0:25:330:25:37

Before, they used to build a stone arch across, didn't they?

0:25:370:25:40

-Then, you know, put the timber on top of that.

-Sometimes they did.

0:25:400:25:44

They had a variety of timber trusses but most are less elegant than this.

0:25:440:25:48

Oh, I know. This is beautiful.

0:25:480:25:50

Yeah, it's Henry VIII's best piece of building here certainly.

0:25:500:25:54

He would actually show with practical demonstrations

0:25:540:25:58

how timber beams worked, for example, and how it was a very precise art.

0:25:580:26:03

Something which I think people tended not to notice before,

0:26:030:26:06

they tended to look at things and say, "Oh, the ceiling's up there,"

0:26:060:26:10

rather than, "Isn't it clever how that is kept together?"

0:26:100:26:13

I remember, I suppose because I was quite interested in it myself,

0:26:130:26:17

the whole business of hammer beam roofs.

0:26:170:26:20

He actually made a hammer beam joint on one occasion

0:26:200:26:24

and I remember the slight nerves he managed to exhibit,

0:26:240:26:28

I'm sure he wasn't feeling them at the time,

0:26:280:26:30

of hammering in the last pin and saying, "Once this goes in it won't come out," and he proved it.

0:26:300:26:36

He made a very good locking joint and made the point of how these great roofs do hang together.

0:26:360:26:42

In the Middle Ages, the roof construction,

0:26:420:26:46

like hammer beam roofs and crook beam constructions,

0:26:460:26:50

the main joint really in all of it were the mortise and tenon joints,

0:26:500:26:55

which is basically a hole in one block of wood

0:26:550:26:59

and a bit sawn on the end of the other that fits in the hole.

0:26:590:27:02

The tools needed to form such a joint are fairly simple -

0:27:020:27:07

a chisel and a hammer.

0:27:070:27:09

And then of course a saw for sawing the tenon on the end of the beam.

0:27:110:27:17

Then of course it's held together by a dowel or a peg,

0:27:170:27:22

and you drill the hole slightly out of centre,

0:27:220:27:26

so when you put the tenon down the mortise hole and knock the peg through,

0:27:260:27:31

the peg has a pulling effect on the shoulders of the tenon and pulls it all together.

0:27:310:27:36

That's what I'm about to undertake to do now.

0:27:360:27:39

That goes in there, like that,

0:27:390:27:43

and then we've got this beam.

0:27:430:27:46

The hole is slightly out of line so when I knock this wooden peg in here

0:27:460:27:52

it'll have the effect of pulling the tenon down into the mortise hole.

0:27:520:27:58

Of course, once we've knocked it in, we won't be able to get it out, so here goes.

0:27:580:28:02

That feels very good and very tight

0:28:080:28:11

and I think...

0:28:110:28:14

it's solid as a rock.

0:28:140:28:16

No daylight,

0:28:190:28:21

slightly out of square

0:28:210:28:23

but I think it's the fact that that side of the timber's round.

0:28:230:28:28

Of course, on this side it's flush all the way over.

0:28:280:28:31

Even for the Middle Ages, that's a pretty good joint...I think, anyway!

0:28:310:28:36

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd, 2006

0:28:430:28:47

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0:28:470:28:51

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