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Can you manage? ..Oh, wonderful! | 0:00:02 | 0:00:04 | |
In the olden days when they built these things, they always had a grand party on top with a brass band, | 0:00:04 | 0:00:10 | |
when really this is best we can do, the old gramophone and the champagne. | 0:00:10 | 0:00:15 | |
It's a bit sad really because, | 0:00:15 | 0:00:18 | |
you know, I've knocked lots and lots of these things down | 0:00:18 | 0:00:22 | |
and this really is the last one to be built in Bolton, hopefully, you know. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:28 | |
And long may it stand. | 0:00:28 | 0:00:30 | |
May it have many years of happy smoking. | 0:00:32 | 0:00:35 | |
Fred Dibnah's work as a steeplejack involved a lot of restoration and repair work on great mill chimneys. | 0:00:59 | 0:01:05 | |
It gave him real, first-hand knowledge | 0:01:05 | 0:01:07 | |
of how huge structures like this had been built in the first place. | 0:01:07 | 0:01:12 | |
By the middle of the 19th century, | 0:01:12 | 0:01:14 | |
we were constructing some magnificent spinning mills with beautiful chimney stacks like the one behind me. | 0:01:14 | 0:01:21 | |
This thing here is India Mill in a place called Darwen near Blackburn. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:26 | |
It were constructed in 1875 and of course when it were first built it were even more ornate than it is now. | 0:01:26 | 0:01:34 | |
It had loads of beautiful iron work round top which were removed in 1936, I think. | 0:01:34 | 0:01:39 | |
Really, I think the man who designed it must have been to Venice, | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
you know, because there's a tower there that looks almost identical. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:48 | |
It would all be built from the inside off a platform in the middle, | 0:01:48 | 0:01:52 | |
and as the walls went up the platform would be moved at six-foot centres up the middle. | 0:01:52 | 0:01:58 | |
But at the top, the great stones, they weren't allowed to have a steam engine, a steam winch to pull them up | 0:01:58 | 0:02:04 | |
because some of them were five ton maybe, a piece, and of course the overhang, you know. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:09 | |
The way they kept them in position while they got more weight on top | 0:02:09 | 0:02:13 | |
were to put great vertical tie rods down the middle, | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
anchored into the brick work below so they couldn't fall off and then they built a bit more on, a bit more on. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:22 | |
You can see how it goes back in, there's quite a few ton above the cantilever coping stones | 0:02:22 | 0:02:29 | |
or the collar, as you might say, very interesting, you know. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
I wouldn't like to have to try and dismantle it the same way they put it up, you know, pretty difficult. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:39 | |
And he could unfold a picture | 0:02:39 | 0:02:42 | |
of how the chimney were constructed. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:44 | |
I'd say to him, "Look, the chimney's made of | 0:02:44 | 0:02:46 | |
"massive stone blocks, how they heck would they get the stone blocks up?" | 0:02:46 | 0:02:50 | |
"Oh, they'd use so and so, they'd use a tripod on the top and it'd be all handraulic action," | 0:02:50 | 0:02:56 | |
as he used to call it. Pulling down, guys with plenty of muscles, they'd use a horse and a pulley wheel. | 0:02:56 | 0:03:01 | |
In later years they'd use a miniature steam engine hauled to the top. | 0:03:01 | 0:03:05 | |
The spire at Salisbury's Cathedral is the biggest in all of England | 0:03:06 | 0:03:10 | |
and, of course, being a steeplejack, | 0:03:10 | 0:03:13 | |
I've always had a great interest in church steeples and church spires. | 0:03:13 | 0:03:17 | |
The thing is, finally I've come to rest me eyes on it. | 0:03:17 | 0:03:21 | |
I'm afraid to say it doesn't impress me as much as I thought it would. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:25 | |
Number one, I always thought it were 500 feet high and its only 404, | 0:03:25 | 0:03:30 | |
and it doesn't really look as impressive | 0:03:30 | 0:03:33 | |
as the one I'm presently repairing in Preston which is 100 feet less in height. | 0:03:33 | 0:03:39 | |
I think it's because the one at Preston is much narrower | 0:03:39 | 0:03:42 | |
than Salisbury and that gives it this wonderful impression of great height. | 0:03:42 | 0:03:48 | |
Because he was up there doing the work himself, | 0:03:50 | 0:03:53 | |
Fred knew what the challenges were that faced the builders of the great cathedrals of the past. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:59 | |
This is St Margaret's Church at Bodelwyddan near Rhyl in North Wales | 0:04:02 | 0:04:08 | |
and I've always greatly admired it, you know. | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
Number one, they call it "the marble church" because of | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
all the different types of marble that have been used in the interior decoration of it, you know. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:20 | |
Basically, it's same stuff outside, but the bit I really like is the steeple, the spire. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:26 | |
It's a work of art. | 0:04:26 | 0:04:28 | |
The man who actually designed it must have known a lot about the material that the thing's made of, | 0:04:28 | 0:04:34 | |
because he must have known how many pounds per square inch | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
them eight corner stones would take or else he were a bit of a gambler. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:42 | |
And it's a proper built steeple with a curve on the outside. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:46 | |
If you stand right underneath the shadow of it and look up, | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
you can see the distinct barrel shape of it. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
When you come far away, the trick of the eye, or something to do with perspective, | 0:04:53 | 0:04:59 | |
it disappears and goes perfectly straight and looks like a needle point. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:04 | |
Ever since I passed by here, years and years and years ago, | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
I stopped one day and had a look at it, you know, beautiful steeple. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
I always wanted to have a closer look and get inside, like where we are now, you know. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:25 | |
It's interesting because you can see the eight stones up above | 0:05:25 | 0:05:29 | |
that takes the weight of the top three-quarters of the steeple. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:34 | |
The other interesting thing is you can see where they had all the timber in the walls when they built it, | 0:05:34 | 0:05:41 | |
all the put logs across to put the platforms on | 0:05:41 | 0:05:43 | |
as the spire progressed in an upwards direction. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:48 | |
If you look right up to the top, you can see the iron cross tree in the top | 0:05:48 | 0:05:52 | |
that the great nut and bolt comes through to hold the top on the steeple. | 0:05:52 | 0:05:57 | |
I think I'll go outside now and have a look round on the veranda. | 0:05:57 | 0:06:01 | |
It just shows you really, it wasn't just industrial history, he was interested in architecture as well. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:07 | |
He just loved knowing how things had been constructed | 0:06:07 | 0:06:11 | |
and he was fascinated with the men that did the work. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:15 | |
Fred was always a great admirer of the ordinary working man, | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
and the skills that they built up in the same way that he did. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:23 | |
Quite beautiful, i'nt it? You can see there's evidence of | 0:06:29 | 0:06:34 | |
steeplejacking activity of long ago | 0:06:34 | 0:06:36 | |
up there in the copper rods in the corner plates. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:40 | |
Mr Firs from Nottingham. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:43 | |
These lovely pinnacles on the corners with the slender supports, | 0:06:48 | 0:06:53 | |
you know, fretworked out and the flying buttresses that join one to the other, | 0:06:53 | 0:06:59 | |
lovely bit of stonework really. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:01 | |
The fact that he knew what he was talking about | 0:07:01 | 0:07:05 | |
and the folks liked Fred for himself | 0:07:05 | 0:07:08 | |
and they liked the way the programme was put together, | 0:07:08 | 0:07:11 | |
they were learning how things were done without realising it. | 0:07:11 | 0:07:15 | |
They didn't realise that they were watching the programme | 0:07:15 | 0:07:17 | |
to learn how these buildings were being put together. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:20 | |
They just liked the way Fred explained it. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:23 | |
At the end of the day, they would go away so much the wiser. | 0:07:23 | 0:07:27 | |
Fred served his apprenticeship as a joiner and, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
at Stokesay Castle in Shropshire, | 0:07:32 | 0:07:34 | |
he was able to draw on these skills | 0:07:34 | 0:07:36 | |
to explain the medieval construction technique of jettying. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:41 | |
When you get up here on the second floor, | 0:07:41 | 0:07:43 | |
all the walls are timber framed and filled in with lath and plaster. | 0:07:43 | 0:07:48 | |
It must have been a very important room for the family, and if you had friends round, | 0:07:48 | 0:07:52 | |
wonderful views of the countryside out through these lovely windows. | 0:07:52 | 0:07:57 | |
But you must have felt a bit vulnerable if there were any enemies about. | 0:07:57 | 0:08:02 | |
I rather think that when this bit was stuck on top of here, you know, they were more peaceful times. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:09 | |
This timber framing, this window frame that I'm stood in, | 0:08:09 | 0:08:13 | |
protrudes out as much as four feet over the stone walls down below. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:18 | |
It's a technique developed in the Middle Ages known as jettying | 0:08:18 | 0:08:23 | |
and of course this north tower here at Stokesay Castle is one of the earliest examples of it. | 0:08:23 | 0:08:30 | |
Joists to the beams used to support a floor or the floorboards. | 0:08:30 | 0:08:34 | |
With this business of jettying, they actually protrude over the wall. | 0:08:34 | 0:08:39 | |
I'm stood in the area where immediate below me there's the outer stone wall of the tower proper, | 0:08:39 | 0:08:45 | |
then there's about four feet of the joists protruding out into space, | 0:08:45 | 0:08:50 | |
but when I stand over here, I'm actually stood on top of the moat. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:55 | |
There's nothing in-between me and the moat, only these floorboards. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:59 | |
I could show you better if we went downstairs | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
and outside and climbed up the ladder to underneath the jetty. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:08 | |
Now, really, the idea of the jetting is | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
you can get a room maybe as much as eight or nine feet bigger | 0:09:15 | 0:09:20 | |
than you would inside the actual stone walls. | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
With the stone walls being very thick and the timber framing very thin | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
with the laths and plaster inserts in-between, | 0:09:28 | 0:09:33 | |
you can really see why they did it, you know. | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
They could gain maybe as much as four or five feet all the way around the room, which is quite a big item. | 0:09:36 | 0:09:43 | |
Must have been a bit draughty because you can see great quarter-inch gaps | 0:09:43 | 0:09:49 | |
in the floorboards, you know. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:50 | |
Had thick carpets down they must have had. | 0:09:50 | 0:09:54 | |
The joists, the actual floor joists, | 0:09:54 | 0:09:57 | |
are the ones horizontal, sticking out, | 0:09:57 | 0:10:01 | |
they go straight across inside from one wall to the other. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
Then there's the stone corbels | 0:10:05 | 0:10:08 | |
with the vertical props which are braced by these 45-degree members | 0:10:08 | 0:10:14 | |
which in turn are mortise and tenoned into each end and pegged | 0:10:14 | 0:10:19 | |
so they give the final overhang a bit of extra support, as you might say. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:24 | |
I think as Fred developed his TV programmes, | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
one of the big changes I saw was from "Here's something interesting" | 0:10:27 | 0:10:31 | |
to "Here's how you should do it, or how it worked." | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
I remember clearly his descriptions of how people built cathedrals | 0:10:34 | 0:10:38 | |
which I thought I knew about until he was able to explain them. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:42 | |
I'm sure that got over to a huge number of people who never really thought about it before. | 0:10:42 | 0:10:48 | |
The thing that distinguishes these great Norman Cathedrals | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
from the Saxon buildings they replaced | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
is their sheer size and scale. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:58 | |
Of course, the Normans brought these ideas and building techniques | 0:10:58 | 0:11:03 | |
all the way from France | 0:11:03 | 0:11:05 | |
and of course left us with these magnificent pillars and arches. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:09 | |
Fred takes us to the heart of buildings, he shows us, | 0:11:11 | 0:11:16 | |
not just the grand scale of places like Ely Cathedral, | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
but then he helps us understand how they were constructed, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:23 | |
how they're still standing today. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
We take so much for granted about our great cathedrals, castles and palaces, | 0:11:25 | 0:11:31 | |
but he shows us the men and women | 0:11:31 | 0:11:33 | |
who helped to build them bit by bit to make them beautiful. | 0:11:33 | 0:11:39 | |
This is a demonstration of building an arch. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:44 | |
Yeah, the wooden bit in the middle, like this bit down here, | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
is what's known as the centring. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:50 | |
Of course, when the thing's set, we can withdraw these wedges down here | 0:11:50 | 0:11:57 | |
and hopefully the wood'll come slack and then, | 0:11:57 | 0:12:02 | |
you know, the arch will stay in position. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:06 | |
It's... | 0:12:06 | 0:12:08 | |
I'm very confident that it will stay in position. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:13 | |
I'm not worried about it at all. | 0:12:13 | 0:12:16 | |
Even though it's waggling about now! | 0:12:20 | 0:12:22 | |
We'll come back after dinner and take the middle out | 0:12:31 | 0:12:35 | |
and hopefully it'll stay up. | 0:12:35 | 0:12:37 | |
I'm fairly confident, I think it will do. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:40 | |
I'm not really a bricklayer, you know. I'm only a sort of... | 0:12:40 | 0:12:46 | |
self-taught mechanic, in a way. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:48 | |
Right... | 0:12:48 | 0:12:51 | |
now, that's what all good bricklayers do at brew time. | 0:12:51 | 0:12:55 | |
I'm off now, we'll come back after lunch and take the middle out. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:59 | |
This is it, the great moment, we're now going to strike the arch. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:07 | |
Aye, success! | 0:13:27 | 0:13:29 | |
I don't know what Mr Brunel would have thought about it | 0:13:32 | 0:13:36 | |
but I'm quite pleased, yeah. | 0:13:36 | 0:13:38 | |
It looks terribly fragile in its present state | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
but if you imagine it being contained at the bottom and at ten to and ten past on the top, | 0:13:44 | 0:13:50 | |
the more pressure you put on the thing, the stronger it becomes. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:55 | |
I'm going to attempt to sit on top of it and see what happens. | 0:13:55 | 0:13:58 | |
I don't think it'll fall down but you never know. | 0:13:58 | 0:14:03 | |
Here we go. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:04 | |
I can't really get high enough up, you know. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:11 | |
How's that? | 0:14:19 | 0:14:21 | |
Well, as you can see, that were one arch down at ground level. | 0:14:35 | 0:14:39 | |
The thing is, basically you get the principle or the idea | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
of how they actually built arches from that disaster. | 0:14:43 | 0:14:47 | |
If I'd used a bit more cement in the mortar, it would have stayed up. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:51 | |
But how did they go on building summat like this behind me? | 0:14:51 | 0:14:54 | |
You know, three tiers or arches, and all quite slender, really, | 0:14:54 | 0:14:59 | |
Must have waited a fair time for the mortar to go off | 0:14:59 | 0:15:03 | |
before they struck the centring out, not quite like what we did. | 0:15:03 | 0:15:08 | |
His particular contribution was in conveying and explaining | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
in an immediate way how things were put together. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
I've seen several TV programmes on which people have tried to explain the principle of a Gothic vault, | 0:15:16 | 0:15:22 | |
but Fred's the only person I've seen building one in his back garden. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:26 | |
That was particularly good. | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
There's the other one where he demonstrates with a model crane | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
how the lantern of Ely Cathedral is put together. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
This magnificent lantern, which is over 200 feet high | 0:15:36 | 0:15:41 | |
and weighs 200 tons, made of wood and lead, | 0:15:41 | 0:15:45 | |
is hanging precariously over this great void. | 0:15:45 | 0:15:49 | |
This really is my personal idea | 0:15:49 | 0:15:52 | |
of how they managed to get it up all them years ago. | 0:15:52 | 0:15:56 | |
To raise up these great bauks of timber, which I think are about 60-odd foot long, | 0:15:56 | 0:16:01 | |
there'd be maybe 50 or 60 blokes on the end of the rope | 0:16:01 | 0:16:05 | |
that controlled the set of rope blocks | 0:16:05 | 0:16:07 | |
that raised the real weight of the thing. | 0:16:07 | 0:16:10 | |
Of course, as it came up, it'd have other guy ropes on | 0:16:10 | 0:16:14 | |
and men pulling the bottom out and keeping the top in the right shop. | 0:16:14 | 0:16:18 | |
When they got it in a position where they could anchor it to the stonework | 0:16:18 | 0:16:23 | |
the next stage of the game would be | 0:16:23 | 0:16:25 | |
everybody would be holding onto the ropes | 0:16:25 | 0:16:29 | |
while some intrepid character crept out onto the stonework | 0:16:29 | 0:16:34 | |
and shoved in the big iron pin. | 0:16:34 | 0:16:37 | |
This would have to be repeated | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
eight times all the way around, or 16 times really, | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
cos there's two for every corner | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
and of course the next piece would come up in the same manner with the rope blocks. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:51 | |
Here again somebody would have to pin it to the masonry. | 0:16:51 | 0:16:55 | |
Then...with the aid of a couple of planks, | 0:16:55 | 0:17:02 | |
chucked out on here for somebody to go out on, | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
it'd be pretty easy to secure the corner there together. | 0:17:05 | 0:17:09 | |
So you see how real strong it is. I'm pressing down fairly hard on this corner | 0:17:09 | 0:17:14 | |
and there's not a lot happening, it's pretty tough. | 0:17:14 | 0:17:16 | |
So if they did that 16 times all around, | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
it would be easy then to lace it up with planks from one to the other | 0:17:19 | 0:17:23 | |
and then construct what I've called the foundation ring for the lantern proper. | 0:17:23 | 0:17:28 | |
Once they'd reached that stage, they'd reached the stage of stability | 0:17:28 | 0:17:33 | |
where they'd realised the thing couldn't collapse. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:36 | |
Up until then it must have been very precarious | 0:17:36 | 0:17:39 | |
and they must have been a bit, you know, excited and uptight while they were doing. | 0:17:39 | 0:17:44 | |
I know if I had to do it, I would. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:46 | |
I mean, you can't compare it so well with modern steel structures | 0:17:46 | 0:17:50 | |
cos, you know, you can cantilever out for miles, like the Forth Bridge, | 0:17:50 | 0:17:55 | |
but things like this, they didn't know whether it were going to start creaking and collapse | 0:17:55 | 0:18:00 | |
till I reckon they'd got that big octagonal shape ring in. | 0:18:00 | 0:18:04 | |
It's a matter of looking, and Fred was very good at looking and understanding. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:08 | |
You've only got to see how he approached the technology | 0:18:08 | 0:18:15 | |
of the medieval carpenters who put up the octagon at Ely Cathedral | 0:18:15 | 0:18:19 | |
and quite clearly he's really in there, | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
getting into their thought processes, | 0:18:22 | 0:18:25 | |
understanding how they had put those things together | 0:18:25 | 0:18:28 | |
and what sort of machines they needed to make it work, | 0:18:28 | 0:18:32 | |
and how they put a rope here and a rope there, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
and what order they put those great timbers up in, in just the same way | 0:18:34 | 0:18:39 | |
as he would be understanding how an engineer would assemble a steam engine. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:44 | |
I think that's a lovely thing to be able to do. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
Really, a simple way to explain it all is like a crossroads. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:51 | |
If you imagine houses coming up to each corner of the crossroads | 0:18:51 | 0:18:55 | |
and something shoving on the bottom corners of them, | 0:18:55 | 0:18:59 | |
you've got to shove a row of houses out the way before the thing can go downwards. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:04 | |
In a way, down below here we've got the nave and the transepts, which in actual fact is a crossroads | 0:19:04 | 0:19:10 | |
and of course the main thrust is on the end corners of the walls, | 0:19:10 | 0:19:15 | |
so you've got to shove out the way the whole length of the cathedral. | 0:19:15 | 0:19:19 | |
It would never come to that, but that's in theory what it is, | 0:19:19 | 0:19:23 | |
before this block can actually descend. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
It's all very cleverly done really, you know. | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
When you think it's so old and what have you, it's a credit to them how they managed to do it. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:35 | |
All for the glory of God. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:38 | |
And he very often said, a thing I liked about him, | 0:19:38 | 0:19:42 | |
"That's a great credit to them." | 0:19:42 | 0:19:44 | |
And you felt he really meant it. | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
There was somebody who centuries before had created this thing and he was there appreciating it. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:52 | |
Anyway, Jonathan, tell me which is Cardinal Wolseley's bit? | 0:19:52 | 0:19:56 | |
From that gable and the gate house to the other gable, | 0:19:56 | 0:20:00 | |
that's all Wolseley's material, and then Henry VIII added these arms. | 0:20:00 | 0:20:04 | |
That one's a toilet for 28 people. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:06 | |
This wonderful, diagonal sort of diamond brick, | 0:20:06 | 0:20:11 | |
it's quite beautiful, that. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:15 | |
If you look closely at the Tudor stuff, you see it doesn't quite carry through the whole facade. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:21 | |
-I've been straining me eyes at it. It's all a bit different, isn't it? -Yes, very irregular. | 0:20:21 | 0:20:26 | |
-There's no proper symmetry about it, is there? -No. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
This new brickwork in the middle, how come that's nice and pink? | 0:20:29 | 0:20:34 | |
-Alarm bells ring when you see a completely different colour brick. -A rebuild of some sort. | 0:20:34 | 0:20:39 | |
It's an 18th-century rebuild and reface of that gatehouse | 0:20:39 | 0:20:42 | |
because Wolseley built too quickly for his foundations to last long | 0:20:42 | 0:20:46 | |
and originally that gatehouse had two wings on each side, which made the centre part the lower | 0:20:46 | 0:20:52 | |
and they were taken down in 1777 after cracks were seen. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:56 | |
So now it's reversed its original appearance. | 0:20:56 | 0:20:58 | |
It looks like a podium now, doesn't it? | 0:20:58 | 0:21:01 | |
Yeah, the chimney stacks, they're summat else, aren't they? Every one different. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:05 | |
None are Tudor, the ones you see, but they're faithful copies of Tudor designs. | 0:21:05 | 0:21:09 | |
I wonder how they got...that beautiful twist on them, you know. | 0:21:09 | 0:21:14 | |
That's an interesting thing, you know. | 0:21:14 | 0:21:17 | |
I read somewhere about a stick, you know, up the middle. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:21 | |
I think that's how they built them. A pole in the middle, a template on it and move the template round | 0:21:21 | 0:21:27 | |
because you only need about two or three types of brick. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:30 | |
It's economical to get a spiral - just move the next course round. | 0:21:30 | 0:21:33 | |
Yeah, it's a good way of doing that, it's quite simple and practical, if you think about it. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:38 | |
And made a wonderful skyline. When all the pinnacles are there, | 0:21:38 | 0:21:41 | |
all the lead caps on the turrets, it must have been a wonderful view from afar, and with gilding on top of it. | 0:21:41 | 0:21:47 | |
All painted as well. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:48 | |
Sometimes, when we stand in front of a great palace like Hampton Court | 0:21:48 | 0:21:53 | |
it's hard to take it all in. | 0:21:53 | 0:21:55 | |
We can see it's so complex and it's built up over so many generations, but Fred leads us through it. | 0:21:55 | 0:22:01 | |
He shows us how each space functions and the people who helped build it | 0:22:01 | 0:22:07 | |
and then we can understand it and enjoy it more. | 0:22:07 | 0:22:09 | |
-You're a man who works with your hands, Fred. -Oh, yeah. -How would you make something like that? | 0:22:09 | 0:22:14 | |
That particular panel, it'll be about...what is it? | 0:22:14 | 0:22:17 | |
12 inches by maybe 23 inches long or thereabouts. | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
It would initially start off as a piece of oak on a bench | 0:22:21 | 0:22:26 | |
and the guy would cut in vertically down the edge of the panels. | 0:22:26 | 0:22:32 | |
They must have had a bit of a gauge to know they were at the right depth. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:36 | |
Same at both ends and then the timber in-between all the folds | 0:22:36 | 0:22:41 | |
would be done with like concave and convex moulding planes and small grooving planes. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:46 | |
-So you groove the whole length and that's done in an instant? -Yeah. | 0:22:46 | 0:22:50 | |
That looks to me as though it could have been done same as masonry | 0:22:50 | 0:22:54 | |
-with an hammer and chisel, you know, cos it's all a bit up and down. -I see, right. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:59 | |
That's the sort of effect to get it to look like folded up material. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:04 | |
I had a friend once, God bless him, he's dead and gone now, but he actually played the fiddle | 0:23:04 | 0:23:10 | |
in the Halle Orchestra but he were a budding woodworker. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:14 | |
His favourite timber were oak, and before he died, | 0:23:14 | 0:23:17 | |
he promised me he'd learn me how to make linen-fold panelling | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
and he did all his house with it. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
It was quite magnificent, the doors, panelling and everything. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
It were very effective and looked very nice. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:29 | |
Aye, this is Henry VIII's bit, is it? | 0:23:29 | 0:23:32 | |
this hall was rebuilt by Henry VIII on the site of Wolseley's. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:36 | |
I'm researching that at the moment and it seems almost certain | 0:23:36 | 0:23:40 | |
that Wolseley's hall was actually longer, bigger by area. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:44 | |
It's 39 feet wide and 114 feet long | 0:23:44 | 0:23:47 | |
and this was the great ceremonial entrance room, | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
so it's decked with tapestries, | 0:23:51 | 0:23:53 | |
each costing as much as an armed battleship to make, | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
-took about four years. -Blooming heck. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:58 | |
So it's a show-off room, designed to impress you. | 0:23:58 | 0:24:01 | |
I mean, this magnificent roof is summat, and I've always thought that they designed that | 0:24:01 | 0:24:07 | |
because they couldn't get any big lumps of timber really. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
If you think of the size of an oak tree, as compared with later architectural feats | 0:24:11 | 0:24:17 | |
of big engineering works with 60-foot long beams, you know, | 0:24:17 | 0:24:21 | |
I mean, there's no bit of wood up there that's more than maybe ten feet or 12 foot long, is there? | 0:24:21 | 0:24:28 | |
You're limited by the length of trunk a tree can provide for a beam. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:32 | |
If you imagine spanning 40 feet, you'd need a beam of immense depth. | 0:24:32 | 0:24:36 | |
I've seen that myself in industrial premises in Lancashire, you know. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:41 | |
To get across here it would be maybe two feet deep by nine inches thick | 0:24:41 | 0:24:46 | |
with a queen post and two vertical posts heavily braced up with iron rods to accomplish the same thing. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:53 | |
And if you imagine the feeling of lightness and space you want to get within this hall, | 0:24:53 | 0:24:58 | |
if you have beams coming across, you've spoilt it already, I think. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:02 | |
In Westminster Hall in the 1390s they pioneered this technique, | 0:25:02 | 0:25:06 | |
using a hammer beam and building it straight out from the wall like a cantilever, so that can support | 0:25:06 | 0:25:12 | |
a vault just under the central section of the roof. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:15 | |
So it's a very light construction, like the underside of a ship. | 0:25:15 | 0:25:19 | |
Yeah, and when it is all bolted together, the weight's basically | 0:25:19 | 0:25:24 | |
straight down on the walls instead of trying to shove them out. | 0:25:24 | 0:25:28 | |
It is a very elegant engineering solution, and this is one of the latest cos Westminster was 1390s, | 0:25:28 | 0:25:33 | |
this was 1530s, so it's quite late on in history. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:37 | |
Before, they used to build a stone arch across, didn't they? | 0:25:37 | 0:25:40 | |
-Then, you know, put the timber on top of that. -Sometimes they did. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:44 | |
They had a variety of timber trusses but most are less elegant than this. | 0:25:44 | 0:25:48 | |
Oh, I know. This is beautiful. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
Yeah, it's Henry VIII's best piece of building here certainly. | 0:25:50 | 0:25:54 | |
He would actually show with practical demonstrations | 0:25:54 | 0:25:58 | |
how timber beams worked, for example, and how it was a very precise art. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:03 | |
Something which I think people tended not to notice before, | 0:26:03 | 0:26:06 | |
they tended to look at things and say, "Oh, the ceiling's up there," | 0:26:06 | 0:26:10 | |
rather than, "Isn't it clever how that is kept together?" | 0:26:10 | 0:26:13 | |
I remember, I suppose because I was quite interested in it myself, | 0:26:13 | 0:26:17 | |
the whole business of hammer beam roofs. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:20 | |
He actually made a hammer beam joint on one occasion | 0:26:20 | 0:26:24 | |
and I remember the slight nerves he managed to exhibit, | 0:26:24 | 0:26:28 | |
I'm sure he wasn't feeling them at the time, | 0:26:28 | 0:26:30 | |
of hammering in the last pin and saying, "Once this goes in it won't come out," and he proved it. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:36 | |
He made a very good locking joint and made the point of how these great roofs do hang together. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:42 | |
In the Middle Ages, the roof construction, | 0:26:42 | 0:26:46 | |
like hammer beam roofs and crook beam constructions, | 0:26:46 | 0:26:50 | |
the main joint really in all of it were the mortise and tenon joints, | 0:26:50 | 0:26:55 | |
which is basically a hole in one block of wood | 0:26:55 | 0:26:59 | |
and a bit sawn on the end of the other that fits in the hole. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:02 | |
The tools needed to form such a joint are fairly simple - | 0:27:02 | 0:27:07 | |
a chisel and a hammer. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
And then of course a saw for sawing the tenon on the end of the beam. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:17 | |
Then of course it's held together by a dowel or a peg, | 0:27:17 | 0:27:22 | |
and you drill the hole slightly out of centre, | 0:27:22 | 0:27:26 | |
so when you put the tenon down the mortise hole and knock the peg through, | 0:27:26 | 0:27:31 | |
the peg has a pulling effect on the shoulders of the tenon and pulls it all together. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:36 | |
That's what I'm about to undertake to do now. | 0:27:36 | 0:27:39 | |
That goes in there, like that, | 0:27:39 | 0:27:43 | |
and then we've got this beam. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:46 | |
The hole is slightly out of line so when I knock this wooden peg in here | 0:27:46 | 0:27:52 | |
it'll have the effect of pulling the tenon down into the mortise hole. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:58 | |
Of course, once we've knocked it in, we won't be able to get it out, so here goes. | 0:27:58 | 0:28:02 | |
That feels very good and very tight | 0:28:08 | 0:28:11 | |
and I think... | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
it's solid as a rock. | 0:28:14 | 0:28:16 | |
No daylight, | 0:28:19 | 0:28:21 | |
slightly out of square | 0:28:21 | 0:28:23 | |
but I think it's the fact that that side of the timber's round. | 0:28:23 | 0:28:28 | |
Of course, on this side it's flush all the way over. | 0:28:28 | 0:28:31 | |
Even for the Middle Ages, that's a pretty good joint...I think, anyway! | 0:28:31 | 0:28:36 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd, 2006 | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:28:47 | 0:28:51 |