Victorian Splendour Fred Dibnah's Building of Britain

This magnificent town hall in Bolton is a grand example of Victorian civic pride.

The success and prosperity that the industrial revolution brought to towns like this

left us with some magnificent buildings.

Victorians loved to have everything ornate and pleasing to the eye.

The ornamentation was almost as important as the building itself.

The construction and engineering skills I've looked at in "The Building of Britain"

has brought me to my favourite period and buildings - the great age of Victorian splendour.

I first became interested in buildings at about 15 years old.

I lived here in this small, terraced house and me mother and father wanted me to be an undertaker.

Now I didn't fancy that, you know.

So, I peddled off to the Youth Employment Bureau where they got me a job as a joiner.

My work as a joiner got me into some splendid mansions

that the cotton-mill owners and bleach-work owners had built.

This was built by a bleach-works owner.

I couldn't help but notice - having come from a house that hadn't got any skirting boards -

the quality of the woodwork,

skirting boards, marble fire places, alcoves and panel doors...

and best of all, the plastered ceilings. It made me wonder how they did it.

Of course, it's a pub now, so really, everybody can enjoy it.

The Victorians went to great lengths to make things pleasing to the eye -

whether it were a great civil engineering project or something as small as a window catch.

Much more ornate than what we do these days.

'On their buildings, they did all this ornamentation on a really grand scale,

'something I was able to see at close quarters.'

About 30 years ago, when I were in me prime,

I got the job of repairing the lantern on top of this town hall.

I thought I'd reached the pinnacle of my career.

'On the top, around the lantern, there are 16 stone pillars.

'And I made a machine and actually turned these stone pillars.

'And then, of course, I talked myself into gilding the ball on the top

'and pointing the whole lantern right down to the top of the lead.

'When it was built in the 19th century,

'it was a time when they had great respect for the past

'and they wanted their buildings to reflect the values of an earlier age.

'They built a new House of Parliament that matched the medieval splendours of Westminster Abbey right next door.

'They made country houses look like castles.

'Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire isn't really a proper castle.

'It's a big country house, designed to look like one.

'It was built for the first Earl Sommers in the early 19th century.

'He wanted everybody to know how rich and well established his family were.

'He commissioned the architect, Robert Smirke, to design a place

'that looked as big and impressive as one of the castles that Edward I had built nearly 1,000 years earlier.

'Eastnor took six years to build and cost over £85,000.

'At a time when Britain's aristocracy felt threatened by the recent French Revolution,

'it sent a clear message to ordinary people.'

It said, "Remember who your masters are".

The scale of this building is as impressive as any of Edward's castles in Wales.

In the first 18 months alone, there were 4,000 tonnes of building stones used,

16,000 tonnes of mortar,

600 tonnes of wood - and this was only in the construction of the walls!

They're built directly onto the granite bedrock,

so there was little need for any foundations.

When you look up, it makes you wonder how they got the walls so smooth.

And, of course, where are the holes for the scaffolding?

How could they make the archways so big?

How could they vault such a large, cavernous space like this

without using massive structural timbers?

You can find out a lot about Smirke's building techniques and the way he went about doing things

because of all the records he left behind at Eastnor castle.

This is James, the current owner, who's got all these wonderful plans.

-He's gonna read me a few letters about it.

-We're very lucky we've kept these.

It gives us a very good record of drawings and letters, describing the process.

The first thing to notice

is the huge amount of stone required.

They were keen to quarry it locally,

-so the original estimate is for a total bill of £82,000.

-Incredible!

They said, "We don't expect to take the stone more than five miles",

but when they looked locally, the stone was mostly granite and they had to look elsewhere.

"I'm sorry to say we must abandon all hope of procuring stone from the ground westward of the house".

They looked further and the house came to be built from Forest of Dean sandstone.

It's obvious Mr Smirke kept tight controls over his finances and accounting system.

We've already seen this costing for the whole building of £82,000.

Interestingly, at the end, it had cost £85,000 - only £3,000 over budget.

This is interesting as it shows how he was drawing on craftsmen from around the country

and there's obviously some very busy ones in London from Smith street...

-One from Carlisle.

-..Then, at the bottom, he's put his own billing for £1,641, 11 shillings and tuppence.

It's quite obvious he used a lot of new techniques for that period.

Smirke was prepared to use modern methods, or what was becoming modern methods.

He introduced cast iron.

There was a shortage of wood at the time the castle was being built.

-Although a lot was cut here, they still needed more...

-Than they could find.

-Yes.

He used cast-iron beams to support the structure

and to enable us to have these large roof spans which otherwise, could only have been managed with arches.

Fred, this is the biggest cast-iron beam we've got in the house.

-You remember it on the drawings?

-Yes.

It's a cast-iron bearer fitted in 1818, just as the castle was being topped out.

In an older building, there'd be a massive stone vault to support the superstructure.

These are the ones who did the job, Mr Pen and Mr Worth, the joiners.

-It's amazing there's only two of them - they must have been fantastic men.

-They'd be the literate ones.

They could write! There'd be a big army of labourers.

Over here, there's something inscribed which describes one of the things that happened

at the time the beam was fitted.

"The memory of this day's events, July 13th 1818,

"John Worth, George Clarke, George Botter, James Curry, all fined a quarter for being too late

"by John Penn and JG - Clerk of Works".

So, they missed out on a bit of money for turning up late.

The reason for the great cast-iron beam at Eastnor castle

is to actually hold up the the front wall of the tower.

This wall on this tower is situated roughly halfway along the great hall.

Instead of building a great, big arch like the Normans would have,

they cast these two iron beams - held together by bolts with spear-headed nuts.

The whole roof's made of iron - there's no wood at all.

The only wood is the ceiling of the great hall.

When you get up there inside the roof space,

they're all units - they're all pieces around eight feet long with dovetails on the end

and mortis holes and pin holes and holes for keys to be knocked through.

The rate of assembly would be very quick and there's no dry rot and wood worm -

it'd be there in 1,000 years if you gave it a coat of tar every now and then.

Mr Smirke made very clever use of cast iron in the building of the castle,

not only for the structural part of it, but the ornamental bits as well.

I mean, if you study this staircase, at first, it appears to be made of wood.

But these posts are cast iron and the way they'd do this

is to make a wooden pattern and bury that in the sand in a moulding box and then pour in the molten iron.

The great beam in the rafters would be made in the same way, but on a mightier scale.

It wasn't the only modern technique that Smirke used.

In the letter, he mentions that he purchased a hydraulic engine.

At this time, 1818, steam engines were being used to power various sorts of machinery,

no doubt, stone saws and big wood saws and all sorts of things.

In my garden, I've got a steam engine that can do the same things Smirke's men would've needed

to build the castle.

'It meant that great amounts of stone could be cut and made nice and smooth

'in a fraction of the time it would have taken to do the job by hand.

'One man could now do what hundreds were needed for in the past.

'They were able to more or less mass produce beautiful detail and ornamentation.'

It's this that I like about the Victorian era.

That's why I've got so much of this sort of stuff in my house.

This wonderful bit here came off the front of a shop somewhere

and you couldn't see the detail, of course, for the paint.

I boiled it up in caustic and all the paint came off, revealing this lovely fancy-work.

It's made of pot - terracotta.

And then, the wonderful age of Victorian gas lighting.

The trouble they went to! There must have been lots of leaks from the joints and taps.

Up there, we've got some more terracotta lions' heads off a pub.

Even things like sports trophies were beautifully made.

Me grandfather, with funny shorts, was a runner at the turn of the century and won wonderful things -

French clocks and this palm tree with the cut-glass bowl on top.

It's one of the nicer items that he won.

It's been handed down over the years in the family and I've ended up with it.

'When you're having building work done,

'plasterers, tilers and joiners are as important as the men who built the place.

'Once Eastnor castle had been built, they proceeded with the interior work and it was all pretty lavish.

'This is the gothic drawing room which was re-decorated in 1849.

'For me, it's the height of Victorian splendour and embellishment.

'It's a very fine example of how good they were at decorating places back in them days.

'The man responsible for the room was architect and designer, Augustus Welby Pugin.

'Pugin had a great passion for the gothic architecture of the medieval cathedrals -

'all those pointed archways and ornate stone work.'

To him, gothic architecture wasn't just a passing fancy.

He really believed in it with his heart and soul.

'This is St Giles at Cheadle in Staffordshire,

'which was designed by Pugin when he was at the height of his career.

'He got together a team of craftsmen to provide the decorative detail for buildings like this.

'I went to see how some of it was done.'

Pugin's beautiful tile designs were actually manufactured by Herbert Minton.

Chris is gonna let me have a go at making one in exactly the same way as they did.

-Hiya, Fred.

-All right.

-OK...

This is one of the earliest forms of decorative tile manufacture

and this is very much a Pugin design.

First, the light colours are pressed into the mould.

Then, the background clay is added.

Do you wanna have a go?

-Go on.

-There's the clay. Use your thumb and push it into the corners.

Hang on...I've not got enough on.

That's it. Then take your cake of clay and just pat that on the surface.

Slap it down right in the middle.

Boom!

Then, you need to beat the clay in. Beat a row up the middle.

That's consolidated the clay. The next job is to wire the surplus off.

Stretch your wire out taut...

-It's quite hard stuff.

-It is, isn't it?!

We can get rid of that.

That's it. That's enough. Pull it out.

-That's the back stamp.

-Mm-hm.

There it is.

'Once it's dry, we can release it round the edges.

'We take a liquid version of the clay and pour it into the recesses left in the pattern.

'The final stage in the process is to scrape away the surplus on top of the tile.

'This is very time consuming.

'As Minton became more successful, they had to find ways of speeding up production

'and they started to use tile presses, beginning to semi-automate the process.

'Even so, many of the printed designs still needed to be finished and glazed by hand.'

So, you can see Pugin came up with a strange mixture of the old and new.

He created some magnificent designs.

He never stopped working.

He did over 2,000 designs for the fixtures and fittings in the Houses of Parliament alone.

'This was the job that made Pugin's name.

'He got it as a result of the old Palace of Westminster burning down in 1834.

'The commission to rebuild it had actually gone to someone else.

'Sir Charles Barry was the main man for the classical style, popular at this time -

'like Bolton Town Hall.

'The contract stated that it had to be in the gothic style - not really his thing.

'So, he turned to Pugin for help.'

It was acceptable for Pugin to marry a modern building with the ancient gothic style

and that's exactly what he did with the Houses of Parliament.

One of these buildings was built at the time of Henry VIII and the other in the 1830s. Notice the difference?

'You can't, and that's the point.

'Pugin wanted something that would match Westminster Abbey next door.

'What he and Barry did was to blend what was left of the medieval palace with their design.

'They came up with a splendid new palace that would be a fitting home for Britain's government.

'Work began in 1837

'and the Pugin-Barry partnership was dead right for the job.

'While Pugin looked after the detail,

'Barry tackled the problem of how to build the palace in the first place.'

As you can see, it's a building site today,

but in 1836, it would have looked pretty similar, but for one or two things.

There would've been quite substantial scaffolding, I should imagine.

Not even fair-poles - big eight-inch square baulks of timber and really grand platforms for working on.

There wouldn't have been any cement mixers.

There'd have been a steam-driven mortar mill and of course lynches and cranage for lifting up the stones.

The fence they erected to hide the work was made of wood in those days, not wire mesh.

But behind it, the workmen would have been doing much as today -

laying pavings, mixing mortar,

flattening the surface with steam rollers...

It would've been a hive of activity, using the most up-to-date machinery of the day.

Even though it looks medieval, there's a lot of modern materials been used in its construction.

In medieval times, everything were wrought iron - it had to be banged with a big hammer in a fire.

Here, there's great use of cast iron everywhere.

The roof has cast iron plates and there are lots of girders and beams inside.

So, although it mimics the cathedrals of the Middle Ages,

the site would have looked very similar to them cathedrals,

apart from the modern aids of the 1830s, like the steam engine.

In order to get the foundations for the Houses of Parliament so close to the shoreline of the river,

they came up with an ingenious solution of building a coffer damn -

driving a great row of wooden piles into the bed of the river, making them safe and corking up the seams.

They would pump the water out of the the banking side

where they were gonna do the foundations for the wall of the Houses of Parliament.

They, of course, would have had steam-driven pumps, but I'm siphoning it out - or most of it.

That's it.

The builders could now proceed to put in the foundations.

They put a slab of concrete in ten-feet thick in the bottom and then, started with the masonry.

And once the palace was built, it was left up to Pugin to decorate it's interior.

'This is the interior of the House of Lords.

'And here, Pugin used all his skills to make a grand statement.

'He busied himself with every detail of the decoration

'from the detailed carvings to every piece of its 1,100 items of furniture.

'He even designed the wallpaper.

'The original designs for Pugin's interiors were done by Crase Brothers

'and here at Cole and Companies, they've got the actual original Pugin blocks.

'These blocks were used to print Pugin's patterns onto sheets of wall paper.

'You have to line it up with a mark and press down hard with a foot pedal.

'There can be as many as seven different printing processes to go through.

'Another method Pugin and Crase used was to print the pattern onto the wallpaper with glue

'and then, stick flocking to it to give it a textured look.

'They still beat it on today in the same way it was done in Pugin's time.

'Pugin died in 1852,

'but work on his designs for the Houses of Parliament went on.

'In 1858, the Westminster clock tower was completed,

'the one we call "Big Ben" after the bell inside it.

'It stands 316-feet high

'and 40-feet square and is constructed of Anston stone from Yorkshire.

'By 1860, all the work had been completed

'at a total cost of just under £2,200,000.

'Big Ben has 334 steps leading up to the belfry and a further 59 to the lantern above.'

When they built this tower, they installed a steam hoist

to raise up all the machinery for the clock and the bells

and all the cast-iron work that forms the lantern on top of Big Ben.

When the job were finished they shifted it all out the bottom.

They should have left the steam lynch cos this staircase is the only way up here...

and believe me, it takes it out of you. Bloomin' heck!

These are the original clockworks that have been here since 1859.

It used to take six men eight hours to wind up the clock with these handles at each end,

but nowadays, it's electrified, which has took a lot of hard graft out of it,

but there are still certain bits that are hydraulic, like this one.

This has got to be done once every two days.

And it's thoroughly hard work, believe me.

'The design of the mechanism followed strict requirements from the Astronomer Royal,

'who wanted to ensure that no matter how hard the wind blows on the hands outside,

'the rate of timekeeping remained constant.

'They couldn't control temperature.

'The pendulum expands and contracts with the heat, so these old pennies are used to adjust the weight.

'Each penny makes the clock go faster by 2/5 of a second.'

In 1976, they had an unbelievable disaster here in this tower.

The mechanism on the chiming side of the clock -

the brakes failed and the weights began to descend inside the tower

and reputedly reached the speed of 200 miles an hour, which would make these wheels go round at some speed.

The centrifugal force got so great, the frame blew to pieces.

It only took 13 hours to get the actual clock mechanism going again,

but it took nine months to get the chime right.

BELL STARTS TO CHIME

BOING!

BOING!

BOING!

I don't know what they'll say next week at the hearing-aid clinic.

'There are four quarter bells which chime the introduction to the great hour-bell, Big Ben.

'But it isn't the original Big Ben.

'The original one was cast at Stockton-on-Tees,

'but it shattered under the weight of the hammer when it was first hit.'

Two months after this particular bell was installed, two more cracks appeared.

You can see where they chiselled in to find the true depth of the crack.

There were no radiography then.

To solve the problem, they moved the bell round a quarter of a turn

and reduced the hammer by almost half its weight.

'The clock tower is the crowning glory of the Palace of Westminster

'and it's one of the greatest and most recognisable national monuments

'we've seen in "The Building of Britain".'

While we've been going about on our travels, we've met craftsmen of all sorts -

wallpaperers, plasterers, lead men, stone masons -

and it's nice to know there are still craftsmen about who can do this type of work.

'The big enemy now is time.

'Everything comes and is erected in a matter of months and not years,

'like it used to be in the olden days.

'A stonemason working on a cathedral

'got out of bed and his only great worry would be the sharpness of his chisel,

'how good his hammer was and his dinner, maybe.

'He'd work all day, possibly just for food and a gallon of bitter or ale.

'To do a beautiful building job, it takes time.

'They spent hundreds of years on some of these places

'and what we see today is a wonderful example of Britain's creative genius over the centuries.

'From the solid stonework of medieval castles and cathedrals

'through the growth of the country house

'to the elaborate grandeur of Victorian Gothic,

'they're a credit to those whose vision, craft and sheer hard work have made Britain what it is today.'

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