Fred Dibnah
Encyclopedia
Frederick "Fred" Dibnah MBE
(28 April 1938 – 6 November 2004), born in Bolton
, was an English steeplejack
and eccentric
with a keen interest in mechanical engineering
who became a cult television personality.
Dibnah was born in a country which then relied heavily upon coal to fuel its industry. As a child he was fascinated by the steam engines which powered the many textile mills in Bolton, but he paid particular attention to chimneys and the men who worked on them. He began his working life as a joiner
, before becoming a steeplejack
. From age 22, he served for two years in the armed forces, as part of his national service
. Once demobilised, he returned to steeplejacking but met with limited success until he was asked to repair Bolton's parish church. The resulting publicity provided a welcome boost to his business, ensuring he was almost never out of work.
In 1978, while making repairs to Bolton Town Hall, Dibnah was filmed by a regional BBC
news crew. The BBC then commissioned an award-winning documentary, which followed the rough-hewn steeplejack as he worked on chimneys, interacted with his family and talked about his favourite hobby—steam. His Lancastrian
manner and gentle, self-taught philosophical outlook, proved popular with viewers and he featured in a number of television programmes. Toward the end of his life, the decline of Britain's industry was mirrored by a decline in his steeplejacking business and Dibnah increasingly came to rely on after-dinner speaking for his income. In 1998, he presented a programme on Britain's industrial history and went on to present a number of series, largely concerned with the Industrial Revolution
and its mechanical and architectural legacy.
Dibnah died from prostate cancer
in November 2004 aged 66. He is survived by his five children from three marriages.
works (his mother later worked as a charlady
at a gas works). Named after his uncle Frederick, he was born on 28 April 1938 and raised in the historic
Lancashire
town of Bolton
, then a predominantly industrial town with a history in the spinning and weaving of cotton
. As a child, Dibnah was fascinated by the sights and sounds of industry and the dozens of chimney stacks visible around Burnden Park
, and paid particular attention to the steeplejack
s he saw on his way to school. A popular pastime for local children was playing around the many mill lodge
s (industrial ponds) which once littered the area. An inventive child, Dibnah and some friends designed a makeshift diving suit
from a crisp
tin, a car inner tube and some piping. After being told to remove it from the local swimming baths, they tested it in one of the lodges, but were unsuccessful.
The Bolton arm of the Manchester Bolton and Bury Canal was one of Dibnah's regular haunts. The canal was by then largely disused (the Bolton arm had been mostly closed in 1924) and Dibnah sometimes dredged it with a rope and iron hook, for what he called 'plunder'. Much of this was stored in the back yard of his mother's house. Dibnah and friend Alan Heap built a canoe from old bicycle wheels (cut in half to make the ribs), slate lath
s and a canvas sheet from the back of a lorry. Much to the consternation of his mother, Dibnah sailed the boat along the nearby River Croal
. He once astonished his teachers when, following the theft of the school keys, he cut new keys for each classroom door.
Dibnah had watched the activities of steeplejacks throughout his childhood, and witnessed his first chimney felling
from his father's allotment near Bolton's greyhound track at Raikes Park. The steeplejacks first removed the top of the chimney and then created a hole in its base, propped with blocks of wood. They then lit a fire, destroying the supports and causing the chimney to collapse. Unfortunately, on this occasion the chimney fell in the wrong direction, onto the greyhound track's dog kennels, a local cafe and a series of power cables.
His first job that involved ladders was given to him while he still worked as a joiner. He was asked to point a garden wall and then the gable end of the customer's house. He used several short ladders, lashed together with rope and hardboard. This gave Dibnah valuable experience and his employer expanded the business to include property repairs. Aged about 17–18 he climbed the 262 feet (79.9 m) chimney at Barrow Bridge, for a 10 shilling
bet. During the night he took two Union flag
s to the top and secured each to the lightning conductors there. The Bolton Evening News reported the incident, with a photograph of Dibnah's feat, but attributed it to the activities of students from Manchester University
. At about the same time, Dibnah decided to replace the chimney stack at his mother's house on Alfred Street with one of his own design, as his mother used only one fireplace—leaving four of the five chimney pots redundant. As the single opening at the top of the new stack was only about 4 inches (10.2 cm) wide, the flue needed regular maintenance. On one occasion, he was cleaning the flue using a sack of bricks tied to a rope when the sack ripped open, breaking several lead pipes and flooding his mother's kitchen. After the death of his mother, the house was sold and the council placed a preservation order
on the chimney which remains to this day.
and was given a position in the cook house. He spent six weeks training at Aldershot
, before being sent to Catterick
to learn the basics of army catering. He was then posted with the 14th/20th King's Hussars
and sent to West Germany
. There he persuaded his commanding officer to let him repair the regiment's farmhouse (used for stabling horses and hounds) and he was soon given a more permanent position as a builder and handyman. He dug a 35 feet (10.7 m) deep shaft into which the horse manure and dog faeces would be emptied and he also fed the animals. He impressed his commanding officers by making a weathercock from army kitchen trays, but was also chastised when he was found with a 1914 Luger P08 pistol he had bought from a fellow soldier. He often received parcels of alcohol and tobacco from his mother, which allowed him to maintain the habits he had formed when he began his working life. Although Dibnah initially resented being called into service, he would later be more positive about the experience:
On his return from National Service in 1962 Dibnah retrieved his tools from storage, bought a 1927 350 cc AJS
Motorcycle for 21 guineas
and looked for more work. Bolton, however, was in the midst of post-industrial decline; between 1957–1965 about 70 mills were closed in the town, leaving only 37 mills operational and about 50 disused. Initially he was unable to find much work and existed on smaller, domestic jobs, until he earned enough to buy his own set of ladders and secured his first commission while working at a local mill. He was paid £140 to point
a mill tower, which he did on weekends. He struggled, however, to get any more meaningful work, until he met Lonsdale Bonner, one of his teachers from art college. The two agreed a deal whereby Bonner would be paid a commission for each job he got for Dibnah. His first job was dismantling a chimney alongside the Manchester and Bolton Railway
, a difficult proposition, as a mistake could force the temporary closure of the railway. The two managed to gain commissions for several jobs, but their relationship was terminated when Dibnah was called upon to undertake another six months of National Service.
He was then commissioned to repair a chimney at a local brewery. While working on this, he met a local welder who also knew the vicar of Bolton (Richard Greville Norburn), who wanted some repairs done to Bolton parish church's weathervanes. The vicar drove a 1929 Humber
limousine and was impressed by Fred's AJS motorcycle; the two quickly became friends. The church was the tallest building in Bolton and once Dibnah had repaired the weathervane the vicar asked him to gild
it. Dibnah appeared in the local newspaper and the publicity and his friendship with the vicar enabled him to gain more work from the local clergy.
His next major job was for local firm Hick Hargreaves, the proceeds of which enabled him to expand his collection of ladders to 30. He was commissioned to remove the top half of a 270 feet (82.3 m) chimney and employed an assistant, Percy Porter. The top of the chimney contained a length of railway line, which had been used for lifting materials during construction. Dibnah hacksawed the line into pieces, letting each piece fall to the ground, with his assistant below, keeping the area clear. He then spent the next six months removing each brick by hand while the chimney was still in use, as the factory could not afford to cease production.
, to get married. Dibnah had first spotted Alison from the top of a chimney and, when one day she walked into the pub where he was drinking, he asked her out; six weeks later, the two became engaged. They left notes for their parents, caught a train to Carlisle and from thereon a series of buses to Dumfries
. They had initially planned to stay at the house of a friend but as he had returned to Bolton for his holidays, they stayed instead at a local farmhouse. The two had to be resident for at least 21 days to be married and so Dibnah agreed to point the gable ends of a local hotel in exchange for bed and board. On 19 May, the two married at the church at Gretna Green and returned to live at Dibnah's mother's house. They later moved into a Victorian gatehouse on the Earl of Bradford
's estate, just outside Bolton. Dibnah spent years restoring the property, including building an extension. The house was a listed building and so he had to source appropriately aged bricks for the extension. A vicar offered him some of the old gravestones from the church graveyard, which Dibnah then used to create the stone lintels and mullion
s, though he later expressed his fear that his property would now be haunted. The couple later purchased the house for £5,000, although it required major repairs to stabilize the rear wall.
The couple had their first child, a girl named Jayne, in June 1968. Alison was initially worried about her husband's occupation but learned to deal with the risk and to trust Fred. She organised his accounts and even collected debts. She also helped him demolish some of the chimneys that he worked on, by lighting the fire to burn away the temporary supports he had put in place.
, by cutting an ingress at the base of the chimney—supporting the brickwork with wooden props—and then burning away the props so that the chimney fell, hopefully in the intended direction. Although this was a tried and tested method, it was not without its opponents. On one occasion he was contracted by the local council to fell two chimneys. The contract obliged him to dismantle each by hand, but he decided to fell them by cutting away the base. The first chimney collapsed as planned, but the council terminated his contract and refused to pay. Dibnah contacted the borough engineer and offered to fell the second chimney for no charge, to prove the effectiveness of his technique. He even offered to let the engineer light the fire, but the wind blew so hard that the chimney did not draw the flames and once the props had been burnt through, it remained standing. Dibnah resorted to using a hydraulic jack to apply extra pressure to the intact side of the base and the chimney eventually fell. He later told the engineer that "it was all about fine balancing and counteracting high wind forces." He almost lost his life in 1997, when a concrete chimney he had been asked to fell began to collapse before the felling team had finished preparing the base. As the team ran from the chimney, Dibnah tripped and fell and was greeted by the sight of 2,500 tonnes of concrete leaning toward him, but fortunately the chimney righted itself and then fell in the opposite direction. He felled his last chimney in Royton
, in May 2004.
ing. A small mill near his childhood home was sometimes mothballed and Dibnah once broke in:
He later became a steam enthusiast, befriending many of the engine drivers and firemen who worked on the nearby railway. As a teenager he met a driver who invited him onto the footplate of his locomotive and who asked him to keep the boiler supplied with fuel. Dibnah became so enamoured with steam engines that he eventually looked for one he could buy. He learnt of a steamroller
kept in a barn near Warrington
and which the owners had bought from Flintshire
County Council. He had the boiler pressure-tested and, despite it being in poor condition, bought it for £175. He towed it to a friend's house, spent a fortnight making various repairs and drove it to his mother's house in Bolton. After he married and bought his own property on Radcliffe new Road, he cut an access road to the garden of his new house and moved the steamroller there. Restoring the engine took many years, as Dibnah had to create his own replacement parts, using Victorian
engineering techniques and equipment he built in his garden. The boiler was in poor condition and needed serious work, but Dibnah fell back on local knowledge and was eventually able to build a new boiler. Once restored, he used the 1910 Aveling & Porter steamroller together with a living van he bought and restored, to take his family around the local steam fairs. While driving the vehicle was relatively safe, Dibnah had experienced several mishaps, including one instance when he lost control while descending a steep hill and was forced to drive the engine into a concrete barrier to bring it to a halt, smashing the front fork in the process.
Restoring the steamroller placed a heavy burden upon his marriage and Alison would often complain that her husband spent more time in the shed, repairing the engine, than he did in the house. He responded by naming the vehicle Alison, telling his wife "It's not every woman that has a steam engine named after her." Alison eventually developed an affection for the antique vehicle saying "We've done without for so many years to get it built up. I couldn't bear to part with it. There's too much of us in it."
His next purchase, made in the autumn of 1980, was a 1912 Aveling & Porter traction engine
. Dibnah paid a friend £2,300 for the vehicle and moved it to the garden behind his home. He built a steam-driven workshop in his garden, salvaging parts from various mills, including line shaft gear and a stationary engine from a mill in Oldham. He gave a conservative estimate of four years to complete the work, but the restoration eventually took 27 years. The engine was sold at auction in July 2010 for £240,000.
In 1988 he was asked by Caernarfon
council to make repairs to a chimney at Parc Glynllifon
. Beneath the chimney, an engine room contained an 1854 single-cylinder steam engine in poor condition. Dibnah repaired the chimney and several weeks later was asked to repair the engine, which he dismantled during the winter of 1988/89 and took back to Bolton. With his assistant Neil Carney, he spent six months repairing the engine. The two sourced a replacement boiler from a local pork pie factory and re-installed the engine in Wales. Dibnah later won a prize for the quality of the restoration work. He also spent about seven months restoring the boiler, engine and blunger
at Wetheriggs County Pottery near Penrith
.
In 1978 Dibnah was commissioned to make repairs to Bolton Town Hall. Decades of exposure to soot and rain had caused serious damage to the clock tower and Dibnah alerted the Clerk of Works to the condition of the 16 stone pillars at the top of the tower. He bought new stone, built a lathe
in his workshop and created the replacement pillars. He was given the job of repairing the clock tower and he also gilded the golden sphere at the top of the building. While Fred was working from his bosun's chair
, a public relations officer at the Town Hall informed Dibnah that BBC Look North West
wanted to interview him. The following week, the film crew arrived and Alistair MacDonald conducted the interview from the top of the building, with Dibnah perched outside on his scaffold. His warm and friendly manner combined with his enthusiasm and broad Lancashire accent proved popular and he was later contacted by producer Don Haworth, with a view to making a documentary. After several meetings over the course of a few weeks, filming began early one morning just as Dibnah had climbed to the top of a 245 feet (74.7 m) chimney at Shaw and Crompton
, a mill town
near Oldham
. Sporadic filming took place over an 18-month period and captured Dibnah (with assistant Donald Paiton) working on a range of buildings, spending time with his family and enjoying his hobbies. Giulio Briccialdi
's Carnival Of Venice (performed by James Galway
) was the music chosen to accompany Dibnah's work on Bolton Town Hall. One of the more notable aspects was Dibnah's 1979 demolition of a chimney in Rochdale
. Standing only yards away from the base of the chimney as it began to collapse, his retreat to safety and subsequent boyish outburst of "Did you like that?" endeared him to viewers.
Fred Dibnah, Steeplejack won the 1979 BAFTA award for best documentary, and over the years Haworth returned to film more documentaries. With his newly found fame, however, came distractions from his work. Visitors would arrive at his house, to see his garden. He began to receive fan mail; one individual wrote to offer Dibnah a steam-powered machine he no longer wanted. One company, who were apparently disturbed to see Dibnah's match
es being extinguished by the wind while at the top of a chimney, sent him a sample of their windproof matches. Filming would also interfere with his work. Cameraman Martin Lightening would climb with Fred to the top of a chimney—with a 16mm film camera—and film him at work, often hundreds of feet above the ground.
Several years later, Dibnah and his family went on holiday, to Blackpool
. The trip was filmed for television and showed Dibnah's preference for working rather than holidaying. He did however manage to undertake the removal of a small chimney stack from a business in the town, under a distinctly grey sky and aided by his wife, Alison. His payment for the job was a new front plate for the boiler of his traction engine. Dibnah, however, refused to take any more holidays and, after 18 years of marriage, Alison booked and paid for a holiday to Greece, taking their three children (Jayne, Lorna and Caroline) with her. Dibnah remained at home and was surprised when, upon her return, she asked for a divorce. One day in October 1985, Dibnah attended a solid fuel exhibition in nearby Bury
. Upon his return he discovered that Alison had left the house, taking with her their three children, the dog and some items of furniture. Short of money, he was forced to sell his antique AJS motorcycle. He found life without his family difficult but defended his wife: "There is no doubt whatsoever, she were a good help to me and I'm going to miss her. It was just that all the pressure got too much for her."
, known as The Fred Dibnah Appreciation Society. Sue moved into Dibnah's home in Bolton and the two married on 27 February 1987. She encouraged him to grow a moustache and also to give up smoking.
Many of the chimneys around Bolton had now been either repaired, or demolished and so Dibnah was forced to travel further afield for work. He travelled to the Yorkshire Dales
to install a lightning conductor on the parish church in Kirkby Malham
. While digging the hole for the conductor, they uncovered human bones, for which a reinterment ceremony was held. Their first son, Jack (named after his father's trade), was born in 1987. Dibnah offered to make a weathercock, provided that his son was christened in the same church. His second son, Roger, was born in 1991.
nest at the top. He was later influential in ensuring the chimney was made a listed building. As a notable raconteur he also became an after-dinner speaker and would wear his trademark flat cap
with his dinner jacket. He made an appearance in a 1996 television advertisement for Kelloggs, but the strain of living with a man so dedicated to his hobbies began to take its toll on his wife: "Sometimes he'll have busted his thumb because he's hit it with a hammer; you couldn't really expect him then to come in and start doing things in the house. I just don't think it's fair though, I think you've got to strike a balance and I think ours is about 90/10. Me for 90 per cent of the housework and Fred for 10." Susan met another man and moved out, taking Roger with her and leaving Jack with Fred.
In 1997 he met author David Hall. Hall had been raised in the Bradford district of Manchester and the two swapped tales of growing up in the latter half of the 20th century. Hall suggested that Dibnah would be unlikely to have any further television work commissioned on his life and that he should consider becoming a television presenter. The two worked on new ideas for a programme that would show Dibnah touring the country, visiting important historical locations and speaking to the men involved in the maintenance and restoration of industrial machinery and architecture. The programme would also exploit Dibnah's working-class attitude and show him operating some of the machinery he visited. Filming of Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age began in July 1998. The first location was near Bolton, at the Wet Earth Colliery
and the crew then moved on to various locations around the country, continuing to film through the summer and autumn of 1998.
The series achieved high viewing figures, with positive reviews, and the associated website became the second most-visited BBC website at the time. A complementary book was also published and was one of the top five best-selling history books of the year. Dibnah admitted he found speaking to a camera more nerve-racking than climbing a chimney, but the success of Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age was a portent; he later presented several other television series. Before filming began for Fred Dibnah's Magnificent Monuments, he had installed his red ladders on the steeple at St. Walburge's in Preston, ready for an inspection. With filming for television now taking up much of his time, however, he was unable to complete the job. He left the ladders at the church for several years and donated them to the tradesman who eventually took the job.
In 2001, to mark the centenary of the death of Queen Victoria, the BBC transmitted a season of programmes based on a Victorian theme and Dibnah presented Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes. He had long been fascinated by the Victorians, especially Isambard Kingdom Brunel
, whom he regarded as his hero. During filming he visited a number of locations including the 245 feet (74.7 m) high Clifton Suspension Bridge
and the slipway for the SS Great Eastern
.
In early 2001 Dibnah was due to begin filming Fred Dibnah's Building of Britain, but suffered severe abdominal pains and was admitted to hospital for tests. He was discharged and began filming at locations around the country, including the Globe Theatre
, Ely Cathedral
and Glamis Castle
. Dibnah was the chairman of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal Society and an episode on the construction of Britain's canal network was therefore of particular interest to him. Toward the end of filming, Dibnah went to Bolton Royal Hospital for a check-up, where a tumour was found on his right kidney
. The kidney was removed and the tumour was found to be malignant
. He went to Christie Hospital
in Manchester
, where further growths were discovered around his bladder
. On the same day, Sheila's father fell from the roof of his house and died. Dibnah underwent chemotherapy
and once his treatment was finished tests showed that he was free of cancer.
Filming for Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam began early in 2003, at the Trencherfield Mill, near Wigan Pier
. The film crew visited a number of locations, including a steam rally in Cornwall
and the Bluebell Railway
in Sussex
. Dibnah was travelling around the country working on a subject that fascinated him, visiting old friends and making money from his hobby. The restoration of his traction engine was almost complete; later that year, however, Dibnah had another checkup at Christie Hospital and was told that a large tumour had been found on his bladder.
in the back garden of his home. Although the sight of pithead gear may have been considered by his neighbours to be unusual, as a child raised in Bolton he had been surrounded by pits such as Ladyshore Colliery
and had long harboured an interest in mining. He had already assembled the wooden pithead gear and was planning to sink a 100 feet (30.5 m) brick-lined shaft below this into the hillside. At the bottom of the shaft, a horizontal tunnel would have led out to the steep side of the valley above which his garden sits. The intention was to have a narrow gauge railway running along the tunnel, back up the hillside on a rope-hauled inclined plane
, returning to the pithead. The ultimate aim was to be able to demonstrate the basic working of an early colliery. Seven years before his diagnosis, therefore, Dibnah had sourced drawings of suitable pithead gear
and built a frame from timber and iron bolts. He had applied for and was given planning permission to erect the structure, but made no mention of his wish to dig a shaft underneath it. The BBC decided to make a documentary on Dibnah's proposed mine, which would entail his once again travelling around the country, visiting working collieries and heritage mines. Filming started late in 2003, by which time Dibnah and his friend Alf Molyneux had already made a start on the shaft.
Using traditional shaft-sinking techniques and the labour of mining friends Alf Molyneux and Jimmy Crooks, the shaft was sunk to a depth of 20 feet (6.1 m) and lined with brick. The work had been undertaken without planning permission
and, when the council eventually found out what was happening, they insisted he apply for planning permission.
In December 2003, his traction engine was now in working order and planning for the new series commenced. Dibnah's illness necessitated that he sleep in hotels, rather than the living van the engine would tow during the trip. For the long distances between locations, the engine would be transported on the back of a low loader
. Dibnah's engine suffered early mechanical problems; it could barely tow the fully loaded living van uphill, as the cylinder had been placed very slightly closer to the footplate
than it should have been. As a result of this, every time the piston was fully forward it covered the steam inlet port. The engine was repaired, and with some minor engineering work to one of the pistons was brought up to full power. The team was joined by Dibnah's sons, Jack and Rodger.
The production crew made every effort to reduce Dibnah's workload. Changes were made to the filming schedule, to allow Dibnah more time to rest at home between filming days. The crew visited the Forth Road Bridge
and Dibnah became the first man to drive a traction engine under its own steam across the bridge. Such pleasures provided a welcome distraction for Dibnah, who was by then ill and in pain. By the end of June he was so ill he could not continue filming. He was sent home to rest and given medication to alleviate his condition, so that he could collect his MBE
.
of Doctor of Technology
for his achievement in engineering by Robert Gordon University
in Aberdeen
, and on 19 July 2004 he was made an honorary Doctor of the University by the University of Birmingham
.
Dibnah was awarded an MBE
for services to heritage and broadcasting. He said "I'm looking forward to meeting the Queen but I shall probably have to get a new cap. And I'd like to meet Prince Charles because we share the same views about modern architecture."
On 7 July 2004, Dibnah went to Buckingham Palace
to receive his award from the Queen. He initially planned to drive his traction engine into the palace grounds, but was refused as the Royal Parks Agency feared that its weight would damage the surface of The Mall. Eventually he was allowed to drive the engine to an army barracks a short distance from the palace. He collected his medal wearing morning dress
and a top hat
.
Filming continued at various locations around the country, with sons Jack and Roger, who had become essential members of the tour, providing much-needed support for their father. By the end of July, the crew had filmed only 34 days with Dibnah, out of a planned 60. It was becoming more difficult by the day for Dibnah to fulfil his filming duties and the crew decided to cut short the schedule. Once home, Dibnah decided to creosote
the pithead gear in his garden but fell and injured his back. He was adamant that he would continue filming, however, and made the trip to North Wales to complete filming. He later made a partial recovery and completed his last day's filming at an Ironworks
in Atherton
.
for three years, surrounded by his family, on 6 November 2004. He was 66 years old. At the time of his death, his estate was estimated as being worth about £1 million.
Eleven days later, thousands of mourners watched as Dibnah's coffin (on top of which his trade mark flat cap was placed) was towed through the centre of Bolton by his restored traction engine, driven by his son. A cortège of steam-powered vehicles followed, as the procession made its way to Bolton Parish Church. During the hour-long service, David Hall told the congregation "He wasn't a posh TV presenter. He was recognised as a working man who had learned through experience." Following the hour-long service, led by the Vicar of Bolton—Canon Michael Williams (a friend of Dibnah)—he was buried at Tonge
Cemetery, behind his home.
Dibnah was praised by many notable British people. After reporting on his death, television presenter Peter Sissons
remarked: "They don't make them like that any more". Comedian Peter Kay
said: "It's very sad news. He was one of a kind and now he has gone I think there will be no one else like him. He was enthusiastic about a way of life that has virtually disappeared now." Brian Tetlow, chairman of the Bolton and District Civic Trust, said: "He's unique, not just to Bolton but to Britain and the world. Our thoughts are with his wife and children."
An 8 feet (2.4 m) bronze statue of Dibnah was unveiled by the Mayor of Bolton, in Bolton town centre, on 29 April 2008. The sculpture was created by Jane Robbins. His home has since been converted into a heritage centre. A play titled The Demolition Man, based on his final years, was staged in 2011 at Bolton's Octagon Theatre
.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(28 April 1938 – 6 November 2004), born in Bolton
Bolton
Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...
, was an English steeplejack
Steeplejack
A steeplejack is a craftsman who scales buildings, chimneys and church steeples to carry out repairs or maintenance.Britain's most famous steeplejack was Fred Dibnah, who became a television presenter and minor celebrity as a result of his craft....
and eccentric
Eccentricity (behavior)
In popular usage, eccentricity refers to unusual or odd behavior on the part of an individual. This behavior would typically be perceived as unusual or unnecessary, without being demonstrably maladaptive...
with a keen interest in mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
who became a cult television personality.
Dibnah was born in a country which then relied heavily upon coal to fuel its industry. As a child he was fascinated by the steam engines which powered the many textile mills in Bolton, but he paid particular attention to chimneys and the men who worked on them. He began his working life as a joiner
Joiner
A joiner differs from a carpenter in that joiners cut and fit joints in wood that do not use nails. Joiners usually work in a workshop since the formation of various joints generally requires non-portable machinery. A carpenter normally works on site...
, before becoming a steeplejack
Steeplejack
A steeplejack is a craftsman who scales buildings, chimneys and church steeples to carry out repairs or maintenance.Britain's most famous steeplejack was Fred Dibnah, who became a television presenter and minor celebrity as a result of his craft....
. From age 22, he served for two years in the armed forces, as part of his national service
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
. Once demobilised, he returned to steeplejacking but met with limited success until he was asked to repair Bolton's parish church. The resulting publicity provided a welcome boost to his business, ensuring he was almost never out of work.
In 1978, while making repairs to Bolton Town Hall, Dibnah was filmed by a regional BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
news crew. The BBC then commissioned an award-winning documentary, which followed the rough-hewn steeplejack as he worked on chimneys, interacted with his family and talked about his favourite hobby—steam. His Lancastrian
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
manner and gentle, self-taught philosophical outlook, proved popular with viewers and he featured in a number of television programmes. Toward the end of his life, the decline of Britain's industry was mirrored by a decline in his steeplejacking business and Dibnah increasingly came to rely on after-dinner speaking for his income. In 1998, he presented a programme on Britain's industrial history and went on to present a number of series, largely concerned with the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
and its mechanical and architectural legacy.
Dibnah died from prostate cancer
Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
in November 2004 aged 66. He is survived by his five children from three marriages.
Childhood
Fred Dibnah was the son of Frank and Betsy Dibnah (née Travis), who were initially both employed at a bleachBleach
Bleach refers to a number of chemicals that remove color, whiten, or disinfect, often via oxidation. Common chemical bleaches include household chlorine bleach , lye, oxygen bleach , and bleaching powder...
works (his mother later worked as a charlady
Charlady
A charlady, char or charwoman was an English house cleaner. The term has the same roots as "chore woman," one hired to do odd chores around the house. A char or chare was a turn in the sixteenth century, and which gave rise to prefix being used to denote people that worked in domestic situations...
at a gas works). Named after his uncle Frederick, he was born on 28 April 1938 and raised in the historic
Historic counties of England
The historic counties of England are subdivisions of England established for administration by the Normans and in most cases based on earlier Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and shires...
Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
town of Bolton
Bolton
Bolton is a town in Greater Manchester, in the North West of England. Close to the West Pennine Moors, it is north west of the city of Manchester. Bolton is surrounded by several smaller towns and villages which together form the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, of which Bolton is the...
, then a predominantly industrial town with a history in the spinning and weaving of cotton
Cotton
Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose. The botanical purpose of cotton fiber is to aid in seed dispersal....
. As a child, Dibnah was fascinated by the sights and sounds of industry and the dozens of chimney stacks visible around Burnden Park
Burnden Park
Burnden Park was the home of English FA Premier League football club Bolton Wanderers who played home games here between 1895 and 1997. As well as hosting an FA Cup Final replay it was the scene of one of the greatest disasters in English football and the subject of an L. S...
, and paid particular attention to the steeplejack
Steeplejack
A steeplejack is a craftsman who scales buildings, chimneys and church steeples to carry out repairs or maintenance.Britain's most famous steeplejack was Fred Dibnah, who became a television presenter and minor celebrity as a result of his craft....
s he saw on his way to school. A popular pastime for local children was playing around the many mill lodge
Mill lodge
In northern England, a mill lodge is a small reservoir of water for the use of a factory....
s (industrial ponds) which once littered the area. An inventive child, Dibnah and some friends designed a makeshift diving suit
Diving suit
A diving suit is a garment or device designed to protect a diver from the underwater environment. A diving suit typically also incorporates an air-supply .-History:...
from a crisp
Potato chip
Potato chips are thin slices of potato that are deep fried...
tin, a car inner tube and some piping. After being told to remove it from the local swimming baths, they tested it in one of the lodges, but were unsuccessful.
The Bolton arm of the Manchester Bolton and Bury Canal was one of Dibnah's regular haunts. The canal was by then largely disused (the Bolton arm had been mostly closed in 1924) and Dibnah sometimes dredged it with a rope and iron hook, for what he called 'plunder'. Much of this was stored in the back yard of his mother's house. Dibnah and friend Alan Heap built a canoe from old bicycle wheels (cut in half to make the ribs), slate lath
Lath
A lath is a thin, narrow strip of some straight-grained wood or other material, including metal or gypsum. A lattice, or lattice-work, is a criss-crossed or interlaced arrangement of laths, or the pattern made by such an arrangement...
s and a canvas sheet from the back of a lorry. Much to the consternation of his mother, Dibnah sailed the boat along the nearby River Croal
River Croal
The River Croal is a river located in Greater Manchester, England. It is a tributary of the River Irwell.Rising at the confluence of Middle Brook and Deane Church Brook, it flows eastwards through Bolton, collecting Gilnow Brook and the larger River Tonge at Darcy Lever...
. He once astonished his teachers when, following the theft of the school keys, he cut new keys for each classroom door.
As a young man
At school Dibnah was placed in an art class (his reading and writing skills were judged to be poor), following which he spent three years at art college, where his work was based mainly on industrial themes such as machinery, pithead gear and spinning mills. On leaving college at 16 he was offered a job at a funeral parlour, but left quickly to begin work at a local joinery.Dibnah had watched the activities of steeplejacks throughout his childhood, and witnessed his first chimney felling
Chimney felling
Chimney felling is the practice of demolishing or "felling" a chimney stack. The practice is considered by some to be a dying art. Modern health and safety rules now largely prohibit the practice in industrialized areas; the current technique is to pack explosives around the base of the chimney...
from his father's allotment near Bolton's greyhound track at Raikes Park. The steeplejacks first removed the top of the chimney and then created a hole in its base, propped with blocks of wood. They then lit a fire, destroying the supports and causing the chimney to collapse. Unfortunately, on this occasion the chimney fell in the wrong direction, onto the greyhound track's dog kennels, a local cafe and a series of power cables.
His first job that involved ladders was given to him while he still worked as a joiner. He was asked to point a garden wall and then the gable end of the customer's house. He used several short ladders, lashed together with rope and hardboard. This gave Dibnah valuable experience and his employer expanded the business to include property repairs. Aged about 17–18 he climbed the 262 feet (79.9 m) chimney at Barrow Bridge, for a 10 shilling
Shilling
The shilling is a unit of currency used in some current and former British Commonwealth countries. The word shilling comes from scilling, an accounting term that dates back to Anglo-Saxon times where it was deemed to be the value of a cow in Kent or a sheep elsewhere. The word is thought to derive...
bet. During the night he took two Union flag
Union Flag
The Union Flag, also known as the Union Jack, is the flag of the United Kingdom. It retains an official or semi-official status in some Commonwealth Realms; for example, it is known as the Royal Union Flag in Canada. It is also used as an official flag in some of the smaller British overseas...
s to the top and secured each to the lightning conductors there. The Bolton Evening News reported the incident, with a photograph of Dibnah's feat, but attributed it to the activities of students from Manchester University
Victoria University of Manchester
The Victoria University of Manchester was a university in Manchester, England. On 1 October 2004 it merged with the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology to form a new entity, "The University of Manchester".-1851 - 1951:The University was founded in 1851 as Owens College,...
. At about the same time, Dibnah decided to replace the chimney stack at his mother's house on Alfred Street with one of his own design, as his mother used only one fireplace—leaving four of the five chimney pots redundant. As the single opening at the top of the new stack was only about 4 inches (10.2 cm) wide, the flue needed regular maintenance. On one occasion, he was cleaning the flue using a sack of bricks tied to a rope when the sack ripped open, breaking several lead pipes and flooding his mother's kitchen. After the death of his mother, the house was sold and the council placed a preservation order
Historic preservation
Historic preservation is an endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historical significance...
on the chimney which remains to this day.
National service
Aged 22 Dibnah was conscripted into the army to complete his National ServiceConscription in the United Kingdom
Conscription in the United Kingdom has existed for two periods in modern times. The first was from 1916 to 1919, the second was from 1939 to 1960, with the last conscripted soldiers leaving the service in 1963...
and was given a position in the cook house. He spent six weeks training at Aldershot
Aldershot
Aldershot is a town in the English county of Hampshire, located on heathland about southwest of London. The town is administered by Rushmoor Borough Council...
, before being sent to Catterick
Catterick Garrison
Catterick Garrison is a major Army base located in Northern England. It is the largest British Army garrison in the world with a population of around 12,000, plus a large temporary population of soldiers, and is larger than its older neighbour...
to learn the basics of army catering. He was then posted with the 14th/20th King's Hussars
14th/20th King's Hussars
The 14th/20th King's Hussars was a cavalry regiment of the British Army in existence from 1922 to 1992.- History :Originally styled the 14th/20th Hussars, the regiment was created in 1922 by the amalgamation of the 14th King's Hussars and the 20th Hussars, as part of the reductions in the Army...
and sent to West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
. There he persuaded his commanding officer to let him repair the regiment's farmhouse (used for stabling horses and hounds) and he was soon given a more permanent position as a builder and handyman. He dug a 35 feet (10.7 m) deep shaft into which the horse manure and dog faeces would be emptied and he also fed the animals. He impressed his commanding officers by making a weathercock from army kitchen trays, but was also chastised when he was found with a 1914 Luger P08 pistol he had bought from a fellow soldier. He often received parcels of alcohol and tobacco from his mother, which allowed him to maintain the habits he had formed when he began his working life. Although Dibnah initially resented being called into service, he would later be more positive about the experience:
Steeplejack
AJS
AJS was the name used for cars and motorcycles made by the Wolverhampton, England, company A. J. Stevens & Co. Ltd, from 1909 to 1931, by then holding 117 motorcycle world records, and after the firm was sold the name continued to be used by Matchless, Associated Motorcycles and Norton-Villiers on...
Motorcycle for 21 guineas
Guinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
and looked for more work. Bolton, however, was in the midst of post-industrial decline; between 1957–1965 about 70 mills were closed in the town, leaving only 37 mills operational and about 50 disused. Initially he was unable to find much work and existed on smaller, domestic jobs, until he earned enough to buy his own set of ladders and secured his first commission while working at a local mill. He was paid £140 to point
Repointing
Repointing is the process of renewing the pointing in masonry construction. Over time, weathering and decay cause voids in the joints between masonry units , allowing the undesirable entrance of water. Water entering through these voids can cause significant damage through frost weathering and...
a mill tower, which he did on weekends. He struggled, however, to get any more meaningful work, until he met Lonsdale Bonner, one of his teachers from art college. The two agreed a deal whereby Bonner would be paid a commission for each job he got for Dibnah. His first job was dismantling a chimney alongside the Manchester and Bolton Railway
Manchester and Bolton Railway
The Manchester and Bolton Railway was a railway in the historic county of Lancashire, England, connecting Salford to Bolton. It was built by the proprietors of the Manchester, Bolton and Bury Canal Navigation and Railway Company who had in 1831 converted from a canal company...
, a difficult proposition, as a mistake could force the temporary closure of the railway. The two managed to gain commissions for several jobs, but their relationship was terminated when Dibnah was called upon to undertake another six months of National Service.
He was then commissioned to repair a chimney at a local brewery. While working on this, he met a local welder who also knew the vicar of Bolton (Richard Greville Norburn), who wanted some repairs done to Bolton parish church's weathervanes. The vicar drove a 1929 Humber
Humber (car)
Humber is a dormant British automobile marque which could date its beginnings to Thomas Humber's bicycle company founded in 1868. Following their involvement in Humber through Hillman in 1928 the Rootes brothers acquired a controlling interest and joined the Humber board in 1932 making Humber part...
limousine and was impressed by Fred's AJS motorcycle; the two quickly became friends. The church was the tallest building in Bolton and once Dibnah had repaired the weathervane the vicar asked him to gild
Gilding
The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold. A gilded object is described as "gilt"...
it. Dibnah appeared in the local newspaper and the publicity and his friendship with the vicar enabled him to gain more work from the local clergy.
His next major job was for local firm Hick Hargreaves, the proceeds of which enabled him to expand his collection of ladders to 30. He was commissioned to remove the top half of a 270 feet (82.3 m) chimney and employed an assistant, Percy Porter. The top of the chimney contained a length of railway line, which had been used for lifting materials during construction. Dibnah hacksawed the line into pieces, letting each piece fall to the ground, with his assistant below, keeping the area clear. He then spent the next six months removing each brick by hand while the chimney was still in use, as the factory could not afford to cease production.
First marriage
In 1967, following disagreements over who should be invited to their wedding, Dibnah and 19-year-old hairdresser Alison Mary Foster eloped to Gretna GreenGretna Green
Gretna Green is a village in the south of Scotland famous for runaway weddings. It is in Dumfries and Galloway, near the mouth of the River Esk and was historically the first village in Scotland, following the old coaching route from London to Edinburgh. Gretna Green has a railway station serving...
, to get married. Dibnah had first spotted Alison from the top of a chimney and, when one day she walked into the pub where he was drinking, he asked her out; six weeks later, the two became engaged. They left notes for their parents, caught a train to Carlisle and from thereon a series of buses to Dumfries
Dumfries
Dumfries is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth. Dumfries was the county town of the former county of Dumfriesshire. Dumfries is nicknamed Queen of the South...
. They had initially planned to stay at the house of a friend but as he had returned to Bolton for his holidays, they stayed instead at a local farmhouse. The two had to be resident for at least 21 days to be married and so Dibnah agreed to point the gable ends of a local hotel in exchange for bed and board. On 19 May, the two married at the church at Gretna Green and returned to live at Dibnah's mother's house. They later moved into a Victorian gatehouse on the Earl of Bradford
Earl of Bradford
Earl of Bradford is a title that has been created twice, once in the Peerage of England and once in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was first created in 1694 for Francis Newport, 2nd Baron Newport. However, all the Newport titles became extinct on the death of the fourth Earl in 1762. The...
's estate, just outside Bolton. Dibnah spent years restoring the property, including building an extension. The house was a listed building and so he had to source appropriately aged bricks for the extension. A vicar offered him some of the old gravestones from the church graveyard, which Dibnah then used to create the stone lintels and mullion
Mullion
A mullion is a vertical structural element which divides adjacent window units. The primary purpose of the mullion is as a structural support to an arch or lintel above the window opening. Its secondary purpose may be as a rigid support to the glazing of the window...
s, though he later expressed his fear that his property would now be haunted. The couple later purchased the house for £5,000, although it required major repairs to stabilize the rear wall.
The couple had their first child, a girl named Jayne, in June 1968. Alison was initially worried about her husband's occupation but learned to deal with the risk and to trust Fred. She organised his accounts and even collected debts. She also helped him demolish some of the chimneys that he worked on, by lighting the fire to burn away the temporary supports he had put in place.
Chimney felling
Having mastered his trade repairing chimneys, Dibnah became aware of the demand for a cost-effective method of demolishing them. He offered to remove them without using explosivesExplosive material
An explosive material, also called an explosive, is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure...
, by cutting an ingress at the base of the chimney—supporting the brickwork with wooden props—and then burning away the props so that the chimney fell, hopefully in the intended direction. Although this was a tried and tested method, it was not without its opponents. On one occasion he was contracted by the local council to fell two chimneys. The contract obliged him to dismantle each by hand, but he decided to fell them by cutting away the base. The first chimney collapsed as planned, but the council terminated his contract and refused to pay. Dibnah contacted the borough engineer and offered to fell the second chimney for no charge, to prove the effectiveness of his technique. He even offered to let the engineer light the fire, but the wind blew so hard that the chimney did not draw the flames and once the props had been burnt through, it remained standing. Dibnah resorted to using a hydraulic jack to apply extra pressure to the intact side of the base and the chimney eventually fell. He later told the engineer that "it was all about fine balancing and counteracting high wind forces." He almost lost his life in 1997, when a concrete chimney he had been asked to fell began to collapse before the felling team had finished preparing the base. As the team ran from the chimney, Dibnah tripped and fell and was greeted by the sight of 2,500 tonnes of concrete leaning toward him, but fortunately the chimney righted itself and then fell in the opposite direction. He felled his last chimney in Royton
Royton
Royton is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies by the source of the River Irk, on undulating land at the foothills of the Pennines, north-northwest of Oldham, south-southeast of Rochdale and northeast of the city of Manchester.Historically a...
, in May 2004.
Steam
Dibnah's interest in steam power stemmed from his childhood observations of the steam locomotives on the nearby railway line, and his visits to his father's workplace—a bleach works in Bolton—where he was fascinated by the steam engines used to drive the line shaftLine shaft
A line shaft is a power transmission system used extensively during the Industrial Revolution. Prior to the widespread use of electric motors small enough to be connected directly to each piece of machinery, line shafting was used to distribute power from a large central power source to machinery...
ing. A small mill near his childhood home was sometimes mothballed and Dibnah once broke in:
He later became a steam enthusiast, befriending many of the engine drivers and firemen who worked on the nearby railway. As a teenager he met a driver who invited him onto the footplate of his locomotive and who asked him to keep the boiler supplied with fuel. Dibnah became so enamoured with steam engines that he eventually looked for one he could buy. He learnt of a steamroller
Steamroller
A steamroller is a form of road roller – a type of heavy construction machinery used for levelling surfaces, such as roads or airfields – that is powered by a steam engine...
kept in a barn near Warrington
Warrington
Warrington is a town, borough and unitary authority area of Cheshire, England. It stands on the banks of the River Mersey, which is tidal to the west of the weir at Howley. It lies 16 miles east of Liverpool, 19 miles west of Manchester and 8 miles south of St Helens...
and which the owners had bought from Flintshire
Flintshire
Flintshire is a county in north-east Wales. It borders Denbighshire, Wrexham and the English county of Cheshire. It is named after the historic county of Flintshire, which had notably different borders...
County Council. He had the boiler pressure-tested and, despite it being in poor condition, bought it for £175. He towed it to a friend's house, spent a fortnight making various repairs and drove it to his mother's house in Bolton. After he married and bought his own property on Radcliffe new Road, he cut an access road to the garden of his new house and moved the steamroller there. Restoring the engine took many years, as Dibnah had to create his own replacement parts, using Victorian
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
engineering techniques and equipment he built in his garden. The boiler was in poor condition and needed serious work, but Dibnah fell back on local knowledge and was eventually able to build a new boiler. Once restored, he used the 1910 Aveling & Porter steamroller together with a living van he bought and restored, to take his family around the local steam fairs. While driving the vehicle was relatively safe, Dibnah had experienced several mishaps, including one instance when he lost control while descending a steep hill and was forced to drive the engine into a concrete barrier to bring it to a halt, smashing the front fork in the process.
Restoring the steamroller placed a heavy burden upon his marriage and Alison would often complain that her husband spent more time in the shed, repairing the engine, than he did in the house. He responded by naming the vehicle Alison, telling his wife "It's not every woman that has a steam engine named after her." Alison eventually developed an affection for the antique vehicle saying "We've done without for so many years to get it built up. I couldn't bear to part with it. There's too much of us in it."
Traction engine
A traction engine is a self-propelled steam engine used to move heavy loads on roads, plough ground or to provide power at a chosen location. The name derives from the Latin tractus, meaning 'drawn', since the prime function of any traction engine is to draw a load behind it...
. Dibnah paid a friend £2,300 for the vehicle and moved it to the garden behind his home. He built a steam-driven workshop in his garden, salvaging parts from various mills, including line shaft gear and a stationary engine from a mill in Oldham. He gave a conservative estimate of four years to complete the work, but the restoration eventually took 27 years. The engine was sold at auction in July 2010 for £240,000.
In 1988 he was asked by Caernarfon
Caernarfon
Caernarfon is a Royal town, community and port in Gwynedd, Wales, with a population of 9,611. It lies along the A487 road, on the east banks of the Menai Straits, opposite the Isle of Anglesey. The city of Bangor is to the northeast, while Snowdonia fringes Caernarfon to the east and southeast...
council to make repairs to a chimney at Parc Glynllifon
Glynllifon
Glynllifon is the name of the old estate which belonged to the Lords Newborough, near the village of Llandwrog on the main A499 road between Pwllheli and Caernarfon in Gwynedd, Wales The original mansion is now a privately owned Country House hotel and wedding venueThe greater part of the original...
. Beneath the chimney, an engine room contained an 1854 single-cylinder steam engine in poor condition. Dibnah repaired the chimney and several weeks later was asked to repair the engine, which he dismantled during the winter of 1988/89 and took back to Bolton. With his assistant Neil Carney, he spent six months repairing the engine. The two sourced a replacement boiler from a local pork pie factory and re-installed the engine in Wales. Dibnah later won a prize for the quality of the restoration work. He also spent about seven months restoring the boiler, engine and blunger
Blunger
A blunger is a machine commonly used in the pottery industry for mixing clay and water. A blunger usually consists of a round or octagonal tank with a mixer. Clay is added to the water filled blunger and then mixed into a slurry, which is also called slip...
at Wetheriggs County Pottery near Penrith
Penrith, Cumbria
Penrith was an urban district between 1894 and 1974, when it was merged into Eden District.The authority's area was coterminous with the civil parish of Penrith although when the council was abolished Penrith became an unparished area....
.
Fred Dibnah, Steeplejack
Lathe
A lathe is a machine tool which rotates the workpiece on its axis to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, or deformation with tools that are applied to the workpiece to create an object which has symmetry about an axis of rotation.Lathes are used in woodturning,...
in his workshop and created the replacement pillars. He was given the job of repairing the clock tower and he also gilded the golden sphere at the top of the building. While Fred was working from his bosun's chair
Bosun's chair
A bosun's chair or boatswain's chair is a device used to suspend a person from a rope to perform work aloft. It is distinguished from a climbing harness by the inclusion of a more or less rigid seat, providing more comfort than even the best-padded straps for long-term use...
, a public relations officer at the Town Hall informed Dibnah that BBC Look North West
BBC North West Tonight
BBC North West Tonight is a nightly regional news programme covering the North West of England. Produced by BBC North West, the programme airs at 6.30pm and at 10:25pm every weekday evening and is broadcast from the BBC's MediaCityUK studios at Salford Quays.-BBC North West region:The BBC North...
wanted to interview him. The following week, the film crew arrived and Alistair MacDonald conducted the interview from the top of the building, with Dibnah perched outside on his scaffold. His warm and friendly manner combined with his enthusiasm and broad Lancashire accent proved popular and he was later contacted by producer Don Haworth, with a view to making a documentary. After several meetings over the course of a few weeks, filming began early one morning just as Dibnah had climbed to the top of a 245 feet (74.7 m) chimney at Shaw and Crompton
Shaw and Crompton
Shaw and Crompton is a town and civil parish within the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham, in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the River Beal at the foothills of the South Pennines, north of Oldham, southeast of Rochdale, and to the northeast of the city of Manchester...
, a mill town
Mill town
A mill town, also known as factory town or mill village, is typically a settlement that developed around one or more mills or factories .- United Kingdom:...
near Oldham
Oldham
Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amid the Pennines on elevated ground between the rivers Irk and Medlock, south-southeast of Rochdale, and northeast of the city of Manchester...
. Sporadic filming took place over an 18-month period and captured Dibnah (with assistant Donald Paiton) working on a range of buildings, spending time with his family and enjoying his hobbies. Giulio Briccialdi
Giulio Briccialdi
Giulio Briccialdi was an Italian flautist and composer.Briccialdi was born in Terni. His contributions include inventing the B-flat thumb key for the Boehm flute. He died in Florence.- External links :...
's Carnival Of Venice (performed by James Galway
James Galway
- External links : IMGArtists.com 15 September 2008. AllAboutJazz.com 5 August 2008.*...
) was the music chosen to accompany Dibnah's work on Bolton Town Hall. One of the more notable aspects was Dibnah's 1979 demolition of a chimney in Rochdale
Rochdale
Rochdale is a large market town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies amongst the foothills of the Pennines on the River Roch, north-northwest of Oldham, and north-northeast of the city of Manchester. Rochdale is surrounded by several smaller settlements which together form the Metropolitan...
. Standing only yards away from the base of the chimney as it began to collapse, his retreat to safety and subsequent boyish outburst of "Did you like that?" endeared him to viewers.
Fred Dibnah, Steeplejack won the 1979 BAFTA award for best documentary, and over the years Haworth returned to film more documentaries. With his newly found fame, however, came distractions from his work. Visitors would arrive at his house, to see his garden. He began to receive fan mail; one individual wrote to offer Dibnah a steam-powered machine he no longer wanted. One company, who were apparently disturbed to see Dibnah's match
Match
A match is a tool for starting a fire under controlled conditions. A typical modern match is made of a small wooden stick or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by frictional heat generated by striking the match against a suitable surface...
es being extinguished by the wind while at the top of a chimney, sent him a sample of their windproof matches. Filming would also interfere with his work. Cameraman Martin Lightening would climb with Fred to the top of a chimney—with a 16mm film camera—and film him at work, often hundreds of feet above the ground.
Several years later, Dibnah and his family went on holiday, to Blackpool
Blackpool
Blackpool is a borough, seaside town, and unitary authority area of Lancashire, in North West England. It is situated along England's west coast by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre estuaries, northwest of Preston, north of Liverpool, and northwest of Manchester...
. The trip was filmed for television and showed Dibnah's preference for working rather than holidaying. He did however manage to undertake the removal of a small chimney stack from a business in the town, under a distinctly grey sky and aided by his wife, Alison. His payment for the job was a new front plate for the boiler of his traction engine. Dibnah, however, refused to take any more holidays and, after 18 years of marriage, Alison booked and paid for a holiday to Greece, taking their three children (Jayne, Lorna and Caroline) with her. Dibnah remained at home and was surprised when, upon her return, she asked for a divorce. One day in October 1985, Dibnah attended a solid fuel exhibition in nearby Bury
Bury
Bury is a town in Greater Manchester, England. It lies on the River Irwell, east of Bolton, west-southwest of Rochdale, and north-northwest of the city of Manchester...
. Upon his return he discovered that Alison had left the house, taking with her their three children, the dog and some items of furniture. Short of money, he was forced to sell his antique AJS motorcycle. He found life without his family difficult but defended his wife: "There is no doubt whatsoever, she were a good help to me and I'm going to miss her. It was just that all the pressure got too much for her."
Second marriage
Dibnah met his second wife Susan Lorenz—a 28-year-old administrator—at a steam rally in Cheshire. In The Fred Dibnah Story (1985) she recalled their first meeting: "He looked sad and miserable, quite a pathetic sort of figure really, none of the bounce that people knew him for." He later invited her to a chimney felling in Oldham and then a talk he had been invited to give to a group of fans in HalifaxHalifax, West Yorkshire
Halifax is a minster town, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It has an urban area population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece...
, known as The Fred Dibnah Appreciation Society. Sue moved into Dibnah's home in Bolton and the two married on 27 February 1987. She encouraged him to grow a moustache and also to give up smoking.
Many of the chimneys around Bolton had now been either repaired, or demolished and so Dibnah was forced to travel further afield for work. He travelled to the Yorkshire Dales
Yorkshire Dales
The Yorkshire Dales is the name given to an upland area in Northern England.The area lies within the historic county boundaries of Yorkshire, though it spans the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Cumbria...
to install a lightning conductor on the parish church in Kirkby Malham
St Michael's Church, Kirkby Malham
St Michael's Church, Kirkby Malham, is located in the village of Kirkby Malham, North Yorkshire, England. It is an active Anglican parish church in the deanery of Bowland, the archdeaconry of Craven, and the diocese of Bradford...
. While digging the hole for the conductor, they uncovered human bones, for which a reinterment ceremony was held. Their first son, Jack (named after his father's trade), was born in 1987. Dibnah offered to make a weathercock, provided that his son was christened in the same church. His second son, Roger, was born in 1991.
Later life
In 1996 Dibnah repaired the 262 feet (79.9 m) chimney at Barrow Bridge—the same chimney he had scaled for a bet, in his youth. He was also asked to install a peregrine falconPeregrine Falcon
The Peregrine Falcon , also known as the Peregrine, and historically as the Duck Hawk in North America, is a widespread bird of prey in the family Falconidae. A large, crow-sized falcon, it has a blue-gray back, barred white underparts, and a black head and "moustache"...
nest at the top. He was later influential in ensuring the chimney was made a listed building. As a notable raconteur he also became an after-dinner speaker and would wear his trademark flat cap
Flat cap
A flat cap is a rounded men or women's cap with a small stiff brim in front. Cloths used to make the cap include original wool, tweed , and cotton. Less common materials may include leather. Cord flat caps are also worn in various colours. The inside of the cap is usually lined with silk for...
with his dinner jacket. He made an appearance in a 1996 television advertisement for Kelloggs, but the strain of living with a man so dedicated to his hobbies began to take its toll on his wife: "Sometimes he'll have busted his thumb because he's hit it with a hammer; you couldn't really expect him then to come in and start doing things in the house. I just don't think it's fair though, I think you've got to strike a balance and I think ours is about 90/10. Me for 90 per cent of the housework and Fred for 10." Susan met another man and moved out, taking Roger with her and leaving Jack with Fred.
Third marriage and television presenting
By 1997 Dibnah was living alone, with little work or money. Competition from Manchester had reduced his income from steeplejacking and filming for the BBC had dried up completely. He had, however, met Sheila Grundy, a former magician's assistant. She had arrived one day with her parents and young son to see Dibnah's back yard, and signed the visitor's book. The two remained in contact and became friends; they shared an interest in steam and Grundy was fascinated by Dibnah's tales of steeplejacking. She and her son moved in with Dibnah in 1998 and the couple married on 26 September that year. At their wedding reception in Bolton, Dibnah was surprised and moved to tears when his youngest daughter, Caroline, came to see him. Dibnah had had little contact with his daughters in the years since his divorce from Alison.In 1997 he met author David Hall. Hall had been raised in the Bradford district of Manchester and the two swapped tales of growing up in the latter half of the 20th century. Hall suggested that Dibnah would be unlikely to have any further television work commissioned on his life and that he should consider becoming a television presenter. The two worked on new ideas for a programme that would show Dibnah touring the country, visiting important historical locations and speaking to the men involved in the maintenance and restoration of industrial machinery and architecture. The programme would also exploit Dibnah's working-class attitude and show him operating some of the machinery he visited. Filming of Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age began in July 1998. The first location was near Bolton, at the Wet Earth Colliery
Wet Earth Colliery
The Wet Earth Colliery has a unique place in British coal mining history, apart from being one of the earliest pits in the country; it is the place where the engineer James Brindley made water run uphill...
and the crew then moved on to various locations around the country, continuing to film through the summer and autumn of 1998.
The series achieved high viewing figures, with positive reviews, and the associated website became the second most-visited BBC website at the time. A complementary book was also published and was one of the top five best-selling history books of the year. Dibnah admitted he found speaking to a camera more nerve-racking than climbing a chimney, but the success of Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age was a portent; he later presented several other television series. Before filming began for Fred Dibnah's Magnificent Monuments, he had installed his red ladders on the steeple at St. Walburge's in Preston, ready for an inspection. With filming for television now taking up much of his time, however, he was unable to complete the job. He left the ladders at the church for several years and donated them to the tradesman who eventually took the job.
Illness
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
Isambard Kingdom Brunel, FRS , was a British civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards including the construction of the first major British railway, the Great Western Railway; a series of steamships, including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship; and numerous important bridges...
, whom he regarded as his hero. During filming he visited a number of locations including the 245 feet (74.7 m) high Clifton Suspension Bridge
Clifton Suspension Bridge
Brunel died in 1859, without seeing the completion of the bridge. Brunel's colleagues in the Institution of Civil Engineers felt that completion of the Bridge would be a fitting memorial, and started to raise new funds...
and the slipway for the SS Great Eastern
SS Great Eastern
SS Great Eastern was an iron sailing steam ship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and built by J. Scott Russell & Co. at Millwall on the River Thames, London. She was by far the largest ship ever built at the time of her 1858 launch, and had the capacity to carry 4,000 passengers around the...
.
In early 2001 Dibnah was due to begin filming Fred Dibnah's Building of Britain, but suffered severe abdominal pains and was admitted to hospital for tests. He was discharged and began filming at locations around the country, including the Globe Theatre
Globe Theatre
The Globe Theatre was a theatre in London associated with William Shakespeare. It was built in 1599 by Shakespeare's playing company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, and was destroyed by fire on 29 June 1613...
, Ely Cathedral
Ely Cathedral
Ely Cathedral is the principal church of the Diocese of Ely, in Cambridgeshire, England, and is the seat of the Bishop of Ely and a suffragan bishop, the Bishop of Huntingdon...
and Glamis Castle
Glamis Castle
Glamis Castle is situated beside the village of Glamis in Angus, Scotland. It is the home of the Earl and Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and is open to the public....
. Dibnah was the chairman of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal Society and an episode on the construction of Britain's canal network was therefore of particular interest to him. Toward the end of filming, Dibnah went to Bolton Royal Hospital for a check-up, where a tumour was found on his right kidney
Kidney
The kidneys, organs with several functions, serve essential regulatory roles in most animals, including vertebrates and some invertebrates. They are essential in the urinary system and also serve homeostatic functions such as the regulation of electrolytes, maintenance of acid–base balance, and...
. The kidney was removed and the tumour was found to be malignant
Malignant
Malignancy is the tendency of a medical condition, especially tumors, to become progressively worse and to potentially result in death. Malignancy in cancers is characterized by anaplasia, invasiveness, and metastasis...
. He went to Christie Hospital
Christie Hospital
The Christie NHS Foundation Trust is located in Withington, Manchester, and is one of the largest cancer treatment centres in Europe. The Christie became a NHS Foundation Trust in April 2007 and is also an international leader in cancer research and development, and home to the Paterson Institute...
in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, where further growths were discovered around his bladder
Urinary bladder
The urinary bladder is the organ that collects urine excreted by the kidneys before disposal by urination. A hollow muscular, and distensible organ, the bladder sits on the pelvic floor...
. On the same day, Sheila's father fell from the roof of his house and died. Dibnah underwent chemotherapy
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer with an antineoplastic drug or with a combination of such drugs into a standardized treatment regimen....
and once his treatment was finished tests showed that he was free of cancer.
Filming for Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam began early in 2003, at the Trencherfield Mill, near Wigan Pier
Wigan Pier
Wigan Pier is the name given today to the area around the canal at the bottom of the Wigan flight of locks on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. It is a popular location for visitors and the local community in Wigan, Greater Manchester, England, situated just a few hundred yards south-west of the town...
. The film crew visited a number of locations, including a steam rally in Cornwall
Cornwall
Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...
and the Bluebell Railway
Bluebell Railway
The Bluebell Railway is a heritage line running for nine miles along the border between East and West Sussex, England. Steam trains are operated between and , with an intermediate station at .The railway is managed and run largely by volunteers...
in Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. Dibnah was travelling around the country working on a subject that fascinated him, visiting old friends and making money from his hobby. The restoration of his traction engine was almost complete; later that year, however, Dibnah had another checkup at Christie Hospital and was told that a large tumour had been found on his bladder.
Dig with Dibnah
Dibnah had another course of chemotherapy, but this time the treatment was unsuccessful. Undeterred, he began to dig a replica coal mineCoal mining
The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...
in the back garden of his home. Although the sight of pithead gear may have been considered by his neighbours to be unusual, as a child raised in Bolton he had been surrounded by pits such as Ladyshore Colliery
Ladyshore Colliery
Ladyshore Colliery, originally named Back o' th Barn, was situated on the Irwell Valley fault on the Manchester Coalfield in Little Lever, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. Founded by Thomas Fletcher Senior, the colliery opened in the 1830s and mined several types of coal...
and had long harboured an interest in mining. He had already assembled the wooden pithead gear and was planning to sink a 100 feet (30.5 m) brick-lined shaft below this into the hillside. At the bottom of the shaft, a horizontal tunnel would have led out to the steep side of the valley above which his garden sits. The intention was to have a narrow gauge railway running along the tunnel, back up the hillside on a rope-hauled inclined plane
Inclined plane
The inclined plane is one of the original six simple machines; as the name suggests, it is a flat surface whose endpoints are at different heights. By moving an object up an inclined plane rather than completely vertical, the amount of force required is reduced, at the expense of increasing the...
, returning to the pithead. The ultimate aim was to be able to demonstrate the basic working of an early colliery. Seven years before his diagnosis, therefore, Dibnah had sourced drawings of suitable pithead gear
Headframe
A headframe is the structural frame above an underground mine shaft. Modern headframes are built out of steel, concrete or a combination of both...
and built a frame from timber and iron bolts. He had applied for and was given planning permission to erect the structure, but made no mention of his wish to dig a shaft underneath it. The BBC decided to make a documentary on Dibnah's proposed mine, which would entail his once again travelling around the country, visiting working collieries and heritage mines. Filming started late in 2003, by which time Dibnah and his friend Alf Molyneux had already made a start on the shaft.
Using traditional shaft-sinking techniques and the labour of mining friends Alf Molyneux and Jimmy Crooks, the shaft was sunk to a depth of 20 feet (6.1 m) and lined with brick. The work had been undertaken without planning permission
Planning permission
Planning permission or planning consent is the permission required in the United Kingdom in order to be allowed to build on land, or change the use of land or buildings. Within the UK the occupier of any land or building will need title to that land or building , but will also need "planning...
and, when the council eventually found out what was happening, they insisted he apply for planning permission.
Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain
Despite Dibnah's best efforts, planning permission was refused. Although he appealed against the decision, a new series diverted his attention. At the end of 2003 production began for Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain. With his friend, Alf Molyneux, Dibnah would tour the country on his completed traction engine, visiting the workshops that still could produce the parts needed for his antique vehicle. His engine, however, was not yet complete and Dibnah's medical diagnosis was not good: he knew he had only a short time to live. His traction engine developed a serious fault, but with the help of friends it was quickly repaired and its restoration completed.Lowboy (trailer)
A lowboy or dolly in Australia is a semi-trailer with two drops in deck height: one right after the gooseneck and one right before the wheels. This allows the deck to be extremely low compared with other trailers...
. Dibnah's engine suffered early mechanical problems; it could barely tow the fully loaded living van uphill, as the cylinder had been placed very slightly closer to the footplate
Footplate
The footplate of a steam locomotive is a large metal plate that rests on top of the frames and is normally covered with wooden floorboards. It is usually the full width of the locomotive and extends from the front of the cab to the rear of cab or coal bunker just above the buffer beam. The...
than it should have been. As a result of this, every time the piston was fully forward it covered the steam inlet port. The engine was repaired, and with some minor engineering work to one of the pistons was brought up to full power. The team was joined by Dibnah's sons, Jack and Rodger.
The production crew made every effort to reduce Dibnah's workload. Changes were made to the filming schedule, to allow Dibnah more time to rest at home between filming days. The crew visited the Forth Road Bridge
Forth Road Bridge
The Forth Road Bridge is a suspension bridge in east central Scotland. The bridge, opened in 1964, spans the Firth of Forth, connecting the capital city Edinburgh, at South Queensferry, to Fife, at North Queensferry...
and Dibnah became the first man to drive a traction engine under its own steam across the bridge. Such pleasures provided a welcome distraction for Dibnah, who was by then ill and in pain. By the end of June he was so ill he could not continue filming. He was sent home to rest and given medication to alleviate his condition, so that he could collect his MBE
MBE
MBE can stand for:* Mail Boxes Etc.* Management by exception* Master of Bioethics* Master of Bioscience Enterprise* Master of Business Engineering* Master of Business Economics* Mean Biased Error...
.
Honours
In mid-2000, Dibnah was awarded an honorary degreeHonorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
of Doctor of Technology
Doctor of Technology
The Doctor of Technology degree is conferred upon candidates after having completed a course of study in technology, and a project of lengthy duration in a technologically-related field...
for his achievement in engineering by Robert Gordon University
Robert Gordon University
Robert Gordon University is located in Aberdeen, Scotland. Building on over 250 years involvement in education, it was granted university status in 1992. Robert Gordon University currently has approximately 16,407 students at its two campuses at Garthdee and the City Centre, studying on over 145...
in Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
, and on 19 July 2004 he was made an honorary Doctor of the University by the University of Birmingham
University of Birmingham
The University of Birmingham is a British Redbrick university located in the city of Birmingham, England. It received its royal charter in 1900 as a successor to Birmingham Medical School and Mason Science College . Birmingham was the first Redbrick university to gain a charter and thus...
.
Dibnah was awarded an MBE
MBE
MBE can stand for:* Mail Boxes Etc.* Management by exception* Master of Bioethics* Master of Bioscience Enterprise* Master of Business Engineering* Master of Business Economics* Mean Biased Error...
for services to heritage and broadcasting. He said "I'm looking forward to meeting the Queen but I shall probably have to get a new cap. And I'd like to meet Prince Charles because we share the same views about modern architecture."
On 7 July 2004, Dibnah went to Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
to receive his award from the Queen. He initially planned to drive his traction engine into the palace grounds, but was refused as the Royal Parks Agency feared that its weight would damage the surface of The Mall. Eventually he was allowed to drive the engine to an army barracks a short distance from the palace. He collected his medal wearing morning dress
Morning dress
Morning dress is the daytime formal dress code, consisting chiefly for men of a morning coat, waistcoat, and striped trousers, and an appropriate dress for women...
and a top hat
Top hat
A top hat, beaver hat, high hat silk hat, cylinder hat, chimney pot hat or stove pipe hat is a tall, flat-crowned, broad-brimmed hat, predominantly worn from the latter part of the 18th to the middle of the 20th century...
.
Filming continued at various locations around the country, with sons Jack and Roger, who had become essential members of the tour, providing much-needed support for their father. By the end of July, the crew had filmed only 34 days with Dibnah, out of a planned 60. It was becoming more difficult by the day for Dibnah to fulfil his filming duties and the crew decided to cut short the schedule. Once home, Dibnah decided to creosote
Creosote
Creosote is the portion of chemical products obtained by the distillation of a tar that remains heavier than water, notably useful for its anti-septic and preservative properties...
the pithead gear in his garden but fell and injured his back. He was adamant that he would continue filming, however, and made the trip to North Wales to complete filming. He later made a partial recovery and completed his last day's filming at an Ironworks
Ironworks
An ironworks or iron works is a building or site where iron is smelted and where heavy iron and/or steel products are made. The term is both singular and plural, i.e...
in Atherton
Atherton, Greater Manchester
Atherton is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wigan, in Greater Manchester, England, historically a part of Lancashire. It is east of Wigan, north-northeast of Leigh, and northwest of Manchester...
.
Death
Dibnah died at Bolton hospice, after suffering from prostate cancerProstate cancer
Prostate cancer is a form of cancer that develops in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system. Most prostate cancers are slow growing; however, there are cases of aggressive prostate cancers. The cancer cells may metastasize from the prostate to other parts of the body, particularly...
for three years, surrounded by his family, on 6 November 2004. He was 66 years old. At the time of his death, his estate was estimated as being worth about £1 million.
Eleven days later, thousands of mourners watched as Dibnah's coffin (on top of which his trade mark flat cap was placed) was towed through the centre of Bolton by his restored traction engine, driven by his son. A cortège of steam-powered vehicles followed, as the procession made its way to Bolton Parish Church. During the hour-long service, David Hall told the congregation "He wasn't a posh TV presenter. He was recognised as a working man who had learned through experience." Following the hour-long service, led by the Vicar of Bolton—Canon Michael Williams (a friend of Dibnah)—he was buried at Tonge
Tonge, Greater Manchester
Tonge is an outlying area of Bolton, in Greater Manchester, England. The name is supposed to be derived from the Old English "tang" or "twang" meaning a fork in a river. Tonge comprises two areas, namely Tonge Fold and Tonge Moor...
Cemetery, behind his home.
Legacy
Through his television work Dibnah became famous for felling chimneys (by the time of his death he had felled ninety), although it was one of his least favourite jobs. As he made more films with Don Haworth, his outspoken views on changing society, work ethics and delinquency, made him the embodiment of the views of many of his fans and epitomised the stereotypical view of a northern working man.Dibnah was praised by many notable British people. After reporting on his death, television presenter Peter Sissons
Peter Sissons
Peter George Sissons is a broadcast journalist in the United Kingdom. He was the presenter of the BBC Nine O'Clock News and the BBC News at Ten between 1993 and 2003, as earlier a newscaster for ITN, providing bulletins on ITV and Channel 4. He is also a former presenter of the BBC's Question Time...
remarked: "They don't make them like that any more". Comedian Peter Kay
Peter Kay
Peter John Kay is an English comedian, writer, actor, director and producer. His work includes That Peter Kay Thing , Phoenix Nights , Max and Paddy's Road to Nowhere , Britain's Got the Pop Factor... and other independent productions which have included two sell out tours.-Early career:Peter Kay...
said: "It's very sad news. He was one of a kind and now he has gone I think there will be no one else like him. He was enthusiastic about a way of life that has virtually disappeared now." Brian Tetlow, chairman of the Bolton and District Civic Trust, said: "He's unique, not just to Bolton but to Britain and the world. Our thoughts are with his wife and children."
An 8 feet (2.4 m) bronze statue of Dibnah was unveiled by the Mayor of Bolton, in Bolton town centre, on 29 April 2008. The sculpture was created by Jane Robbins. His home has since been converted into a heritage centre. A play titled The Demolition Man, based on his final years, was staged in 2011 at Bolton's Octagon Theatre
Octagon Theatre, Bolton
The Octagon Theatre is a producing theatre located in Bolton, Greater Manchester, England.-Programme:The Octagon produces between eight and nine professional theatre productions a year in its Main Auditorium...
.
Filmography
See- Fred Dibnah: Steeplejack (1979)
- Fred (1983)
- Fred - A Disappearing World (1983)
- A Year with Fred (1987)
- A Year with Fred - New Horizons (1991)
- Life With Fred (1994)
- The Ups and Downs of Chimneys (1994)
- The Fred Dibnah Story (1996)
- Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age (1999)
- Fred Dibnah's Magnificent Monuments (2000)
- Fred Dibnah's Victorian Heroes (2001)
- Fred Dibnah's Getting Steamed Up (2001)
- Fred Dibnah's Building of Britain (2002)
- Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam (2003)
- Dig with Dibnah (2004)
- A Tribute to Fred Dibnah (2004)
- Fred Dibnah's Made in Britain (2005)
- Fred Dibnah's World of Steam, Steel and Stone (2006)