A quality brand new hardback book which chronicles in words and monochrome and colour photographs a great many of the 90 factory chimney demolition jobs that was carried out by the famous Bolton Master Steeplejack, Fred Dibnah M.B.E.  

The author Alan McEwen is a renowned consultant boiler engineer, industrial historian and writer, and was one of Fred's closest friends for almost 25 years.  Alan attended a significant number of Fred's chimney demolition jobs, and regularly assisted with the art of building the massive bonfires that Fred cleverly engineered for the destruction of the gigantic 200 feet tall cotton mill chimney stacks.  He was therefore, at the heart of this amazing and ofttimes highly dangerous demolition work, which has enabled him to write passionately and correctly regarding his long time, famous friend, Fred Dibnah's dramatic chimney drops.

FRED DIBNAH'S CHIMNEY DROPS is chock full of wonderfully exciting and evocative stories covering Fred's chimney demolition projects all over the North West............... and the pictures, the majority taken by the author himself are historically important documents that dramatically portray Fred Dibnah at the height of his long career as a Master Steeplejack and Chimney Demolition Expert. 

FRED DIBNAH'S CHIMNEY DROPS is simply a must for industrial historians and not least for Fred Dibnah fans everywhere.

FRED DIBNAH'S CHIMNEY DROPS WILL MAKE FANTASTIC CHRISTMAS PRESENTS!    BUY NOW WHILE STOCKS LAST!

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INTRODUCTION FRED DIBNAH MASTER STEEPLEJACK AND CHIMNEY FELLER

Fred Dibnah and the author in Fred’s Engine Shed.  For over 20 years Fred, Master Steeplejack and expert chimney feller, would often relate to Alan dramatic stories of steeplejacking lore and particularly chimney drops in either the Engine Shed or the ‘hen-hut’ workshop. ©Alan McEwen Industrial Heritage Collection

Nationally renowned Master Steeplejack, Fred Dibnah was born on the 29th April 1938 in the Lancashire cotton town of Bolton.  Even as a young lad, Fred was considered by his family and also his contemporaries as being a little odd, rather eccentric, for the young Boltonian eschewed the normal football and similar sports–related pastimes in favour of the world of steam engines, boilers and in particular the numerous cotton mill and factory chimneys that were as ubiquitous as blades of grass.  For the young Fred Dibnah was captivated by the gigantic, gleaming steam engines with their enormous whirling flywheels that powered the cotton mills and that were jammed cheek by jowl into Bolton’s townscape.  Fred also had a profound interest in the many classes of steam locomotives that regularly clanked by close to his boyhood home in Burden Park, and he regularly visited Bolton Loco Depot, where he would spend hour upon hour, fascinated, watching and studying the various steam shunting locomotives and goods engines stabled at the sheds.  Fred clearly loved all aspects of British industry and was fascinated by the numerous ancient coal pits with their distinctive headgear that he saw when taking a regular walk along the towpath of the Manchester, Bury and Bolton Canal.  Indeed, many years later when he became famous, he would delight his audiences with his colourful reminiscences and adventures regarding the Lancashire coalmining industry. Fred’s greatest passion however, was industrial chimneys and steeplejacking, which had thrilled him from being a small lad when he had witnessed, during the local wakes weeks when the cotton mills closed, the sight of steeplejack’s’ red-painted ladders running up the sides of the towering mill chimneys and the tiny ‘Lowry-esq’ figures, the steeplejacks ‘dancing around’ on the platform some 200 feet up in the sky. By the early 1960s the cotton industry and its ancillary trades were in a severe downward spiral of decline.  The demise of this once prominent industry (in the nineteenth century the boast of Lancashire’s millowners was: ‘England’s bread was won by Lancashire’s thread’), was excellent at first for the young Fred Dibnah whose ambition and most fervent desire was to become established as a steeplejack.  The numerous mill and other industrial chimneys scattered all over Bolton and the other neighbouring Lancashire cotton towns all radiating out from the hub: (Manchester, known as the cottonopolis), which for decades had been beautifully engineered and subsequently regularly repaired, would from now on require to be demolished.  Fred regarded these mill chimneys as monuments to the industrial age.  He held these towering structures with great affection and he often related stories about the ‘hard men’, the chimney builders who erected them and of the men also, who maintained and repaired them: the steeplejacks.  As Fred eloquently put it, “these chimneys had served their masters well; they were no longer loved and had therefore to be done away with: demolished”.  But to just place an explosive charge in the chimney’s base and blow them down when they came to the end of their lives, did not appeal to Fred, for to him there was another more traditional way of felling these chimneys that embodied respect for the old time chimney builders – and would demolish them with great aplomb and not a little drama. Fred Dibnah’s procedure for carrying out a chimney felling was the result of a well considered demolition plan, based on traditional Victorian practice known in steeplejacking parlance as ‘gobbing out and pit-propping’.  Fred termed it as ‘the science of back’ards construction’. By the employment of this tried and tested procedure, Fred almost made it into an art, because from the early 1970s his fame as an expert chimney feller became renowned.  His deep-seated knowledge of chimney construction and of steeplejacking lore, his charismatic and competent showmanship rapidly made him nationally famous: particularly following those memorable early BBC television programmes.  His name became synonymous with the stereo type no-nonsense, straight-talking Northern character, and of craftsmanship, hard graft and of daring-do. Fred’s later television series particularly made his character blossom, his passionate and oftimes comical descriptions of how the complexities of historic mechanical wizardry were built and how they operated, thrilled his television audiences nationally.  He was a most brilliant, natural speaker, and especially gifted in being able to ‘paint a picture’ in his distinctive Boltonian accent. Fred was awarded two honourary degrees: the first was from The Robert Gordon Institute of Technology, Aberdeen, and the second from The University of Birmingham.  Thereafter, he was Doctor Fred Dibnah.  In July 2004, Fred was awarded the M.B.E. for services to television and broadcasting.  On the 6th November 2004, Fred died after bravely battling with bladder cancer since autumn of 2001. FRED’S GOBBING OUT AND PIT-PROPPING PROCEDURE With Fred having carefully planned the direction of the condemned chimney’s fall which he termed ‘the drop zone’, the gobbing out would then be started by him and his men cutting a slot into the side of the chimney and the removal of the loose bricks or stonework.  This slot would be around three feet high by a width of around eighteen inches. The most dramatic of Fred’s chimney demolition jobs were the chimneys that had to be felled by chopping a hole through the base in the direction of the planned fall.  This is known as ‘gobbing out’.  As the gob was cut through the base brick work of the chimney which could be considerable in thickness, timber props, known as ‘pit-props’ and sawn from short sections of old timber telegraph and electricity poles would be inserted into the gobbed openings with ‘cap-pieces’, sections cut from old wooden nine inch by three inch planks placed on top.  Long, thin tapered wedges cut from oak, ash or other hardwoods would then be firmly driven between the top of the ‘cap-pieces’ and the underside brick work of the ‘gob’, thus producing stout and immensely strong supports for the massive weight of masonry towering above. This procedure was repeated around the circumference of the chimney base until approximately one third had been gobbed and pit-propped.  This would result in, as Fred put it, “the thing feeling the pain”.  This meant that the tall structure was now balanced on the numerous pit-props and was therefore ready for the stacking of the demolition bonfire. During Fred’s long career of steeplejacking which spanned some forty years he was instrumental in demolishing ninety cotton mill and factory chimneys.  His last one Park No. 2 Mill, Royton he carried out six months before he died in November 2004.  Many of these chimney demolition jobs were carried out brick by brick, which commenced by Fred having to fasten his distinctive red-painted wooden ladders up the side of the chimney until he reached the top which could have been 200 to 300 feet above the ground.  Once the top was attained, he would then construct his working platforms from steel scaffolding poles, timber battens and long, nine inch wide planks. Once completed, this working platform would allow Fred the often arduous and profoundly dangerous task of removing the cap-stones, many being hugely hewn stone blocks that formed the chimney cap and wide oversillers.  He would commence by cautiously cutting through the angle irons, iron or steel bars to allow the dismantling to take place.  Fred often said that this dangerous procedure had caused the death of numerous steeplejacks, because as they cut through the iron work which tightly held the stone work together, very similar to a giant clamp, everything thus being held in tension; as soon as the iron was cut through the whole of the chimney top could suddenly spring forth and disintegrate, resulting in the destruction of the steeplejack’s working platforms, and on many occasions causing the men to be thrown off to fall to their deaths. Most steeplejacks tackled the demolition work in teams of two, three or more. Fred demolished oversillers and truncated numerous tall and profoundly structurally dangerous chimneys, removing many of them totally by himself.  Obviously playing a useful and profoundly reliable job on the ground, would be Fred’s assistants who would haul up, by the use of a mixture of pulleywheels and ropes, the ladders, iron dogs, scaffolding poles, timber battens, planks etc, as Fred required them.  These stalwarts would lower to the ground, hundreds of tons of brick and masonry in the ingenious rope-worked metal cylinders known as ‘Fred’s Flying Buckets’.  Even though Fred was undoubtedly an expert Master Steeplejack, he couldn’t have managed without the skills of his long-time, well respected mates such as Donald Payton, Mick Berry and Neil Carney.  Fred was also ably assisted on numerous jobs by fellow steeplejack Eddie Chattwood for well over 35 years.   FRED’S PROCEDURES FOR THE DEMOLITION OF CHIMNEYS 1.    Timber ‘Sole pieces’ 9” x 3” to be placed on bottom of ‘gobbed out’ opening cut through brickwork or stonework. 2.    Timber ‘Cap pieces’ 9” x 3” to be placed on the top of the ‘pit-props’. 3.    Hardwood Wedges – usually sawn in Fred’s workshop by steam powered saw.  These long, thinly tapering wedges are driven beneath the ‘cap pieces’ and on top of the ‘pit-props’.  One wedge is placed at the front, the other at the rear.  Both are driven in by hammering simultaneously to create optimum tightening of the ‘pit-prop’ supports. 4.    ‘Pit-props’ – sawn to the required length from old telegraph poles and to have square-cut ends. 5.    ‘Gobbed-out’ – This refers to the hole cut through the chimney wall to weaken the structure.  The ‘pit-props’ are placed inside the ‘gob’ or ‘mouth’ to support the chimney mass. 6.    ‘Mouth’ – Another word – as above. 7.    Trammel Points are an adjustable tool comprising two separate steel points that can slide along a steel bar which assists Fred to take accurate measurements on a vertical plane of the chimney masonry opposite the ‘gobbed-out’ section; particularly important on square-base chimneys.  Accuracy with these measurements assist in plotting the path of the chimney drop zone.  The procedure is that Fred would paint a horizontal and a vertical line in white paint to the rear of the ‘gob’; equally above and beneath the horizontal line and on the vertical centre line he would drill one small hole into the masonry.  Fred would then place the top trammel point in the top hole, and the bottom point would then be engaged in the bottom hole.  The points would then be tightened up by thumbing knurled screws.  The trammel points were thus set which recorded the exact distance prior to the bonfire weakening the supporting ‘pit-props’. As a consequence of the ‘pit-props’ gradually becoming weak due to the ravaging effects of the fire, the chimney would generally then commence pressing down on the supports, and this movement could be detected with the trammel points. FRED’s QUOTES 1.    Did yer like that? 2.    The modern world stinks. 3.    I’m just a bum who climbs chimneys. 4.    One mistake up here, and it’s half a day out with the undertaker. 5.    I set out as a steeplejack in my youth to preserve chimneys.  I’ve finished up knocking most of them down. 6.    Fred commenced his chimney demolition career by applying what he called, “the science of back’ards construction”. 7.    “Once the fire is lit, it’s out of your hands; it’s in the hands of ‘The Man in the Sky’ ”. 8.    “You’ve always got the twenty minutes of dry-throated inaction until the thing feels the action of the fire”. 9.    “I sometimes get characters coming out of the crowd following a drop and ask me if I ever worry.  I usually tell them that I always worry until the thing is safely on the deck, and it’d take a bloody brave man to tackle a large chimney with a box o’matches and not worry!” 10.     “After the usual chimney drop, I get all sorts of folk approach me, each carrying a red-hot brick for me to sign my autograph on”. 11.    “When you’re up on the top of the staging around a 200 foot tall chimney, should you make a wrong move causing you to fall, then it’s half a day out with the undertaker”.