101 Facts About Fred Dibnah

When Dibnah was born, Britain relied heavily upon coal to fuel its industry.

Fred Dibnah began his working life as a joiner, before becoming a steeplejack.

In 1978, while making repairs to Bolton Town Hall, Fred Dibnah was filmed by a regional BBC news crew.

Towards the end of his life, the decline of Britain's industry was mirrored by a decline in his steeplejacking business and Fred Dibnah increasingly came to rely on public appearances and after-dinner speaking to support his income.

Fred Dibnah died from bladder cancer in November 2004, aged 66.

Fred Dibnah was the son of Frank and Betsy Dibnah, who were initially both employed at a bleach works.

The canal was by then largely disused and Fred Dibnah sometimes dredged it with an iron hook on a rope, for what he called 'plunder'.

Much to the consternation of his mother, Fred Dibnah sailed the boat along the nearby River Croal.

Fred Dibnah once astonished his teachers when, following the theft of the school keys, he cut new keys for each classroom door.

At school Fred Dibnah was placed in an art class, 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.

Fred Dibnah clapped that chimney on the roof when he was sixteen, I've had to live with it ever since.

Fred Dibnah had watched the activities of steeplejacks throughout his childhood, and first witnessed a chimney felling from his father's allotment near Bolton's greyhound track at Raikes Park.

Fred Dibnah was asked to point a garden wall and then the gable end of the customer's house.

Fred Dibnah used several short ladders, lashed together with rope and hardboard.

Aged 22, Fred Dibnah was conscripted into the army to complete his National Service and was given a position in the cook house.

Fred Dibnah spent six weeks training at Aldershot, before being sent to Catterick to learn the basics of army catering.

Fred Dibnah dug a 35-foot deep shaft into which the horse manure and dog faeces would be emptied and he fed the animals.

Fred Dibnah impressed his commanding officers by making a weathercock from army kitchen trays, but was chastised when he was found with a 1914 Luger P08 pistol he had bought from a fellow soldier.

Fred Dibnah 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.

Fred Dibnah struggled to get any more meaningful work, until he met Lonsdale Bonner, one of his teachers from art college.

Fred Dibnah was then commissioned to repair a chimney at a local brewery.

The church was the tallest building in Bolton and once Fred Dibnah had repaired the weathervane the vicar asked him to gild it.

Fred 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.

Fred Dibnah was commissioned to remove the top half of a 270-foot chimney and employed an assistant, Percy Porter.

Fred Dibnah hacksawed the line into pieces, letting each piece fall to the ground, while his assistant below kept the area clear.

Fred Dibnah 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 halt production.

Fred 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.

Fred Dibnah spent years restoring the property, including building an extension.

Fred Dibnah 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.

Fred Dibnah contacted the borough engineer and offered to fell the second chimney for no charge, to prove the effectiveness of his technique.

Fred Dibnah 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.

Fred Dibnah resorted to using a hydraulic jack to apply extra pressure to the intact side of the base and the chimney eventually fell.

Fred Dibnah almost lost his life in 1997, when a concrete chimney he had been asked to fell on Canvey Island began to collapse before the felling team had finished preparing the base.

Fred Dibnah later became a steam enthusiast, befriending many of the engine drivers and firemen who worked on the nearby railway.

Fred Dibnah became so enamoured with steam engines that he eventually looked for one he could buy.

Fred Dibnah learned of a steamroller kept in a barn near Warrington and which the owners had bought from Flintshire County Council.

Fred Dibnah towed it to a friend's house, spent a fortnight making various repairs, and drove it to his mother's house in Bolton.

The boiler was in poor condition and needed serious work, but Fred Dibnah fell back on local knowledge and was eventually able to build a new boiler.

Fred Dibnah 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.

Fred Dibnah later won a prize for the quality of the restoration work.

Fred Dibnah spent about seven months restoring the boiler, engine and blunger at Wetheriggs Pottery near Penrith.

In 1978, Fred Dibnah was commissioned to make repairs to Bolton Town Hall.

Fred Dibnah bought new stone, built a lathe in his workshop and created the replacement pillars.

Fred Dibnah was given the job of repairing the clock tower and he gilded the golden sphere at the top of the building.

Sporadic filming took place over an 18-month period and captured Fred Dibnah working on a range of buildings, spending time with his family and enjoying his hobbies.

Fred Dibnah, Steeplejack won the 1979 BAFTA award for best documentary, and over the years Haworth returned to film more documentaries.

Fred Dibnah 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 Fred Dibnah's matches being extinguished by the wind while at the top of a chimney, sent him a sample of their windproof matches.

Fred Dibnah 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.

Fred Dibnah's payment for the job was a new front plate for the boiler of his traction engine.

Fred Dibnah remained at home and was surprised when, upon her return, she asked for a divorce.

One day in October 1985, Fred Dibnah attended a solid fuel exhibition in nearby Bury.

Fred Dibnah encouraged him to grow a moustache and to give up smoking.

Many of the chimneys around Bolton had now been either repaired, or demolished and so Fred Dibnah was forced to travel further afield for work.

Fred Dibnah travelled to the Yorkshire Dales to install a lightning conductor on the parish church in Kirkby Malham.

Fred Dibnah offered to make a weathercock, provided that his son was christened in the same church.

Fred Dibnah was asked to install a peregrine falcon nest at the top.

Fred Dibnah was later influential in ensuring the chimney was made a listed building.

Fred Dibnah made an appearance in a 1996 television advertisement for Kelloggs.

Fred Dibnah had met Sheila Grundy, a former magician's assistant.

Fred Dibnah had arrived one day with her parents and young son to see Dibnah's back yard, and signed the visitor's book.

At their wedding reception in Bolton, Fred Dibnah was surprised and moved to tears when his youngest daughter, Caroline, came to see him.

Fred Dibnah had had little contact with his daughters in the years since his divorce from Alison.

Hall suggested that Fred Dibnah would be unlikely to have any further television work commissioned on his life and that he should consider becoming a television presenter.

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.

Fred Dibnah left the ladders at the church for several years and donated them to the tradesman who eventually took the job.

Fred Dibnah had long been fascinated by the Victorians, especially Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was his hero.

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.

Fred Dibnah was discharged and began filming at locations around the country, including the Globe Theatre, Ely Cathedral and Glamis Castle.

Toward the end of filming, Fred Dibnah went to Bolton Royal Hospital for a check-up, where a tumour was found on his right kidney.

Fred Dibnah went to Christie Hospital in Manchester, where further growths were discovered around his bladder.

Fred Dibnah underwent chemotherapy and once his treatment was finished, tests showed that he was free of cancer.

Fred 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 Fred Dibnah had another checkup at Christie Hospital and was told that a large tumour had been found on his bladder.

Fred Dibnah had another course of chemotherapy, but this time the treatment was unsuccessful.

Fred Dibnah had already assembled the wooden pithead gear and was planning to sink a 100-foot brick-lined shaft below this into the hillside.

Seven years before his diagnosis, therefore, Fred Dibnah had sourced drawings of suitable pithead gear and built a frame from timber and iron bolts.

Fred Dibnah 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 Fred Dibnah's proposed mine, which would entail his travelling around the country, visiting working collieries and heritage mines.

Palmer says that the day he visited Fred Dibnah's House to save the headgear from going to Cumbria was an important day for Fred Dibnah's Legacy, as it should stay in Lancashire.

Fred Dibnah's engine was not yet complete and Dibnah's medical diagnosis was not good: he knew he had only a short time to live.

Fred Dibnah's illness necessitated that he sleep in hotels, rather than the living van the engine would tow during the trip.

Fred 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.

The crew visited the Forth Road Bridge and Fred Dibnah became the first man to drive a traction engine under its own steam across the bridge.

Such pleasures provided a welcome distraction for Fred Dibnah, who was by then ill and in pain.

Fred Dibnah was sent home to rest and given medication to alleviate his condition, so that he could collect his MBE.

Once home, Fred Dibnah decided to creosote the pithead gear in his garden, but fell and injured his back.

Fred Dibnah was adamant that he would continue filming and made the trip to North Wales to complete filming.

Fred Dibnah later made a partial recovery and completed his last days filming at an Ironworks in Atherton.

Fred Dibnah asked me if I was still climbing chimneys.

Fred Dibnah was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2004 New Year Honours for services to heritage and broadcasting.

Fred Dibnah 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.

Fred Dibnah collected his medal wearing morning dress and a top hat.

Fred Dibnah was the Castaway on Desert Island Discs on 1 December 1991.

Eleven days later, thousands of mourners watched as Fred Dibnah's coffin was towed through the centre of Bolton by his restored traction engine, driven by his son.

Fred Dibnah was recognised as a working man who had learned through experience.

Fred Dibnah was one of a kind and now he has gone I think there will be no one else like him.

Fred Dibnah was enthusiastic about a way of life that has virtually disappeared now.

Fred Dibnah's home was converted into a heritage centre in 2010 but its contents were sold at auction in March 2018.

The life and times of Fred Dibnah were celebrated by St Helens comedy folk band the Lancashire Hotpots, who released their song "Fred Dibnah" with a music video in 2016.

Fred Dibnah was a working class and genuinely nice bloke.