Fred Dibnah - Steeplejack

1 x 50 mins

 VIDEO LINK 

Fred

7 x 30 mins

9 September - 21 October 1982

A Year With Fred

5 x 30 mins

9 February - 10 March 1987

A Year With Fred

1 x 30 mins

1992

New Horizons 

An update on the changes in Fred's life since the last series.

Life With Fred 

4 x 30 mins

10 March - 31 March 1994

The Fred Dibnah Story 

6 x 30 mins

28 August - 2 October 1996

1. Beginnings

Fred Dibnah's Industrial Age

1999

6 x 30 mins

Fred starts his journey at the old Bolton, Bury and Manchester Canal where he first discovered his passion for industrial history. As a young boy, he would walk along the towpath, passing cotton mills and old coal mines. Fred fondly retraces his childhood steps before showing viewers some of the many preservation projects he has been working on over the years: a steam-powered pottery in Cumbria, a mill chimney in Lancashire and a steam engine in North Wales

Fred visits Queen Street Mill in Burnley, where the original steam engine still powers the looms in a huge weaving shed. He meets a woman called Evelyn who has worked in the mill all her life and fondly remembers the camaraderie amongst the weavers.

Fred traces the development of the production of iron and steel and begins his journey at Ironbridge Gorge in Shropshire, the cradle of the industrial revolution. It was here that Abraham Darby first smelted iron with coke and thus started a dynasty of iron founders in the gorge who were to change the entire face of industry. Fred visits Abraham Darby's original furnace and rides on a replica of the first steam railway locomotive which was built at Ironbridge in 1803

Until the 1960s, mining was a major industry around Bolton and Fred recollects how his auntie always believed that there was a coal mine under her house. Fred talks about the working conditions down the mines and the camaraderie between the miners that came from working in this hostile and dangerous environment.

At the National Coal Mining Museum for near Wakefield, Fred descends to the coal face to see how the machinery the miners used developed over the years. At Big Pit, in South Wales, Fred rides on top of the pit cage to carry out a shaft inspection and in Scotland he is welcomed to the Lady Victoria Colliery by a pipe band.

Fred recollects his early excitement for steam locomotives as they roared past his bedroom window at night, the driver's face lit only by the engine's firebox. Fred's enthusiasm has never burnt out and in this programme he traces the development of the railway locomotive from Richard Trevithick's first locomotive to the world record-breaking Mallard.

Fred visits the North East which is rich in railway history. At Bowes Railway near Gateshead he sees one of George Stephenson's early engineering projects, where a stationary engine pulled coal wagons up a hill with a rope. But at Darlington Railway Museum he admires Stephenson's most famous engineering achievement, the original "Locomotion No.1", which was the first locomotive to run along the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

Fred examines the skill of the shipbuilders and machine engineers who turned Britain into a great manufacturing nation. In Bristol, Fred visits the SS Great Britain, the first ocean going ship to be constructed by iron and driven by steam, and pays tribute to the designer, Fred's hero, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

The SS Great Britain won't be going to sea again so Fred goes in search of a working steamship. He travels to Scotland to take a voyage along the west coast on the paddle steamer Waverley. Back in England he visits the Windermere Steamboat Museum and sails across the lake in the Steam Launch Swallow.

      Fred Dibnah's      Magnificent Monuments

2000

6 x 30 mins

Fred begins his journey in Wiltshire with an insight into the development of castles.

Fred looks at various dwellings, including Hampton Court Palace, Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire and his own childhood home in Bolton.

Fred visits religious sites, starting in Preston and taking in York minster, a Saxon church in Durham, and St Paul's cathedral in London.

Fred's journey takes him from a 1000-year-old tithe barn in Sussex to a modern Lloyd's Building in London. Along the way he visits a Norman hospital and one of Britain's oldest dockyards in Kent.

Fred travels from the earliest wrought-iron suspension bridges to the Channel Tunnel. In Wales he steers a canal barge across the Pontcysyllte aqueduct and later admires the view from atop one of the Humber bridge's 500 foot-tall towers.

Fred's final foray takes him to structures built for entertainment. This week he takes in Bath, Shakespeare's reconstructed Globe theatre, the Victoria and Albert museum and the recently restored Scott monument in Edinburgh, before finishing up in Blackpool.

Fred Dibnah's Victorian Hero's

2000

1 x 50 mins

Fred's tribute to Robert Stevenson, Isambard Kingdom Brunel & William Armstrong.

        Fred Dibnah's        Building of Britain

2002

6 x 30 mins

This edition focuses on the 11th-century building programme undertaken by the Normans, which resulted in impressive fortress cathedrals at Peterborough and Ely, and a magnificent castle at Rochester.

Fred examines the chain of castles along the North Wales coast, and the achievements of the architect who helped revolutionise castle design in England.

Fred examines the carpentry that helped turn castles of the Middle Ages into homes, visiting Stokesay in Shropshire, Little Moreton Hall in Cheshire and Harvington Hall near Kidderminster.

Fred explores the engineering skills of the Scottish baronial style of building. At Glamis Castle, Fred reveals how a simple sandstone tower house was transformed with the help of stonemasons from Aberdeen and plasterers from Italy. In addition, he visits the House of Dun near Montrose and Culzean Castle on the Ayrshire coast.

Fred returns to his old stomping ground around Bolton where, in the mid-18th century, the building of the first canals heralded the birth of civil engineering.

In the last of the series, Fred shows how steam power aided 19th-century construction, and admires the buildings of architect Augustus Pugin, including the Palace of Westminster and Big Ben.

Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam

2003

6 x 30 mins

A visit to Cornwall illuminates the early history of the steam engine in Britain, which was developed to pump water from the tin mines.

How the advent of steam power radically changed the way people travelled.

Fred charts the role of steam in Britain's 18th- and 19th-century industrial expansion, and the use of huge stationary steam engines in mills, collieries and steel works until well into the 20th century.

Fred looks at experiments in  the use of steam for road transport that took place a full century before the invention of the car.

Fred follows the progression of steam ships from early paddle steamers to the use of steam  turbines in modern vessels.

Fred's history of steam power concludes with a look at today's powerful steam turbines that generate electricity and the preservation of our steam heritage in museums.

 Dig with Dibnah

2002

1 x 60 mins

Fred attempts to construct a coalmine in his back garden.