PERSPECTIVE UKNORTH
People and their profiles: dukes, archbishops, actors, writers, monks, oddbods, the garish, the gregarious - here they are in single file, chosen by chance, by inclination, or by necessity ... and all reflecting, one hopes, the essential, but indefinable, spark that makes one human being interesting to many. Geoffrey Mather
Room at the top - Fred in the raw
I kept a transcript of a meeting with Fred Dibnah, steeplejack and television personality (who died in November, 2004, at the age of 66). I print it here in its entirety because it is almost a sacrilege to alter his words. To tidy up the conversation somehow reduces the richness of the language. So here is Fred unexpurgated, as he should be:-
Where we met
Working up a church steeple where the clock stood permanently at 2.43 and if he fell he would already be in a graveyard. Previous night's homing pigeons kept out by Fred's netting had banged their heads against it and left their feathers behind.
Sugar
I don't know what bloody sugar thing it were but somebody in London rang up and said, We have two chimneys in Barbados at our sugar refinery and we want 50ft off t' top of each one or summat - would we be interested in giving a price?'
There's enough work round here.Entry into the trade
Strange really. When I was a kid it always fascinated me, these black little men with flat caps always covered with oil and muck and I used to go round talking to 'em and they always had red ladders. exactly like mine. with 21 rungs each and nearly all from Manchester.
There's more steeplejacks now per square mile of Lancashire than 20 years ago. When Fine Spinners & Bleachers' Association and Cotton Corpn were all going, all had their HQs in Manchester and Falkner & one or two others were in with them there..
So people like me - the only things you could mend were bits of laundries and engineering works and foundries; little rubbishy ones that Falkner weren't interested in. All the big 'uns were done by him.
What attracted me to it was the style of it all: dead easy-going. you know. Victorian pace. I used to go talking to 'em and then I went to art school where my outlook changed a bit. I got, like, big ideas of having a good job somewhere. And what happened,. the art school job, they said -You're pretty good with the woodwork; you could be a cabinet maker. And they never found me a job so I had to go out and find my own and I think there were seven of us for one job and I had a bike and I got there first. So I ended as a joiner when I was about 16 till I were 21 but this chap I worked for was a bit on t' tight side - he would deliver you to a job, like ,and. you had to walk it back with t' saw, block and tins o' paint.
I'd be going along a street somewhere and there'd be a big chimney and these red ladders up and I used to go and talk to these steeplejacks. I learned a certain amount. Most of them were a bit on t 'thick side. They couldn't explain how they did it. It had just been hammered into 'em from leavin' schoo'. They learned by watching. Not many people know how they put ladders up because nobody had enough time to stand around and watch somebody do it.
I found a ladder floatin' down a river and I had a pair of steps and a plank and nobody ever gave me any money. Everything I've got I've had to bloody work for. The thing is, I used to go round pointing houses but I could only do them with flat bay windows. you know, put t' steps on t' top of bay windows and this one bloody ladder; and before a month or two were up I had about forty odd quid or summat like that and I bought five ladders. I think they were £5 each. They're 39 quid each now (1981) . Anyway I got these ladders and I'm still joinering and I'd be about 18/19 and all the mills were shutting up. So whether to have a go or not? Anyway I kept on pointing these houses and then started looking at little chimneys, about five ladders high, and that was a big chimney for me. Anyway, one day a schoolteacher friend of mine said, What are all these ladders for Fred? I said, well, my steeplejacking business, but I'm not having any luck. This fellow talked posh and I told him where to go and what to say - he was bloody hard up. like - so he got me about three jobs and for each one I gave him about ten quid.
I mended one spinning mill, and always no bloody tackle - and this bugger sent me a letter: Will I come up to the mill immediately? I thought: Oh he must have noticed we've nicked his plank. Anyway I didn't know he had another mill with work there. I'd had my medical for tt Army but I thought sod it, I'll bloody do it: 90-odd pounds I made. Never been as well off. All at week-ends and nights.
Anyway, two years lying on my back in t' Army, nothing to do, and plenty of time to think. I made my mind up. He'd have given me t' firm, the follow I worked for. Fact, his missus said: You, could have run it all. But I didn't bloody fancy it. Anyway I come out the Army and bought another ten ladders and set off round the town. For six months I never got a job, You- know. like it was a funny period. Early sixties. Mills just shut and all these private enterprise people were buying them. Other people. All split up in bits. Chimneys were t' last on t' agendas. Nobody wanted to know about it. Then one day I did a little job. I knew a bloke who owned a brewery and t' chimney were two ladders high off t' roof and I mended this chimney for 45 quid and what I used to do to survive - there were tons of property doing-up jobs, chimney pot here, couple of slates there. bit of spouting and all that. Well I'd worked for about three days and made 25 quid. and that were enough to keep me me happy, like, with the rent job and then I'd put my suit on and get the car and go round town. Anyway, this bloody chimney, I so much wanted to mend a chimney I did, it for 45 pounds. I needed an iron band, you see, and I knew an ironworker and he were making me this iron band and he said, hey. he said, I was doing a job for Canon Horburn - big un. parish church - and he got a bit of trouble with his weather vanes. He'd like you to go and have a word with him. Round I went and we hit it off. A real good fellow. Anyway, he said give me a price, like. For these weather vanes. Cut a long tale short, I did the job and got my photo in t' evening paper and it did me a load of good in religious circles.
Hardest job
Oh, some of these knocking down jobs where bricks and mortar are one and the same... Desperation is the mother of invention.. We got one, took me six months for £900. Nearly bankrupted me. Never had as bad a time in my life. I had a brainstorm of using a hydraulic ram for inside, you see, for shoving 'em apart so I went to a pit and got something they used for bending railway lines. Anyway we got this thing and screwed it on th' end of a length of telegraph pole and had a pipe across t' top of t' chimney and it was hanging down inside and it was great while it was pretty thin but when it got about four foot thick it just wouldn't take it.
We didn't want one bloody job. We looked at it. A nasty bugger right in a corner. Bridgewater canal touching it on one side. A fire escape for about five floors near it. A mysterious shed with all t' windows bricked up and a big iron door with about four padlocks. Right awkward. You'd have to be right careful all t' time. So I come home and said, oh. £8,000 - he'll throw it to t' back of t' fire when he sees it like. He's on t' phone day after - When can you start? A big chimney. He had a big Rolls and owned an industrial estate. Nice bloke. He'd come round once a fortnight to see how we were doing. Didn't take so long.
Documentary - and fame
Hundreds of letters. We get begging letters now as though we're affluent. We wouldn't be here now if we'd plenty of money. Fame without fortune.
When we were on one job, this little bloke comes wandering up to Donald and he says - My boss wants to know whether he knows what he's doing up there or not. And Donald said, well, he's been doing it for 20 years and has never fallen off yet. He said, I'm the health and safety man. And Donald said why don't you go up and ask him. And he said, bloody hell, no, the wife says I have to look after myself.
If you. are doing something dangerous like big stones on top of a chimney owt can happen so you've got to treat it with the greatest of respect. Or you end up dead.
Some of these chimneys, there's one right in t' middle of Bolton. There's a two-foot overhang resting on a nine-inch wall and out of the wall there one full brick and about a quarter of another and about ten tons of stone on top of it with a two-foot overhang, all wrapped up with iron bands and clamps and you've got to get that off without it getting you off.
Many near misses?
No. Too bloody careful.
Ropes
Kids pinch 'em. We've had 100-ft sliced off one of 'em. They're bloody moronic you know. Big chimney we've just done a 220-footer and we'd two coils of rope 800 foot long with. a lot of spare and the mill gates about 15ft high with barbed wire on top - somehow or other they still get in. They just cut it in half. Not to steal it. It's about 90-odd quid that, for 40Oft. They're only kids but it makes you wonder about their mentality.
Talking to groups
I talked to people at a university biochemistry dept .They were all about 19 to 20-odd and this professor, like, it was like the end of term boozeup sort of thing, Anyway I told one about the weathercock and nobody laughed and I said to the professor, like, hey I thought you said. these men were intelligent? Oh, he said, they are, but in the field of biochemistry. They're thick as planks when it comes to outside things. And like, by nine ol clock they were so drunk they were fighting each other. Some of em had only had a couple of pints and a few sips at the wine jar. They weren't THAT bad. - they were talking - but it was just they were all, like, strange and funny people, you, know? And I just ploughed on with the bloody thing.
Then I did a Rugby club. Well, Christ they had a pornographic joke teller on. How am I going to get a laugh after. he's been on? That were embarrassing in some ways. But they're the only two. Some of the ones where you think: It's going to be hard work here - old dears in fur coats - There were a bloke down from Kendal explaining with slides a project on old property and he keot trying to crack jokes - nobody laughed - and came the interval part - and I thought bloody hell it's going to be hard work, this ,and it went down a bomb. Very strange.
We went to York, British Rail engineers' department and they paid for the hotel and gave me £80, an evening dinner job and that went all right you know?
Rugby clubs - 100 quid no trouble. The thing,. is - it isn't their type of material. There's not a lot funny things happen climbing chimneys. The bloke with the dynamite box, Blaster Bates - owt can happen; but it's different with me.
There's this big bell on this church spire, about 8ft diameter, about 7ft tall, made of cast iron and the bloke we were working for, he said - Can you get it down? He'd only given us 300 quid for knocking t' spire down. Anyway, I said,, aye, give us another 300 quid. No - he said - we can't do that. So I said Take pot luck: if we bust its frame it might be all right if it lands on rubble. This bell was on a big oak beam about 18 inches square and it all wedged in the tower and it wouldn't go. I'd given that job up. But one morning, down it went. And it's there at t' bottom of t' tower in all t' rubble, didn't break nor nothing.
I came back from t' pub about half past one and Donald said: He's bin Iike, gone for a wagon. highly delighted. And there's this pub in Manchester and the bloke promised him a hundred quid for this bell to put on his lawn. Anyway we sat there for about an hour and he didn't come back so I said to Donald, I'm going back up. First stone - I didn't do it on purpose - straight through t' top, a big hole. He came back, great big fellow. He'd have killed me if he could have got me.
There'll be nowt left by the time I'm ready for retiring. All t' chimneys will hv gone.
Why burn rather than blow up?
The dynamite job, you need a licence. In my opinion it is a lot more accurate my way. This last twelve month's performances have proved my point. In Johannesburg they had millions of poundsworth of damage when 900ft of concrete fell on a power station.
In Glasgow they tried for a week to blow one up and finally managed it, then down in Bristol they did one and there were bricks through roofs and bungalows and all sorts. We did one t' other week at Flixton and I put it to him: Give us 300 pounds and we'll drop it for you. If you. want it insuring more than like it will cost you six.
Not really, no. It's mass destruction really. Once they've gone they've gone forever. I can't go back and mend it can 1? Went to a place t'other day where I used to mend t' chimney and they're cutting the boilers up. I suppose you could say it's a dying trade. 1 must have knocked 40 to 50 down in Bolton in 20 years. You can go up a chimney now and scan the horizon and count in the imagination where they all were. Great areas where there were ten or eleven and- there's nothing.. Just rooftops. In some instances, the mill and all has gone. Nothing left. There must be ten or eleven complete mills, big uns, seven storeys high, just completely gone.
Geoffrey Mather © 2004
3 March, 2007