Fred Dibnah: They don't make 'em like they used to

Ever heard of the late Fred Dibnah, MBE? 

Me neither.

But what an interesting character Fred was.

I came across Fred in early September, when a mention of him came across my Twitter feed in a form of a post from the BBC noting that "#OnThisDay 1979: Extraordinary steeplejack Fred Dibnah was introduced to the nation." 

The BBC story about Fred - linked in the tweet and well worth a look - chronicled the intrepid steeplejack's climb up a very tall brick chimney that, over the next little while, the intrepid steeplejack dismantled, one brick at a time, all by his lonesome.

Fred, who was born in 1938, was always interested in steeplejack work, so he was a natural to become a chimney man. But his career coincided with the decline of manufacturing in England. When Fred was a lad, all those mills - his hometown of Bolton, near Manchester, was a center for the cotton spinning industry - were still in operation. Powered by coal, they all had massive chimneys to keep the spinning spinning. But over time...

I live in New England, and when I was a kid, there were knitting mills - sibling factories to spinning mills - all over the place. Each summer, my family would make a trip to a mill (Ware, Massachusetts; Fall River, Mass.) to pick up a summer supply of t-shirts for five kids at the mill's outlet store. These mills went the way of the Bolton spinning mills. (Occasionally, you see a New England chimney stack that's still standing. Guess there were no Fred Dibnah to do the dismantling.)

Anyway, Fred began doing chimney, clocktower, and steeple repairs, and then - as the market changed - had a good business there for a while, taking down smokestacks before they tumbled on their own accord. 

Fred was a charming and interesting character, and he became a subject of a documentary. And another documentary. And television news special interest pieces. 

Suddenly, he was famous. There were visitors just showing up unannounced at his home. He started getting fan mail. 

And then both the repair and dismantling work and the BBC special interest dried up. But through happy happenstance, the indomitable Fred ended up with a TV program of his own: Fed Dibnah's Industrial Age, which focused on the maintenance and restoration of industrial sites around the country. 

The show was well received, and several other series followed, one on Victorian heroes (an interest of Fred's), another called The Building of Britain, which focused on sites like cathedrals and the Globe Theatre. Then there was Fred Dibnah's Age of Steam. (Steam was a lifelong fascination of Fred's.)

Someone along the line, Fred became an MBE. (Member of the Order of the British Empire, an honour bestowed by the reigning monarch, in Fred's case, the late Queen E.) Here's Fred on his trip to Buckingham Palace: 

I was slightly nervous shaking hands with the Queen. She asked me if I was still climbing chimneys. It beats me how she keeps tabs on everybody. I never thought I would be receiving an MBE.

Fred was also awarded a couple of honorary doctorates in engineering. Not bad for the son of a bloke who worked at a bleach works, and a mum who was a charlady at the local gasworks. When this sort of success for a working class guy happens, people talk about "only in America." But for all its class-bound whatever, I guess it can kinda-sorta happen in England, oo. 

Fred died in 2004, of cancer. I'm guessing his death (age 66) was accelerated by all his exposure to ancient brick dust and debris. The smoking probably didn't help, either. But what a life. 

Source for info on Fred: Wikipedia.