Fred Dibnah Heritage Centre
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Originally built in 1854, this was the gatehouse for the estate owned by the Earl of Bradford. Rumour has it that it was built purely as a ‘folly’, for posh people to have something nice to look at, said Fred when asked about its history! It appears from the front to be a little one floor cottage; however it is quite deceiving because it is of subterranean structure meaning that there’s a lower floor below ground level, which is level with the ground at the rear, leading to the gardens and yard. The house itself is a Victorian Grade 2 listed building and has a blue English Heritage plaque on the wall outside declaring this to be the home of the late Fred Dibnah MBE. Fred made many alterations to the house during the 35 or so years he lived there, such as in 1990 extending the left side (as you look at it) with his brother Graham, a professional brick-layer. It is almost indistinguishable from the original part such as was Fred’s skills and eye for perfection. He also replaced some rotten structural timbers supporting the roof, and these he cut in his workshops with steam power. Indeed, Fred undertook all aspects of making the house habitable after he bought it for £5,000 in the late 1960’s from the Earl of Bradford. This was during his marriage to Alison, and at first they rented the place for ‘next to nowt’ after they married, but Fred wanted somewhere permanent to store and work on his steam roller ‘Betsy’. The work done to the house was extensive and Fred even included inserting iron tie rods to make the property stable again after large cracks appeared and threatened to demolish the whole back wall. This was filmed by the BBC during the director Don Haworth period, and the difficult operation can be seen on some of Fred’s earlier programmes as he struggled with his side-kick old Donald to ‘prevent the arse end of the house falling out’ as Fred always put it. Being an expert engineer, Fred did a good job, and no further problems occurred after this.
The original windows are stone mullions with stained glass, and the stone mullions to the extension are also made by Fred in the workshops from old gravestones to imitate the ones on the original part of the building. If you look to the left, you will see a hexagonal chimney built by Fred to resemble an industrial one, and this is made from reclaimed stone from an old local hospital called ‘Potters’. The windows were badly damaged when we came here in November 2008 but we had them repaired at great expense. Then they were damaged once again after we had moved in, by some mindless young thug who obviously thought it would be fun to kick a stained glass window in as he had nothing better to do. We found the imprint of a kid’s size trainer on the window and had to have I think it was 7 stained glass diamonds refitted, fortunately we have not had any repetitions since. On the ground floor there are three bedrooms but one is used as a study, and a bathroom. The ‘new’ end of the house incorporates the master bedroom with fitted wardrobes and the family bathroom. To the older part are two further bedrooms and a passageway designed and built by Fred, since the front door originally opened up into one big room with just a smaller one off to the right. Both rooms contain original Victorian open fireplaces. These areas have been lovingly brought back to life in the style of the Victorian era to which they belong.
The down stairs level has a drawing room, a dining room, a scullery (which was the original kitchen), and the new dining kitchen. The drawing room and dining room have also been brought back to life with the original décor and furniture and soft furnishings such as curtains have been fitted to give a feeling of Victoriana with a little hint of warmth and luxury. The original kitchen was a long galley type about six feet wide, boasting a splendid selection of 1960’s glass fronted cabinets set off by chequerboard black & white tiles installed for Alison as a young bride. It also had the old square pot sink, which was removed when the new kitchen was installed and is now used as a larder/storage area. A fully new kitchen was fitted out in 1998 after Fred’s last wife Sheila came here and complained about the traction engine parts stored in the extension! Prior to this it was also used by Fred to construct weathervanes and fettle bits of engines but there was clearly a need for a more workable kitchen area, so he set about fitting the new kitchen.
Barring conceded modern appliances, this was fitted out in a style completely in keeping with the Victorian era of which Fred was an avid enthusiast. The centrepiece of the kitchen is a beautiful AGA (Rayburn) cooker in a gorgeous deep red which doubles as a cooker and central heating boiler, this is the first thing that catches your eye when you enter the kitchen and it has been serviced refurbished maintained and kept in superb condition and is in full working order. The Rayburn is set upon a diagonal plinth covered in terracotta pan tiles like the rest of the kitchen floor and is flanked by two cast iron upright pillars reclaimed from an old mill in the Deane Road area of Bolton; with an old peace of railway sleeper used as a cross-member. From this hangs a large iron ring salvaged from an engine house, once used to service and install a beam engine. Over the Rayburn on the back wall surrounded in cream Minton tiles is featured the ‘Hick-Hargreaves’ makers plaque from a massive stationary steam engine that Fred often admired as a child. The plaque was rescued when the men came with the gas-axe to dismantle the engine when it was no longer functional. Fred also fitted out the kitchen with beams to keep the Victorian look and solid oak kitchen cupboards and units that look as good as the day they were fitted, obviously after 4 years of lying empty you can imagine the work we had to put in to ensure they look their best now, but I think you could call it a labour of love.
The workshops had been broken into and every bit of brass that could be taken had been taken, the work shed had been ransacked in the search for brass or anything of value, there was even I am told a tramp living in the workshop making I believe daily trips to the scrap yard with bags of metal for weighing in! In fact when we took over I found heaps of metal (artefacts, fittings, nuts & bolts of all sorts) in a big bag as if it were ready to be dragged off to the scrap yard. All the pressure gauges and gauge glasses had been removed from the Danks boiler that was used to power the yard, most of the signs and maker’s plates that Fred had collected over the years had been stolen (shame on those that did this). Even the weather vane had gone missing. The garden was so over grown it was like a jungle with many of those fast growing trees sprouting up all over the place. Inside the house the burglars had spent many hours walking around scavenging for anything they thought was of value and in so doing had left trails of candle wax absolutely everywhere, on carpets on furniture everywhere, what a nightmare to remove, but we did, by hand bit by bit.
Features and detail leap out from every corner of the house. For instance, the terracotta corbels to both downstairs rooms were rescued from an old pub in Mount Street, Bolton when they demolished it in the 70’s. The brass and cut glass light fitting once graced a local church and the timbre wall cladding in the middle downstairs room and master bedroom also came from an old church, and was originally part of an organ! If you are a Fred fan and hopefully that’s why you are reading this, you will be aware that this is an amazing place. A living testimony to a great mans lifetimes’ work which had been left unattended for over four years due to a family legal dispute, and when we took over it was to put it bluntly “a mess”. The house was in a bad state having not been lived in for 4 years and it had been burgled several times. All the windows were boarded up and it was looking sad from every angle. On top of this the yard had been left with all the outside machinery at the mercy of the elements, covered in mildew and many parts had been stolen from the machinery.
This is NOT a replica – like Fred, it will be real. It would be a shame if all this history had been lost to scrap men and thieves. When the work is completed this will be one of the last fully working steam driven worksites left in the world. Fred’s workshops must be preserved for future generations to see how it all worked; and experience the danger and thrill of how our ancestor’s successfully toiled to make Great Britain into the finest industrial capital of the world; a heritage of which we can all be proud.
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