Absoloutly fascinating peter tatham always said that Smiths were the best steeplejacks ever nobody would ever come close even his grandfather who he was first employed by at 14 years of age couldn't do a lot of the things smiths wre doing.to own a pullman coach then meant a lot.

yes stanley that second pic is me ,so many mixed memories from that time most good .if i could turn the clock back i would't change a thing.

i put ladders up the ellen road before christmas and there still there .isn't that ironic.

This was at Salford destructor chimney.  Was the bloke on the left called Eric?  He was at Sunnybank chimney at Haslingden as well and I seem to remember he had a very fast motor bike and tunnel vision.....  Who is the bloke on the right, I remember him well but can't remember the name.  Forgive the lack of clarity, it was all a long time ago and as you say, they were busy and very happy days.  Tom, one specific question, were you on Ellenroad chimney top when Peter and I were deciding what height to build the drum to?  This thread is good, it's turning into steeplejack's corner........

STANLEY,the bloke on the right is called berger can't remember his proper name and Eric is higgie he used to ride his motorbike down manholes his sight was failling that much.

can't remember if i was there when you decided on the hieght of the barrel,must have worked on hundreds of chimneys since .

Peter tatham and myself were instructed to do an inspection on jones strouds chimney in longridge preston in 1985 after it was struck by an oil tank when it exploded,we started erecting the ladders and noticed we could see right through both walls of stack,we had no option but to condemn the chimney there and then.

we were then instructed to pull it down brick by brick (piece meal) and replace it with a steel chimney.

On starting the job we had to erect an internal scaffold in the top 20 feet to remove the stringcoarse stones safely ,so we dropped down inside on bosuns chairs but something wasn't quiet right ,we were bouncing off the walls inside and they were 10 feet apart,so we made an ageement to take it very cautiously.

Sometime later there was about 10 feet remaining and it was still rocking so we carried on,when we got to the footings we realised why,instead of being 4 foot thick the sulphur and eaten the brickwork away to 4 inches thick for about 2 foot above ground level then the boiler man told us it had not been cleaned out (flued)for about 25 years,we were lucky to walk away from that one.

quite like steeplejacks corner of OGFB.

Pater Tatham had the job of inspecting the chimney at Robert Arams mill at Todmorden.  It was a stone stack with a brick extension.  Robert wanted the extension taking off and the chimney capping.  It was a very frosty morning in winter and Peter and |Robert were discussing tactics when Robert noticed that Peter was keen to get on.  He asked him why and Peter said that when he was laddering the extension the day before he could hear bricks dropping in the chimney as he drove the dogs in.  He reckoned it was only the ice that was holding the shaft together and he wanted to get started before the sun got on the stack.  He did it OK but told me afterwards it was dodgy, he could see daylight through the brickwork,

He also told me about a time they were dropping a square stone stack and after they had finished their break Higgy got up and said he might as well drop it.  He swung the sledge and hit one of the corner stones.  He was only joking of course but Peter said that when Higgy struck the stone it exploded and the chimney dropped.  Peter said that all the weight must have been on that one stone, that was the reason he had left it.  He said it made it into a profitable job!

ROBERT ARAM,last time i saw him me and peter re-slated the tower at todmorden ,probably the last time i saw you stanley.I put some ladders up the mill wall to access the roof below the tower and you complimented the squeeking hemp lashings saying you can tell ronnie goggins hasn't put these up(refaring to your visit to mons mill)some months previous.I think you came to look at the roof which had collapsed.

Does robert still collect chimneys,ive searched the net but can't find anything.

I remember peter telling about that chimney felling,they had actually sat in the hole to eat there diner ,hundreds of tons of chimney can make a mess of a cheese butty he said trying to laugh ,smoke his capstan full and cough at the same time.

Robert is alive and well and I still work with him.  He has about 18 stacks now.  He spends most of his time at Masson Mill now, big enterprise, call in sometime and look at it.  We're putting the Jubulee engine in there.  here's the Mons story....  we must have been mad!

At this time a steeplejack called Ronnie Goggins had the contract to dismantle the redundant chimney at Mons Mill in Todmorden. I went there one morning to see whether the bricks they were dropping were of any use to me. Mons Mill chimney interested me because I knew that it had been altered after it was built. The mill was originally to be called Hare Mill and about two thirds of the way up the chimney there had been a glazed brick panel about twelve feet deep which depicted a running hare and the name ‘HARE’. During the construction of the mill the entrepreneurs ran short of money. They had contracted with the firm of Carels Freres from Mons in Belgium to supply the gigantic 3,000hp cross compound engine that was to drive the mill. No doubt in an effort to ensure their contract was paid, Carels invested money in the mill on condition that its name was changed to Mons. This presented a difficulty as the panel depicting the hare had already been incorporated in the structure as it was built. The story I had heard was that the chimney builders were instructed to cut out the redundant panel and replace it with one saying ‘MONS.’ They did this but I reckoned they wouldn’t have been able to replace the header bricks that keyed back into the next course in. I was curious to see if I was right.

When I arrived on site, young Ronnie Goggins and his mate were on the head working on the demolition. I climbed up their ladders which were very badly fixed. They hadn’t cut new dog holes for their dogs and wedges but had followed any unfilled holes they could find on the stack. The consequence was that the ladders meandered all over the place and were a trifle insecure in places! When I got to the top ladder there were three rungs missing out of it and it wasn’t fastened at the top. I halted and addressed young Ronnie. “I know you’ll think I’m a wimp but could you please tie the top of the ladder on before I come up it?” Ronnie laughed and walked round the rim of the chimney. We were at about 180 ft and what made it impressive was the fact that four years earlier, Ronnie had lost a leg in a motorcycling accident! I crawled on to the rim and sat there while I examined the state of the bricks. They were just what we needed and had been made at Newhey Brickworks just behind Ellenroad where all the original brick for the mill had come from. I arranged with them to drop the good bricks separate from the others and I would send a gang across to gather them up. We did this and used this brick on Ellenroad chimney head. We were still some bricks short but Ronnie was dropping Jubilee chimney at Padiham at that time and we made up our numbers with ten tons of bricks from there.

One last thing about Mons chimney. The locals always said it was so high there that you could always see snow from the top! The reason for this becomes clear if you think about what MONS looks like if viewed upside down. I told Ronnie about the change of name and he told me later that when they came to the panel it was as I suspected. There were no key bricks, the whole panel was a single skin construction separate from the body of the chimney. Ronnie said it peeled off in big sections when they came to it.

Back at Ellenroad Peter Tatham and I had to decide how we were going to tackle the job of rebuilding the head. I had already found a big flue door on site which was redundant and we decided we would cut a hole in the square flue box at the base of the chimney to give us access to the base and that when we were finished we would put the large cast iron door in so that we had easy access to the flues for maintenance afterwards, We scaffolded the top of the stack, put a snatch block on the structure and had a rope almost 500 feet long from an electric winch at the bottom into the bottom of the stack round a snatch block anchored in the chimney base and up to the head, over the snatch block mounted there, and down to the bottom where we fitted a large cast iron weight and a hook on the end of the rope. In effect we had converted the stack into a mine shaft and the addition of a five gallon bucket meant we could hoist all our materials up to the top through the flue. This worked well and eased our labours considerably.

The next job was to decide what height the drum should be built to, we had no drawings, only a photograph taken in 1915 when the mill burned down. Peter and I were discussing this on the top of the chimney and he said that when he used to work on the stack with his grandfather he remembered that he couldn’t quite see over the top of the drum when stood on the toeboard of the scaffold. I got him to stand there and marked the scaffold pole at the level of his eyes then I added two inches for shrinkage over the years! We cut a mark on the scaffold pole and that was the height we built it to. When we had finished the eye told us that we had got it as near right as we could have. It looked exactly the same proportion as the original photograph.

The most important part of a chimney head is the finishing courses on the drum. This is what gets all the weather and is attacked by the fumes in the flue gas. When new, various materials were used, solid stone, cast iron or specially cast terracotta segments. Peter cast the concrete rim at Ellenroad in six segments joined together by one inch diameter copper bars, two to each joint. The joints were sealed with bitumen. This made a very strong and durable rim which would last for longer than we cared to think about! He told me he once saw that Firs were demolishing a chimney that he had put a new rim on by this method and he had a word with the jack in charge on the site intending to warn him about this. Professional rivalry arose and it became evident that Firs’ man didn’t want to know anything Peter told him. Peter said that the consequence was that when they dropped the chimney, the rim rolled off down the hill like a big Polo Mint and demolished part of the mill! He added that they weren’t much good as they felled the stack on their air compressor! Their is always an element of rivalry in trades.

There was one funny story about our job at Ellenroad. Peter had a young lad working for him at the time. He was a cheeky little bugger but sharp with it. I arrived one morning just as he was setting up at the chimney base to start hauling bricks up to the top. He was looking puzzled and I asked him what was the matter. “I don’t like this chimney, it’s haunted!” I asked him what brought him to this conclusion and he said he’d show me. He went into the chimney base and held the weighted hook on the fall of the tackle until it was still. Then he stood back and said “In ten minutes that hook will be swinging until it touches the wall!” I took him to the hut and we had a cup of tea. When we went back, sure enough the hook was gently swinging like a pendulum and was almost touching the side. He said “There you are, I told you so. It must be haunted, there’s no wind to move the chimney!”

He was right of course, it wasn’t the wind but it wasn’t haunted either. I told him that what we had was probably the best Foucault Pendulum in the world as its moment was over 200 feet! I explained that what he was looking at was a vibration caused by the earth wobbling on its axis as it turned and that the principle had been understood for hundreds of years. I don’t know whether he believed me but he seemed happier about it afterwards!

Just been on the web site for masson mill,looks great.Is it the same type of engine as the original one.

Ive just remembered an article about robert aram i think it was in lancashire life when somebody said steeplejack peter tatham well known for his proess aloft,this phrase made peter cringe so i did my best to mention it as often as possible.it was the article when he was going to buy swabs chimney.

I have an idea it was the one I did.  Swabs chimney was a laugh. That was where I first met Peter and here's what I wrote about it at the time.

Robert Aram was a frequent visitor and often stayed the night as he had a lot of interests in the area. One weekend he came with a serious purpose and with Daniel in tow we all went across to Middleton near Manchester to meet his steeplejack, Peter Tatham and have a look at a chimney Robert was interested in buying. You may well be asking yourself why anybody would want to buy a chimney! Good question! One of the things I had found out about Robert was that his ‘collection’ of things connected to industrial archaeology didn’t stop at small artefacts, it extended to things like mill lodges, old water mill sites and redundant chimneys! ‘Swabs’ chimney at Middleton was his biggest prospect yet. It was the detached chimney which served the boilers at Rhodes Mill in Middleton which was at that time owned by the Bernstein family and manufactured furniture. It was called Swabs chimney because the original owners of the mill when the chimney was built was Simon Schwab who were cloth finishers and dyers. They had 13 Lancashire boilers and so needed a big chimney but it was now redundant. The chimney was enormous, it stood over three hundred feet tall and was at the time the largest brick chimney in Europe. The purpose of our visit on the Saturday was for Peter to inspect the chimney and for Robert to climb it. Peter had laddered it during that week and Daniel and I went along to watch the fun. Old Arthur Entwistle was visiting at the time and he came along too. My function was to give an opinion about the state of the chimney and anything else that I thought Robert should take into consideration before buying it.

Robert did well. Peter asked him if he’d ever been up a ladder before and Robert told him he had, on to the roof of the family bungalow at Mablethorpe! Peter took this in and gave Robert a crash course in serious ladder climbing. Robert asked if he should go up first and Peter said no, if Robert dropped off he didn’t want to be underneath! Up they went and when they got to the top Peter swung out off the side of the ladder while Robert climbed past him to look at the top. Then Robert came down while Peter took some photos of the chimney head. The wind was getting up a bit and Peter came down the ladder two rungs at a time! Champagne all round at the chimney base and then I cast a damper on the proceedings by telling Robert we needed to look in the flues before we made any final decisions about buying it. The deal that Robert had been offered was that he could have the chimney for a nominal sum, £10. For this he got the chimney, the valuable piece of real estate it stood on and the responsibility of maintaining the stack. This was the big problem as far as I could see because it was literally within two feet of the pavement and the road.

The following day we were back at the mill. There was just Robert, Peter, Daniel and myself. This time we started in the boiler house in the mill on the opposite side of the main road from the chimney. We put on overalls, rugged up with fents (cloth ends from the shed at Bancroft) and set off into the flues. They were enormous, very dirty and in bad condition. The last boilers to run had evidently been oil-fired and the burners badly adjusted, the bottom of the flue was wet and there was about six inches of black oily sludge to wade through. The further we got in the worse it got and eventually we were met with a solid wall of flue dust at the entrance to the chimney base, it hadn’t been flued for at least twenty years. We had to go back and get some boards to place on top of the dust so we could crawl over the top and into the base of the chimney. It was enormous, I have never seen a chimney so big inside. I measured it and it was twenty two feet across internally, there was a cruciform wall dividing it into four sections and each had a separate flue coming in from the main flue. The chimney liner only went up about forty feet and there were internal lightning conductors, something I had never seen before.

When we had got our fill we got out, cleaned up and retired to the pub. Robert asked me what I thought and I told him that if he bought it he would regret it. Peter Tatham agreed with me and we left Robert to come to his own conclusions. In the end he decided not to buy it and this was a sensible decision. A steeplejack bought it and went bankrupt while demolishing it, another tried and went the same way and eventually it was finished by a third firm. The weekend hadn’t been wasted though, I had met Peter Tatham and he and I were to do some pretty impressive jobs together in years to come!

It was bought by Ben Lancaster from middleton not a steeplejack as such more of a demolition concractor but fettled in the chimney game,I saw him at mervyn simpsons funeral totally blind with a guide to help him around,great shame he was quite a nice fellow.

if you thought up proess aloft don't take offence at what i said i thought it was a brilliant phrase ,hope somebody says it about me one day.