The Fred Dibnah Connection

W

wstol

Dedicated Member
No doubt many of you will remember Bolton's Fred Dibnah, steeplejack.

I've recently bought a secondhand Fred Dibnah book, only to discover a photograph of Fred outside Nora Batty's house, pictured with Kathy Staff and Bill Owen in character.

I would estimate the picture to be from the 1990s.

Fred wasn't an actor, and wasn't in LOTSW to my knowledge - no doubt this is some publicity event or Fred happened to be in the area - nonetheless a great picture. Compo is in his longjohns.

I should point out it IS Fred Dibnah, and not the very similar Gordon Wharmby.

My book also shows (I'm 95% sure) Jean Alexander visiting Fred Dibnah's back garden.

Unfortunately the book does not explain the LOTSW connection.

Anyone have any info on this?
 
I wonder in one of his TV series in which he used to visit many places in the North of England he at some point filmed in Holmfirth or surrounding area and perhaps as some light relief from the Engineering / Architecture facets which dominated his show he took time out to visit the then famous LOTSW set . Some say Wesley was based by Roy Clarke on Fred.
 
I’ve been reading about the sale at Freds house. The volunteers are furious that they’ve been taken for a ride . They’ve put in many hours of restoration work and now the owner is selling up and making money out of their hard work.
 
Only the owner's side of the story appears in the article he wishes to retire and :-

Mr Powsney, who was unable to find a buyer to keep the museum open, said he had "mixed feelings" over the sale.
"It's very sad but a relief in some ways," he said.
"Hundreds of people are going to own something of Fred's now and treasure it.
"They worshipped him for years and now they can own something of his."

If he attempted to sell as a going concern and there were no takers then I imagine he had no choice . As he says, unlike some of the props from shows like LOTSW ,which probably get skipped , people can keep Fred's memory alive by owning some of the articles he kept and clearly treasured.
 
I do understand what your saying . It’s more about the hours they’ve put in to restore one of Fred’s steam engines and the more desirable pieces he owned. Maybe a museum would have been a better place for the steam engine they restored.
I think the auction was on Saturday , Would be interesting to see some of the prices. I’m guessing the man who bought the museum probably actually lost money in the long run. Unfortunately interest in things like this is small these days. There probably weren’t enough people going so he had to shut. Would have been nice to have bid and won something owned by Fred though.
 
I found the auctioneers and the page with details of the sale. A lot of the items simply don't identify themselves as being owned by him others were clearly his , for example there are sets of drill bits and spanner sets that could belong to anybody but there are two signs from his Business which went for £1700 each . There are 442 items in the sale but when you look lots of clothing items worn by the great man such as the navy blue jumper were withdrawn from the sale .

The favourite item I found thus far is a manure fork and shovel which fetched £20 :eek: . The most associative item that was sold is the original boiler from Betsy the Steam Engine which had been converted to a wood burning stove that fetched £660.

If you are interested the link is below you can change the number of items per page which helps to get through them more expediently.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/...adam-p10145/search-filter?page=1&pageSize=240
 
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Great response, the pic at Nora's house was the one I've seen in the book.

It's a shame about the heritage centre, I thought someone could take it on, requires a lot of commitment.

I suppose it's too big a price for the volunteers to club together.

A shame Fred's family weren't in a position to carry it on.

Fred's sons are very much like Fred, particularly Roger Dibnah now. Just look on YouTube.
 
Thanks for the link. Just had a look through the catalogue, some lovely bits there. I think I would have liked one of his red ladders out of everything.
 
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