These were the men who transformed the face of the country and the world, and turned the Victorian age into the great age of the engineer. ibid.
George Stephenson had a great interest in mechanics and he was involved in the early development of the railways. He is known as the Father of the Railways. ibid.
Robert Stephenson was in the forefront of creating a railway network which was to transform the lives of millions. It was the age of iron. ibid.
Railways, bridges, ships, the lot: Isambard Kingdom Brunel. ibid.
Armstrong never had any formal training in engineering … The greatest armament supplier of the time. ibid.
Britain is full of magnificent examples of architectural and engineering genius. And it stands testimony to the men who actually constructed it all and of course the architects and engineers who designed it. Fred Dibnah’s Building of Britain e1: Mighty Cathedrals, BBC 2002
Believe it or not this is a cathedral – this is the Saxon cathedral of St Peter’s ... It’s the only Saxon cathedral in the country that survives intact. It isn’t very big, it is? ibid.
After the Conquest the Normans began to build on a scale that had never been seen before. ibid.
The Normans didn’t want to leave anyone doubt down here on Earth who was in charge. ibid.
The Normans build with semi-circular or round arches just like the Romans used to build ... It saved material; it also looked very attractive and it let lots of light flood in from the side. ibid.
The rib-vaulting was of course a new invention. And very strong. ibid.
The Normans improved their techniques and moved on from the round arch to the pointed Gothic version. ibid.
Of all the great feats of engineering that helped to shape Britain there’s nothing more dramatic than the great chain of medieval castles on the coast of north Wales. Built over 700 years by Edward I to stamp his authority on his newly conquered province. Among them are some of the finest castles in the country. One of the greatest feats of royal engineering in British history. Fred Dibnah’s Building of Britain s1e2: The Art of Castle Building
They kept very detailed records. ibid.
Caenarfon took nearly fifty years to build and at nearly £20,000 it was the most expensive of all of Edward’s Welsh castles. The total cost of them all was over £78,000. ibid.
This was the age of the carpenter. Changes that turned an Englishman’s castle into his home didn’t happen overnight. It was a very gradual process that started in the Middle Ages. Fred Dibnah’s Building of Britain e3: The Age of the Carpenter
It’s a building technique known as jettying [hanging over], and it was developed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. ibid.
Master Carpenters began to develop specialised jointing techniques ... Timber was the main construction material. ibid.
The Mortise and Tenon joint in one form or another is the main joint in a half-timbered building. ibid.
The timber frame was still the main method of construction. ibid.
Harvington Hall contains the finest series of priest holes to be found anywhere in the country. ibid.
Ha ha. I’ve been up a few chimneys in me time, you know, but I’ve never been up one with as nice surroundings as this one. Fred Dibnah’s Building of Britain e4: Scottish Style
Robert Adam’s style was so distinctive they named it after him. ibid.
This is Glamis Castle – the childhood home of the Queen Mother ... One of the best examples of the Scottish Baronial style in existence. It’s a style that was developed in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. ibid.
By the eighteenth century the leading Scottish architect William Adam began to design country houses that broke away radically from the Baronial style. ibid.
It was William’s more famous son Robert who took some elements of this and added a lot of ideas of his own to create a style of architecture that is named after him. Robert Adam had spent three years travelling around Europe drawing and studying the great buildings of the past. He was particularly impressed by the remains of the ancient Roman buildings he saw, and it was this that influenced the Adam style more than anything else. ibid.
The eighteenth century saw the building of the first canals and with it the birth of civil engineering. Fred Dibnah’s Building of Britain e5: Building the Canals
The canals were like the arteries of the industrial revolution. ibid.
[James] Brindley was actually a mining engineer ... Work on the Bridgewater Canal started in 1759 ... It was opened in 1765. It was an immediate success ... A major engineering achievement. ibid.
His Barton aqueduct which carried boats forty feet above the river was so amazing in its time it was considered one of the wonders of the world. There’s not much of it left now. ibid.
A canal across the Pennines from Leeds to Liverpool ... A hundred and twenty seven miles and climbed over the Pennine chain – the backbone of England. ibid.
The whole enterprise was incredibly expensive. ibid.
There’s more to lock gates than meets the eye. ibid.
Elm is a beautiful timber for chucking in water and lasting for ever. ibid.
It took six years to build this tunnel under atrocious conditions ... Cut and cover – where they dig a great tunnel through the hillside and then put in the centring ... Lay the masonry which had all been cut to shape ... Cover the whole lot up ... Withdraw the wedges from underneath the centring ... And keep advancing like that ... A beautiful stone arch tunnel. ibid.
Those early civil engineers who built the Leeds and Liverpool Canal helped to revolutionise transport in Britain. They made cheap travel across the Pennines possible, and laid the foundations for the Industrial Age. They helped turn Britain into the Workshop of the World in the Victorian Age. ibid.
The magnificent town hall like this one here at Bolton is a grand example of Victorian civic pride. The success and prosperity that the industrial revolution brought to towns like this left us with some magnificent buildings. The Victorians loved to have everything ornate ... The great age of Victorian splendour. Fred Dibnah’s Building of Britain: Victorian Splendour s1e6
Pugin had a great passion for Gothic architecture of the medieval cathedrals ... He really believed in it with his heart and soul. ibid.
The Houses of Parliament: this was the job that made Pugin’s name. He got it as a result of the old Palace of Westminster burning down in 1834 ... Pugin wanted to build something that would match Westminster Abbey next door. ibid.
Building began in 1837 and the Barry-Pugin partnership was right for the job. Pugin looked after the detail of the design. ibid.
First of all there was water and wind, the earliest forms of power to drive machinery. Then came steam, and in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Britain led the world in harnessing the power of coal, water and steam to drive the engines that revolutionised transport and made mass production possible. The steam engine really is a fascinating thing. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e1: The Early Pioneers, BBC 2003
The steam-engine really is a fairly simple thing. There’s two main principles: the expansion of steam in a cylinder pushing a piston which is connected to a crank shaft or a connecting rod. And the second principle of course is the condensation of steam which creates a vacuum in the cylinder. ibid.
The steam turbine isn’t only used for generating electricity. It serves dozens of purposes in the world of industry. ibid.
Thomas Newcomen invented a brand new type of steam-engine which was designed solely for one purpose: to pump water from deep mine shafts. The first one was installed here at Staffordshire at a colliery, and it proved to be the world’s most successful steam-engine. ibid.
What was needed was a more efficient engine. And this is where James Watt came on to the scene ... In 1769 James Watt came up with the answer: he put together all the existing technology that were known about the steam engine at the time and came up with the revolutionary design that of course earned him the name the Father of the Steam Engine. ibid.
It was a Cornishman called Richard Trevithick who made some of the greatest advances in the 1790s and the early 1800s. ibid.
Mining was still a difficult and dangerous business. Sometimes it was the steam-engine itself that made it dangerous. ibid.
In 1803 Richard Trevithick builds a second road carriage which he drove around the streets of London. ibid.
So Trevithick turned his attention to developing a steam locomotive that would run on rails. ibid.
Steam power brought about a revolution in transport. It was one of Britain’s greatest contributions to the industrial world. In the age of steam the railways moved everything and everybody. Fred Dibnah’s Age of Steam e2: The Transport Revolution