SMOKING STEEPLEJACK TAKES DOWN HUGE CHIMNEY BRICK BY BRICK

I’ve been wanting to post this terrifying video (below) for some time. It’s a short documentary on Britain’s Most Fearless Steeplejack, Fred Dibnah, shimmying up a 200-foot chimney with all the nonchalance of a man nipping to the pub.

Dibnah, born in Bolton in 1938 climbed chimneys with a rickety ladder and some ropes, stopping halfway up to chat about Victorian engineering as if he weren’t dangling over the void. No harness, no hard hat, no fear.

But Dibnah wasn’t just a daredevil; he was a poet of industry, mourning Britain’s lost chimneys like others grieve cathedrals.

This video? A glimpse into a world where people laughed in the face of gravity. Today, they’d call it madness. Fred called it a day’s work. Incredibly, over the course of 5 months in 1979, he would single-handedly demolish this huge structure, brick by brick.