Dangerous Jobs Steeplejack
If you've ever watched a TVprogramfeaturing Fred Dibnah, or played one of the manyYoutubevideos of him at work, you will probably agree that being a Steeplejack – that is, someone who climbs tall chimneys, church steeples, etc in order to carry out repairs, cleaning, and other work as needed – is definitely one of the most dangerous occupations around.
As long as there have been such structures that need repairs, there have been brave men who are willing to climb those structures to work on them. The earliest documented 'steeple climber' is probably the one found in 'The Return', a scene in the 11th century Bayeaux Tapestry, where a man appears to be climbing a church steeple in order to place a weather vane on the top.
In those days steeple climbers were also nicknamed 'steeple flyers', and they were as much entertainers as repairmen. They would perform daredevil feats of balance and acrobatics using ropes suspended or secured from the top of the local church spire to entertain visitors to fairs and carnivals. More often than not, after the celebrations, they would be asked to do necessary work on those structures – sometimes having caused the damage themselves during their enthusiastic displays!
In a Hogarth painting of 1725, an Italian steeple climber called Violante is shown returning to ground level at the end of his working day in a quicker manner than usual. He slid headfirst down a taut rope, from the top of St Martins Church, Charing Cross (London), crossing St Martins Lane and ending in the Royal Mews. He was lucky, however, as these tricks were every bit as dangerous as they seemed, especially considering the lack of safety equipment prior to the twentieth century. A few years later, in 1739, an English 'steeple flyer' called Robert Cadman tried the same trick from a church in Shrewsbury, but his rope gave way and he fell to his death.
Modern steeplejacks need to be able to climb up towers, chimneys, etc that can be several hundred feet high, and are usually built of flat brickwork that gives no possiblity of handholds over most of their height. So how do they do it? They start by placing a tall ladder against the base. Then, climbing to the top of this, they use a hammer and chisel to create a couple of small holes in the structure and knock iron hooks called 'dogs' into them. The ladder is lashed to these dogs, and a long rope passed through by which the next ladder is pulled up to this level. The bottom of this new ladder is lashed to the top of the first, and to the dogs – then the steeplejack climbs this new ladder and repeats the fixing process before hauling up the next ladder.
Before long the steeplejack is hauling each new ladder up vertical distances that would make most people dizzy. Through it all, he sets out to climb each new ladder, often hundreds of feet off the ground, while it's held to the previous one by nothing more than the knots in a couple of lengths of rope near the bottom - and the only thing preventing him from falling to a certain death is his own grip on this ladder!
Once the ladders are fixed the full height of the structure, they can be used as a base from which scaffolding can be attached at the height of the area where the work is required, or the steeplejacks will just swing on a bosun's chair (a wooden seat on ropes that can be raised or lowered at will from the seat) or abseiling ropes, much as the window cleaners do on modern-day city office blocks.
Equipment and methods haven't changed an enormous amount over the centuries. An article in the 'London Chronicle' of 1767 described 'dogging' the iron hooks into the brickwork, and using a bosun's chair almost exactly as they are still used today.
Even watching this on TV is enough to make you feel ill – yet Fred Dibnah and his colleagues used to do it with such blasé confidence that Fred would happily chat to the camera as he climbed these enormous distances on the ladders (still with nothing attaching him in any way) and barely get out of breath. He'd stop occasionally, hook one leg through the ladder and take both hands off to point out some flaking brickwork or crumbly mortar to the cameraman – who was esconced safely on the fenced platform of a cherry-picker crane, a few feet away (but still too far to help if anything had gone wrong)! On one occasion Fred reached the top of a tall tower, climbed off the ladder and, having left his wife and son at the base, turned round and leaned out on the top rung of the ladder to wave to them – hundreds of feet straight down. Gulp. If his hand had slipped, or his balance not been absolutely perfect ...!
Nowadays, of course, improvements in safety equipment and methods mean that a great deal of the danger involved in this job is avoidable. Even attaching the initial ladders doesn't need to be quite so dangerous, as mountain-climbing equipment can attach him to the previous ladder as he climbs the new one each time, and ensure that any fall need only be the length of the ladder or so, rather than the headlong plummet to the ground that awaited a clumsy worker in previous centuries. However, if Fred is any indication, it doesn't get used as often as it should be!
