Book Description

For a lot of people, one of their first questions when they visit a great historic building is 'How the heck did they build that all that time ago? How did they manage to lift all that stone and wood up to such a great height?' In Fred Dibnah's Buildings of Britain we get Fred Dibnah's own distinctive answer to this question, as he takes us to some of the country's most famous and historic monuments, castles, cathedrals, abbeys, great houses and engineering marvels. One of Fred's great passions was architecture, engineering and the craft skills of builders, carpenters,stonemasons and structural engineers. His interest was not in architectural theory but in the practicalities of how things were built and with the help of his beautifully executed drawings he was very good at giving simple, vivid explanations of how things like great medieval castles and abbeys were built at a time when technology was limited and there were no power tools, no concrete, no steel, no engines and no heavy machinery. From Peterborough Cathedral to St Paul's and from the Humber Bridge to the Blackpool Tower, the book will take us on a tour of Britain's great historic buildings with a very unique and charismatic guide - Fred Dibnah.