Fred Dibnah’s Chimney Drops by Alan McEwen. 200 pages A4. Published October 2008. The demise of the cotton industry was excellent at first for the young Fred Dibnah, whose ambition and most fervent desire was to become established as a steeplejack. The numerous mill and other industrial chimneys, scattered all over Bolton and the other Lancashire cotton towns, would from now on require to be demolished. But to just place an explosive charge in the chimney’s base and blow them down did not appeal to Fred, who preferred a more traditional way of felling these chimneys. Fred Dibnah’s procedure for carrying out a chimney felling was the result of a well considered demolition plan, based on traditional Victorian practice known in steeplejacking parlance as ‘gobbing out and pit-propping’. Fred termed it as ‘the science of back’ards construction’. This book documents his rise to fame as an expert chimney feller.