I grew up in Bedford, moved away a couple of years ago and didn't know these had come down. Lots of memories of these chimneys signalling the beginning or end of a journey. I remember walking around Stewart by as a kid and the place always had an orange film everywhere. Sad to see but glad this film exists. For people asking why we aren't using them, the brickworks shut down in 2008, failed to meet emissions standards. Part of the area is now park, the main site will be developed for business and more housing. Thanks for filming and posting this
Curbing production without curbing consumption does nothing for the environment. It just destroys our jobs and empowers governments who don't mind the emissions.
Thanks for this, very sad to see these fabulous monuments to the skill and dedication men showed in their construction, men who got up each day to go to work to build these, probably months or years of hard dangerous toil and then they are literally gone in a few seconds.
I'm a caver and I can handle "depths" just fine, with single rope technique for descent and ascent of pits, deep underground, in the dark. I feel confident doing it. Watching what Fred Dibnah did gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Haha, he would agree this is the best method for these chimneys though as it's not in a built up area. His method of demo'ing brick by brick over months is only needed when they can't be allowed to collapse. Even in his they they would use explosives to demolish if they could.
@@Mpayne1472There's more to the story; workers cottage and village with all amenities etc. Thats what I'm searching for; a proper in depth documentary.
I love how though the walls still stand, a forest has been growing inside of what was once the brick factory. I hope a lot of the bricks can be recovered and reused, which is common in many places.
the Most expensives are those we're someone has to Dive for...🙈... this demolition was Not with Intention to Reuse whole bricks... mir for Recycling Material for Road construction
Remember passing these on the way to see relatives near Bedford. Back then the brickworks were still working and you could see, from the train, the working conveyor belts taking clay to the works from the pits. The pits are just lakes now and yet another industry closed.
The chimneys were leaning and it was a public danger, In the past, efforts were made to attempt to straighten and preserve them but unfortunately it was too dangerous so they were blown up.
I wonder if the bricks are in good enough shape to be recycled into housing (this was done in Louisville: many of the bricks used to construct houses in 1890 came from the demolition of the Southern Exposition of 1883.)
I've been to the site and seen the bricks, they are larger than regular bricks and also they aren't perfectly square. The bricks also might contain asbestos
indeed it was. It was part of the London Brick Company and used Lower Oxford Clay which has a high carbon composition which allowed for lower kiln temperatures. At its peak, it was the most productive brick manufactory in the world and produced 20% of all bricks in Britain
What great advertising for Fenland Aerial Photography, DSR Demolition, and Stewartby Brickworks. I really liked the chimneys doing belly flops in the pond. The last one splashing was very spectacular. Never fails to amaze me when tall chimneys are imploded. Laws of Physics take over. As the chimney is falling in a long arc, it is accelerating down towards ground, but also accelerating laterally due to centripetal force. Chimneys almost always pull apart before hitting ground. The chimneys are designed to support vertical load, not horizontal lateral tension due to centripetal motion.
They did. All bricks on site were marked LBC standing for "London Brick Company", Some of the buildings have different brand bricks, probably the original buildings before the production line was up.
Not really. Most houses nowadays are being made of timber frames and plasterboard with wood siding on the outside walls. Yet, mortgage companies / banks will not mortgage a building unless it is of bricks and mortar.
Great aerial footage, the right angle and approach for this event. Well done! Please develop the technique starting at 1:53, it speeds up the building process tremendously ;-)
Any 4k drone video of demolition gets my sub, well done! I would gladly fly one of my 5" drones and give you the video card just for the opportunity to fly a demo project.
I would prefer silence to the ultra dramatic, intense music. I had to turn it down. sorry. good footage of the demolition but I enjoy the sound of the explosions and demo work and not the rest of the fluff.
I lived in a village near these & saw them on a daily basis as a kid, my grandad worked there too. The day the last ones were felled I had to film them too from high up at houghton house, ( not of your quality tho) I filmed them & put it on RUclips getting s decent response. A sad day but necessary I suppose.
Wow, what an impressive yet at the same time sad sight. Last time I saw them was when I was working for a few months on the new upgraded A421 link road between Bedford and the M1. Some landfill activity was still going on, though by that time it was a hill, not a hole in the ground they were tipping on.
It’s not a river, it’s a pond. At a guess they will be leveling the site, including the pond, partially using the old buildings as fill so they just pushed the bricks in the right direction.
There used to be 30+ of those chimneys. After WWII a heck of a lot of Italians came to Bedford to work in those brickyards. The Italians were later replaced by a vast number of Asians I believe mainly from Pakistan.
This reminds me of the old Blaster Bates story about 'Big Mick from Connemara' who, having watched him drop a chimney stack in this manner, asked if he had ever considered 'what a grand asset ye might be to a political organisation?' Seems a bit daft though, to destroy these and then erect a replica!
I hate seeing tall chimneys like these destroyed, they have such a tiny footprint for such majestically tall structures that it always makes me wonder why developers don't just demolish everything else on the site but leave the chimneys intact and build whatever they are building around them, leaving them as landmarks and monuments to the past.
Couldn't it be saved and repurposed in some way? This is our heritage we are destroying. It should be considered just as important as a stately home in the country.
Seems like it didn’t go as planned- Did they really mean for that one stack to go into the pond? For those questioning why demo and then build a replica stack: what makes you think the replica will be the same height? For the preservationists out there, sorry, but this is a rather large property to leave fallow to remind everyone they made bricks. Preservation is not free, it takes money to preserve and make historical structures into tourist attractions - and I dare say a brickworks would make for a dull and expensive tourist attraction that few would visit.
Correct. You usually find preservationists say "They should do this" or "They should do that".... Who "They" are or who is going to pay is conveniently omitted!! Private corporations are not charities, and Gov schemes have to give value to the taxpayers. It's not too easy to preserve this, that, and everything, just because we can!
I can understand the sentiment, or even nostalga, to preserve it. However lets face it, they were stinky, filthy, air poluting places to visit when they were working, Even worse to actually work there. Cant imagine the amount of filthy smoke, grime and dust workers had to endure. But then I am not a fan of old cars either for similar reasons. Even changing my mind on steam locomotives which I used to love. I think the canals are worth preserving though!☺
@@w1swh1 Rail preservation has gone mad. 30, 40, 50, or 60 examples of some mundane classes of steam and diesels are "preserved", many of them rusting away on heritage line sidings. What's worse is enthusiasts celebrate the smoke and the clag... we have to be more responsible and set an example in these days of increasing global warming and climate change. Burning coal in outdated machines is not good.
@@PreservationEnthusiast The coal fueled steam locomotives that remain in working order are few, and rarely run - I have no issue with the enthusiast for bringing them out occasionally.
@@w1swh1 Classic cars are seldom driven. Soon enough petrol powered cars will be banned from several major cities - the only way they will be able to enter is on a trailer.
Well done video- but PLEASE heed the comments : your viewers DO NOT want to listen to a music soundtrack, they would much rather hear the sounds of the demolition, or even the drone, than music!
"Implosion" means to blow or collapse in but in this case, it was explosions because the walls of the chimney's were blown outwards so the right term is explosion.
In my heart I was hoping they would leave the last one standing.But alas progress for yet another housing project I guess.Theres no room left in the world for ludites like me.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I grew up in Bedford, moved away a couple of years ago and didn't know these had come down. Lots of memories of these chimneys signalling the beginning or end of a journey. I remember walking around Stewart by as a kid and the place always had an orange film everywhere. Sad to see but glad this film exists.
For people asking why we aren't using them, the brickworks shut down in 2008, failed to meet emissions standards. Part of the area is now park, the main site will be developed for business and more housing. Thanks for filming and posting this
I wonder if emission standards are met wherever we exported the manufacture?
emission standards = cultural Marxism... thats the Globalists! Their baby (China) does what it does ! ps, the religion of scientism makes all this OK!
Curbing production without curbing consumption does nothing for the environment.
It just destroys our jobs and empowers governments who don't mind the emissions.
@@cnocspeireagno they are not especially in certain parts of Europe
Thanks for this, very sad to see these fabulous monuments to the skill and dedication men showed in their construction, men who got up each day to go to work to build these, probably months or years of hard dangerous toil and then they are literally gone in a few seconds.
Fred would've made those chimneys come straight down.
Did ya like that.
Yup, woulda built a fire in a hole in the base and brought the whole thing down. None of this explodey stuff.
I'm a caver and I can handle "depths" just fine, with single rope technique for descent and ascent of pits, deep underground, in the dark. I feel confident doing it. Watching what Fred Dibnah did gives me the heebie-jeebies.
That was my first thought.
@@Stevie-J Fred Dibnah was a hard drinking GOD.
I’m sitting at brickworks right now and watching this video is so resourceful and informative, I have learnt a lot today. Thanks for this x
Fred Dibnah would be justifiably unimpressed with this.
They used his technique of taking away bricks at the base. They just blew the props away
Haha, he would agree this is the best method for these chimneys though as it's not in a built up area. His method of demo'ing brick by brick over months is only needed when they can't be allowed to collapse. Even in his they they would use explosives to demolish if they could.
Fred would have done it with style and none would have gone In the waterway. 👍🇦🇺
@@markwatters6875 Yes that one went a bit askew.
Fred was a legend!! 😳😳
I always feel sad when old buildings get demolished.
Great footage. But really sad to see the iconic buildings vanishing.
I'm surprised that they were permitted to allow debris in the ponds.
poor fishies.
Would like a version with a bit of historical/technical narration & clean audio of blasts/falls, minus dramatic soundtrack.
I can definitely do without that ghey music.
It produced bricks. The end
@@Mpayne1472There's more to the story; workers cottage and village with all amenities etc. Thats what I'm searching for; a proper in depth documentary.
Thank you very much for the upload its a pity they werent listed.
they were Grade II listed in 2008 (when the site closed)
Very nice work! Thank you for posting. Cheers from New Braunfels, Texas.
did they get the debris out of the water?
A useful record of change - impressive rainbow in the spray from the "final splashdown". Thank you for creating and posting. Mike
I love how though the walls still stand, a forest has been growing inside of what was once the brick factory. I hope a lot of the bricks can be recovered and reused, which is common in many places.
the Most expensives are those we're someone has to Dive for...🙈...
this demolition was Not with Intention to Reuse whole bricks... mir for Recycling Material for Road construction
What one man has built, another can always break.
The builder had more craftsmanship.
Remember passing these on the way to see relatives near Bedford. Back then the brickworks were still working and you could see, from the train, the working conveyor belts taking clay to the works from the pits. The pits are just lakes now and yet another industry closed.
So much work to build. Gone in no time.
all the hard work and history that has been spent on this! I just don't understand why people would destroy a special part of history. :/
The chimneys were leaning and it was a public danger, In the past, efforts were made to attempt to straighten and preserve them but unfortunately it was too dangerous so they were blown up.
More demolition of British history, such a shame.
I think that’s one of the best demolition films I’ve seen. The music the editing all first class IMHO.
I was particularly impressed that they saved the labelled tower for last. Nice touch.
Rather sad they have gone, having seen them twice a day for seven years on my train journey to and from school in Bedford.
Onkyo the First one was exact. the others were so bad falling into water, bank and brushwood. so really bad to Pick Up and clean area...
I wonder if the bricks are in good enough shape to be recycled into housing (this was done in Louisville: many of the bricks used to construct houses in 1890 came from the demolition of the Southern Exposition of 1883.)
but definitiveky Not buy exploding a brick chimney and let it Fall on hard surface and into water...wis HH Lot of fun at recovering
I've been to the site and seen the bricks, they are larger than regular bricks and also they aren't perfectly square. The bricks also might contain asbestos
Was this one of the places where the oil in the clay provided most of the energy needed to fire the bricks?
It ran on coal, there used to be tracks leading into the building to deliver coal and product to be turned into bricks
indeed it was. It was part of the London Brick Company and used Lower Oxford Clay which has a high carbon composition which allowed for lower kiln temperatures. At its peak, it was the most productive brick manufactory in the world and produced 20% of all bricks in Britain
What great advertising for Fenland Aerial Photography, DSR Demolition, and Stewartby Brickworks. I really liked the chimneys doing belly flops in the pond. The last one splashing was very spectacular. Never fails to amaze me when tall chimneys are imploded. Laws of Physics take over. As the chimney is falling in a long arc, it is accelerating down towards ground, but also accelerating laterally due to centripetal force. Chimneys almost always pull apart before hitting ground. The chimneys are designed to support vertical load, not horizontal lateral tension due to centripetal motion.
any idea what it will be converted into?
Housing, business park and an erection of a replica chimney, I am told!
@@fenlandap i assumed a tesco or warehouses considering its location but more housing is always good i guess.
@@fenlandap. They couldn't keep one of the old chimneys? I guess it's about location.
More housing is never good. Send the fuckers back home. Especially at the expense of some cool old structures….
@@Thewatcherinthering336 So British people don't need new houses? Where will you send them?
And who is going to retrieve the bricks from the water ?
Sad to see go was something I’d always see as a child leaving Bedford
Such a sad sight I used to like ripping freestyle fpv at the place
Great to see but it's a shame you mis-judged the distance for capturing the top of the chimney crashing into the lake.
I wonder if they made the bricks used in the construction of the stacks.
They did. All bricks on site were marked LBC standing for "London Brick Company", Some of the buildings have different brand bricks, probably the original buildings before the production line was up.
Trying to work out if those were birds which flew past the last one or drones?
Love the video and the soundtrack too!! 😊👍
The end of an era, sad to see. Did the clay run out?
Too bad one of the stacks could have saved but I guess they were deemed unsafe.
Dont we still need bricks?
Not really. Most houses nowadays are being made of timber frames and plasterboard with wood siding on the outside walls. Yet, mortgage companies / banks will not mortgage a building unless it is of bricks and mortar.
@@ianallen2 That really makes no sense.
Great aerial footage, the right angle and approach for this event. Well done!
Please develop the technique starting at 1:53, it speeds up the building process tremendously ;-)
Great video! Had to mute the horrendous background noise. AVOID epidemic sound LIKE THE PLAGUE.
Any 4k drone video of demolition gets my sub, well done! I would gladly fly one of my 5" drones and give you the video card just for the opportunity to fly a demo project.
Of what use would a chimney that big be to people in 1898???
That was one gigantic splash!
Isn't demolishing it a bad thing all the hard work by the workers for there master peace to be blown up
The men who built those chimneys are all long dead. I don't think they care any more!
Brilliant editing!
What's with the music?????????????????????????? Totally unnecessary.
I would prefer silence to the ultra dramatic, intense music. I had to turn it down. sorry. good footage of the demolition but I enjoy the sound of the explosions and demo work and not the rest of the fluff.
I lived in a village near these & saw them on a daily basis as a kid, my grandad worked there too. The day the last ones were felled I had to film them too from high up at houghton house, ( not of your quality tho) I filmed them & put it on RUclips getting s decent response. A sad day but necessary I suppose.
What a cool place.... dang that really sucks... wish I could have seen that In the day.
Is there a GOOD reason you fucked up capturing the splashes?
I would think with the bricks falling into the water would add a Hugh amount of money to the cleanup cost!
Wow, what an impressive yet at the same time sad sight.
Last time I saw them was when I was working for a few months on the new upgraded A421 link road between Bedford and the M1. Some landfill activity was still going on, though by that time it was a hill, not a hole in the ground they were tipping on.
How sad back drop to my child good a lot of my family worked there 😣
Seems stupid to me to make them fall into the river. Has to be a harder cleanup than had they downed them on all that available land.
Probably didn't clean it up. At Keystone dam there's a asphalt parking lot under water. Someone said a few buildings was under water too.
It’s not a river, it’s a pond. At a guess they will be leveling the site, including the pond, partially using the old buildings as fill so they just pushed the bricks in the right direction.
See all that brick structure around the chimneys? Its all going to fill in the pond that shouldn't be there anyway.
Love how the stacks fell into the duck pond, certainly would have stirred up the fish!
There used to be 30+ of those chimneys. After WWII a heck of a lot of Italians came to Bedford to work in those brickyards. The Italians were later replaced by a vast number of Asians I believe mainly from Pakistan.
Stewartby used to have over 150+ chimneys in its peak.
@@RetroScythe According to Google there were 162 chimneys at the peak but that was well before my time in Bedford
This reminds me of the old Blaster Bates story about 'Big Mick from Connemara' who, having watched him drop a chimney stack in this manner, asked if he had ever considered 'what a grand asset ye might be to a political organisation?'
Seems a bit daft though, to destroy these and then erect a replica!
More of our heritage gone.
That splash was epic
The old question what came first.. the brick or the brick factory 😂
I hate seeing tall chimneys like these destroyed, they have such a tiny footprint for such majestically tall structures that it always makes me wonder why developers don't just demolish everything else on the site but leave the chimneys intact and build whatever they are building around them, leaving them as landmarks and monuments to the past.
I still look for them when I drive down the Marston road .
Don't forget Fred Dibnah, he took down many smokestacks in England on RUclips . He climbed some and took them down brick by brick
Couldn't it be saved and repurposed in some way? This is our heritage we are destroying. It should be considered just as important as a stately home in the country.
Pity about the soundtrack....
Seems like it didn’t go as planned- Did they really mean for that one stack to go into the pond? For those questioning why demo and then build a replica stack: what makes you think the replica will be the same height? For the preservationists out there, sorry, but this is a rather large property to leave fallow to remind everyone they made bricks. Preservation is not free, it takes money to preserve and make historical structures into tourist attractions - and I dare say a brickworks would make for a dull and expensive tourist attraction that few would visit.
Correct. You usually find preservationists say "They should do this" or "They should do that".... Who "They" are or who is going to pay is conveniently omitted!!
Private corporations are not charities, and Gov schemes have to give value to the taxpayers. It's not too easy to preserve this, that, and everything, just because we can!
I can understand the sentiment, or even nostalga, to preserve it. However lets face it, they were stinky, filthy, air poluting places to visit when they were working, Even worse to actually work there. Cant imagine the amount of filthy smoke, grime and dust workers had to endure. But then I am not a fan of old cars either for similar reasons. Even changing my mind on steam locomotives which I used to love. I think the canals are worth preserving though!☺
@@w1swh1 Rail preservation has gone mad. 30, 40, 50, or 60 examples of some mundane classes of steam and diesels are "preserved", many of them rusting away on heritage line sidings.
What's worse is enthusiasts celebrate the smoke and the clag... we have to be more responsible and set an example in these days of increasing global warming and climate change. Burning coal in outdated machines is not good.
@@PreservationEnthusiast The coal fueled steam locomotives that remain in working order are few, and rarely run - I have no issue with the enthusiast for bringing them out occasionally.
@@w1swh1 Classic cars are seldom driven. Soon enough petrol powered cars will be banned from several major cities - the only way they will be able to enter is on a trailer.
Fish: WTF was that?
gone- like my chilhood and all that cane before us. a 'tears in the rain' moment
Bloody Awesome!
Good morning to all from SE Louisiana 28 Nov 21.
What was the purpose of these tall chimneys?
It became the scene in the cemetery from The Good The Bad And The Ugly at about 2:00, lol...
Wow wie schnell sich so ein Schornstein in nichts auflöst wirklich sehr beeindruckend 👍👍
It made a pleasant change not have camera angle change midway.
that splash at the end 😃😃😃😃
could have done without the music
good demolition........garbage sountrack
Well done video- but PLEASE heed the comments : your viewers DO NOT want to listen to a music soundtrack, they would much rather hear the sounds of the demolition, or even the drone, than music!
Excellent footage - but yeah... Dump that sh/t in the water, I'm sure there's nothing toxic og otherwise environmentally harmful in old chimneys.
Too theatrical. Just show the implosions and the aftermath.
"Implosion" means to blow or collapse in but in this case, it was explosions because the walls of the chimney's were blown outwards so the right term is explosion.
Those chimneys were so tall one of them landed in the Sea.
i was at the college park jeez its was so close
In my heart I was hoping they would leave the last one standing.But alas progress for yet another housing project I guess.Theres no room left in the world for ludites like me.
"Packed nitroglycerin".
Did I in fact then see a rifle round going into one of those bases right before the explosion?
That will be the det cord 😊
No fish were harmed during the demolition ! 😎👍
What a shame! three ancient Hoffmann ovens whose art will be lost........
Falling like the UK post-brexit economy.
But, the Brits will rise again, the chimneys won't...
To me i looks like a cg simulation
No Fred Dibnah where they...........
It seems to me, none of that debris should have ended up in the water. But HEY - not my circus, not my monkeys!
You scared the bejesus out of those fish 🐠
Surely they should have come down at 90 Deg to where they actually fell?!
Sure about that?
@@troo_story Actually I just noticed that one of them does, so yes absolutely.
No no no that is not how Fred would do it.
Whares Fred dibnah when you need him 👍
Yet they couldn't do just 1 like Dibnah would... Fail.
Would have rather seen Fred do them.....
Yep Fred would have done them with a box of matches in one hand and a pint in the other
Wonder if old fred went up that one lol
Simple.... spacious......efficient.....~ coconut tree.....
This is Stewardby. Not Helm's Deep! 🥴
F - it, just dump them in the water.
The government will need this brickworks as they are going to build 1000’s of new houses, I suppose they intend using cardboard🤔
I wish they'd of backed out a bit so we could of watched each one fully. Seems like they all zoom in too deep.