Brick By Brick: Rebuilding Our Past

In this episode Dan and Charlie follow the reconstruction of one of Britain’s earliest aviation buildings: Claude Graham-White’s Watch Tower. Graham-White was an heroic pioneer of early aviation and his watch tower was the nerve centre of the vast aircraft factory he built to supply warplanes for World War One.

This episode follows the construction of a fully working coal-fired Edwardian fish and chip shop at Beamish Museum. Charlie helps with the refurbishment of one of the world’s oldest surviving frying ranges, and gets a horse-drawn fish and chip cart back on the road. Dan discovers the surprising origins of our national dish and explores its rise from squalid back-street outlets to grand fish and chip palaces.

A mysterious medieval building on the quayside at Haverfordwest was dismantled 30 years ago by a team of young apprentices. Charlie helps those same men reconstruct the seemingly fortified vaulted house at the Welsh National History Museum. Dan sets out to discover what the building actually was, and uncovers stories of wealthy merchants, pirates and the English invasion of South Wales.