ICI Billingham – Brims Civil Engineers -These photographs are courtesy of Mrs J Rowell, they belonged to her late father who worked for Brims Civil Engineers for many years. Unfortunately there is no other information available about them. 
Picture Stockton Archive
A Pictorial History of Stockton-on-Tees
This picture must show the two main pipebridges being built as there are no pipes visible on the bridges. The comment by Cliff Thornton about a pile driving accident seems to be the likely source of the photo’s. ICI Billingham was built on what was once very wet land and in my time there we had problems with underground water washing away the soil under the founds. WG2 building comes to mind when the crane driver said he had trouble stopping his crane at the South end of the building and had hit the buffers hard a couple of times. He was correct, we found the main columns at the South end had sunk, this caused a major problem as the plant was kept working whilst the Columns were first supported the founds dug out and a huge hole discovered. This had to be filled, new founds put in and the building gradually jacked back to its correct position. It was a long and slow procedure but production never stopped. The 100,000 ton Silo also sank, it was meant to float on the soft land it was built on, when full it would go down and empty come back up. We only discovered it had not come up when the end wall built as a fixed item started to buckle, a rapid fix got it all freed up again with the Silo slightly lower than it once had been. ICI was bombed on several occasions but in wartime this was never reported, Lord Haw Haw told us that ICI had been destroyed more than once but then he put some truth into a massive propaganda lie as he would do. The main damage was caused when bombs hit the Fertiliser plant and Nitric acid, the coal plant and Casebourns were also hit, there are pictures somewhere of the small conveyor bridge that was wrecked at the Fertiliser plant. Other bombs dropped on the tank farm causing some damage and many bombs dropped on open land within ICI boundaries causing little damage. Those pipe bridges we see, became so covered with pipework the steel work was almost invisible yet they carried the weight for all those years after first being constructed. Having walked them many times it is a wonder the constant vibration from high pressure pipes did not bring them down but we only ever had one failure. A section of bridge near the Boiler plant suddenly dropped and was only being held up by the pipework. Another rapid support job followed by two cranes lifting it back then brackets being welded to the uprights sorted that one, they really did build things to last back then.
I was told that the Billingham site was hit by only 2 or 3 bombs which landed on a pipebridge at the east end of Nitrates avenue doing very little damage as this area was almost completely devoid of important palnt. The bridge was not replaced the few pipes involved being brought down to ground level for a short distance. I well remember seeing this gap in the bridge
Looks like a pile driving rig that was made of wood ! The wooden tower couldn`t take the strain and broke away from the platform on which sat the steam engine. But then I`m no engineer…..