Great British Railway Journeys (2010) s04e03 Episode Script

In 1840, one man transformed travel In the British Isles.
His name was George Bradshaw and his railway guides Inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel, what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later, I'm making a series of journeys across the length and breadth of these Isles to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.
I'm at the midpoint of my journey from Buckinghamshire to Aberystwyth.
And at this point, I'm going to make a small diversion, dragged northwards from my direct route to Wales by that magnet for train enthusiasts, the railway works at Crewe.
On today's journey, I'll explore one of the greatest locomotive factories In railway history Records are sketchy, but they talk about 20,000 people, so the size of it was immense.
discover the dark side of the Industrial Revolution The place was heavily spoilt by pollution, and the stench of the sewage, it was like a large cesspit.
and learn how In Victorian times the potteries brought their products to the masses.
This is incredibly difficult.
This is fiendish.
So far, my journey has brought me from the rural Home Countles Into the heart of the Industrial Midlands.
I'll soon be heading west, through the Severn Valley along Its heritage railway, before venturing Into Wales, and my final stop at Aberystwyth.
Today I'm making a detour to explore Stoke-on-Trent, en route to the fabled railway works of Crewe, finishing up In the Cheshire town of Winsford.
My Bradshaw's contains a gripping description of my first destination, Stoke-on-Trent, at the height of the Industrial Revolution.
"There may be seen the surrounding hills, crowned with towering columns and huge pyramids of chimneys and great rounded furnaces, clustering together like hives.
" Yes, I'm headed for the potteries.
Sounds like my cup of tea.
At their Victorian peak, the six pottery towns, strung along the North Staffordshire railway, were home to 250,000 people, almost all employed In the manufacture.
Those communities have since merged Into modern Stoke-on-Trent, but the story began In Burslem, the so-called "mother town".
I'm exploring with local historian Fred Hughes.
This is the Wedgwood Institute.
As you can see, it rather is a magnificent building.
It's a statement, it's a picture, of what the potteries were in the Victorian times.
This is the image that the people of Burslem wanted to portray to the rest of the world.
We gave birth to pottery, and Josiah Wedgwood, the great Josiah Wedgwood, was born here, and this is a tribute to him.
Pottery began In this area as a cottage Industry, using the abundant local coal and clay.
Then, In the mid 18th century, Josiah Wedgwood, Inspired by the scientific advances of his day, applied Industrial methods for the first time.
Over the years, thousands of bottle kilns dotted the landscape.
Bradshaw's Guide gives me a very powerful description of the potteries towns in the middle 19th century.
Give me an idea of what they looked like and felt like and smelt like.
It was satanic, it was dark, it was dingy, it was dirty, you couldn't see the sky.
Grit got in your eyes all the time.
People were choking virtually to death on the smoke and the pollution that was coming out of these places.
Out of this Inferno came some of the finest porcelain ever made.
By the turn of the 18th century, delicate bone china had been developed, and local red clay was abandoned In favour of finer white clay, Imported from southwest England.
At first, It was brought by sea and canal, but by the mid 19th century, the smoke of the bottle ovens mingled with smoke from railway locomotives.
The railways sped everything up.
First of all, it could carry more ware and more clay in.
It still had to come from Cornwall round the coast to Liverpool.
It sped up that transportation from Liverpool into the potteries.
The rails also exported the finished goods across the country and beyond, helping the Industry to flourish for over a century.
The region remains an Important centre for British ceramics, though It's a far cry from Its Victorian heyday.
Electrification certainly did away with coal and smoke, and, of course, the Clean Air Act.
But I think the most important thing was the big change in the way other nations had come in.
I mean, we'd had our Industrial Revolution, we started the whole thing.
All of a sudden, other nations wanted a piece of the action.
So they followed on where we left off.
- We led it and we lost it.
- That's absolutely right.
Luckily, not every trace of the Victorian trade has disappeared.
Close at hand, the Middleport Pottery has survived virtually unchanged since the 19th century.
I'm taking a tour with company historian Jemma Baskeyfield.
Was this state of the art when it was built in the 19th century? Yeah, people came to visit this factory because it was a very cutting-edge factory.
The most cutting-edge factory you could wish to visit.
Today, we are possibly the most backwards factory you'll ever visit, but, yeah, that's part of the charm, certainly.
A few years ago, the historic buildings here had fallen Into such disrepair that the factory was at risk of closure.
However, In 2011, the Prince of Wales's Regeneration Trust stepped In with ambitious plans to redevelop the site on behalf of the whole community.
So this remarkable snapshot of the Victorian pottery Industry will survive.
So this is the largest collection of the blocks and cases, the master copies of moulds, left in any factory anywhere.
We've kept all of them.
And there's 15,000 plus.
Piled up, well, as high as you can see, and it goes on forever.
Yeah, in all directions.
One of the most extraordinary sights.
Mass production using moulds like these helped Victorian potters to meet unprecedented demand from the new aspirational middle class.
And to supply decorated products on an Industrial scale, they embraced the art of transfer printing.
It's a way that you can affordably, to a high quality, decorate pottery over and over again.
And that's replacing the hand painting process which is what went before.
This Is the only pottery still using the method.
The pattern Is printed on to sheets of tissue paper, before transferring the colour on to the pottery.
These ladies are incredibly skilled.
Traditionally, it takes seven years to learn to do this.
They take the sticky paper and they've got to apply it to the once-fired pottery, what we call biscuit ware.
They apply the print, but they can't peel it off and put it on again because it sticks, so it's first time every time.
The colour is oil-based, so when you wash these items, the tissue paper washes away and you're just left with the print on the surface of the pottery.
- I'm amazed - Yep.
Well, if you'd like to have a go I'll be more amazed.
The transferrers work with amazing speed.
Time to see how I measure up.
Try and get your hand down to the bottom and swing it round this side, like a cone.
Like a cone.
- Oh.
- The scissors are there.
The trick Is to minimise the creases and joins so they won't be detectable.
But I begin to see why It takes you seven years to perfect the art.
- This is incredibly difficult.
- We make it look easy.
This is fiendish.
You've got the hang of it now.
That's it.
Covering the outside Is one thing, but the Inside Is quite another.
Now begins the really difficult bit.
That's it.
Seven years down the line you might be on the production line.
Oh, dear.
I've got a hole.
Well, you can repair it.
And then cut it off when you've pressed it over.
That's it.
Perfect match.
Where's the reject bin? We don't reject anything.
I think I'd better stop distracting the skilled transferrers and continue my tour of Victorian Staffordshire.
The phenomenal success of the potteries here had unforeseen consequences for some, and before I leave Stoke-on-Trent, I'm visiting a place which reveals the drawbacks of rapid Industrial growth.
I've come to Trentham Park which is described in my Bradshaw's as "the Duke of Sutherland's seat on the River Trent of great extent".
"The old seat has been rebuilt by Sir Charles Barry.
" "The Trent is made to spread into a fine lake planted with ornamental timber, the work of Capability Brown, the famous landscape artist.
" Here is the Trent, here is the lake, all beautifully described.
But where is the house? When my guidebook was published, Trentham Park was one of the most fashionable houses In the land, having been remodelled In the 1830s by celebrity architect Sir Charles Barry, the man who built the Houses of Parliament.
To learn what became of this magnificent pile, I'm meeting estate manager Michael Walker.
- Hello, Michael.
- Very nice to meet you.
There are certain disadvantages to using a guidebook 150 years old.
I'm looking for a house and I rather fear it's not here, is that right? That's absolutely right.
The majority of Trentham Hall was demolished in 1911 by the Duke of Sutherland.
What brought that about? The pottery industry was expanding all the time in the 1840s, and so was the local housing.
But there was no provision for proper sanitation.
And the sewage from the houses pretty much ran directly into many of the local brooks and rivers.
And at that time, the River Trent used to feed directly into Capability Brown's mile-long lake, so the place was very heavily spoilt by pollution, both in the air, sometimes it could be, you know, black, and the stench of the sewage.
It was like a large cesspit.
It's quite an interesting antidote because I get very enthusiastic about the Victorian period from my Bradshaw's.
But there was a pretty ghastly downside to it all.
By the turn of the 20th century, the problem had become so bad that the Sutherlands chose to abandon the park.
No buyer was found for the house, so It was demolished for Its building materials.
All that remained of Charles Barry's masterpiece was his remarkable formal garden.
So what we're seeing here, this is Charles Barry, is it? This is Charles Barry.
It's a very grand Italian garden in the neo-classical style And this formality suited the Victorians? I think this was the must-have accessory for the aristocracy at the time.
It was a new trend, a new fashion, and one which was really pioneered in this country at Trentham.
Visiting the park today, It's possible, with a little Imagination, to savour Its Victorian zenith.
The garden was of course designed to be viewed from upstairs, within the grand bedrooms of the house, looking down, and it's only really from above that you get the detail, the formality.
It's tremendous.
How was it that the garden was able to survive? After the house was demolished, Trentham ran as a private business for the local people as a pay for public visitor attraction.
For most of the 20th century, the gardens were the playground of the potteries.
There were dance halls and a bandstand, and a new branch line, opened In 1910, enabled visitors to flock here to enjoy the attractions.
Trentham Park took visitors within five minutes' walk of the front gates of the estate.
That was very important.
During the holiday periods, that train service was very well used indeed.
Sadly, by the end of the 20th century, the gardens themselves had fallen Into decline.
But, In 2004, a major renovation project began.
Barry's Italianate "parterre" was restored, and new areas were landscaped by leading garden designers.
So Bradshaw might be astonished that the house has gone, but he probably would recognise the garden.
I hope he would.
The manicured elegance of Trentham Is stunning, but I'm now taking to the tracks In search of a wilder landscape.
My last stop of the day was a favourite Victorian beauty spot.
As evening approaches, I'm on the train to Kidsgrove.
"Mow Cop," says Bradshaw's, "is a mountain in miniature.
" "From the summit of this hill, 1,091ft high, the finest views imaginable are obtainable in every direction.
" I suppose that depends on the weather, and I'm hoping that my luck will hold.
Built by the North Staffordshire Railway and originally called Harecastle, Kidsgrove Station opened In 1848.
Soon, readers of "Bradshaw's" would alight here to admire the vista from a nearby park.
Guide Des Ball Is showing me the way.
You know, Des, my Bradshaw's has quite a long paragraph about Mow Cop.
And I was thinking, "What is all the fuss about, it's only 1,000ft high," but now I get here, I see.
You've got this 360-degree view.
Amazing.
Seven counties are visible from here, and my guidebook tells me that on a fine day you can see as far as Wales.
First we have Shropshire over there.
Then we have Denbighshire, Welsh mountains there, go all the way to north Wales that way there.
And over to this side we have Derbyshire.
My "Bradshaw's" also points out an artificial ruin which has a good appearance In every point of view.
Built as a folly In the 1750s, by the time my guidebook was published, It was In use as a summerhouse, complete with windows and doors.
These days, romantic as It Is, It's rather windswept, so Des Is leading me to a more hospitable venue.
Here is the pub I mentioned called the Cheshire View, but it used to be called the Railway Inn.
And of course, in the hollow there is the railway and Mow Cop station that used to be.
No longer here, I'm afraid.
An Ideal spot for a thirsty railway traveller to revel In the English landscape that unfolds below.
- It is an amazing view, isn't it? - Wait till the sun sets in a moment.
And to think that you and I can see it without the smoke and pollution of the Victorian era.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
My Midlands railway adventure continues, and my next stop Is almost hallowed ground.
Crewe, says my Bradshaw's, "is a railway town and a first-class depot".
"Nearly 2,000 men are employed.
" "Here are immense rolling mills for the rails and locomotive factories.
" "An engine with its tender is made up of 5,416 separate pieces, and a new one is turned out every Monday morning.
" Any self-respecting Great British railway traveller must visit Crewe.
The works at Crewe were once amongst the foremost In the world, and the town still has a place In every train buff's heart.
- Morning.
- Morning.
Thank you very much.
So I'm going to the very heart of the railways, Crewe.
Crewe? Can you imagine that, in the 1860s, apparently a locomotive and its tender - was made up of 5,416 separate pieces.
- That's amazing, isn't it? - Bet you didn't know that.
- No, I didn't.
I bet you didn't before you read that.
- Have a good day.
- And you.
The story of the Immense works at Crewe began as a meeting point of major railways.
Even with Its elegant 19th-century architecture covered In scaffolding, the station remains a key hub as It was In Victorian days.
Crewe started its railway history as a major junction, and in the next few minutes, there'll be trains leaving from here for Liverpool, for Manchester, for Edinburgh and for south Wales.
In the early 1800s, there was a hamlet of just 360 souls, but the arrival of the railway In 1837 changed that.
In 1877, the borough of Crewe was established, and by 1881, Its population exceeded 24,000, complete with rows of railway workers' cottages.
At the heart was a vast factory, which I'm exploring with general manager Tony Webb.
- Hello, Tony.
- Welcome to Crewe.
The first line to reach Crewe was the Grand Junction Railway, which linked Birmingham with the pioneering Liverpool to Manchester line.
It was soon joined by other routes, and Crewe found Itself at the junction of three of Britain's busiest main lines.
It was the Ideal spot for a railway works on an epic scale.
My Bradshaw's says 2,000 people are working at the site, but I think it got to be much more than that, didn't it? The war years, the records are sketchy, but they talk about 20,000 people, so the size of it was immense.
Is this the full extent of the works? You get some idea of the scale that there's a football ground here, - which is kind of lost in space.
- It is huge.
You're talking about erecting shops and buildings hundreds of metres long.
Obviously it created not only a works but it created a town as well.
How were the people housed? The railway was a very paternalistic organisation.
There would have been railway schooling, railway homes.
It had its own hospital on site.
The accident book is very interesting reading.
Not uncommon for people to lose eyes, fingers and even limbs.
There are some drawings that were created at the works of artificial limbs.
More than 8,250 locomotives were built here, from Victorian steam engines to modern electric trains.
These days, however, the works focus on renovating bogles, the wheel systems that sit beneath carriages.
They start in a pretty filthy condition.
You can imagine running round for half a million miles or more.
At the end of the process, you wouldn't recognise them, and I'm offering a helping hand with the finishing touches.
It all looks now so beautiful, so pristine.
It's ready for another half a million miles.
Just as it comes down now, you just steady it.
Beautiful.
Spot on.
- If you could remove the stand.
- Take that away? - Yeah.
- Whoa! There we go.
- Did I do that? - You did that, yeah.
By building their tracks through Crewe, Victorian railway engineers shaped the town's history.
Today, It remains an important junction, and a magnet for some of Britain's most committed railway enthusiasts like Tom and William Snook.
- Tom and William, hello.
- Good afternoon.
Nice to see you both.
You're a father and son team, is that right? - We are indeed.
- Yes.
Now, I quite like trains, but I'm not a trainspotter.
For those of us who are not in on this, can you explain the intrigue of photographing trains, and taking down numbers and so on? Well, for me it started in 1952.
By the time of eight, I was travelling on my own down into London and seeing all sorts of things, which you can't do these days.
The camaraderie of all the youngsters together and screaming and shouting when something really unusual came in.
It's the enthusiasm to try and see everything, for me.
I want to see everything.
My dad has nearly seen everything.
I'm not that far behind him.
What's that you're clutching there? Well, my son compiled this.
I created this book over three years.
I finished it last year.
It goes from locomotives, passenger trains, testing trains that run around the country for Network Rail.
I thought I'd bring you up a copy, and it's yours to keep and take away.
Oh, my goodness.
I mean, I'm really flattered, but it's not kind of easy reading, is it? - How can I put this? - The page you're on now You wouldn't go to sleep reading this, or, actually, maybe you would.
It's really a historical document, like Bradshaw's, really, in as much as it tells you what is totally on the network at that particular time in the summer of this year.
It's no replacement for my trusty "Bradshaw's Guide", but It's good to know that, for some, the romance of the railways lives on.
It's a class 350.
For me, the best thing about train travel Is the chance to discover the remarkable range of Victorian Industries that were served by the railways.
I'm on my way to Winsford, which Bradshaw's tells me is situated in one of the most important salt districts in the country.
"There are 28 salt works here, some of them being like small towns in extent.
" Now, other towns around here are Middlewich, Northwich and Nantwich.
Which is very interesting because I think wich is the Anglo Saxon for "salt".
Beneath Cheshire's "wich" towns lies an enormous salt deposit, formed from a sea bed 200 million years ago.
Ever since Roman times, the brine that bubbles up In local springs has been evaporated to make salt.
And by the 1600s, rock salt was also being mined In the area.
Then, In Victorian times, a fresh rock salt deposit was discovered In nearby Winsford, and a mine dug to extract It, still In operation today.
I'm heading 180 metres below ground with mine manager Gordon Dunn.
Now, in Victorian times, I guess they didn't go in beautiful lifts like this.
How did they go down? They went down in the same buckets that was used to lift the salt.
It wasn't regarded as unsafe, it was just the only way to do it.
Prospectors looking for coal first discovered the extent of the salt seam.
Using explosives, picks and shovels, they began to carve out vast subterranean rooms, supported by pillars of salt.
I was expecting I would be crawling on hands and knees, but this is like walking into an underground ballroom, it's huge.
Yes, it is very large.
As well as being needed for the Victorian table, the 19th century saw demand for salt rise thanks to the growing chemical Industry, which used It for everything from caustic soda to chlorine.
Between 1844 and 1892, one million tons of salt were mined at Winsford.
An extraordinary feat, given the basic equipment that the miners were using.
You can see the black marks on the roof from the soot from the candles, as that was the only way they were able to light the - Seriously? - Yeah, seriously.
It was all candlelit and we've found evidence of old tallow candles and old small packets of cigarettes, cos they were allowed to smoke underground in those days.
And where we are now is the old two-foot gauge railway line.
And once they'd taken the salt up to the surface, - was it also transported by train? - Yes, it was.
Some was transported by train in special carriages that were timber lined to stop the salts reacting with the steel, and other salt was put into barges, sent to Liverpool, and traded as Liverpool salt, although it was really from Cheshire.
Victorian mining was so efficient that, by the late 1800s, prices had plummeted, and Winsford was forced to close.
But It reopened In the 1920s when a local competitor flooded, and since then has prospered.
Today, the salt mined In Its 142 miles of underground tunnels Is used mostly for gritting the roads.
- And you're still at it.
- We certainly are.
We mine over a million tons a year and we've got enough reserves for up to 100 years.
Despite the mine's resources, a decade ago, It began to diversify In a highly unexpected direction.
The salt In the rock here helps regulate the humidity In the disused tunnels, creating stable conditions which are excellent for storing historic documents.
I'm hunting out archive manager Stuart Selwood.
Stuart? This is bizarre.
Rows and rows of bookshelves in a salt mine.
- Hello.
- Hello.
Why are there all these records in a salt mine? Well, this is the National Archives off-site storage facility.
The repositories in Kew where National Archives is based are filling up, and we needed a safe and secure environment to hold them in.
The National Archive, formerly known as the Public Record Office, was established In the 19th century to Impose Victorian order on Britain's official records.
Nowadays, the collection holds material from the middle ages right up to the present day.
This census was taken In this area at the time of my "Bradshaw's Guide".
Inside, you've got the actual printed and then written record from the night in 1861 when they took the census.
And the first person listed here is a salt maker, George Whitton, and then his wife is Martha Whitton, gives her age, and then their daughter, Maria Whitton.
Quite a thought, though, that those salt workers might have dug these tunnels and now their records are housed here in perpetuity.
Yes, indeed.
I mean, we will be keeping them safe down here for the foreseeable future and beyond, really.
Once again, my 19th-century guidebook has led me to fresh Insights Into Britain's past and present.
From hidden underground archives to potteries untouched by the passage of time, this country Is full of surprises.
Minerals have dominated this leg of my journey.
The salt and coal and clays buried in the ground had been known about throughout history, but they were exploited by the Victorians on an industrial scale, shaping the destinies of Staffordshire and Cheshire.
In the mines, the collieries and the kilns, workers toiled to make Britain prosperous.
They were the salt of the earth.
On the next leg of my journey, I learn how Victorian blacksmithing was not for the faint-hearted It's very hard physical work.
There's no doubt of that.
I'll ride one of Britain's most modern trains And there we go.
A surge of power.
and traverse the remarkable Victoria Bridge.
In its day, it was the longest clear span in the world, and it is, of course, majestic.