Great British Railway Journeys (2010) s04e08 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 halfway point of my journey from Portsmouth to Grimsby, and today I'm going to linger in one of Britain's greatest ports, London.
Our capital, my home city.
On today's journey, I'll learn how volunteer Victorian fire fighters Liked a tipple To encourage people to help pump the fire engine, insurance brigades would take kegs of beer to a fire, or they would take beer tokens with them.
I'll discover how even 19th-century sewage pumps were a celebration of design Open this valve here.
and I'll put In a shift at the oldest fish market In Britain.
Thank you, Michael.
Let's get them boxed up.
Man wants his fish today, not the weekend.
Using my "Bradshaw's Guide", I began this journey on the Hampshire coast, and have travelled up through Surrey to London.
I will then push northeast to Cambridgeshire, alighting, finally, In Grimsby on the Humber Estuary.
The third leg of my journey starts In Victoria, heads east to Southwark, on to Canary Wharf and, finally, downstream to Abbey Wood.
On previous railway journeys to London, I've noted Bradshaw's view, which reflected the Victorian outlook on our capital.
"London is the capital of the civilised world, the largest mass of human life, of arts, science, wealth, power and architecture that exists.
" "Our gigantic metropolis is enabled by the Thames to carry on a water communication with every part of the globe.
" And on this trip, I intend to focus on Old Father Thames.
Today's leg of my journey starts at Victoria Station, which began In 1862 as two distinct sites, one serving Kent and the other Sussex.
In the early 1900s, the brick and stone structures were beautifully rebuilt, and In the 1920s, It became the single station that we know today.
Victoria is my local station, but I shed a tear every time I come here because the Edwardian architecture has become so cluttered with illuminated advertising hoardings and shopping centres, and what they need to do is sweep the lot away and reveal the beauty of the original brick and stone.
Leaving the station behind, I'm taking a short stroll to the Thames to visit one of the most Imposing Victorian buildings on the riverbank, Tate Britain, a gallery containing the world's greatest collection of British art, Including works by Blake, Constable, Gainsborough, Stubbs and Turner.
But according to my "Bradshaw's", this site at Millbank was once for those who'd had brushes with the law.
Archivist Krzysztof Cleszkowski should know more.
- Hello, Krzysztof.
- Hello, Michael.
- Very pleased to meet you.
- It's lovely to be back.
My Bradshaw's Guide refers to a penitentiary being on this site.
Do you know anything about that? Yes, it was variously called Millbank Prison and Millbank Penitentiary.
It was a prison for convicts who were being sent to Australia.
And what brought about a gallery on this site? Well, there was no gallery of British art in the way that there was, for example, in Paris.
It was only when Henry Tate, in 1889, offered his collection of contemporary British art to the nation that the idea started to become a reality.
- Who was Henry Tate? - He was born in Lancashire, he made his fortune, first of all, in the grocery business, then in sugar refining.
This is the Tate that later became Tate and Lyle? Yes, he was the most important sugar refiner, and he introduced the sugar cube to this country.
This is a volume of correspondence relating to the opening of the gallery.
Here is a letter from the Queen's secretary, Arthur Bigge, thanking Henry Tate for the invitation and for an album, in which all the works in the Tate collection were reproduced.
They're wonderful documents.
Henry Tate offered his £75,000 collection to the nation, but the press snobbishly complained that a mere sugar boiler should Impose his taste.
So Tate spent £80,000 on building his own gallery, which contained many works by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, an art movement founded In 1848 by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais.
To create work that explored social, moral and political Issues In a way that was new and often shocking, the brotherhood took characters from literature and history and paid homage to the perfect realism of their hero Raphael by painting In the open air, directly from nature, and not In a studio from sketches.
Curator Alison Smith believes that their art relied on train travel.
Well, now you're bringing me towards a very famous picture, Millais's Ophelia, and you tell me that this has something to do with the railways? That's right.
This is because the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed at exactly the time when the railway network was developing in and around London.
He worked on this for about five, six months, about July to November 1851.
This was a place called Cuddington, near Malden.
It's near Yewell in Surrey, and so he would have travelled to Yewell from either London Bridge or Waterloo.
It's disillusioning that it was painted near the suburban railway stations, of course, of the mid 19th century.
It wasn't exactly near the suburban railway stations.
He opted to stay in a rambling farmhouse called Worcester Park Farm.
And from that, each day, he would walk about four miles to the site and he, in fact, encountered lots of problems when he painted this.
He was once arrested for trespassing.
He was attacked by sheep, a bull.
But it was fundamentally important to him to paint nature in nature, not to do it from sketches back in the studio? Yes, this is the key point, that this was painted en plein air, in nature.
Are there other examples here of Pre-Raphaelites who were using the train to get to nature? We could look at Hunt, who worked in this area, in Yewell with Millais.
We've got another painting by him produced the following year, which was Strayed Sheep or Our English Coasts, which he painted near Hastings.
What's the importance of the Pre-Raphaelites? The Pre-Raphaelites are probably the first modern art movement in Britain in that they really wanted to break with the past and the fact that British artists had been indebted to European old masters and they actually wanted to paint in a new, radical way which really reflected modernity.
In Bradshaw's day, one of the most efficient ways of navigating London was by river.
He might have taken an elegant paddle steamer.
I'm Impressed by this state-of-the-art catamaran.
I'm now using a Bradshaw's Guide to London dated 1862.
I'm on the boat that takes us from the Tate Britain to the Tate Modern galleries.
My Bradshaw's says, "For the sake of variety, we shall proceed to the journey by water, which of a fine day is not only the most agreeable, but furnishing an excellent opportunity of seeing the scenery of the Thames.
" And to me, of course, the finest piece of scenery on the Thames is the Houses of Parliament.
The river's popularity as a transport route may have dwindled In modern times, but even on Its choppiest days, there are some who remained loyal.
Hello.
Are you enjoying your trip on the river? - Certainly am.
- Would you say, as my Bradshaw's says, that seeing London from the river is the best way? A lovely way.
It really is.
There's so much to see, the history's there, the way the city has developed over the years.
It's all there.
Nowadays, we use the river so little.
It's underused, I'm sure.
Yes.
We've also arrived at our destination, so we'd better be careful we don't get left on.
We'd better get off.
Thank you.
Bye.
From Bankside Pier, home of the magnificent Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, I'm heading Inland to Southwark to visit a place that was highly significant for the safety of Victorian Londoners.
My Bradshaw's Guide is very concerned about fire in London.
"Sometimes as many as five or six occur in one night.
" "To guard against the loss of life, the Royal Society for the Preservation of Life from Fire have been most active in establishing stations, where fire escapes with conductors are ready to be called upon the first alarm.
" "No society more richly deserves encouragement.
" It's extraordinary to think that our capital city had no publicly funded fire brigade.
With Its origins dating back to 1828, The Royal Society for the Preservation of Life from Fire placed mobile fire escape ladders on street corners at night.
I'm hoping Jane Rugg, curator of the London Fire Brigade Museum can tell me who was actually fighting fires In London at the time.
- Hello.
- Hello there.
- I'm Michael.
- I'm Jane.
Nice to meet you.
- Good to see you.
- Come on in.
When my Bradshaw's Guides were written at the beginning of the 1860s, what sort of fire provision was there in London? We didn't have a public service until 1866.
So, before that time, you would have had insurance brigades that made up the London Fire Engine Establishment.
So just like house insurance today, you insured your property and then if your house was on fire, the insurance would send their fire brigade and they would come along to put the fire out for you.
Obviously, there wasn't a fair system.
Not everybody could afford to have the fire brigades.
It was not as a public service is now.
The 1666 Great Fire of London, which started In a baker's shop In the aptly named Pudding Lane, destroying over 13,000 homes, Is well remembered In history.
Less well known Is that, almost two centuries later, the 1861 Tooley Street fire was a catalyst to the formation of a publicly funded brigade.
Fire fighters from all over the country attended the blaze, but couldn't cope with an Inferno that started In a warehouse and burned for two weeks.
Five years later, the Metropolitan Fire Brigade was formed.
Chief Officer Captain Sir Eyre Massey Shaw Inherited the Insurance brigade's equipment.
You have wonderful machines here.
What is this one? This is an example of a manual pump inherited by the public service.
The arms open all the way out, and then the other one comes out the other way and you'd have ten people on this side, ten on the other and you pump up and down, working the pistons inside to push the water out.
But you can only pump for five minutes before you're too exhausted and you need to swap with somebody else.
I'm not surprised.
I felt exhausted just standing there.
To encourage people walking past to help pump the fire engine, the insurance brigades would either take kegs of beer with them to a fire, or they would take beer tokens with them, so you can see an example of a beer token.
You would be given it once you'd helped pump, and then you could go to your local public house and exchange it for a drink.
And they did that because, with kegs of beer at a fire, people were more interested in drinking the beer than pumping the fire engine.
Did they have lots of drunken volunteers? They could have done, yes, there was the potential.
Sometimes they would take cash with them to a fire, but in the end, the pumping tokens seemed to work the best.
So, what else can you show me? This is an example of a steam fire engine.
So we moved from the manual pumps to using steam, mainly when we had a public service.
That would be under Captain Shaw? It would, indeed, yeah.
He was the chief officer that really wanted the new technology.
He also introduced a new uniform into the fire brigade.
So, he introduced a woollen tunic, and this is a replica of a tunic worn at the time.
So you can get an idea of how heavy it would've been and what the fire fighters had to wear when they went into an incident.
It is very, very heavy.
I imagine if it was soaked with water, it would be quite impractical.
Yeah.
I mean, the water helped to protect them when it was wet, but they also made sure that it didn't have hems, so it could run off the jacket to try and keep it a bit lighter.
In addition, they also introduced new helmets into the brigade.
So, again, this is a replica, but it gives you an idea of the brass helmets that would have been worn at the time.
Take me to my hose.
I'm keen to find out how things have changed since Massey Shaw's day.
Southwark Is also where the brigade trains new recruits.
Assistant Commissioner Danni Cotton assures me that beer tokens no longer feature In the curriculum.
At what stage of their development are these trainee fire fighters now? About eight weeks now, so they're about halfway through their basic training, which lasts 1 7 weeks.
What's the exercise we're watching now? It's demonstrating their ability to use hoses combined with ladders, so it's a simulation of a fire in a three-storey building.
- Do you remember your training? - Oh, vividly.
It took place here in 1988.
It was quite different.
It involved a lot of marching, a lot of saluting, a lot more shiny shoes and shouting and running.
But it was a lot more basic.
But now the fire fighting role is so much more complicated.
- Why? - Well, technology advances, mainly.
Cars, for instance, were very basic, if you went to cut a car up, you could cut it anywhere.
It didn't matter.
Now cars have got so many different systems in them to protect us, air bags and things, that you need the training for that.
Then you've got things like terrorist threats, chemicals.
You're no longer squirting hoses yourself? Sadly not.
I did that for a number of years.
I point at people and tell them to squirt hoses.
What's the proportion of women in the London Fire Brigade? Still a relatively low number.
We've got nearly 350 women out of nearly 6,000 fire fighters.
There's no reason a woman couldn't fight a fire as well as a man? Absolutely not.
It's the best job in the world.
I would recommend it to anyone.
I've loved every minute of my 24 years.
In an area where old London meets new, I'm heading back towards the river through Borough Market, whose traders have sold food and supplies since the 11th century, to my final destination of the day.
The George Inn also has a long past, which historian Pete Brown has Investigated.
- Pete, hello.
- Hello.
- Great to see you.
- And you.
My Bradshaw's Guide to London says, "The old inns in the Borough with their wide rambling staircases and wooden galleries round the inn yards are pleasant reminiscences of ancient days of coach and wagon traffic.
" Absolutely, yeah I'm amazed to find it so brilliantly preserved here at the George.
It's an amazing survivor from a previous age.
Borough High Street used to be the main thoroughfare into London from the southeast and the continent.
London Bridge, up the road, was the only bridge across the Thames until 1750.
It was a huge bottleneck, everything came here, had to stay here.
So these inns cropped up all down the street, there were 20 at one time.
And this is the last survivor.
It's the railways that killed off places like this.
Anything in the way of that railway line just disappeared, was obliterated.
And when you look at maps of Southwark from before and after, it's like a child with a pen came in and scribbled these lines across it, completely transforming the geography of the place.
How do you account for the unique survival of The George? Partly, it's because the Great North Railway Company bought it, demolished a lot of it and kept some of it for office space, and partly it's because, at that time, the landlady was this lady Agnes Murray, this formidable woman.
She basically appropriated the mythology of all of Southwark's coaching inns and sort of centred it here.
So, on this side, for example, stood The White Hart.
The White Hart played a pivotal role in Dickens's first novel Pickwick Papers.
It's where Mr Pickwick meets Sam Weller.
And Agnes Murray basically said, "Oh, no, that happened here.
" "Dickens said The White Hart, but he meant The George.
" She would show people the bedroom where this meeting supposedly took place and the table where Dickens supposedly sat and built up this mythology around the place.
And does the pub still have a warm hearth and warm beer? It's got a warm hearth and pleasantly cool beer.
Let's go in.
With an early start tomorrow, It's just one for the road.
- Well, Pete, cheers.
- Cheers.
- What a delightful way to end the day.
- Absolutely.
I'm up too early to catch the Jubilee tube line or the Docklands Light Railway to Canary Wharf because to get the full flavour of my next destination, Billingsgate Fish Market, requires a pre-dawn start.
My Bradshaw's Guide says, "Billingsgate, situated chiefly at the back of that cluster of buildings by the Custom House, has been, since the days of William III, the most famous fish market in Europe.
" In Bradshaw's day, the fish used to arrive by train.
Now they come mainly by lorry, and the market has been relocated to Canary Wharf.
But here at five in the morning, it has lost none of its bustle.
And the change of location has made Billingsgate no less famous.
Billingsgate became synonymous with fish when a 1699 Act of Parliament made It "a free and open market for all sorts of fish whatsoever.
" Originally situated on the river adjacent to London Bridge, the market was supplied by boat, but the coming of the railways revolutionised the fishing Industry, and as It satisfied the new demand for affordable fresh product, ports like Grimsby boomed.
Billingsgate customers are still buying the freshest fish possible at a price that suits them.
Excuse me? I see you buying fish this early in the morning.
Are you in the business, or are you buying it for yourself? - No, it's for my personal use.
- Do you do that a lot? Yes, very often.
It's good value.
Come down here at 5am and buy your fish? Absolutely.
Very good value.
Are you looking for anything special in the fish line? I tend to look for sea bream, which is extremely good value.
Salmon, as well.
How do you cook your sea bream? First of all, I prepare the sauce, and then put the sea bream on top, and then cook it for about five, ten minutes, just steam it.
- It sounds absolutely fantastic.
- Beautiful.
Caribbean style.
You enjoy that.
Mouth watering.
Thank you.
Most orders placed here are wholesale.
At busy times, the larger firms can sell up to two tons of fish each morning.
Mark Morris works for the market's longest established family business, and he's offered to show me the basics.
Has your family been in the business long? We're the fourth generation.
We go back to the early 1900s when our great-grandfather founded the business.
We bring our fish in from all over the UK, all over Europe.
We've got pollock and coley there.
And mackerel.
Beautiful mackerel there.
Have a little feel of that.
- Feel the pinch on that.
- Oh, beautiful fish.
And if you turn him upside down, open up his gills, you'll see the lovely, thick, rich red blood colour in there.
That's what we're looking for.
Bright-eyed, nice and firm.
Lovely hake here.
We pick it up by the eyes because, as you see, the teeth are absolutely razor sharp.
We don't want to get our fingers caught in there.
Thumb and forefinger, Michael.
So, thumb in one eye.
Forefinger in the other.
And lift straight up.
There we go, that's a nice safe way of picking up a hake.
So I'm avoiding the sharp teeth, I'm avoiding the sharpness round the gills.
And it's a rather yucky feeling, sticking your fingers in the eyes of a hake.
Having got a handle on his fish, I'm set to work.
Michael, I need two hake, please.
Let's get them boxed up.
Man wants his fish today, not the weekend.
Give me a headless cod now, please.
- Headless cod? - One of those large headless cod.
- 3.
88 of headless cod! - Thank you.
Two salmon fillets as well, please.
No, no, no.
Fillets, Michael.
Michael, the fillets, please, sir.
Fillets, thank you.
Yes, of course, fillets.
I do apologise.
New boy on the firm today.
Oh, it's got to go on the weighing machine first.
- 3.
46 of salmon fillets! - Thank you, Michael.
We'll make a salesman out of you yet, sir.
OK.
Lovely.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, sorry about the delay.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Lovely, Michael.
Great job.
Well done, sir.
Thank you very much.
Oh, dear.
I don't think I could get used to this.
What I could get used to Is travelling on Old Father Thames.
I'm heading east to Abbey Wood, and my route takes me past one of the most famous of all London landmarks.
Bradshaw's London guide says, "Greenwich presents a striking appearance from the river, its hospital forming one of the most prominent attractions of the place.
" I've always loved Greenwich.
Its wonderful architecture, its spacious buildings, its association with one of my heroes, Horatio Nelson.
And now that the Cutty Sark has been restored, it is complete again.
I marvel at the river's wonderful views of London landmarks, old and new, but one should always remember that the river Is a potent force to be reckoned with.
In Bradshaw's day, and indeed, until quite recently, the Thames posed a mighty danger of flooding.
And the erection of the Thames Barrier has much reduced that risk.
In Bradshaw's day, there was another peril from the Thames as well.
The water was filthy.
The final destination on this leg of my journey lies six miles further downstream at Abbey Wood.
The Crossness Pumping Station was opened In 1865 as an essential element of one of the largest engineering projects ever undertaken anywhere In the world.
Author Stephen Haillday should be able to tell me more.
- Stephen, hello.
- Hello.
I've just travelled here on the river and it was very nice, but I believe it was not always that pleasant on the Thames? Indeed.
The sewage of 2.
5 million people was flowing into the river Thames and, of course, the Thames is a tidal river, so it never went away.
Why hadn't that happened before? Because until about 1800, if you wanted to spend a penny, you would go into the basement of your home, you would do what you had to do in a cesspit, which would be emptied at intervals by night soil men, who carted it away and sold it to farmers.
And what happened after 1800? The importation of guano from South America, solidified bird droppings, gave a better form of fertiliser.
But the real killer was the introduction of the water closet.
When you flushed, what you sent round the S bend was a very small quantity of potential fertiliser and a huge volume of water.
So the cesspits filled up ten or 20 times as quickly with liquid, which people didn't want to buy, and which leaked.
And they leaked into surrounding water courses, wells, sources of drinking water, and dysentery, cholera and typhoid started to spread throughout London.
That's the so-called Great Stink? Indeed.
In the summer of 1858, you would not have wanted to be on the river at all.
After the 1853 cholera outbreak had claimed over 10,000 lives and the hot summer of 1858 created the Great Stink, action was finally taken.
As chief engineer to London's Metropolitan Board of Works, Joseph Bazalgette oversaw the building of 82 miles of main sewers under the streets of London, which Intercepted existing sewers and dispatched the capital's human waste out to sea via two steam-powered pumping stations, like Crossness.
It's currently undergoing restoration.
It's absolutely glorious.
It's as highly decorated as the House of Commons.
Yes, for a sewage pumping station, they didn't stint, did they? What a fantastic restoration.
Hello, I'm Michael.
I'm Mike Jones.
So, when was the pumping station restored? Well, we're still restoring it, but I suppose the trust really started around 1988.
It was, in fact, scheduled for demolition for quite a while, and wasn't demolished because the engines are so large.
So it's very fortunate it's still here.
I think people will be amazed, overwhelmed that the Victorians decorated a pumping station like this.
I think it's a reflection of the Victorian pride in what they were doing.
And I believe one of the engines actually works? That's true.
Prince Consort has been in steam since 2003, and if you'd like to, you can start it.
I would love to.
It would be a privilege.
Crossness has four gigantic steam engines each boasting 47-ton beams and 52-ton flywheels.
We blow the whistle before we start the engine.
Give it a long blast.
Open this valve here.
My Bradshaw's Guide is right, the best way to see London is by boat.
From the Tate Gallery past the Houses of Parliament to Billingsgate Fish Market, the Thames was London's highway to the world.
But when, during the Great Stink, it began to carry more sewage than exports, those magnificent Victorians engineered a solution.
On the grand scale, as usual.
On the next leg of my journey, I'll discover how derelict Victorian London Is being rejuvenated to Its former glory This is to be called Granary Square, and will be bigger than Trafalgar Square.
Amazing.
I'll put In a shift at a Cambridgeshire brick factory that helped to rebuild post-war London - Would you like a go? - Always one for a challenge.
and I'll meet a brick-built Immigrant community.