Gainsborough to Ely Great British Railway Journeys


Gainsborough to Ely

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For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name.

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At a time when railways were new,

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Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks.

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I'm using a Bradshaw's guide to understand how trains transformed Britain.

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Its landscape, its industry, society and leisure time.

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As I crisscross the country 150 years later,

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it helps me to discover the Britain of today.

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My rail journey from north-western to eastern England has brought me to Lincolnshire,

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where I'll encounter yet another example of 19th-century industrial ingenuity,

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and consider the contribution to English literature made by Britain's

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longest-serving Poet Laureate.

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In Ely in Cambridgeshire,

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I'll be reminded that some of the era's loftiest achievements were

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inspired by Victorian godliness.

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My route is taking me on a diagonal across England towards East Anglia.

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From Blackpool, I took in the mighty northern conurbations,

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developed in the industrial age.

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Leaving Manchester, I cross the Peak District using the route of the

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North Country Continental Rail Service.

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I'll soon traverse the Fens,

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finally to arrive in Essex, gateway to Continental Europe.

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This part of my journey starts in Gainsborough and heads to Lincoln.

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From there, I'll travel south-east to March in Cambridgeshire

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before finishing in the Fenland city of Ely.

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'On this leg, I have my reaction times challenged by a mechanical marvel...'

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This would drive you mad if you did this all day.

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'..get carried away by the cadences of conflict...'

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"Half a league, half a league, half a league onward into the valley of death rode the 600."

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'And I see how today's railway is regenerating its past.'

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We recycled around 46,000 tonnes of steel last year,

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which is actually the equivalent of six Eiffel Towers.

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My first stop of the day will be Gainsborough.

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This is how Bradshaw's presents it - "agreeably situated on the eastern bank of the River Trent.

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"An elegant stone bridge of three elliptical archers forms a great ornament to the town."

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That's Gainsborough in a nutshell.

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But should you judge a town by its packaging?

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In the case of Gainsborough, perhaps you should.

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-TANNOY:

-Next stop is Gainsborough Lea Road.

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Situated on the River Trent, Gainsborough is Britain's most inland port.

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Here a pioneering company invented a process which at the time constituted a breakthrough.

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And has since become an indispensable part of our daily lives.

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Wrapping and packaging.

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The company was founded by William Rose.

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I'm meeting sales director Andrew Mann.

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An impressive sight.

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-Thank you.

-Andrew, I can't imagine a world without packaging.

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What was it like?

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Well, it didn't exist, it was all completely manual.

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It was literally take the sweets out the jar and place it into a bag, and that was it.

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And who was William Rose, who made a difference to that situation?

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He was working in a tobacco shop.

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It was his job to measure out, weigh and pack the tobacco.

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So that was his inspiration to develop an automated machine.

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What, he became fed up with having to do it?

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He became fed up with having to do it, absolutely.

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Did he realise fairly soon that this could be applied to other products?

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He did. He very soon got into packaging things like chocolate bars,

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soap tablets, anything similar.

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Any consumer goods.

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William Rose's invention changed the retail world forever.

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A chance visit by an American businessmen, Richard Harvey Wright,

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to London tobacconist in 1892 gave Rose the chance to sell his machines

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to the United States.

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His business rapidly grew to employ more than 50.

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Did Rose's stick to doing just packaging machinery?

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No. In fact, in wartimes,

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they were there much involved in the military and RAF,

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making turrets for Lancaster bombers, for example.

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That's quite a leap from packaging machinery.

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It is. It is, but they were well ahead of the game in their engineering

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skills in Gainsborough.

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And they turned to William Rose for his expertise.

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Today the company no longer wraps products,

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but it continues to make and service the machines that do.

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You've got a busy shop here.

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We have, yeah. This is the machine shop,

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where we produce all the components.

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Those components get designed in the design office.

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They produce the drawings.

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And in here, we manufacture the components from the raw metal.

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-And all of that then goes into your machines?

-Some of the best packaging machines in the world.

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Some even say that Rose's branded packaging may be how Cadbury's famous chocolates got their name.

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A lovely-looking vintage machine. Looks a bit like a 1950s jukebox.

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It is a bit. It was built in the 1950s by Rose in Gainsborough,

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and it was designed for wrapping sweets.

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Don't tell me it's still in service.

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Still in operation today in a factory in Leeds.

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Well, it looks like a bit of a challenge, but might I give it a go?

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Just press the start button.

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MECHANISM RATTLES

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The machine is moving really fast.

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Much faster than I can do, sliding them in.

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The people who operated this machine didn't miss a one.

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This would drive you mad if you did this all day.

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-Definitely getting better.

-Yeah, you're getting the hang of it.

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Ah! Enough of that, end of scene, it's a wrap.

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Brilliant!

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From Gainsborough, I'm rejoining the Sheffield to Lincoln line,

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and travelling 19 miles south-east to the county town.

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I'm on my way to Lincoln,

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which Bradshaw's tells me is a cathedral town and capital of Lincolnshire.

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The Roman Lindum, from which the present name is derived.

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Thinking about science and engineering,

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it's clear to me that the Victorians applied their reason,

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but they weren't immune to rhyme.

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They lived their lives in prose, but they were moved by verse.

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I'm on the trail of a melancholy poet who brought Queen Victoria

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great comfort during her long years of widowhood.

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-TANNOY:

-We will shortly be arriving at Lincoln Station.

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Lincoln's fortunes have ebbed and flowed.

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During the 13th century, it was the third-largest city in England.

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But by the beginning of the 18th, it was described as a one-street town.

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"I cannot rest from travel.

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"I would drink life to the lees."

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I can empathise with those words from the pen of Lincolnshire's most

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famous native, born in 1809.

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When I was last here, I missed this fine statue of a Lincolnshire man.

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Alfred Lord Tennyson, a great Victorian.

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He is honoured now by standing in the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral in

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perpetuity, although he entered the valley of death back in 1892.

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Today the city is home to the Tennyson Research Centre.

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Grace Timmins is the collections officer.

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Welcome to the Tennyson Research Centre.

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And all this is to do with Tennyson?

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-It is.

-This is really quite a collection.

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It is. It's the most significant collection of Tennyson-related papers in the world.

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Where was he from?

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He was born in Somersby, which is a hamlet in the Wolds.

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He was one of 11 children born in 13 years.

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Do we know a lot about Alfred's childhood?

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Yes. He did have formal education between the ages of seven and 11.

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But it didn't suit him at all, he didn't like it,

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and his father took him out of school to home-educate him.

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So these books over here are the books that really furnished his mind

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and his imagination.

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Over here, there's a book that his father set him as homework.

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It's Virgil's Aeneid,

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and you can see all the work that has gone into translating it.

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But what you can also see at the front is Tennyson's own doodles.

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And this is a picture of his beloved homeland.

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There's little bits of music coming out of it there.

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And there's also, he's done here the address that many of us I think have

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put into books, "Alfred Tennyson, Somersby in Lincolnshire, in England,

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"in Europe, in the world, in the air, in space."

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Isn't that extraordinary? Did he achieve early fame with his poems?

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Some of the poems that he wrote at this period,

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such as The Lady of Shalott,

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remain some of his most popular and most well-known today.

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In 1827, Tennyson had entered Trinity College, Cambridge,

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and became friends with fellow student Arthur Hallam,

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who became engaged to his sister.

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In 1833, Hallam died of a stroke at the age of only 22.

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His big breakthrough was with In Memoriam AHH, to give it its full title,

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which is a collection of poems dealing with the grief that he felt

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at the death of his best friend.

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It took him about 14 years to write.

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And this is in his own hand.

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This is a gem, and you can actually see where he's altered things.

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Absolutely. It's a marvellous object of Victorian culture.

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And with this comes fame and success.

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Absolutely. It becomes the favourite poem of a whole range of people.

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Prince Albert loves it.

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We do actually have a letter from Prince Albert here,

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where he is asking Tennyson to put his name in the front of a later volume.

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"Will you forgive me if I intrude upon your leisure with a request

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"which I have thought for some little time of making?

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"That you'd be good enough to write your name in the accompanying volume of your poems."

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A royal autograph hunter.

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Absolutely, it's funny!

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In 1850, Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate,

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and wrote In Memoriam, recalling Hallam,

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but from which Queen Victoria would draw comfort after the death of Prince Albert.

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After what the Times reported as a "hideous blunder" during the Crimean War,

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Tennyson wrote the Charge of the Light Brigade.

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What does he do while he's Poet Laureate?

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Well, the third thing that he does is write The Charge of the Light Brigade.

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What we've got here is evidence of how difficult he found it

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to get to a final version.

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He has crossed out the "half a league, half a league, half a league onward" verse,

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and put it up to the top.

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He moves it back down again here.

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Isn't that remarkable?

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And then he moves it back up there.

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MICHAEL LAUGHS

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This is absolutely fascinating.

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This is very typical of Tennyson, isn't it?

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This sense of rhythm.

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"Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, into the valley of death rode the 600."

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-I mean, obviously you can feel the horses galloping towards the guns.

-Yes.

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'Tennyson's life spanned every decade of the 19th century,

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'and he bore witness to the birth of the railway.'

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Did he write about trains?

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He uses the train as a metaphor for progress in his poem Locksley Hall,

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but he gets it slightly wrong.

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Let me read it to you.

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"Forward, forward, let us range,

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"let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change."

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Now, he realised he'd got this wrong, that trains don't run in grooves.

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And his son explained it as being the result of his seeing the train,

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the very first train that went from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830.

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And because of the increasing twilight,

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and because of the crowds of people, and because of his own short-sightedness,

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he couldn't see exactly how the train was working.

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And he thought it ran in grooves.

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It strikes me that Tennyson has passed out of fashion a bit.

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What was his popularity like during his lifetime?

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He was incredibly popular in his lifetime.

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He was as popular as Charles Dickens.

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My route now takes me up a street voted Britain's Best Place in 2011.

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It's aptly named Steep Hill.

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I'm skirting the walls of the Norman castle on my way to a refreshing ale

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in the Victoria pub.

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The pub hosts a group of enthusiasts,

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who are keeping Tennyson's legacy alive in Lincoln.

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Good evening. Do I have the pleasure of joining a group of Lincoln poets?

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-Yes.

-Yes.

-And what you call yourself?

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Lincoln Creative Writers.

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Very good. And you meet here in the pub.

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And what do you do apart from drink pints?

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We have a workshop, we do a bit of writing together.

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Have you been inspired by Lincolnshire in the way I think Tennyson was?

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Yeah, definitely. I think, obviously living here and writing contemporary

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stuff, you can't help but be influenced by where you live, so...

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Would you mind giving me a sample, please?

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It's called Peregrines Nest.

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"I live in a city where peregrines nest on angels' wings,

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"where the exhaled breath of a thousand travellers up its hill hangs in the air with its history,

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"seeping into every cobble,

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"flowing into glasses in bars held up by our veteran souls,

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"where men tell tales of older times, of forgotten times,

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"where our city continues to grow,

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"fields of rye and rape make way for houses,

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"where new stories are born and raised and schooled,

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"because this is a city that for a thousand years has never slept,

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"although at times is sleepy,

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"a city that bends a king's knee, a city that changed the world.

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"This is my city.

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"This is our city.

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"This is a city where peregrines nest on angels' wings."

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I found that very beautiful.

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I particularly sympathise with the exhaled breath of the people struggling

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their way up the hill, which is something that I did this afternoon!

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I'm rejoining the root of the North Country Continental Rail service and

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travelling 60 miles south-east into Cambridgeshire.

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My first stop on this new day will be March.

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Bradshaw's tells me it's a village in the parish of Dodington.

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"Numerous Roman coins and other antiquities have been discovered."

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But my currency is different - industrial archaeology.

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Set amongst Fenland, March boasts the 11th-century St Wendreda's Church,

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about which John Betjeman enthused that it was worth cycling 40 miles

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in a headwind to see.

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In the 1920s and '30s,

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the London and North Eastern Railway built the Whitemoor freight

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marshalling yards.

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They became the largest in Britain, and second largest in Europe.

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I'm meeting Joanna Clarke from Network Rail.

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Well, Joanna, an impressive sight.

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Tell me about it in its heyday.

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Back in the 1920s,

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London and North Eastern Railways created a huge marshalling yard.

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This is where all the trains would have been marshalled,

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a strategic point for the whole of the supply chain out to Anglia and

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the rest of the country. It would have had around 3,000 wagons here.

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Around 25% of the inhabitants from March and the local area would have

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been employed here.

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So it was huge.

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Nowadays with motorways and lorries and so on,

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it's quite hard to understand how strategically important the railways were.

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But I suppose every sort of good and freight went from here.

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It did indeed, yes.

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We would have seen coal, steel,

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all types of materials being taken by rail from March.

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During the war, of course, strategically it was very important,

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and they actually built a decoy site to the south of this site so that

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the German bombers were diverted, so that this place stayed intact

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because of its strategic importance.

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'As increasingly freight switched to the road network in the 1960s,

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'the yards fell into decline.

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'And closed in the 1990s.'

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Part of the old site did get sold off,

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so this is only a small part of what would have been here back in the '20s in the heyday.

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'In 2004, a renaissance began at Whitemoor,

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'as Network Rail reopened part of the old yards as a distribution centre

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'from which to transport maintenance materials across the network.'

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Today, in terms of everything that the railway needs,

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this is the core of its supply chain.

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Whitemoor here is the biggest of three of our depots.

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From here, we will ship everything that we need for the railway, and

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that could be sleepers, concrete sleepers, timber sleepers, rail.

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Any material that we need to upgrade the railway.

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'Seven years later, the once-abandoned Whitemoor yards expanded again.'

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The other part of the site,

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which is the really interesting and exciting part,

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is the major recycling that we do here.

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Since 2011, this has been the National Track Materials Recycling Centre.

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So all of the materials that come back from work sites come back to

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Whitemoor to be sorted, graded and recycled.

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-Well, that's what we need to look at.

-Absolutely.

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'Each year, over 500 miles of used rail,

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'800 switches and crossings and 50,000 tonnes of contaminated ballast

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'are processed at Whitemoor.'

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A remarkable view from here.

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It is, it's fantastic.

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What actually is this tower about?

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So, this is a ballast washer.

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'Ballast is the stone and gravel bed on which the track sits.

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'It helps to drain water and hinder weeds, but becomes soiled.'

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We bring in our hazardous ballast,

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the ballast that is covered in contaminants, oil,

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all of the nasty stuff.

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It comes up on the conveyor belt.

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This acts as a washing machine for the ballast.

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It comes out that side into different-sized aggregate,

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which we can then sell into the construction industry.

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You've got a tremendous site here.

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What else are you able to recycle?

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We recycle all of our sleepers.

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So timber sleepers, we will grade them.

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If we can use them back in the rail network, we will.

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-What about the rails?

-Where possible, if we can re-use the rail,

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we'll re-use it again in the rail network.

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Otherwise, it gets chopped up and it gets sent to the furnace as scrap.

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We recycled around 46,000 tonnes of steel last year,

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which is actually the equivalent of six Eiffel Towers.

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May we see your ballast washing machine in action?

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Yes, follow me!

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'The controls to turn the washer on are below the ballast tower.'

0:20:330:20:36

Here we are. And if you want to just press the start button on the screen.

0:20:360:20:40

Press the green start button.

0:20:400:20:42

Vast quantities of contaminated ballast are cleaned every year with this machine.

0:20:460:20:52

It would otherwise be sent to landfill,

0:20:520:20:55

so thousands of lorry journeys are saved.

0:20:550:20:57

And here we are at the end of the process now, with lovely. clean ballast.

0:21:000:21:03

-I must say, you scrub it up really nicely.

-Thank you!

0:21:030:21:06

The final leg of my journey takes me 13 miles south-east,

0:21:110:21:15

into the heart of the Fens.

0:21:150:21:16

I'm on my way to Ely.

0:21:220:21:24

My guidebook tells me that, "the principal object of interest is its

0:21:240:21:27

"venerable cathedral, founded in 1070.

0:21:270:21:31

"510ft-long, and the Norman nave 270ft-high.

0:21:310:21:37

"Bishop Allcock's perpendicular Chapel, Northwold's tomb, the Lady Chapel,

0:21:370:21:42

"Lantern Tower and Scott's screen should be noticed. "

0:21:420:21:46

Ely is built on a 23-square-mile clay island,

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the highest land in the Fens.

0:22:000:22:02

The Fens were drained in the 17th century,

0:22:020:22:05

but the city had already been named after the area's most popular catch - eels.

0:22:050:22:10

Ely grew up around the magnificent 11th-century cathedral.

0:22:100:22:14

The enormous structure known as the ship of the Fens towers above the

0:22:140:22:18

city, its marshy surrounds and the river, the Great Ouse.

0:22:180:22:23

Will Schenk is a guide at the cathedral.

0:22:230:22:26

-Good to see you, how do you do?

-Welcome to Ely.

0:22:270:22:29

A fantastic prospect.

0:22:290:22:31

Bradshaw's tells me that the foundation of the cathedral is 1070 AD.

0:22:310:22:35

When would you date it to?

0:22:350:22:36

I date it much further back.

0:22:360:22:38

It does go back a lot further.

0:22:380:22:40

The original foundation is from the seventh century, to 673,

0:22:400:22:43

but he's probably referring to the Norman structure,

0:22:430:22:45

which is maybe 20 years after the Conquest.

0:22:450:22:47

So about 1085, 1087.

0:22:470:22:50

What happened to it after that?

0:22:500:22:51

Well, during the Vikings, it would have been destroyed.

0:22:510:22:53

It would have been refounded in the tenth century.

0:22:530:22:57

And when you have the Normans coming in 1066, about 20 years later,

0:22:570:23:01

they pulled down whatever Anglo-Saxon church would have existed and they

0:23:010:23:04

rebuilt this great Norman church.

0:23:040:23:05

What we look at now, is that substantially a Norman cathedral?

0:23:050:23:10

The nave, the two transepts, the entire west end, this extraordinary tower.

0:23:100:23:13

So yes, the bulk of the cathedral is still Norman,

0:23:130:23:15

which takes people by surprise.

0:23:150:23:17

Bradshaw's lists a whole number of things that I need to see in the cathedral.

0:23:170:23:20

-Yes.

-I was intrigued by Scott's screen.

0:23:200:23:23

Can that be a reference to George Gilbert Scott?

0:23:230:23:25

Almost definitely. George Gilbert Scott was the architect in charge of

0:23:250:23:29

essentially the Victorian restoration.

0:23:290:23:31

'In 1322, the central cathedral tower had collapsed and been rebuilt by medieval craftsmen.

0:23:310:23:37

'By Victorian times, further work was needed.

0:23:380:23:41

'George Gilbert Scott was chosen to oversee the process.'

0:23:410:23:45

He was first employed by the Dean, George Peacock,

0:23:450:23:48

in 1847 to move the choir,

0:23:480:23:49

and subsequently went on to restore the entire octagon tower.

0:23:490:23:53

So he constructed a new choir space for the chapter.

0:23:530:23:56

And the screen is part of that, very integral to that space.

0:23:560:24:00

Scott was born in 1811,

0:24:010:24:04

and became one of Britain's most prolific architects,

0:24:040:24:07

designing or restoring over 800 buildings.

0:24:070:24:09

Fascinated by medieval structures,

0:24:110:24:13

he was known for his work in the Gothic Revival style,

0:24:130:24:16

and designed the Albert Memorial in London.

0:24:160:24:19

What astonishes me, Will,

0:24:210:24:22

is that such a perfect and massive building was constructed in the 11th and 12th centuries.

0:24:220:24:28

Yes, and you have to imagine it also looked quite different.

0:24:290:24:31

It was painted, plastered and painted, even gilded.

0:24:310:24:34

So as you would have come in from the west,

0:24:340:24:35

-it would have been as if you are seeing an image of paradise.

-Wow.

0:24:350:24:38

Now, the floor that we've been walking over,

0:24:420:24:44

that's George Gilbert Scott as well.

0:24:440:24:46

And if you look up, you have this marvellous ceiling from the 1850s.

0:24:460:24:50

And then above us, a most unusual and remarkable thing.

0:24:500:24:53

That's the octagon lantern.

0:24:530:24:55

That is what is unique, extraordinary, the masterpiece, really, of Ely.

0:24:550:24:58

It is dating to the mid-14th century and is a wooden construction built

0:24:580:25:02

out over this space.

0:25:020:25:03

And that also has some Victorian influence?

0:25:030:25:06

Oh, it has a great deal of Victorian paintwork.

0:25:060:25:08

So Scott, one of the responsibilities he had was to restore the octagon.

0:25:080:25:12

Originally, the actual lantern would have been much plainer.

0:25:120:25:14

So now you're looking at something that is really a work of the high Victorian style.

0:25:140:25:18

-And the screen?

-Oh, yes.

0:25:180:25:20

The screen is just here behind you.

0:25:200:25:21

He's working in the Gothic style,

0:25:210:25:23

but he's not imitating any known actual screen.

0:25:230:25:25

It is a work of genius,

0:25:250:25:27

because you see through it all the way to the reredos at the very back,

0:25:270:25:30

which was the focal point that he created.

0:25:300:25:32

Was George Gilbert Scott, who designed so many churches, actually religious?

0:25:320:25:35

Very much so.

0:25:350:25:36

Church of England, his father was a rector.

0:25:360:25:38

So were many of his brothers.

0:25:380:25:40

They'd studied for divine orders at Cambridge.

0:25:400:25:42

In fact, he was the black sheep of the family. He went into architecture.

0:25:420:25:45

So George Gilbert Scott is mostly associated with religious architecture,

0:25:450:25:48

but in point of fact, he also designed St Pancras Station,

0:25:480:25:51

which might interest you, the Midland Hotel.

0:25:510:25:53

And there is something here that I think I'd like to show you that relates

0:25:530:25:56

to your interest in railways.

0:25:560:25:57

-I'm in suspense.

-Thank you.

0:25:570:25:59

Now, this is a memorial to two individuals who died in a tragic railway accident in 1845.

0:26:030:26:09

They were first the driver, Pickering, and there was the stoker Edger.

0:26:090:26:13

What's particularly tragic is that their names are misrepresented.

0:26:130:26:16

It was not William Pickering, it was Thomas Pickering.

0:26:160:26:19

And it was not Richard Edger, it was Richard Hedger.

0:26:190:26:22

They died in a tragic accident on the Thetford to Norwich line.

0:26:220:26:26

The engine exploded, it came off the line.

0:26:260:26:29

The driver and the stoker were

0:26:290:26:31

crushed to death underneath the engine.

0:26:310:26:33

-Ghastly.

-Yes.

0:26:330:26:34

They had this poem, The Spiritual Railway.

0:26:360:26:38

"The line to heaven by Christ was made.

0:26:380:26:41

"With heavenly truths, the rails are laid.

0:26:410:26:43

"From Earth to heaven, the line extends to life eternal,

0:26:430:26:48

"where it ends."

0:26:480:26:49

Gosh, a bit dated, isn't it?

0:26:490:26:50

Well, not really. At the time, it would have been very contemporary.

0:26:500:26:53

The railways would just have arrived in Ely in 1845.

0:26:530:26:56

So something like this would have seemed very modern.

0:26:560:26:58

Nothing more modern than the railways.

0:26:580:27:00

A statue of Alfred Lord Tennyson stands in the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral.

0:27:090:27:14

And here at Ely Cathedral,

0:27:140:27:17

the work and influence of

0:27:170:27:19

Sir George Gilbert Scott are writ large.

0:27:190:27:22

Each was the son of a rector,

0:27:220:27:24

at a time when God loomed large in the affairs of men.

0:27:240:27:28

The railway age was also an era of assertive Christianity,

0:27:280:27:34

when poets permitted themselves to see life as a train journey,

0:27:340:27:38

away from sin and towards heaven.

0:27:380:27:42

All aboard!

0:27:420:27:43

'Next time, I uncover an industrial pioneer in Suffolk...'

0:27:480:27:53

I've never been in a building like this.

0:27:530:27:55

It is absolutely extraordinary.

0:27:550:27:58

'..discover that train companies didn't always win their battles...'

0:27:580:28:01

The plans of the Great Eastern were so huge that the town council objected to the

0:28:010:28:06

idea of having half their town demolished.

0:28:060:28:09

'..and witness a railway renaissance.'

0:28:090:28:12

The Middy closed before I was born, and yet the Middy rides again!

0:28:120:28:16

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