London Bridge to Chatham Great British Railway Journeys

In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.

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 the country to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.

Starting off in London, I've embarked on a new journey.

My Bradshaw's Guide is going to take me to Kent,

which was regarded as a very important county

because it was the front line of our defences against continental enemies.

It was a rich agricultural area, supplying food to the capital,

and of course it was a good habitat for commuters.

Almost the whole county was put within two hours journey of London by a network of railways.

In Bradshaw's time, Kent was the gateway to Europe.

Its railways provided fast links to the continent for tourists, businesses and sometimes armies.

On this journey, I'll be finding out how the trains synchronised time across Britain.

If you wanted to catch a train and you had your watch set to local time

and the trains were running on London time,

you needed to know that or you'd miss your train.

Daring to follow the Victorian along the world's first underwater tunnel...

People came here in their millions, but not everyone had the courage to walk under river.

I have some sympathy with that.

..and travelling on a new generation of high speed lines that would have delighted Bradshaw.

Darren, this is very exciting.

Already you can feel the thing really thrusting forward.

On this route, I'll be journeying east out of the capital,

before winding around Kent on some of its many railway lines.

From the cathedral city of Canterbury, I'll aim for Whitstable,

then explore seaside towns that sit along our closest border with the continent

on my way to Hastings.

Today I'll start in London, and travel via Greenwich to the strategic naval port of Chatham.

My first stop is London Bridge, the oldest station in the capital.

My guide says, "The South Eastern Railway conveys to and from this terminus

"the passenger and goods traffic to and from France and the north of Europe."

In Bradshaw's day, this station provided the gateway to continental adventures.

My Bradshaw's Guide refers to the platforms

being "spacious and extensive, the wooden roofs over them are light and airy, and the plates of glass

"with which they're covered admit and defuse sufficient light to every part of the vast area."

And I can see the Victorian station behind me, but many people's experience of London Bridge

are the four platforms over there and this kind of 1970s, rather horrid station.

These are very busy. You can see all the time trains waiting to come

into the platforms, like planes being stacked over an airport.

Over the years, London Bridge has grown into a hotchpotch of dark buildings and sprawling platforms.

Thankfully, now it's undergoing a billion pound refurbishment.

And it will sit beneath Europe's tallest building, the Shard, which is due for completion in 2012.

Having caught my connection, I'm travelling five miles

along the south bank of the Thames, following London's first railway line.

I'm now travelling to Greenwich on London's oldest railway.

Bradshaw says, "There are as many as 60 trains daily by this railway, to and from London.

"The line runs over viaducts the whole distance,

"through the populous districts of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe."

And it is indeed built on brick arches, 878 of them.

Apparently it took 60 million bricks to build and they were using 10,000 a day,

causing a brick shortage all the way through London.

Imagine how it changed the capital.

Suddenly you found these railways in the sky plunged through the place where you'd been used to living.

Before the railways, the Thames provided the fastest means of travel.

When the Greenwich line opened in 1836, travellers were reluctant to exchange the boats for trains.

But within a short time, 1,500 passengers a day were using the service.

Greenwich, with its stunning park, was transformed from a leafy village

outside London to one of the capital's most popular suburbs, and Bradshaw could see why.

Talking of Greenwich Park, Bradshaw says,

"We cannot but hope that the park and heath may be preserved for ages to come

"as an oasis in the desert, when the mighty city has spread its suburbs

"far beyond it, into the hills and dales of the surrounding country."

And Bradshaw's wish has come true. The park and the heath have been preserved.

But even George Bradshaw, with his great imagination about the future, cannot have anticipated

the mighty bulk of the structures of Canary Wharf, which are magnificent.

In Bradshaw's time, the splendid historical buildings at Greenwich

attracted tourists from across the world.

Now the naval hospital and the Queen's House form part of a World Heritage site,

which includes the park's crowning marvel, the Royal Observatory.

My Bradshaw's Guide says, "The Royal Observatory occupies the most elevated spot in Greenwich Park.

"For the guidance of shipping, the round globe at its summit

"drops precisely at 1pm to give the exact Greenwich Time."

Oh dear. I'm going to need a better watch.

The Greenwich Observatory's Time Ball has been helping accurately to set watches and clocks since 1833.

-Hello, Jonathan.

-Hello, Michael.

'Jonathan Betts is the senior curator of horology.'

The famous ball here. What is that for, what does it do?

It was necessary before you left your home port to set to local time,

and that's what the Time Ball was for.

To enable the ships in the docklands below to set their chronometers correctly.

So they'd be on the ships with their telescopes, looking up

and measuring the exact moment at which the ball fell?

At 1pm every day, they were all down there.

And of course the public regarded it very much as a time service for them.

With the dawn of the railway age, Greenwich assumed additional importance.

Until then, time was set locally, so Bristol was 14 minutes behind London time and Plymouth 20 minutes.

That caused havoc for train timetables.

Is it really the case that the railways were the main force

driving towards having standardised time in this country?

Principally it was, yes. The railways and the electric telegraph went hand in hand.

With the introduction of the railways and the telegraph

it was realised we needed one time for the nation.

If you wanted to catch a train and you had your watch set to your local time and they had

their timetables on London time, you needed to know that or you'd miss your train.

Then eventually Greenwich gets into the business of telegraphing

the time to towns and cities all over Britain?

Yes, electric clocks had been created in the 1840s, and we created here something called an electric

master and slave system, in which the master clock sent out electrical time signals using the electric telegraph

along the railway lines to virtually anywhere in the country, to provide Greenwich Time.

Towns and villages outside London instantly received the Greenwich Time,

which would be displayed in public places using signal devices.

Jonathan has several Victorian examples.

Your workshop is a busy-looking place.

Yeah. There's plenty going on here. I've actually got two time signals out for you to see.

From the 1870s, this type of time signal was being used by subscribers all over the country

to provide a Greenwich Time service for their customers.

In front of jewellers shops, like Hancocks here in Bond Street,

you'd find a group of people with their pocket watches, waiting to set the time.

As the moment approached, there'd be mounting excitement.

This one is more like your ball here at Greenwich.

Very much so. This is a little miniature version of the Time Ball.

There were many of these made.

First of all, this would happen at about five minutes before 1pm.

The person receiving the time signal

would arrange for the ball to be raised to the top of the mast

in time for the Greenwich Time signal to go through.

Then, with everybody standing outside waiting with their watches,

at the moment of the signal, the ball would drop.

-And there you have it.

-Wow. That's magnificent.

-Isn't that fun?

-It is.

It's absolutely wonderful. I've been thinking about railway time since I started making these journeys.

But it's really brought it home to me today. That really is fascinating. This is how it worked.

Precision time-keeping.

The railways created the need for standardised time in Britain, and in other countries, too.

That gave rise to time zones.

Since 1884, time around the globe has been set by reference to Greenwich.

One last thing to do before I leave Greenwich.

Bradshaw comments that, "Large quantities of whitebait are caught in the season.

"Whitebait dinners form the chief attractions to the taverns adjacent.

"And here, Her Majesty's ministers regale themselves annually on that fish.

"The seasons from May to the latter end of July, when Parliament generally closes for the season.

I can tell you that those dinners aren't just historic.

When I was a minister, I went to one of those whitebait dinners at this very tavern.

-Hi.

-How many of you?

-Just one of me.

Can I have a table, please?

-Follow me.

-Thank you. Have you got any whitebait on today?

-Of course.

-Your great tradition.

-Very traditional.

-It's certainly a table with a view. Isn't that fantastic! Thank you.

I'll have a whitebait dinner, please. Thank you.

Famous statesmen from William Pitt to William Gladstone enjoyed whitebait suppers.

So I follow rather eminent diners.

Thank you very much. Fresh from the Thames?

Not any more, unfortunately. From the North Sea now.

I believe that this tavern was particularly associated with Liberal politicians?

I'm slightly out of place here. Well, maybe not in coalition times! Thank you so much.

-My pleasure. Enjoy.

-I will.

As good as ever.

Absolutely great. Crisp, beautiful.

I've left Greenwich and made my way to nearby New Cross,

and now I'm headed for Rotherhithe on London's newest railway service.

Part of the London overground, it opened in 2010, although a portion

follows the route of a railway that dates back to Bradshaw's era.

In the 1860s, when it was first built,

it was known as the East London Railway.

I'm travelling just two miles to my next stop.

The refurbished East London line has wonderful new trains.

They remind me of trains I've seen in places like Hong Kong.

You pass from one car to the next.

With no doors. And the whole thing is like one long continuous tube.

'I'm pleased to find that my enthusiasm for this new rail service

'is matched or exceeded by one of its passengers.'

-Hello.

-Hello.

-It's terrific, isn't it, the new service?

-Yeah.

Have you been on it before?

Yeah. I was the first ever person

to go on the new line from Shoreditch High Street to New Cross Gate,

-to Dalston Junction and back to Shoreditch.

-First ever person?

-Yeah, on 15 April.

-You wrote in, did you, or telephoned?

-I e-mailed in.

What's so special about the East London line?

What's special is the Thames Tunnel between Wapping and Rotherhithe stations,

built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

-Well, we'll be arriving at Rotherhithe soon. That's where the tunnel begins, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-That's where I'm getting off and I'm going to have a close look at that tunnel myself. Bye-bye.

-Bye.

I'm getting off at Rotherhithe, where the new line follows

the original Victorian route, and takes advantage of one of the 19th century's most daring achievements.

So it's London's newest railway service, but it passes through a tunnel familiar to Bradshaw.

"The tunnel from Wapping to Rotherhithe was commenced in 1805 and opened in 1843

"by the projector and engineer, Sir IK Brunel."

Then he gives all its dimensions and he says, "It's a double archway,

"brilliantly lighted, with gas, and open each day and night with a toll of one penny for each passenger."

This tunnel wasn't built for a railway.

It was built for pedestrians, and I'm going to take a walk through it.

From 1am, the line is closed, and I'm assured it will be safe to walk along it.

I'm meeting Robert Hulse from the Brunel Museum,

a keen admirer of this tunnel.

-Hello.

-Here we are in the middle of the night.

We hope all the trains have stopped when we go into the tunnel.

It's quite a special tunnel, isn't it?

Yes, it is. It's the first tunnel under a river anywhere in the world,

and it's the first project that Isambard Kingdom Brunel worked on.

So in a way, it's also the origins of underground railways?

Yes, this is an international landmark site as it's the birthplace

of the Tube, not just for London, but for everywhere.

This 365-metre tunnel was originally built as a fast way to transport cargo across the river.

It was engineered by Marc Brunel, and the work was supervised by his son, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

For the first time, they would bore beneath water at enormous risk and in appalling conditions.

Was machinery used to build this in any way?

No, it's dug by hand.

It's dug by men working in cages with short-handle spades,

showered with Thames water.

In 1825, when the Thames was the biggest open sewer in the world,

it just doesn't bear thinking about what was showering down

on these poor unfortunates as they toiled under the river.

It took thousands of men, working by oil lamp, to construct the tunnel.

Officially, six people were killed building it,

but that doesn't include others who died from cholera and TB.

-It was a lethal enterprise.

-It began just here.

Now, imagine this as a cage, 36 tiny cages, a row of 12 along the top.

-Each one of those has a man in it?

-Each one of those has a man in it.

-And the method of building it? Obviously it had to be original?

-That's right.

This is Marc Brunel's patented method,

and modern tunnelling-machines are based on this principle.

Men dug out the earth four inches at a time,

then the exposed flanks were quickly lined with bricks.

But after 18 years, there was no money to build cargo ramps,

so the tunnel was opened to pedestrians instead, at the cost of one penny.

In the first 15 weeks, there were a million visitors, but that's only a million pennies.

The tunnel was conceived as a cargo tunnel that would have got

tolls form the shipping agencies, so they have pennies.

They were a huge success as a visitor attraction, but they have no revenue.

So they built the world's first underwater shopping arcade,

to try and make some money. Each of these little archways was a shop.

There's just room for you and a barrow and table of souvenirs.

They sold items like this.

They sold Thames Tunnel gin flasks, Thames Tunnel pin cushions,

Thames Tunnel snuff boxes, Thames Tunnel coffee cups.

If they'd had baseball caps, they'd have sold those.

People came here in their millions, but not everyone had the courage to walk under the river.

And some people walked under the river very briskly, and broke into a run at this point, which is halfway.

Where most people's resolve failed them.

I have some sympathy with that.

Sadly, what opened as a shining avenue of light

under the River Thames to Wapping became by degrees a little less shiny

-and a little less respectable.

-Oh. It became a bit seedy, did it?

It did. It became a haunt of thieves, cut-purses and what the books

demurely describe as, "Women, no better than they should be."

In fact, there were all kinds of transactions conducted under the River Thames in these dark spaces.

And so at that point it was ready to became a railway tunnel?

Yes, in 1865, they sold the tunnel to the railway.

The tunnel became part of the growing rail system

and is now the centrepiece of London's newest train service.

-I still don't like touching that electric rail, even if it is off.

-Healthy respect!

The next day, I'm heading to St Pancras station to pick up

a very fast train that will carry me to the heart of Kent.

If Bradshaw were still publishing, he would be lyrical about this service.

This is a very exciting thing for me, first time I get to ride

on a high speed train on a domestic British service.

I bear the scars of this line, as when I was a Minister of Transport in the 1980s, we were planning it,

and the people of Kent were up in arms

that they'd have noisy, high-speed trains passing near their villages.

What they couldn't imagine then is that many of them would get travel times to London

that would be a fraction of what they'd experienced before,

and at speeds that would have exhilarated George Bradshaw.

Oh, and by the way, I get to ride in the cab, too!

Driver Darren Stevens is going to demonstrate how modern track allows high speed travel.

Darren, this is very exciting, isn't it?

Already you can feel the thing really thrusting forward.

You will do when we go into the first tunnel.

I'm looking at a very steep gradient ahead of us,

these trains can really cope with steep gradients, can't they?

They can, yeah - the route's like a roller coaster. As you'll see.

This dedicated fast line was built for Eurostar trains to cut the journey time to the Channel Tunnel.

It opened in 2007 and permits speeds up to 186 miles per hour.

From 2009, it's also carried high speed domestic services to Kent.

This has made a big difference to journey times, hasn't it? Yeah.

We've had nothing but positive feedback from passengers.

I think it's made a big difference to the journey times, it's sliced off somewhere up to an hour.

I spoke to one lady, she was saving over two hours a day.

This new service, transforming commuting,

is reminiscent of the impact that railways had in Bradshaw's day.

Look at your speedometer climb now, it's going crazy, isn't it?

Shooting up to 160, is it going to get to 160?

The acceleration is very good, we're up to 200 now, maximum line speed.

We're allowed to go to 200. Even here in the tunnel?

Yes. We do get up to 225 in the tunnels.

Wow, this is awesome. This is the newest tunnel under the Thames.

Mr Brunel would be impressed and Mr Bradshaw would be exhilarated.

This is my stop, Chatham.

I've really enjoyed the ride. Thank you so much.

-Thanks for being here.

-Safe journey.

In the 19th century, Chatham had one of the greatest shipyards

in the country which not surprisingly, features strongly in my guidebook.

"The dockyard, to be seen by application at the gate,

"was commenced by Queen Elizabeth, following the wise policy of her father, and is about a mile long."

And I'm going to see what I think is a really vital part of British naval history.

My Bradshaw's goes on to describe the vast array of facilities at the dockyard.

"It contains six building slips, wet and dry docks,

"rope house, 1,140ft long, oar and block machinery by Brunel."

The list goes on. At the time of writing, England was still

on the defensive against France in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars.

With fear of European invasion ever in the air, and the arrival of new technology,

the dockyard was rapidly expanded, from 80 acres to over 600.

Well, I've come down now to the dockyard and I am just very impressed by the scale, it is huge.

It reeks of history. Some beautiful historic buildings.

Such an extensive dockyard in Bradshaw's day required its own network of tracks.

Hello, Richard.

'Richard Holdsworth is the museum and heritage director at Chatham.'

I assume that the place was so big it needed a railway?

It had a huge transport system, the railway arrived in the dockyard in 1879 and for the next 20 years

the dockyard was building standard gauge railway lines across its entire length

and that process went on until the 20th century.

You could bring trains off the national system

-right into the yard?

-Right into the yard. They were carrying

the sorts of material needed to build ships, specialist tools, equipment,

guns, things like that.

The railways were crucial to keeping Britain at the forefront of naval engineering.

In the late 1800s, trains hauled in the materials required for shipbuilding

and the technology of steam was used to modernise the vessels.

The Victorians had created a vast global empire and Chatham supplied the latest warships to defend it.

HMS Gannet strikes me as a pretty unusual ship, because it's both sail and steam.

That's right, she's transitional period.

Really, the heyday of the dockyard of the navy in Victorian times

when Britain's navy is projecting power across the world.

These are the sorts of ships designed to patrol the widest flung parts of Empire.

From about 1892 to 1905, 250,000 tonnes of warship entered the Medway from the slips behind me

and they were the cream of the Royal Navy, the envy of the world.

Chatham was at the core of ship construction and ship repair.

The vast new docks and the new technologies became a tourist attraction in themselves.

Visitors came to marvel as up to 2,500 craftsmen

readied the ships for sea and produced essential naval equipment like ropes.

It strikes me as ironic that one of things which survived was the ropery

as when you move form sail to steam, you'd need fewer ropes?

That's true and from 1866 onwards, the navy cut down the rope it used,

but in the heyday, it had four roperies of its own and bought a huge amount in commercially.

When built, the ropery was the longest brick building in Europe.

It's still used for the same purpose as in Bradshaw's time.

Nothing prepares you for that, does it? It's endless.

It's one of the seven wonders of the world.

This is the oldest rope manufacturer in Britain.

The building is so long because the strands of rope had to be

laid out to their full length before being twisted.

The length of the room is just so you can make these enormous stretches of rope.

The length of the room is designed so the navy could make rope in 120 fathoms

and that works out today as 220 metres.

That is the international length of a standard coil of rope.

Today the ropery makes natural fibre ropes for theatres and zoos

as well as boats, pleasure cruisers and the Ministry of Defence.

This scene, I could have seen at any time in the last 200 years?

It's a process going on today as it has for a couple of hundred years, and it's a commercial venture.

Following my Bradshaw's around Britain, it's useful to remember

that the Victorians enjoyed one of the longest periods of peace in British history.

Yet the danger posed by France at the beginning of the 19th century

made them guard fiercely both homeland and Empire.

It can sometimes be difficult to grasp the mentality of Bradshaw's era.

They believed in Empire, an idea that's passed from fashion, and just as well.

But when I was in Brunel's Thames Tunnel,

I was struck that we're still using and adapting Victorian engineering.

The reason is that the same qualities that inspired the Victorians to global supremacy

were the ones that led them, those remarkable ancestors, to build to last.

On my next journey, I'll be hopping with excitement, Victorian style.

-I just yank this?

-Give it a good pull.

Discovering the secrets of paper from one of the country's leading experts.

Would you like to know where this paper was made?

-Don't tell me you can tell that.

-I can.

And learning how the trains transported a very English game all over the country.

If you look at the map of expansion of the rail network around England and Scotland,

cricket follows those lines.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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