Kirkby-in-Furness to Lancaster Great British Railway Journeys


Kirkby-in-Furness to Lancaster

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In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.

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His name was George Bradshaw

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and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.

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Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,

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what to see and where to stay.

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Now, 170 years later, I'm making a series of journeys across the length

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

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My Bradshaw's guide has now steered me

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towards the stunning natural beauty of the Cumbrian coast.

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In these parts, the proximity of the sea,

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the rich mineral deposits and the network of railways has led

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to industrial development centred around the mines.

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On today's part of my journey,

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I'll be exploding the myths behind Cumbrian slate.

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KLAXON WAILS

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That was a much bigger bang than I'd expected.

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Submerging myself in a top-secret world.

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Not much room here, I can tell you.

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And discovering why Victorians loved the hanging town.

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-This is a short-drop rope.

-Short-drop meaning, of course, that they would be strangled.

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-They danced on the end of the rope.

-Indeed.

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I began my trip in Berwick-upon-Tweed and I'm

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travelling through the spectacular counties of Cumbria, Northumberland

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and Lancashire, finishing by sailing the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man.

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Today's leg of the journey starts in Kirkby-in-Furness

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and then hugs the west coast, circumscribing Morecambe Bay,

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culminating in the city of Lancaster.

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My Bradshaw's says that people here are engaged in the slate, iron and copper mines.

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But I'm intrigued by this entry under Kirkby-in-Furness.

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It says, "This place has a population of 1,666 employed in the blue slate quarries."

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That sounds like quite a lot of people in Victorian times

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and I'm not sure I even know what blue slate is.

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I've arrived at Kirkby-in-Furness, perched on the West Cumbrian coast.

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This area is renowned for its famous blue slate, which has been

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coveted since Roman times.

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But it was during the 19th century that production ballooned.

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I've come to the Burlington quarry to find out more from Ian Kelly.

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You've brought us to a fantastic vantage point and I see slates all around us,

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but I'm in search of blue slate. Do you have blue slate?

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Lots of blue slate here, Michael, yeah. There's a few pieces there.

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And this entire mountain that we're looking at here, where the quarry is, is full of it.

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And what's blue slate used for?

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It's still used for roofing slate. We still make quite a lot of roofing slate.

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We also make architectural products,

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wall cladding, flooring, kitchen tops, anything you can

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basically think of in a building that we can make from slate.

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As towns and industries grew in Britain in the Victorian era,

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so the clamour for good quality

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building materials increased dramatically.

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The question was how to transport the vast volumes of slate out of

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the quarry directly to customers throughout Britain.

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Historically, the Furness area had always been isolated,

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with the only road across the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay.

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So the local landowners built a railway,

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including the spectacular, and still functioning, Arnside Viaduct,

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to allow for onward shipping, either by rail or sea.

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After two years of construction, the railway opened in 1846.

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They quarried the slate by hand. They made it into what we call clogs of slate,

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which is a piece of slate that they could manage, by hand and with pulleys.

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They would load it onto a railway bogie,

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which they would then either push by hand or pull with a pony

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through tunnels and out to the production area.

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From there, when it's been made into roofing slates, they'd use another rail mechanism,

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if you like, which was an incline, where loaded bogies would go down and empty bogies would come up.

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And this took the slate about a mile down into Kirby village, where the railway station is.

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Gravity-powered railways were amongst the earliest tracks in Britain,

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relying on the weight of the full wagons going downhill to pull the empty wagons up.

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These open-sided trucks, or bogies, as they were known,

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delivered the slate straight to the railway station.

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I'm keen to see more of this historic quarry,

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which remains fully operational.

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That is an impressive sight, I must say. This is huge, isn't it?

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You can see by the volume of rock that has been extracted over the years, there's a lot gone out.

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Rumour has it that it's one of the deepest man-made holes in Europe.

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It looks like they've worked it down by layers over the years. Is that right?

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Yeah, they've worked one level of the quarry floor and, when that's finished, they go down.

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They put what we call a sink in, which is sinking into the floor,

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dropping down, take another level out.

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And, if you look to the east end,

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you can see the different levels of where they have gone down

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over the years into what's the bottom of the quarry now.

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In Bradshaw's day, the slate was wrested from the rockface using only

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hand tools and explosives.

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The Victorian miners worked hard to ensure that the blocks remained as intact as possible,

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in order to provide the best quality raw material.

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Today, just 150 people work a total of seven quarries with

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a high degree of mechanisation.

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But Victorian quarrying techniques are still practised today

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and recognised to be highly effective.

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We try to be as gentle with the rock as we possibly can.

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We're using a technique over there called diamond-wire sawing.

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They did use wire saws in here a long time ago,

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but this is a more modern technique, used in the Italian marble quarries.

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It involves drilling holes into the rock to meet up,

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threading a diamond-encrusted wire around them

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and then spinning it and drawing it back like a cheese wire.

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Ian's taken me to the very heart of the quarry to show me

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a rather more spectacular Victorian extraction technique

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that's still practised today.

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HOOTER BLARES

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That was a much bigger bang than I'd expected! You talked about a little bit of gunpowder.

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-That was quite a blast.

-Yeah, it is quite loud.

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-So that's been a success, has it? That's just what you wanted.

-Yep.

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In the 19th century, roof slates were made by dressing,

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or hand-working, large blocks of rock.

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And, unusually, this quarry's slates have traditionally had

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a curved end, earning Kirkby residents the nickname 'roundheads'.

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The current hand-dresser, John Earl, is going to let me

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have a stab at dressing a roof tile in the old-fashioned way.

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-So, a few pointers might be useful here, John!

-OK.

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-Grip it like that with your hand and your thumb on there.

-All right.

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-OK.

-If you just start in there.

-OK. Just take that edge off?

-Yep.

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Whoops!

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Woah!

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Keep your finger out the way!

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Oh!

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-You're all right.

-I'm all right, am I?

-Yeah.

-Just keep going?

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That's not quite as beautiful as yours, is it, John?

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The hardest bit is getting a straight line. Once you get that, you're away.

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-That's it.

-Ah, I'm getting the hang of it now. Yes.

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Oh, I'm getting the hang of that now.

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Right, here goes.

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-There we go.

-There we go!

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It's not quite like yours, is it, John? Oh, dear, oh, dear!

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-Thank you very much indeed.

-All right.

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Having got the chop from my tile-dressing job,

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I'm now following the route that the slate would've taken,

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south down the rails to the port of Barrow-in-Furness.

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I'm told that this line provides one of the most delightful

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railway journeys in England,

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sandwiched between the Irish Sea to the west and

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glimpses of the Lake District to the east.

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These mountains produce more than just blue slate.

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As my Bradshaw's puts it poetically, "Iron is now forged in this vicinity

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"where the stag, wolf and wild boar were formerly hunted."

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Local landowners and entrepreneurs put in this railway line to

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Barrow-in-Furness, and there, they constructed a dock

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and a steelworks, and they used that steel to build ships.

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During Queen Victoria's reign,

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Britain became the most powerful trading nation in the world.

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At the heart of this was the successful development of steam technology.

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It powered not only the railway network,

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but also the ships that operated on the major trade routes to

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India, South Africa, the Orient and Australia.

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British shipyards came to dominate the world as they pioneered

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the use of iron and steel in shipbuilding.

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With iron ore in the Cumbrian hills, Barrow-in-Furness grew from a

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tiny hamlet to a major shipbuilding town, home to the largest steelworks

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in the world by 1876, earning it the moniker 'the Chicago of the North'.

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The dockyard is still going strong,

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famous for building a very special type of boat,

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first constructed here in the Victorian period - submarines.

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I've been granted very special access to the top-secret Devonshire dock.

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My guide is Brian Hurley.

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It is enormous, isn't it?

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-I mean, it's like the last scene of a James Bond movie, isn't it?

-It is.

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It's a phenomenal building. It's 17 storeys tall.

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It's probably the biggest open space that we have in the country.

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At the moment, from what I can see, you've got two boats,

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as you call them, two submarines under construction.

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How are they getting on?

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Well, behind you, you can see Audacious. This is boat four.

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She's in what we call open outfit.

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And on the south build line, we have Artful,

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which is now into closed outfit, where we're now finishing systems

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and getting ready to hand them across to the commissioning teams.

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Astonishingly, submarines have been built at Barrow since 1886,

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when the shipyard built its first submersibles for the Danish.

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Earning a growing reputation for quality built boats, the shipyard

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claimed at the turn of the century to be the only one capable

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of designing, building, engining, and arming its own vessels.

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What is the challenge of making a submarine?

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The challenge of making a submarine, it's putting all the things

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that you wouldn't want to put together into one tin can.

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So, effectively, you've got a nuclear reactor, you've got a power station, you've got a hotel.

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You've got high-voltage systems, you've got high-pressure systems, all inside a confined space.

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That's the one thing you wouldn't want to do. You'd want as much space as possible.

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Barrow won the contract for the Royal Navy's first five submarines.

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Built and launched in utmost secrecy in 1901,

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the HMS Holland One could dive to a depth of only 100 feet

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and had to surface every day.

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But the Admiralty was sufficiently convinced to continue

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with submarine development.

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Six decades later, the shipyard constructed Dreadnought,

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Britain's first nuclear-powered submarine, launched in 1960 by the Queen.

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I name this ship Dreadnought.

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May God bless her and all who sail in her.

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CHEERING

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-Hip-hip-hip!

-CROWD: Hooray

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Do you have a sense, working here, of the heritage of submarine building?

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Is it something you're aware of?

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Well, certainly, from my perspective, I'm fourth generation in shipbuilding.

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My father actually worked for me on Ambush as a paint supervisor.

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Before that, his father was a rigging supervisor on one of the boats.

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And then, before that, his father was a machinist in the shipyards.

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So, yes, the heritage and the legacy rests quite heavy with me

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and I'm quite emotive about the whole build of submarines in Barrow.

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As I walk beside the leviathan that is HMS Audacious,

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it's riveting to recall that all this began with Victorian entrepreneurs.

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Their construction of the Furness railway in the 1840s,

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to carry iron ore, slate and limestone,

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allowed for the immense expansion of the deepwater port at Barrow.

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Being underneath the submarine now, you get another idea of how big it is.

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Things have really come on over the years, haven't they?

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Yes, certainly. The Holland class submarine that we first built was just over 20 feet long.

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The Astute class submarine is just over 300 feet long.

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I've been given the rare privilege of going onboard the nuclear-powered submarine HMS Ambush

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as she lies in the water undergoing final tests before her sea trials.

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Not much room here, I can tell you.

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Fantastic, isn't it? You enter a different world.

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And, as you warned me, not much headroom here, is there?

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No, it's quite confined inside the submarine.

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-Where are we now?

-We are in the control room of HMS Ambush.

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So all the information would be displayed here?

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The control room isn't the traditional control room you'd expect to see with the periscope.

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We have externally mounted masts and digital input, so what you see on

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the screens in front of you are the digital outputs from the masts.

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I'm rather amazed to discover that 21st-century submarines don't

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necessarily have traditional periscopes.

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The Astute class are the first British submarines to use

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high-spec video technology instead.

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And the commanding officer sits here?

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The commanding officer's chair has a perfect view of what's seen in the control room.

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Fantastic!

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Beautifully air-conditioned. Wires everywhere.

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So this is, what do you call it, the senior rates' mess?

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Senior rates' mess, yeah.

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So, the senior non-commissioned officers on the boat?

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-That's right, yeah.

-How many are they?

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There's approximately 30 on the boat.

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30, wow! Not so big for 30, is it? What will they do in here?

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Well, they'll spend some of their recreational time.

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They do all their eating, drinking, within this facility.

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-Obviously in shifts.

-In shifts, yeah.

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The guys work four on, four off, so they rotate through this facility.

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And how many months is the same crew at sea?

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The patrol could last three months and that's based, primarily,

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on the amount of food that the submarine can carry.

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Before I leave, I want to meet someone who's spent his whole working life

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as a welder on the submarines, Joe Murphy.

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Very nice to see you. They told me to look you up.

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They told me you're a bit of a welder, is that right?

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I've been welding 40 years, but I've been teaching for another six.

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-Teaching others to weld?

-It's nice to pass on your skill to somebody else, you know.

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-And how do you feel about this work you've done here?

-Ah!

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The boats that we build are built to the highest specification in the world.

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There's nobody else builds them like we build them. So it's great.

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But I get a lot of satisfaction from what I do now.

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What we are trying to instil in the lads is pride.

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It's pride in the work. That's everything.

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Neatness - when I look at welding and I see the neatness,

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I can see the concentration that these lads have put into that.

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And neatness equals pride. And that's what it's all about.

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Pride in your work. Pride keeps our crews safe.

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That's what keeps the water out. This town depends on this shipyard.

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Without this shipyard, that town'll fold behind it, you know.

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Let's hope that never happens. Joe, a real privilege to meet you.

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-Thank you very much.

-Thanks for talking to me. Bye.

-Thank you, Michael. Bye, now.

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I was once the political boss of the Armed Forces

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and I've always found it humbling to meet the people whose energy

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and skill provide the nation with its submarines.

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For my overnight stop, I'm taking the west coast mainline

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and crossing the border into Lancashire, headed for Lancaster.

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The city's port was one of the busiest in Britain

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during the 19th century and the railway station is inspired by

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the towering 13th-century fortress beneath which it nestles.

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My Bradshaw's refers to Lancaster castle station as being,

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"the Northern terminus of the Lancaster and Preston Railway.

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"The station is a very neat building, erected of fine white freestone."

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And I love the fact that it's been made to look like a castle.

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I'm staying overnight at a Bradshaw recommendation, the King's Arms.

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But he's not the only great Victorian

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who took a shine to the place.

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Bradshaw says that Charles Dickens stayed here in 1857 and remarked

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that his orders were, "promptly executed, as all orders are in this excellent hotel."

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-Which floor is that?

-Fourth floor, sir. Enjoy your stay, sir.

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-Thank you very much. Good night to you.

-Thank you. Good night, sir.

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Sleeping where Dickens once did was certainly novel.

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With the arrival of morning, I'm up early to head into town.

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My breakfast order was promptly executed and that's put me

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in a good mood for a new day.

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The late 19th century saw an increase in leisure time for all,

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with the five-and-a-half day week becoming standard.

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Lancashire, as the gateway to the Lake District,

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experienced an upsurge in Victorian tourists, as train companies

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such as the Furness Railway widened their remit,

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from ferrying industrial traffic to embrace the carrying of fare-paying passengers.

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My next destination was a favourite location for Victorian visitors.

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Although perhaps, as I'm led to believe,

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not for the most savoury of reasons.

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Lancaster Castle.

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My Bradshaw's says, "Standing on a hill west of the town,

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"it includes the shire court, county jail, four or five old towers,

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"of which the dungeon, 90 feet high, is the oldest."

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And, to my amazement, I see that even today,

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it has a notice describing it as Her Majesty's Prison Lancaster Castle.

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I've come to Hadrian's tower -

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one of a number of towers that defended the castle -

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to meet Steve Allen,

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my guide to this ancient bastion.

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-Hello, Michael. Welcome to Lancaster Castle.

-It's a magnificent building.

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How old is Lancaster Castle?

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Well, there's been a fortification here since Roman times.

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But it was the Normans who rebuilt it and turned it into this stone fortress.

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They controlled Lancashire and what is now South Lakeland area from here.

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And how long has it been a prison?

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Well, it's been a prison, really, since Norman times.

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It's got a history stretching back nearly 900 years.

0:20:200:20:23

In fact, the prison here is the oldest working prison

0:20:230:20:26

in the country, or rather it was, until March of 2011 when it closed,

0:20:260:20:30

although it still receives and dispatches prisoners to criminal court here.

0:20:300:20:34

The court, housed within the castle, began dispensing justice in 1800 and

0:20:360:20:40

is the oldest continuously working criminal court in the country.

0:20:400:20:44

Visitors could be forgiven for thinking this more like

0:20:440:20:48

a torture chamber, looking at the shackles hanging from the walls.

0:20:480:20:52

These chains were often used for prisoners who were sentenced

0:20:520:20:56

to transportation to Australia.

0:20:560:20:58

Shockingly, Lancaster Crown Court sent many hundreds of men,

0:20:580:21:02

women and even children Down Under.

0:21:020:21:04

Steven wants to show me another room in this labyrinthine fortification

0:21:040:21:10

that has a macabre history.

0:21:100:21:13

What took place there, he believes, is the real reason that Victorians flocked to the castle.

0:21:130:21:19

-So here we are now, Michael, in the drop room.

-Drop room?

0:21:190:21:23

Yeah, it's a kind of en-suite execution facility,

0:21:230:21:27

as part of the rebuild and extension of the castle here.

0:21:270:21:30

And this is a short-drop rope, with a noose.

0:21:300:21:34

Short-drop, of course, meaning that they would be strangled.

0:21:340:21:37

-That's right.

-They danced on the end of the rope.

-Indeed.

0:21:370:21:41

Three, four, five, six minutes, and this would be in full view

0:21:410:21:45

of thousands of people who'd come to the town to see the execution.

0:21:450:21:50

In Victorian times, public hangings were very popular

0:21:500:21:53

and people would come from miles around to watch.

0:21:530:21:57

Special trains were laid on, as the poet AE Houseman recalled about his native Shropshire.

0:21:570:22:02

"They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:

0:22:020:22:06

"The whistles blow forlorn,

0:22:060:22:08

"And trains all night groan on the rail

0:22:080:22:10

"To men who die at dawn."

0:22:100:22:12

This window is also a door.

0:22:120:22:14

It's a wooden door, disguised on the outside as a stone window.

0:22:140:22:19

The door opens inward and the parties step out onto

0:22:190:22:22

a temporary wooden platform that's been erected the night before.

0:22:220:22:26

Sort of kept here in a easy-to-assemble kit version for these special occasions.

0:22:260:22:30

And outside, this vast crowd of people who've all packed in to every available bit of space.

0:22:300:22:35

In fact, the vicar was able to charge people to stand, or perch, up there on the roof,

0:22:350:22:40

so that they could get a good gallery view seat of the operation.

0:22:400:22:44

And even today, you can see the holes in the wall of the castle there,

0:22:440:22:48

where the superstructure was attached.

0:22:480:22:50

And the noose would be put around the condemned man's neck

0:22:500:22:54

and then a hood put over their head.

0:22:540:22:56

The sheriff, or his deputy, would read a proclamation.

0:22:560:23:00

The priests say a prayer

0:23:000:23:02

and then the officials would withdraw,

0:23:020:23:05

the executioner stepped down, pulled the lever, released the bolts,

0:23:050:23:10

and, uh, we're in business.

0:23:100:23:12

Lancaster Court is said to have sentenced more people

0:23:120:23:16

to swing from the rope than any place outside London,

0:23:160:23:19

earning it the epithet 'the hanging town'.

0:23:190:23:22

But as the century progressed, the authorities realised that the crowds

0:23:220:23:27

were more entertained than deterred from committing hideous offences.

0:23:270:23:31

So a parliamentary act of 1868 finally removed executions to

0:23:310:23:36

within the prison walls.

0:23:360:23:39

With all the dramatic landscapes that I'm travelling through,

0:23:420:23:46

it's hardly surprisingly that I'm passing over some spectacular bridges.

0:23:460:23:51

Bradshaw's attention was caught particularly

0:23:510:23:54

by the one I'm approaching now,

0:23:540:23:56

just east of Lancaster, on my last leg of today's journey.

0:23:560:23:59

My Bradshaw's says, "Further up the River Lune is the aqueduct bridge,

0:23:590:24:04

"with five semicircular arches, each with a 70-foot span.

0:24:040:24:09

"This magnificent undertaking conveys the Lancaster Canal

0:24:090:24:13

"over the Lune and under one of the arches,

0:24:130:24:16

"the north-western railway line passes up to Yorkshire."

0:24:160:24:20

With a wonderful description like that, of railway and aqueduct,

0:24:200:24:24

I just have to see it.

0:24:240:24:26

Before he turned his attention to the railways,

0:24:330:24:36

Bradshaw had made his mark in 1830 by publishing a guide

0:24:360:24:39

to the canals of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

0:24:390:24:42

Throughout the 18th and 19th century,

0:24:420:24:45

the canals were the lifeblood of the Industrial Revolution.

0:24:450:24:48

At a time when the roads were poor and haphazard,

0:24:480:24:52

a single barge could transport ten times the cargo of a horse and cart.

0:24:520:24:57

Britain was the first country to acquire a nationwide canal network,

0:24:570:25:02

over 4,000 miles of waterway at its height.

0:25:020:25:06

And this led to some stunning engineering

0:25:060:25:08

and architectural breakthroughs.

0:25:080:25:11

The Lune Aqueduct is just such an achievement.

0:25:110:25:15

I'm taking a barge on the Lancaster Canal over the River Lune to

0:25:220:25:26

meet canal expert Andrew Tegg.

0:25:260:25:28

Setting foot on this aqueduct towering above the river, I'm very impressed.

0:25:300:25:35

This is a fantastic achievement,

0:25:350:25:37

quite early in the Industrial Revolution.

0:25:370:25:39

Very much so.

0:25:390:25:41

I mean, this was conceived and constructed in the late 18th century.

0:25:410:25:45

And it's a great example of the engineers' art and ability at that stage.

0:25:450:25:48

It was mainly constructed using rudimentary machinery and manpower.

0:25:480:25:52

And what was the purpose of the canal?

0:25:520:25:55

The canal was constructed really to link the coalfields

0:25:550:25:58

in the Wigan area with the South Lakeland area for limestone.

0:25:580:26:01

So it was always known as the black and white canal.

0:26:010:26:04

Because I'm always banging on about railways,

0:26:040:26:07

I'm in some danger of forgetting that, of course,

0:26:070:26:09

before the railway revolution, there was a canal revolution.

0:26:090:26:12

There was a canal mania.

0:26:120:26:14

There was. In the late 18th century, you know, canal technology was the future.

0:26:140:26:19

It was the High Speed Two of its generation.

0:26:190:26:22

It really revolutionised transport.

0:26:220:26:25

And canals like this were very much an example of that.

0:26:250:26:28

They made the movement of goods very, very profitable and, therefore,

0:26:280:26:32

investors were very keen to invest in such schemes.

0:26:320:26:36

On its completion in 1797, the aqueduct was inscribed with a Latin motto which translates,

0:26:360:26:42

"Old needs are served, far distant sites combined. Rivers by art to bring new wealth are joined."

0:26:420:26:48

But the golden age of water transport came to an end in the mid-19th century,

0:26:480:26:53

and it was none other than the more competitive railway network that drove it into disuse.

0:26:530:26:58

But thanks to conservation and tourism over the last few decades,

0:26:580:27:03

the British canal network is starting again to display scope and beauty.

0:27:030:27:08

That is glorious!

0:27:080:27:10

That is so elegant, isn't it? That is a thing of beauty.

0:27:100:27:14

It absolutely excels my expectation when we were walking up there.

0:27:140:27:17

It's... Well, I mean, it is so 18th century, isn't it?

0:27:170:27:20

It's just...just magnificent.

0:27:200:27:23

On this leg of the journey, I feel I've seen the span

0:27:320:27:35

of the Industrial Revolution, from an 18th-century aqueduct

0:27:350:27:39

to a 21st-century nuclear-powered submarine.

0:27:390:27:42

The common thread is the vision of brilliant engineers,

0:27:420:27:47

the sort of people that George Bradshaw admired,

0:27:470:27:50

the sort that I revere.

0:27:500:27:53

On the next step of my rail trip,

0:27:550:27:58

I'll be visiting an island steeped in smuggling history.

0:27:580:28:01

He stepped onto his ship and his trousers split,

0:28:010:28:04

discharging the tea into the harbour water below him.

0:28:040:28:07

Discovering Britain's fear of enemy spies in the Second World War.

0:28:070:28:12

The British Government told the Manx Government to tell all the

0:28:120:28:16

boarding house keepers and hoteliers to move out at ten days' notice.

0:28:160:28:20

And scaling the heights to view seven kingdoms.

0:28:200:28:24

We're in the Guinness Book Of Records for having the oldest working tram in history.

0:28:240:28:29

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