Epping to Hackney 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.

My Bradshaw's guide has brought me through rural Norfolk

and Suffolk to what it describes as "the gentle hills and Dales of Essex."

Using my guide, I'll discover how the tentacles of the railways,

reaching out from London, changed the lives of those they touched.

On my journey today, I'll be finding out how dairy herds travelled

the length and breadth of Britain, first class.

The cow also decided to urinate on me,

but that's all right.

Discovering how gunpowder fuelled Britain's empire building.

That is the sound of blackpowder in the 19th century.

-Brilliant noise.

-From the Crimea to Zululand to the Indian Mutiny.

And hearing of a heinous crime

that shook the Victorians' faith in railways.

What they discovered on Hackney Station

was an empty first-class carriage absolutely besmeared with blood.

This journey commenced on the east coast of Norfolk,

and the great Eastern Railway, has brought me through country

that before Bradshaw's day

had been remote and inaccessible.

The coming of the railways changed all that,

and opened the region to industry, tourism and business.

I'm beginning today's leg in the heart of rural Essex,

and then travelling through the teeming London boroughs

of Stratford and Hackney.

Now I'm headed for Harold Wood,

a place that I think of as suburban London,

but to my surprise,

it hosts an agricultural community of rolling acres.

In the 19th century, Essex was considered perfect arable land

because, as my Bradshaw's describes it,

the county was "the largest connected space of level

"ground in the whole island, with not one lofty eminence or rocky ridge."

But, as the rail network spread through Britain,

the type of agriculture changed, and Essex was no exception.

I've come to a farm just a stone's throw from the M25

and the outskirts of London.

I want to discover more about the impact of the railways

on the rural economy.

Dairy farmer Duncan Padfield has kindly agreed to be my guide.

-Morning, Duncan.

-Good morning, Michael.

-Welcome to our farm at Little Tawney Hall.

-Lovely to see you.

Now, my Bradshaw's Guide gives an idea of, kind of, rural idyll,

here in Essex, but just after this book was written in the 1860s,

there was actually a lot of change in agriculture here, wasn't there?

There was, yes. That was the time when there was a lot

of arable farming going on in Essex around this area,

and the farmers went broke,

so the landlords were advertising for farmers

to come and take the farms from areas

like the West Country and Scotland,

and, in particular, to bring their dairy cows into the area

because we had the London market

and this was where all the people were.

And that was what happened to your family?

Your family came in from outside?

It was. Our family were from Somerset,

and they came up in about the 1880s.

My grandfather actually came to this farm in about 1915.

Now, your wife also comes from a family of incomers, doesn't she?

Yes, they came from Scotland, from Ayrshire,

and there were more of those,

that came from Scotland than there were of us,

families that came from the West Country.

So, do you still find, in this area,

a lot of people with Scottish names, West Country names?

Yes, if you look in the phone book,

there's a whole list of McCaigs, McGowans, and McTurks.

There's pages and pages.

From 1870 onwards, Essex suffered an agricultural depression.

Poor harvests, bad weather,

and cheap grain imports forced farms out of business.

Farmers from outside who seized the opportunity to repopulate

these bankrupt farms had to relocate lock, barrel,

and stock, having to transport their dairy herds huge distances.

So they came down and actually rented trains,

and would bring down their cows from Scotland, their horses,

and the family, all their belongings,

and everything. They would move house and come down to Essex.

This is an extraordinary thought for me,

that they would put all these cows onto the train.

To me, it's a whole new use for the railways.

Enabling entire herds to move wasn't the only benefit

that the railways offered to these pioneering farmers.

They joined them to the edge of the world's largest city.

During the 19th century, London had grown enormously,

from just one million inhabitants in 1800

to an astounding 6.7 million a century later.

This milk-thirsty population could be supplied

by railway with fresh product,

offering a great business opportunity for ambitious farmers.

Indeed, the first Sainsbury's opened in Covent Garden, London,

in 1869, selling fresh railway milk from churns on a marble counter.

London market was down the road, there,

and with the railways there, they could put the milk onto

the train from Ongar, and this line here,

and it was into London,

and the milk was fresh, and there was a better price, also.

Cattle played an important part in Victorian life,

and products such as milk, cheese and butter could be highly profitable.

Duncan and his family currently milk a dairy herd of 150,

with somewhat higher productivity than his Victorian forefathers.

Well, I can see it's all highly mechanised,

wires and pipes everywhere.

Must be a big contrast to the Victorian scene.

Oh, it was. My dad used to milk 14 cows a day,

and he used to come in from ploughing in the fields exhausted,

and it was a time of rest for him to sit down under a cow

and milk them by hand.

And I think each man used to milk 14 cows a day, twice a day.

And my man in here, he milks 140 on his own,

and that's how things have progressed.

Cows are no longer milked by hand,

but Duncan's offered to let me entice out their product the modern way.

-Why do I feel so squeamish about this?

-This is an automatic cluster.

There is a button on the bottom, which you will have to press,

which lets the vacuum get into the cluster unit, here.

You guide it to the bottom of the teat and it should pop on.

In Bradshaw's time, a cow would produce 11 litres a day,

but now, with good breeding and husbandry,

that's improved to an extraordinary 30 litres.

-And the milk is flowing.

-The milk is flowing.

She's got her food, she's happy standing here,

and she's releasing the milk, and it's all coming into the jars.

And there we are, fresh milk for the supermarkets of London.

Absolutely, Michael.

I'm not sure whether I have cold hands,

but this lady passes her bovine judgement on my skills.

One of the hazards of the job.

It's not usually this...

The cow also decided to urinate on me. But that's all right.

As dairy herds spread across Britain,

railway lines and stations were built in the most rural locations

to serve the agricultural trade.

And my next stop, Blake Hall Station,

was used by local families, right up until the 1960s,

to transport milk to London on what was known as The Milk Line.

I'm meeting Simon Hanney,

manager of Epping and Ongar Railway,

at the now disused station.

-Simon, hello. What a fantastic station!

-Good morning.

-Isn't it beautifully preserved?

-Very much so, yes.

So, this station was originally part of the Great Eastern line?

Yes, it was. It was built as part of the Great Eastern Railway branch

to Ongar, which was opened in 1865.

So that's about the time of my Bradshaw's guidebook.

And immediately after that was when there was the big boom

in which the amount of milk travelling by train really took off.

Well, yes. The milk traffic doubled between 1894 and 1899.

And that led to the Great Eastern Railway company building

a special milk dock at Ongar to handle the trains.

But how far are we from London, actually?

We're 21 miles, at Blake Hall, here, from Liverpool Street,

which is where the trains used to operate into.

By 1949, steam locomotives ferried agricultural products,

and also commuters, from the last stop at Ongar

to Central London via Blake Hall as, amazingly,

this tiny rural stop became part of the London Underground network.

With electrification in 1957,

the Central Line's Tube trains ran between hedges and fields

direct to the capital's Liverpool Street station

and the West End, beyond.

It can't have a very busy London Underground station.

No, it's famed to be the least used underground station

on the whole network, which led to its closure in 1981,

with apparently only six passengers using it a day.

And it had a stationmaster,

indeed, I assume he lived in that part of the station.

Yes, he would, and he'd have been on the same pay

and conditions as stationmasters

down through the rest of the London Underground network,

which is quite amazing when you look at the station here.

Poet Laureate John Betjeman, an avid railway enthusiast,

is quoted as saying that the stationmaster's job at Blake Hall

was the ideal job.

Sadly, The Tube doesn't come to Blake Hall any more,

but the railway is now operating as a heritage line.

So, to continue my journey to Epping,

Simon has offered to let me ride up front.

I remember these magnificent diesels. They used to do all sorts of things.

They used to haul freight and passenger trains, didn't they?

Well, yes. This locomotive BR Class 37 was built in 1959

and was a direct replacement for a steam engine.

But, we have to imagine now, we're in the Victorian era,

and this is a steam engine, powering along, hauling milk for Londoners.

And, indeed, the branch would have provided 200 churns of milk

a day at its height.

This journey has given me a strong historical sense

of the lifeline that the railways provided,

bringing much better health and nourishment to Victorian Londoners.

-Thank you.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.

The Heritage Line has brought me to Epping,

where I'm catching the Central Line Tube to London.

I'm a big user of the London Underground,

mainly passing through the tunnels under Central London,

but I was brought up on the outskirts of London,

and people tend to forget that at the extremities

of the Underground line, it passes through leafy green suburbs.

I'm headed for Stratford, and Bradshaw's says,

"This station forms an important junction of the lines

"to Cambridge, Ipswich, Tilbury, and places on the North London railway.

"Here, a collier dock of 600 acres is being constructed."

Well, Stratford is, today,

an even more important railway junction, and hundreds of acres

are again being constructed, but this time, it's nothing to do with docks.

Stratford was clearly a major junction in Bradshaw's day,

but it's now at the centre of a remarkable rail infrastructure

that's been built and updated for the Olympics.

This is Stratford.

Please mind the gap between the train and the platform.

Stratford is now the most fantastic hub.

You've got the Underground, the Docklands Light Railway,

you've got suburban railway, national railway.

There's even an international railway station,

and shortly, people are going to be coming from all over

the world for the greatest sporting event on Earth.

The coming of the railway in 1839

began an explosion of industrial growth in the area.

It was close to London, with river and rail links.

Land and rates were cheap,

and there was a huge untapped workforce.

One of the biggest employers, Great Eastern Railways,

opened a massive locomotive and carriage works,

known as Rail Lands, employing 6,000 people.

Today, the rail links began in Bradshaw's time

are vital to the success of the Olympic Games.

I'm meeting John Armitt,

the Chair of the Olympic Delivery Authority.

John, it's the most fantastic site. My Bradshaw's guide refers

to 600 acres being under construction in the 1860s.

How many acres do you have under construction?

Well, believe it or not, 600 acres.

Do you think that's a coincidence?

Is it basically the same site, do you think?

20 years ago, this was known as the Railway Lands,

and so I would imagine that, yes, largely the same site.

So, what went on on these Railway Lands?

Everything from through railway lines,

and we've still got the North London line

running right through the site today,

and the East London line running round the periphery.

You had major maintenance facilities here,

and you also had the overnight stabling of trains

which weren't being used,

and we also had freight terminals here.

People like me from the West End wondered what you were doing

sending the Olympics to the East, but you did actually have

a fantastic infrastructure of railways here, didn't you?

Yes, I mean, Stratford, one of the best connected parts of London.

Three railway stations, ten railway lines,

Channel Tunnel high-speed rail link

running right through the middle of it,

now with the high-speed Kent services, so, yes, well connected.

Despite its great connections, the immense challenge facing John

and his team is how to get millions of visitors to the Olympic Park,

in and out of Stratford.

Come the Olympics, how many people do you expect to come here,

and how many of those will come by train?

We expect about two thirds of the people to come by rail,

maximum number here, on any day, at least 300,000,

so 200,000 people on the railway lines.

This visit is really pleasing to me because following Bradshaw's,

time and again, you're dealing with history,

-what the railways did in the past.

-Yes.

But this is about what the railways have done today

and for the future, isn't it?

It is, absolutely, and the railways are central to society,

and to society's development,

and here we are seeing regeneration of part of London,

in part driven by the railway.

I'm struck that Stratford's emergence in Victorian times,

and its renaissance today, depend on railways.

I'm now heading off in search of my night's hotel,

and for this, I've left the crowds of London

and doglegged north to a large country estate in Hertfordshire.

To be handily placed for the morning, I've come to Waltham Cross,

which Bradshaw's tells me was one of the 15 crosses

erected by Edward I to Queen Eleanor's memory.

And Bradshaw's mentions "Theobalds Park,

"which belonged to Sir Henry Meux Baronet."

And now it's a hotel, and my bed for the night.

I've been told there's a fascinating rags-to-riches tale associated

with the house.

And manager Lisa Avril is my guide.

-Hello, Lisa.

-Hello, how are you?

-What a fabulous house, isn't it?

-Yes.

It's beautiful. I would quite like to own it myself, actually.

Well, according to my Bradshaw's, it was owned by the Meux family.

-That's correct.

-Tell me something about them.

Well, there were several Meuxs, actually, that lived here.

But, really, there was one that stood out amongst all of them,

and that was Valerie Susan Meux who married Henry Meux,

and she was the third Lady of the House.

What was special about her?

When he married her, she was actually just a bar lady,

and so the rest of the society shunned her.

She was also shunned from society

because she was one of the first women to be photographed in bed.

Really, all you could see was her face, and her beautiful hair,

but that was really not done in those times.

She just didn't care.

Although ostracised by polite society,

Lady Meux was such a beauty that the renowned artist Whistler

chose to paint her no fewer than three times.

She died in 1910 in her sixties.

But that wasn't the end of her story.

-But she comes back.

-She comes back?

-She does.

One lady, she checked out

because the bedclothes were flung off of her.

We've had another one that's heard whispering,

and she's also been seen coming down the central staircase

in a beautiful grey dress.

Ooh! Well, that would be all right. I don't want things flung around,

but I don't mind seeing her on the staircase, that's all right.

Well, I'd better be brave, hadn't I?

I think so, I think it's time.

-Up to Lady Meux's dressing room.

-I think so.

-Which way?

Up here.

If the spirit of the beauteous Lady Meux

wafted through my dressing room in the night,

or if her ghost trod these stairs,

I was blissfully unaware.

I slept soundly.

This morning, I have moved just

a couple of miles from Waltham Cross to Waltham Abbey.

George Bradshaw highly recommends visiting

the remains of the Abbey, which he describes as having

"a magnificence of design, and elaborate finish."

But I want to visit somewhere that was shrouded in mystery in Bradshaw's

day, despite being fundamentally important to the Victorians,

both in the construction of railways and the growth of the Empire.

I've come to this place of trees and birdsong,

and picturesque canals, because my Bradshaw's says

that in the vicinity is the Government Gunpowder Mills.

I'm intrigued by that single cryptic reference.

The Royal Gunpowder Mills have been situated on this huge site

at Waltham Abbey since the beginning of the 18th century.

Scientific advances made here ensured that British gunpowder

and explosives were the envy of the world.

From supplying gunpowder for the muskets

at the Battle of Waterloo

to explosives for the bouncing bomb

in the Second World War, and even dynamite for railway companies

to blast tunnels and cuttings through the British landscape,

it's played an immensely important role

in Britain's emergence as an international power.

However, it's always been dangerous work.

The people of London heard two deep, reverberating booms.

They were caused by serious explosions

at a gunpowder factory in Waltham Abbey.

Thousands of panes of glass in the neighbourhood were shattered.

It was reported that five men lost their lives and 30 were injured.

I'm meeting the mill's curator, Dr David Kenyon,

to be shown the secrets of this intriguing place.

My Bradshaw's makes just the tiniest reference to this place,

but, in fact, it seems to be vast.

It's about 170 acres in total.

And you'd have had little industrial processes taking place

throughout the wood.

Across the site are the remains of buildings used to make

explosives and gunpowder over the centuries.

Gunpowder was manufactured wet, but had to be dried for use.

This was one of the most dangerous phases of the process.

The building you're looking at,

the idea is you have this enormous blast wall in the middle,

and the presses on one side doing the dangerous part of the job,

and all the other people and equipment, and the waterwheel, and everything,

is on the other side of the blast wall, safe if that side explodes.

Railways played a vital role within the huge site.

Materials and components were moved between,

and even into the buildings, on wooden tracks, with an 18-inch gauge.

Initially, they used a canal system,

but latterly, they went on to railways, mostly, initially,

with wooden rails, because sparks are a major problem here.

Later, they went for mechanical power,

but it was one of the first places where

they used diesel electric locomotives,

because steam engines belch lots of sparks out,

and again, that would've been a risk.

The 19th century was pretty peaceful, on the whole, but Britain,

nonetheless, was in arms production throughout that period, was it?

The Crimean War takes place in the mid-1850s,

and that's followed by the Indian Mutiny as well,

so the Army is suddenly very busy,

and the demand for powder is very high.

The site finally closed as a research establishment in 1991,

bringing to an end 300 years of explosives production.

Today, it's reopened as a tourist attraction,

and in this fascinating place, David has one other surprise up his sleeve.

Well, Michael, this is our armoury collection.

Good Lord! What an extraordinary collection!

We have over 200 separate weapons in here.

And anything from the period of Bradshaw?

Very much so, yes.

What we have here is the complete blackpowder period, really,

starting from the English Civil War at the bottom there,

coming through Waterloo, right up to the Zulu War,

right up to about 1900 when gunpowder stops being used.

So, even in the 1860s, in the Bradshaw period,

they're using gunpowder still.

Very much so, and the key weapon of the 1860s is this one here,

which is the 1853 Enfield rifle musket.

Beautiful piece of work. Now, it doesn't fire any more, does it?

Most of the guns we have here don't, but this one can be made to shoot.

Pour the powder.

I'm intrigued to see just what a 19th-century weapon can do.

So, all I do now is put it to full cock.

-Hmm, good noise.

-Good noise.

-Very good noise.

That is the sound that Bradshaw would have heard of gunfire.

Yes, that is the sound of blackpowder in the 19th century.

-Brilliant.

-From the Crimea to Zululand to the Indian Mutiny.

And that's just one. Imagine a battalion of 800 of those.

What a fascinating piece of our heritage!

It was said that in the 300 years of its operation,

there was never a challenge

that the Royal Gunpowder Mills could not rise to.

For the last leg of today's journey, I'm back on the train into London,

to investigate a story in Hackney

that greatly unnerved the Victorian public's trust in railways.

From the earliest days, trains were popular with commuters,

but the railways struggled to convince nervous passengers

that they were really safe.

Then, in 1864, about the time that my Bradshaw's guide was published,

a heinous event occurred in a railway carriage

that shook the confidence of the nation.

In Victorian times, crimes on trains - pickpocketing,

con merchants, and robbery - were recognised hazards.

Theft from goods sheds was also rife, and as early as 1825,

constables were employed by railway companies to deal with disorder.

But what happened in a train compartment in Hackney

one summer's evening

gripped and alarmed Victorian society.

I'm arriving at Hackney Wick Station to meet historian Kate Cahoon.

Hello, Kate.

-How nice to meet you.

-How lovely to see you.

So, what was the gruesome incident that was uncovered,

in Hackney in 1864?

It was the first murder on a British railway train,

although at the time, they didn't know it was a murder.

What they discovered on Hackney Station

was an empty first-class carriage, absolutely besmeared with blood.

Bloody fingerprints on the door handles, bits of brain matter

sliding down the paned windows,

and blood all over the floor.

But the carriage, as I said, was empty.

Victorian train compartments were, in effect, closed boxes,

with no corridor linking one to another.

Doors opened only onto platforms.

And in between stations, there was no means to summon help.

And so, what had happened to the body?

The body was found about 20 minutes

after the empty bloody carriage was found at Hackney,

further down the tracks between Hackney Wick and Bow.

Was the body alive or dead?

Well, alive, but only just.

Insensible and groaning, but he never fully regained consciousness.

He was never able to tell anybody what had happened to him,

and he died 24 hours later.

The murder of Thomas Bricks,

a 69-year-old defenceless banker,

near his elegant suburban home in Hackney,

caused panic and uproar amongst terrified Victorian rail users.

Where was the body found?

The body was found just up on the embankment, up here.

So, just before the train was crossing

the canal coming in this direction.

This is where the old line went.

This is the old embankment right up here.

When they heard the bellows,

they ran out of the back of the pub,

scrambled up the grassy rise up onto the embankment,

to find the stoker and the engine driver hefting

a large black-suited body over the embankment and down.

They took him into the back of the back room of the pub, here,

and called the local doctors.

A German Taylor by the name of Franz Muller

was arrested, tried, and subsequently hanged

in front of a crowd of 50,000 people

on 14th November 1864.

The case was a watershed in railway history,

forcing the introduction of communication cords,

and eventually,

trains were built with corridors linking the compartments.

But the biggest effect was on the psyche

of the Victorian travelling public.

The fear that the murder had caused to ripple down railway trains

continued to ripple well into the 1860s.

So, people did become nervous about travelling by train.

Extremely nervous. Now because somebody had actually been murdered

on a train for the first time.

They were talking about personal safety,

one's own ordinary day could be plunged into hell.

I must say, you know, reading my Bradshaw's,

which is such an optimistic book,

you never get the idea that fear stalked our railway lines

in those days.

I love to think of railway history,

of those churns of milk heading into London,

and even the first railway murder,

here at Hackney.

But in the East of London, with the Olympic Park,

and with these shiny new modern trains,

I think not so much of railway's yesterdays,

but of railway's tomorrow.

On the final leg of this journey,

I'll be taking a ride on a secret miniature railway.

Wow! I'll never complain about The Tube again.

This is quite small, isn't it?

Tolling alongside the good burghers of Bow.

Try not to look up. You'll get dust in your eyes.

And confusing hapless commuters at Fenchurch Street.

Chalkwell, Westcliff, Southend Central, and Shoeburyness.

Ooh! I left out the time, at the beginning, didn't I?

I left out the time.

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