Winchester to Isle of Wight 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.

I'm back on the route that would have been familiar to Queen Victoria,

as she journeyed from London or Windsor to her beloved

Osborne House on the Isle of Wight,

passing through places that she would have seen

and that Bradshaw's documented.

Today, I'll be learning how Victorian engineering

made its mark on music...

I'm now going to press a pedal.

An amazing feeling of power.

..going behind the scenes at a 19th-century railway works...

Barry, that is what I call a locomotive.

-That is fantastic!

-Yes, it is.

..and discovering a landscape that wowed tourists in Bradshaw's day.

I have this amazing plunge down to the beach. Whoa!

You have to have a head for heights here.

So far on this journey, I've seen how the home counties of Berkshire

and Hampshire were brought closer to the capital

by the growing rail network.

Now, I'm continuing towards the coast,

on my final stop on the Isle of Portland.

Today, I'll take the mainline south,

from Winchester to the port of Southampton,

continuing by ferry to the Isle of Wight.

My first stop is Winchester,

and my guidebook promises plenty to interest the railway traveller.

My Bradshaw's guide tells me that King Canute,

a king who has had an unfair bad press because of his altercation

with the tides, made Winchester the capital of England.

So, this is a seriously historic city.

When the railway came to Winchester, in 1839,

it brought waves of Victorian tourists, hungry for heritage.

Then, as now, the must-see attraction was the ancient cathedral,

which has stood in the heart of the city for 900 years.

Winchester Cathedral.

My Bradshaw's says that it is "more remarkable for its antiquity

"and length, 518 feet, than its appearance."

But that is surely rather ungenerous of Bradshaw's.

It may be a little squat,

but it has a magnificence that leaves me in awe.

I want to see what the locals make of Bradshaw's faint praise.

-Do you live in Winchester?

-I do, yes.

How wonderful to live with this cathedral.

-I know, it's amazing.

-Do you still find time to look at it?

Absolutely, yes. It's lovely when you come back in the evensong,

and you can hear all the choristers practising.

You know, I'm using a 19th-century guidebook. Listen to this.

"More remarkable for its antiquity and length, 518 feet,

"than its appearance." What do you think of that?

I think that's a bit unfair, actually,

because, I mean, the setting is beautiful.

Inside, it's beautiful as well, all the beautiful carvings.

It's just, it's lovely.

-How wonderful. So, naughty Bradshaw, eh?

-Absolutely.

I think I wouldn't agree with that at all. Yeah.

For once,

I think that Bradshaw's and I will have to agree to disagree.

But my guidebook describes more than just the architecture.

I'm intrigued by this Bradshaw quote.

"One of the first organs made in England was placed here

"by Bishop Elfeg in the year 951,"

that's 115 years before the Norman conquest.

"A ponderous thing containing 400 pipes blown by 24 pairs of bellows."

I wonder if it's still here today.

It's hard not to be impressed by your first sight

of the stunning 160-metre-long nave.

When the cathedral's famous choir fills it with delightful sound,

it's breathtaking.

THEY SING

Andrew Lumsden is the musical director.

-Andrew, good morning.

-Hello, welcome to the cathedral.

Absolutely magnificent. Thank you very much, boys, indeed.

That was glorious. I enjoyed that so much.

But, apart from the choir, I was also fascinated by the organ.

It has quite a sound, hasn't it?

It is a mammoth sound in this building, isn't it?

It's very, very large. It's all made up here.

Basically, dating from 1851, from the Great Exhibition.

-Then it was moved here in 1854.

-1851?

I came with my Bradshaw's Guide looking for an organ from 951 AD.

-Yes.

-Not here any more?

-Not here any more. Long, long since gone.

Been replaced by this wonderful one and various other ones before that.

This one in 951 apparently had 400 pipes, that's quite impressive.

It is. It was then regarded as the loudest organ in the world.

-But now we have something in the region of about 6,000.

-6,000?

-6,000.

It's perhaps unsurprising

that my guidebook mentions the cathedral's ancient organ.

Victorian Britain was swept by a craze for organ music.

Inspired by the technological advances of the age,

builders competed to design ever bigger and better instruments.

There was a competition for building organs at the Great Exhibition.

And the one that won was basically this one,

built by Henry Willis, who used the modern technology of the day.

He was really very important in the whole organ-building world

for this, because he used this technology in a brand-new way

to enable us to have bigger organs, like the one we have today.

Willis' groundbreaking organ was exhibited alongside

industrial machinery at the Crystal Palace,

and people flocked by train to see it.

When the Great Exhibition was over, the organ was brought to Winchester.

It's so huge that many of the pipes are buried deep inside

the cathedral's structure.

-Is it far?

-No, not too far.

Ah, that gives you a different aspect.

It's completely different here.

Wonderful part of the building to be in.

I'm travelling into the bowels of the organ,

across a gantry, alarmingly high above the cathedral floor.

-That was a journey.

-Yes, it's quite a journey. Quite precarious.

-Quite scary. So... Wow. What a lot of pipes.

-It is.

Well, this is only, I should think, about a fifth of the organ, if that.

And you can see, the size of these, as you come down here,

they get very, very small indeed.

So...

That's, you know, one of the high ones.

Then, as you can see, they vary and they all produce different sounds.

Right at this end here, we have what we call a little reed pipe.

Again, I'll just take this out.

-Inside here...

-Oh, my goodness.

..there is a minute little metal reed, just in there.

When you blow it, it vibrates. That is what actually makes the sound.

It's like an oboe reed or a bassoon reed, or something like that.

So, you get a good little sound of that.

If these are your smallest, Andrew,

what are your largest?

The largest ones are about 32 feet long.

There's a few of them over here, or some of the smaller versions.

They look here like part of the furniture, really, but, actually,

these are wooden pipes that will be going right the way

up the top of the organ.

These are the very low, rumbly pipes.

So, although Bradshaw's Guide mentions the 951 AD organ,

the one that the writer would actually have seen

would have been the 1851-54 organ.

How much of that is still here?

About a third of the current organ is from that 1854 organ.

He would have seen and heard very much of what we have nowadays.

-But much has been added, then?

-Much and much has been added.

-It's grown organically?

-Indeed, it has. Yes, very good.

These musical machines were the perfect instrument

for the age of steam.

Some of the same technology was used on the early railways to warn

-people of approaching trains.

-TRAIN WHISTLES

But playing one is more complicated than driving a steam engine.

-Shall I assume the position?

-Indeed. Yep, that's great.

All right, now, what should I do?

-So, do you want to press button 12 up there?

-Oh.

-And now, I'm going to press a pedal?

-Yep.

HE PLAYS A NOTE

I don't know where that goes next. It's an amazing feeling of power.

And it's just one person making all that noise.

I'd love to stay and learn some technique,

but it's time for me to catch my next train.

I'm leaving historic Winchester behind and heading seven miles

down the track to a town with much more recent roots.

Bradshaw's Guide lists virtually every railway station

in the United Kingdom, but not our next stop,

even though I think of it as a major railway town.

I'm on my way to find out the reason why.

Eastleigh, which straddles the mainline between Winchester

and Southhampton, is home to 28,000 people.

I want to know whether the locals share my view that the town

is synonymous with railways.

Well, I've just arrived at Eastleigh,

and I'm wondering, what's this town famous for?

-Famous for railway.

-What's the town famous for?

-Trains?

-What's the town famous for?

-The railway.

-Hello, gentlemen. What is the town famous for?

-I couldn't tell you.

-We're from Portsmouth.

So, it doesn't mean anything to you?

Don't worry about it. The answer was railways, but you didn't get it.

No prize for you.

In the 1860s, when my guide book was written,

the town of Eastleigh didn't exist.

All that was here was a small station called Bishopstoke Junction,

which served the scattered villages around.

Then a state-of-the-art carriage works was built beside the line,

sowing the seed for a brand-new town.

What a vast place.

Shops stretching for miles and miles and miles. Workshops.

Eastleigh Works is still going today,

so I'm taking a tour with manager Barry Stephens.

-Hello, Barry.

-Hello, Michael.

-Welcome to Eastleigh Works.

-Great to see you.

-Thanks.

So, I can't get over how big this place is. It's vast.

It's a big place, Michael. It is, indeed.

The original London and South West Railway terminated

at Nine Elms, then on the outskirts of the capital. When the line was

extended to Waterloo in 1848, Nine Elms was its engineering works.

But as the railways grew, bigger and better facilities were needed.

With the London and Southwestern route,

we started to move out of London and come to an unknown site,

greenfield site at Eastleigh.

So they moved the coach-building facilities in the 1880s, 1890s.

Then, this main workshop was built in the early 1900s.

I suppose Nine Elms...

-That's a prime piece of real estate in the heart of London.

-Oh, indeed.

Soon, rows of houses were built for the influx of new workers

and Victorian Eastleigh was born.

I imagine, at one time, probably the whole town worked in the railway.

What was the size of it in those days?

Back even when I started, in 1969, which is obviously quite

late on, there were 2,500 people who worked on the site. So, yeah.

I mean, at lunch times and closing down times,

it was like a mass exodus of bicycles, etc.

I'm not sure what its total workforce at its height was,

but I imagine it's probably up in the 4,000s.

Traditionally, there are a lot of people who work in railways

generation after generation, would that be true of people here?

I think so, to a certain degree.

We have an apprentice whose grandfather worked in the works.

And I myself am from a third-generation railway family.

My granddad was a driver at Exeter and my father was a driver at Exeter.

And my eldest son works with me here on site now.

So, I think it's probably true to say that there is

a bit of a tradition going on.

When it opened, this was Britain's most advanced works

and hundreds of locomotives and thousands of carriages

were built here.

Everything was done on site,

from assembling the engines to fitting out the coaches.

Now, Barry, that is what I call a locomotive.

-That is fantastic!

-Yes, it is.

-What a beautiful pair of wheels!

-They're bigger than I am.

-Yep, they are indeed.

It's a locomotive actually built here in the mid-1930s, I believe.

So, yeah, actually it came back for an overhaul before going back to

-Mainline Steam again, I believe.

-That's a beautiful story.

What strikes me about this workshop is you've got railway history here, haven't you?

A 1934 steam locomotive. You've got, what? And a 1670s stock.

Here, we're going back a little bit to the 1960s,

-the London underground.

-The London underground.

I used to use these at school.

You probably have even been on that one, Michael.

I probably have been on that very car,

that's absolutely true.

Although they've stopped building new trains in the 1960s,

important maintenance work still goes on here.

Some vintage equipment is still in use,

like these cranes, which can lift whole trains.

Operator Nigel Ellis is letting me take the helm.

-Permission to step aboard?

-Yes, come aboard.

-You've got a lovely view up here, Nigel.

-Yes, we certainly have.

Now, what's the object of the exercise?

-We're going to go down and pick up that locomotive?

-Yes.

We're going to travel down to what we call Botley.

So, you're going to move that lever round that way.

-OK.

-There we go.

So, one end of your shop is called Botley,

the other end is called London.

The local code.

-Happy with that speed, Nigel?

-Yes.

-It's quite fast, isn't it?

-Yes, it is quite fast.

-And they're walking along with the...

-The steady and the beam.

-This is rather exciting, isn't it? Wow.

Now, we need to move that very, very cautiously. Travelling out!

When you're lifting 100 tonnes of train, you can't afford mistakes.

-Just gave it one swipe and it was there.

-Travel to Botley again.

Travel to Botley.

-Get ready to stop in a moment.

-I'm ready.

-And, now...

Whoa! Precision.

-Nigel, we're ready for the lift, are we?

-Yes, we're ready.

For obvious reasons, I'm going to let you do this. Right.

One, two, three, go.

Now we have 100 tonnes of locomotive

rising into the air, that is pretty amazing.

My guidebook might have been too early for Eastleigh Carriage Works,

but I'm sure George Bradshaw would have loved to see

such a concentration of railway engineering.

'This train is for Salisbury, via Southhampton Central.'

I'm now continuing my journey, travelling south.

The tracks follow the path of the River Itchen,

one of Britain's finest chalk streams renowned for its fishing.

I'm leaving the train at Swaythling to explore the river bank.

Bye-bye.

In the 19th century, the growing railway network helped to make

fishing one of Britain's favourite sports.

Rail companies targeted would-be anglers with special deals to entice

them away from the cities.

There was no more fashionable spot to cast a line

than the chalk streams of Hampshire.

Clayton, good evening. So, what an idyllic spot.

Clayton Moorhouse is the ghillie who looks after this stretch

of the river.

-What's the relationship between chalk and fish?

-It cleans the water.

There's a little bit of colour at the moment, to me,

but another week or so and that will be crystal clear.

That will be as clear as your tap water.

So you'll be able to see the fish.

Then it's a different story altogether.

-If you can see them, they can see you.

-Let me have a go, if I may?

You may, indeed.

These pure waters were perfect for fly fishing,

the favourite style of the Victorian elite.

The trick is to keep the artificial fly floating on

the surface of the water, which means repeatedly recasting the line.

Oopsy-poos.

Thank goodness I'm with an expert.

Well done, sir, well done.

-There we go.

-You've got yourself a trout.

What a beautiful fish. Well done, Clayton.

Luckily, Clayton is happy to share his catch.

Thank you very much. Bon appetit.

That is so tasty, so fresh.

This has been a lovely evening.

I understand now why people like to fly fish.

This is literally a delicious way to end the day.

On a misty old morning, I am back on the tracks,

heading for Southampton, where I will take ship, or ferry anyway.

I'm bound for the Isle of Wight,

but this is the closest I can get by rail.

Southampton Central.

Bradshaw says, "The station, which is close to the quay

"and has a commanding position on the banks of Southampton Water,

"is admirably adapted for the convenience of the passenger."

The arrival of the railway in Southampton

transformed it into one of Britain's busiest ports, and my guidebook

describes the new docks, formed on a scale of great magnitude.

It's where I've come to catch my ferry on to the Isle of Wight.

I'm really looking forward to this leg of the journey.

It's good to see there are still some foot passengers.

That's how I used to travel as a child.

We'd take the train from Waterloo and, indeed, on the other side,

we'd take the steam train down to Ventnor for our holiday.

Nowadays, people with families want to have a car on the island,

but it's still great fun to do it on foot.

Steamships began to ply the Solent in the 1820s, but what really made

this journey popular was Queen Victoria's decision to make

the Isle of Wight her summer home.

I'm following in her footsteps, on the modern car ferry,

steered today by Captain Ken Edwards.

Can you imagine what this would've been like in Victorian times?

Yes, I can, because the route itself would be exactly the same.

Obviously, the shipping is different

to what it was in those days, but you've still got

the same channels, the same buoys.

And all the whole scenery around it hasn't really been developed much.

When Queen Victoria travelled to the island,

-did she go to East Cowes like we are?

-Yes.

There is a public landing there now where Queen Victoria used to land.

And that would be the quick way to Osborne House?

Oh, yes, just up the hill from there. Probably about a mile and a half.

By the end of Victoria's reign,

the island was being visited by tens of thousands of tourists every year.

And they haven't stopped coming since.

Good morning.

-Good morning.

-What takes you to the Isle of Wight?

-We come here...

We try to get here at least once a year.

-Cos we love it over here.

-Why? Why do you love it so much?

There's so much to see and do. There's two things, really.

It feels like it's back in time a little bit.

So, we enjoy that feeling of the seaside and the holiday

by the sea, but there's a lot to see and do, isn't there?

Plenty to do for children. Beautiful beaches, lots of activities.

-Beautiful weather?

-Usually.

Well, I think the weather is improving already,

so I hope you have a wonderful holiday.

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

I'm really pleased to be back on the Isle of Wight.

I've hardly set foot here as an adult, all my memories are childhood

memories from seven summer holidays that I spent here.

So, I think about ice cream and buckets and spades, beaches and piers.

Bradshaw says, "Those who desire to make a real acquaintance with

"all the island's attractions may spend many pleasant weeks

"in it, finding new walks every day."

That was pretty much what we discovered when we came here

all those years ago.

Queen Victoria also spent happy childhood holidays here,

kick-starting a lifelong love affair with the island.

Her delightful summer home, Osborne House,

was built in the 1840s and became one

of her favourite royal residences.

Soon after, the first railways arrived to carry the tourists

who followed in her wake.

By 1875, this tiny island had 32 miles of track.

No Victorian railway tour was complete without a pilgrimage

to the dramatic cliffs of the island's western tip.

These days, there is one outstanding way to see this famous landmark.

As the chair lift reaches the edge of the cliff, over to my left,

I have the most spectacular view of The Needles,

this extraordinary geological phenomenon,

which I remember from childhood.

I've even seen it from aircraft, flying way above it.

But this is a fantastic view. And now, as we go over the top,

I have this amazing plunge down to the beach,

down the side of the cliff.

Whoa! You have to have a head for heights here.

The Needles rocks that loom up out of the Channel mark the entrance

to the stunning Alum Bay.

For 19th-century visitors, this was a star attraction.

My guidebook writes,

"The cliffs on one side are white and on the other side, curiously

"variegated, with strata of ochre, Fuller's earth,

"grey and white sand."

-Hello, Tony.

-Oh, Michael.

-Good to see you.

-Welcome aboard the Rambling Rose.

-Thank you very much.

Tony Isaacs' family has a special connection to these unique sands

that goes back generations.

Tony, I'm astonished by the colours.

I did not expect them to be as bright as that, as vivid.

They're fantastic!

Well, you're probably seeing them at their best today.

These remarkable stripes were once horizontal layers of sediment,

but over millions of years,

they've been forced up into a vertical position.

Victorian visitors were entranced by this geological oddity

and started to take the coloured sands home with them on the trains.

These Victorians, would they come

and buy souvenirs of sand, or would they go and collect it themselves?

Oh, they would do both, really.

I mean, it's quite exciting fun to come along the bottom

of a cliff with an old jam jar or something and fill your own.

But yes, of course, they were able to buy them,

should they need to.

My great-grandfather was the pier master here.

He had a little shop on the end of the pier,

and they used to sell coloured sand ornaments even then.

As the train network helped British tourism to grow,

the idea of souvenirs became more widespread.

Coloured sands became the essential keepsake

of an Isle of Wight holiday.

By the 20th century, competition for the tourist business was fierce.

When we first started to sell, just after the War,

that's my own recollection, there were 12 colours.

Everybody had 12 colours.

And then another rival faction came on the scene

and they went up to 15 colours.

So, then we went up to 18 colours, and they went up to 21 colours.

But wait a minute, wait a minute.

There can't really be any debate about this.

There are either 12, 15 or 21 colours. How many are there?

What it was, you see, each company, each rival faction,

tried to advertise that they had the most colours to attract

-the most customers.

-Yes.

-They called a truce at 21.

That was it. But over the years that I was collecting it,

I decided I'd keep a sample of every colour that I collected.

I can't remember exactly what it was,

but I think it was either 31 or 32 different colours.

-Really?

-Yeah.

These days, only sand that has fallen through natural erosion may be sold

and access to the cliff is strictly controlled.

Who does the sand belong to, by the way?

Does it belong to you? The island? Who does it belong to?

It belongs now to what is known as the Needles Pleasure Park.

Funny enough, my great-grandfather had the opportunity once of buying

-all this lot for £20.

-And he didn't?

-No, no.

Well, you see, my great-grandfather said to my grandfather...

There was an auction,

"Go up to £20 for this cliff," the top of the cliff back to the road.

He went off to a meeting. When he came back, he said,

"Well, did you get it?"

And Grandfather said, "No, it went for £25."

And Great-Grandfather said, "For goodness' sake!

"Why didn't you go another £5?"

"Well, you only told me to go to 20," he said.

-So, there you go.

-This is like the man who didn't sign up The Beatles.

Oh, dear, something like that, yeah.

I'd probably be quite wealthy by now.

Tony's family might have missed out,

but islanders are still making a living from tourism today,

all thanks to the Victorians, who saw the charms of this beautiful island.

Queen Victoria left the Isle of Wight for the last time

in her coffin, headed for her last railway journey to Windsor.

She had so often been to the island,

first as a newlywed with her beloved Albert

and then frequently as a widow.

The thing that enabled her to to-and-fro to the island

was the arrival of high-speed travel, by railway.

On the next stage of my journey,

I'll be slithering in the tracks of a Victorian snake catcher...

Fantastic view! I never dreamt I'd get that close.

..uncovering a secret library described in my Bradshaw's Guide...

-This is your oldest book?

-Yes, it is.

There are only two other copies of this in existence.

..and visiting a seaside town born in the railway age.

Whoa! Off we go!

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