High Wycombe to Stratford-Upon-Avon Great British Railway Journeys

In 1840, one man transformed travel in the British Isles.

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 these isles

to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.

I've embarked on a new journey,

following in the tracks of Victorian entrepreneurs and travellers,

along railways that were the arteries

to industrial England's Black Country heartland.

And from there, on to the verdant beauties of Wales.

On today's stretch, I'll meet the remarkable craftsmen

behind the Victorian furniture trade...

My dear bodger, I believe that I have made a bodge!

..discover how George Bradshaw helped to save Britain's

canal heritage.

He inspired railway travellers in the 19th century

and canal travellers in the 20th.

And see Shakespeare, through the eyes

of a 19th century railway tourist.

"Our revels now are ended

"These our actors..."

Bravo!

Starting in the rolling Chiltern Hills, my guidebook will lead me

through Oxfordshire and Warwickshire

towards the industrial centres of the Midlands.

Turning west, I'll experience the stunning Severn Valley Railway,

en route to mid Wales,

and the Victorian seaside resort of Aberystwyth.

Starting in High Wycombe, this leg takes me north-west,

to one of the Victorians' favourite spa towns,

before heading for the heart of Shakespeare country.

My first stop will be High Wycombe, seated deep in the Chiltern Hills.

Bradshaw says, "Wycombe is a borough in Buckinghamshire on the Wyck.

"In the vicinity, are many corn and paper mills."

But the arrival of the trains here, in 1854,

helped to furnish the town with a new industry.

Trains puffed into High Wycombe, courtesy of the Wycombe Railway,

which linked the town to Brunel's famous Great Western.

Today, it's a popular commuter town.

Indeed, even in the 19th century,

the area attracted those who wanted to live

at a distance from the Big Smoke.

I've always wanted to come to High Wycombe Station. Seriously!

Near here was the country home of one of my great heroes,

the Conservative Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli,

who had a very good relationship with Queen Victoria,

mainly because he was a great flatterer.

By own admission, he laid it on with a trowel.

Queen Victoria did him the extraordinary honour

of visiting her Prime Minister at his home.

Imagine how gratified he would have been

when he received Queen Victoria at this very railway station.

When she arrived here in 1877,

the Queen was collected by carriage

and driven past an eye-catching display -

a giant arch, constructed from wooden chairs.

It was built in honour of an industry

which thrived here in the 19th century,

thanks to a very special kind of craftsman.

I'm going down to the woods today, to get a big surprise.

The exceptional tale of the Chiltern chair bodgers.

-Hello.

-Hello. Bit of a stranger in these woods!

Ha! I'm sorry to interrupt your work.

-I see you are Stuart King of the Bodgers.

-Indeed. Yes.

What is a bodger?

A bodger, historically, was a wood turner,

who turned chair legs, for the High Wycombe chair industry,

mostly working in the woods, amongst his raw material,

usually the beech trees.

Why would you come to the woods to do this work?

It's much easier to take my simple equipment like this,

the raw material,

than to take very heavy beech logs, perhaps many miles, to a workshop.

Bodgers have worked here since at least the 18th century,

but their heyday came in the railway age.

Train transport transformed the High Wycombe chair industry.

It opened up new markets, and sped up getting to those markets.

Before the railway, everything was taken to London, the Midlands,

the South Coast by horse and cart. With the coming of the railways,

they were there within hours, instead of days.

In the late 19th century, there were 340 men at work in this area.

But by the 1960s, the advent of electric-powered lathes

had seen off the last of the bodgers.

Thankfully, craft historian Stuart King is keeping the skill alive,

which means mastering the bodger's key machine tool.

This is chair bodger's pole lathe.

There's the pole.

So, I'm going to put a hollow here.

That's magnificent!

-Do you think you could put one there?

-No!

THEY LAUGH

-You put the tool on the rest first.

-Yeah.

Have you any idea, when the industry was at its height,

how many chair legs were being turned out?

Oh, enormous numbers.

If we take a pair of chair bodgers, they would produce,

maybe, three gross a week - a gross being 144 chair legs.

Fantastic output.

My dear bodger, I believe I have made a bodge!

In fact, you've done pretty well.

I have to give you eight out of ten.

The bodger's finished legs and stretchers were destined to be

incorporated into High Wycombe's famous Windsor chairs.

Apparently, the name dates back

to before the arrival of the railway,

when the chairs were taken overland to Windsor, then by river to London.

But by Bradshaw's day,

over 4,700 chairs a day were being carried out of High Wycombe by rail.

Stuart Linford is amongst the last of the town's chair makers.

-Stuart!

-Hello, sir!

-Welcome to Kitchener Works.

-Thank you very much. Lovely to be here.

-Is this a Victorian factory, in origin?

-Absolutely right.

This was built in the 1890s

and it is the last working chair making workshop left

in High Wycombe, sadly, out of over 100.

High Wycombe's thriving factories helped to meet the demand

from Britain's rapidly-expanding middle classes.

They flaunted their new status, by buying elegant furniture

and the Windsor chair was a firm favourite.

-And this is the famous Windsor chair?

-Absolutely.

What are its chief characteristics?

Right, it's got a solid wooden seat,

into which the back and legs are socketed.

So the axis of construction is the seat.

These days, the legs

and stretchers are turned by machine, not by bodgers.

But the method for assembling the Windsor chair

remains unchanged since Victorian times.

This, Michael, is the Windsor framing shop,

where we actually make the chairs.

Stuart's going to demonstrate just how quickly

a framer could make a chair, in Bradshaw's day.

This process is called legging up,

That's a legged-up base.

Now, we've got to put the sticks in.

Amazing! This construction kit goes together in moments!

If I just grab... That's it! Hand me that lovely steam-bent component.

That fits in there like that.

There's a finished Windsor chair.

Please have a seat.

Bravo! That's fantastic!

Sadly, there's no time for me to sit around.

I'm continuing my journey along the Chiltern Mainline,

heading north-west.

I've crossed the border from Buckinghamshire into Oxfordshire,

where I'm seeking out the roots of Britain's Victorian prosperity.

Next stop for me is Banbury. Bradshaw's tells me that

the navigable canal from Coventry to Oxford

passes by and is conveyed through a hill by a tunnel

three-quarters of a mile in length.

George Bradshaw began his career by mapping canals

and he may have been upset

that his beloved railways eventually put them out of business.

In the late 18th century,

Britain's canals helped to launch the Industrial Revolution,

transporting coal and other materials faster than ever before.

Banbury soon found itself on an important route

from the Midlands to London.

I've come to Tooley's Historic Boatyard to hear the story,

from director, Matthew Armitage.

-Matthew.

-Oh, Michael, hello.

-Good to see you.

-And you.

A boatyard more than 220 years old. That must be some kind of record?

It's pretty special, isn't it?

The boatyard was built in 1788,

around the same time as the Oxford Canal -

one of the major arteries

of the fledgling canal system.

It provided the final link in an ambitious "grand cross" of waterways

connecting up the rivers Mersey, Trent, Severn and Thames.

The canal became very busy and was actually the M40 of its time,

transporting goods to London,

pretty much connecting Coventry down to the River Thames at Oxford.

When the canal was thriving,

what would the scene in Banbury have been?

Boats coming from all directions,

horses, you'd have had a blacksmith in the forge.

There would have been hammer ringing where they were making horse shoes

and parts for boats.

Soon, the Oxford Canal encountered competition,

when the Grand Junction canal opened a more direct route

from the Midlands to central London, bypassing the Thames.

But before long, an even bigger rival emerged.

The canals must have faced intense competition from the railways?

Exactly, that's right.

They actually used the canals to transport all the goods

and equipment needed to build the railways.

Once the railways were built,

they filled them in afterwards, stopping any competition,

but that wasn't the case for the Oxford Canal.

It kept going, which is pretty amazing.

There's something special about the Oxford Canal.

The boats plying the Oxford route

could stop off here in Banbury for repairs,

and this boatyard continued to thrive

through the 19th century and right up to today.

So we're at the bottom of the dry dock now.

You can see it's pretty dry.

We've got a boat. We're blacking it.

We're busy. So I think we could do with a hand, really.

These days, it's pleasure boats that come here to be serviced.

After a period of decline in the early 20th century,

Britain's canals had a revival as a place of leisure.

And that story began with a man called Tom Rolt,

who, in 1939, bought himself a dilapidated narrow boat.

He brought his boat to the dry dock.

-To this very dry dock?

-To this very dry dock,

and it was repaired by the Tooleys.

He set up his boat and went on a journey around the waterways,

and during this time, he wrote a book "Narrow Boat",

which became very, very famous.

It was pretty much a catalyst

for setting up the Inland Waterways Association

which campaigned for the canals,

bringing them up to what they are today.

So, Rolt's book set people travelling on the canals

in the same way as my Bradshaw's has set me travelling on the railways?

Yes, very much so. In fact, I've got a copy here, and there's something

here which I think you might find rather interesting.

Have a look at just that point there.

"A large-scale map of the canal system hung on the wall

"of my bedroom,

"and I would lie abed, planning imaginary journeys.

"I had also acquired a second-hand copy of a book

"which is indispensable to the canal traveller.

"Bradshaw's Guide to the Canals and Navigable Rivers

"of England and Wales."

Good old George Bradshaw!

He inspired railway travellers in the 19th century

and canal travellers in the 20th.

It's heartening to think that Bradshaw helped preserve the canals

for us all to enjoy.

Having brushed up my skills in the boatyard,

I'm now in search of refreshment worthy of a Victorian bargeman.

Bradshaw's informs me that Banbury is famous for cakes, cheese and ale.

"The cakes being sold in the metropolis."

After the day of physical exertion that I've had,

I hope they're still for sale in Banbury.

I've never heard of Banbury cakes, but in Victorian times,

the trains carried this local delicacy all over the country.

Back in Bradshaw's day,

Philip Brown's ancestors owned a thriving bakery on this street.

We've stopped outside the pub.

Cakes and ale seem to go together in Banbury.

Yes, they certainly appear that way.

There were 81 alehouses in Banbury and seven bakeries.

Four in this street, as it happens,

one of which ours, on the opposite side road to The Reindeer.

And what happened to it?

I'm afraid we sold it 1967 because it needed a lot of modernisation

and we hadn't got the money to do it.

It was knocked down by the developers in 1968.

Shame. But do you remember it the way it used to be?

Oh, very much so. Yes.

The front part of it was quite a delight

and people took a great interest in it.

Although the bakery's long gone,

Philip still makes and sells the cakes.

The exact recipe, thought to have been brought back from the Crusades

in medieval times, is a closely-guarded secret.

But he's brought a sample to my hotel for me to try.

Time to find out what all the fuss is about.

Oh, yes!

Buttery, spicy, fruity.

Full of eastern promise.

That's what they're like.

A delicious end to a long day of Victorian railway travel.

An excellent night's sleep thanks to the Banbury cakes.

Or was it the Banbury ale?

I'm now continuing my journey through central England,

and my next destination was clearly a Victorian favourite.

My first stop is Leamington Spa,

which my Bradshaw's says is now, "though still small and picturesque,

"become a large, handsome town, better paved,

"lighted and regulated than any other town of its size."

"Few places possess so many attractions

"as this highly-favoured town."

There must be something in the water!

Leamington Spa owed its fame to its mineral water springs,

which, from the late 1700s,

were recommended as a cure for all sorts of ills.

-Morning. Thank you.

-Thank you.

By the 1850s, the railways were bringing wealthy Victorians here

in their droves.

The curative properties of the waters of Leamington Spa are,

according to my Bradshaw's,

"resorted to by vast numbers of invalids and a constant succession

"of fashionable visitors."

But I was struck by this reference.

"Amongst Leamington's numerous attractions are a splendid

"tennis court and racquet ground

"attached to an elegant pile of buildings."

I think a visit there would serve me well.

The Leamington Spa Tennis Court Club was founded in 1846

when lawn tennis as we know it had yet to be invented.

Mark. Good morning.

-Morning! Welcome to Leamington Tennis Court Club.

-Thank you.

Come through.

Very spacious, and very Victorian.

The Victorian gentlemen of leisure who came here

played the ancient indoor game of "real tennis".

Marc Seigneur is one of a select few who play it today.

A real tennis court is just immensely different

from a lawn tennis court, isn't it?

What are all these lines about and the sloping roofs?

The lines are what we call the chases,

and that's the complicated bit of the game.

The sloping roofs are called penthouses,

and they would have dated back

from the cloisters because the monks played.

So this is very historic game,

but I've seen a real tennis court at Hampton Court.

Yes. Henry VIII would have played, Henry V before him.

It dates back from the 12th, 13th century.

Henry V, in fact, went to war because of it.

Went to war because of tennis?

Well, the French dauphin sent him a box of balls when Henry V

claimed the throne of France

and the message going with it was, play tennis with the boys,

leave war to the men.

Mm! An insult.

For the Victorians,

this rich history served to make real tennis irresistible,

sparking a revival of the game.

When lawn tennis burst upon the scene in the 1870s,

some of this club's members

helped to draw up the rules.

But the older sport wasn't forgotten.

So that's our equipment.

Ooh! These feel quite different from tennis balls.

Yes, this is what we call a pilota.

Hardly bounces at all.

And...

these are quite heavy.

Yes, there are different weights and different balances,

but they're all made out of wood, with very taut strings,

much tauter than the lawn tennis version, and a very small sweet spot,

so it's actually quite difficult to strike the ball.

I see!

Right.

Nonetheless, would you like to show me how the game is played?

Love to.

Modern tennis owes some terminology to the medieval game,

such as "service", which comes from when servants used to throw

the ball into play.

Swing slowly.

Swing slowly!

The basics might be straightforward, but the game gets trickier

when your opponent starts to bounce balls off the wall.

I'm going to serve onto this sloping roof, which we call "the penthouse",

and you'll have to try and hit it.

OK.

Good! You're too good at this.

Well done!

-Thank you, Mark.

-It's a pleasure.

I feel you've not only introduced me to a sport but to history.

The sport of kings. I mean, real tennis, royal tennis.

Yes, you're welcome and membership is still open.

Thank you very much.

I'd love to linger to develop my backhand,

but it's time for me to take my last train for today.

I'm making a short hop south-west, on the trail of a national icon.

My Bradshaw's provides a clue as to my next destination.

"Where his first infant lays sweet Shakespeare sung.

"Where the last accents faltered on his tongue

"and to which the genius of one man has given immortality."

In other words, Stratford-upon-Avon,

which, by any other name, would be as sweet.

The entry for Stratford in my Victorian guidebook dedicates

nearly two whole pages to the Bard, and judging by this busy train,

he's just as popular with modern railway tourists.

-Are you headed for Stratford?

-Yes, I am.

-Would I be right in detecting you're not from UK?

-I'm not.

-Where are you from?

-I'm from the United States of America.

-Where are you from?

-I am from Peru.

-Shakespeare is quite well known in Peru?

-Yes.

Can you do any quotations?

Um... "Ser o no ser?"

"To be or not to be?"

Yes.

-"To be..."

-"To be..."

Do you know how that finishes?

Um, "To be or not to be."

There we are!

Romeo! Romeo! Where art thou, Romeo?

Any more?

Um...

No!

It seems these days Stratford attracts Shakespeare pilgrims

from across the world.

There's no option but to join the throng.

The crowds getting off this train are absolutely amazing

and it's like the Tower of Babel - there are

so many languages being spoken on this train

and they're all here for a man who died 400 years ago.

Shakespeare's emergence as a global icon was

well under way in Bradshaw's day.

The Victorian's passion for the immortal poet shines

through in my guidebook.

It describes how in Stratford,

"we tread the very ground that he has toured a thousand times

"and feel as he has felt." And to do just that, it sends readers

to the old-fashioned, timbered house where Shakespeare was born.

Here, Victorian admirers went to extreme lengths to preserve

Stratford's Shakespearean heritage.

I'm hearing this story from Dr Anjna Chauhan.

My Bradshaw's tells me

that Shakespeare's birthplace, after some changes and "the risk

"even of being transferred as it stood to America by a calculating

"speculator, was at last purchased by the Shakespeare Club

"and adopted by the government."

So, apparently, the house was saved in Victorian times.

Yes, that's true.

It was going to be purchased by an American businessman

and showman, PT Barnum.

Now, obviously people in England got very angry about this

and they decided to form the Shakespeare Committee,

a birthday committee, and purchase the birthplace.

As industrialisation swept Britain,

nostalgia for the past grew and, with it, a desire to protect

historic sites like this,

but Shakespeare had an extra-special resonance for the Victorians.

Shakespeare was somebody people could look up to as a man.

He transformed from somebody who was just the son of a glove-maker

in a market town

and he became a prolific playwrighter

and a great businessman in his own right

and this was incredibly admirable in the period

of industrialisation, of capitalism as well, of self-improvement.

As well as applauding Shakespeare's example of diligence, 19th-century

audiences interpreted the plays in a particularly Victorian way.

They were great pieces of literature but they were also considered

-great moral tales, cautionary tales as well...

-Mmm.

..stories about justice, about mercy, about what's right

and what's wrong, what's good, what's bad.

From 1860, high-minded Victorian visitors could arrive here by rail.

Down in the birthplace archive, documents show that trains

brought Stratford within reach of day-trippers.

We have a record of the rail journeys to and from Stratford-upon-Avon

and the rail fares during the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth,

so 1864, to celebrate 300 years after the birth of William Shakespeare.

The highlight of the archive is this edition of Shakespeare's

complete works, published in 1623, brought here in the 19th century.

Now, without this, this particular text,

we'd be missing 18 of Shakespeare's plays, so it's very, very important.

We'd be missing plays such as The Tempest, Macbeth and Twelfth Night.

I've never felt closer to the Bard than at this moment.

That's wonderful to hear.

At first, railway tourists came to Stratford to see Shakespeare's

birthplace and grave,

but from 1879 they could also attend performances of his plays here.

That was when the curtain rose in Stratford's first successful

theatre dedicated to the Bard, and its modern-day descendant

is the recently-renovated Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

Before I leave town, I'm taking a tour with actor Jonathan Slinger.

We walk through here. I make an entrance down this lift

in Twelfth Night.

-This is a fantastic space now, isn't it?

-It's stunning.

Now, in Victorian times,

I imagine nearly all theatres would have been...

The stage would have been behind an arch, proscenium,

and now thrust out into the audience.

Exactly right. I much prefer this,

because I very strongly believe that Shakespeare wrote his plays

with audience participation in mind.

A lot of the text that you can read sometimes lends itself

to the kind of audience participation that we don't get any more,

except at panto, but in Shakespeare's day, there would

have been a lot more heckling going on of the actors on stage.

'It's not just the staging that's changed since Bradshaw's day,

'acting techniques have moved on too.'

There was much more of an emphasis on stance and gesture,

so that would have been...

So if we take a line, if we take a bit from, The Tempest, let's say.

Our revels now are ended

These our actors, as I foretold you

Were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.

Bravo!

And how are you delivering it today?

Well, today would be a much more naturalistic affair, so...

Our revels now are ended

These our actors, as I foretold you

Were all spirits and are melted into air, into thin air.

Very moving indeed, so I've been privileged to hear one version

and George Bradshaw would have heard another.

On today's journey, my guidebook has shown me

how our 19th-century forebears helped to shape many things,

from furniture to our appreciation of theatre.

Ever since I sat in that Windsor chair in High Wycombe,

Queen Victoria has never been far from my mind.

During her reign,

there was a revival of interest in both real tennis and in Shakespeare.

Having been bashed about the tennis court, I've now trodden

the boards in Stratford-upon-Avon, so all's well that ends well.

On the next stretch,

I'll learn how railways helped pen-making to boom in Birmingham...

It was a trade that brought writing to the masses really.

..hear the chilling tale

of one of 19th-century Britain's most notorious murderers...

30,000 turned up for his execution.

They had special trains laid on from Bristol, from Manchester

and from London.

..and sample the delicacies concocted in a Victorian kitchen.

Look at that, wow! That's got a real wobble factor on it, hasn't it?

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd