Birmingham to Stafford 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'm continuing my journey through England's industrial heartland towards rural Wales.

Even before the Victorian period,

the Midlands had experienced an intellectual enlightenment

that put it at the core of Britain's Industrial Revolution.

And by the time my guidebook was published,

their ideas had turned Britain into the world's most advanced economy.

On this stretch, I'll learn how the railways helped

to make Birmingham the pen-making capital of the world...

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! Did you make that?

-I certainly did.

That's got a real wobble factor on it, hasn't it?

This journey began in the Chilterns and is now taking me

towards the heart of the industrial Midlands.

I'll then join the picturesque Severn Valley,

before crossing into Wales, en route to my final stop at Aberystwyth.

Today, I'll begin in Birmingham, then explore the Staffordshire towns

of Tamworth and Rugeley, finishing in the county town of Stafford.

I'm on my way to Birmingham,

which Bradshaw's tells me is "the great centre of the manufactured metal trades,

"being situated in North Warwickshire on the borders

"of the South Staffordshire iron and coal district."

During Victorian times,

Birmingham was known as the workshop of the world

and "the city of a thousand trades," a place where the currencies

were skill and invention.

-ANNOUNCEMENT:

-We are now approaching Birmingham Moor Street.

To trace the vestiges of that hive of industry,

I'm alighting at Birmingham Moor Street, the spectacular gateway

from the Chiltern railway to Britain's second-largest conurbation.

Thank you. 'It's an uplifting way to enter this dynamic city.'

Birmingham Moor Street station, what a joy.

First opened in 1909, in Edwardian Britain.

Rebuilt in the 21st century, in 1930s style.

It has the feel of a film set for a period costume drama.

And I love it.

From the start of Britain's Industrial Revolution,

Birmingham led the way,

enthusiastically adopting the new technologies that would change the world.

According to my guidebook,

"scarcely a street is without its manufactory and steam engine.

"At the same time, a considerable amount of the labour

"is of a manual kind."

By the middle of the 19th century,

Birmingham had a population of 500,000.

And in the previous 100 years, its inhabitants had applied

for three times as many patents as those of any other city.

My Bradshaw's recommends that amongst the principal establishments

worth visiting in Birmingham

I should go to one for the manufacture of steel pens,

here in the jewellery district.

In Bradshaw's day, Birmingham was a global centre

for the making of pen nibs and my guidebook singles out one producer,

saying, "We should think that the reputation of Messrs Gillott and Son of Graham Street

"has reached all parts of the world."

Whilst the Graham Street factory is no longer in operation,

just opposite the site is a pen museum,

where I am meeting expert Larry Hanks.

-Larry.

-Good morning.

Good to see you.

I've got an advertisement in my Bradshaw's guide for Joseph Gillott.

It's a fantastic advertisement.

"Joseph Gillott, metallic pen maker to the Queen,

"begs to inform the commercial world of his useful productions

"which for excellence of temper, quality of material

"and cheapness ensure universal approbation."

-Very good.

-Joseph Gillott was just across the street, wasn't he?

His factory was built in 1839. He was a great entrepreneur.

He made sure that anybody of any note who visited Birmingham

in the tour went around his works.

In Victorian times, factories like Gillott's were helping to transform society.

The first steel nib was invented in Birmingham

for a local doctor in 1780, but in those days,

pens were a handcrafted luxury, so even the few who were literate

couldn't afford to write.

Then, in the 1820s, the process was mechanised,

with far-reaching consequences.

When the steel pen nib was put into mass production,

did it remain an expensive item?

No, the price came down dramatically.

I mean to say, you could be paying 2 or 3 shillings each for a steel pen

when they first came out.

2 or 3 shillings, that would've been a lot of money.

It would have been in those days, yes.

So it really made quite a difference to public literacy,

-the availability of cheap pens.

-Oh, yes, it did.

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

Suddenly schools could afford to buy pens in bulk

and the means of writing were put within everybody's reach.

The advent of the railways gave the industry a further boost.

Trains carried steel from Sheffield and by the mid-19th century,

Birmingham's pens were conveyed by rail for export around the globe.

What scale did pen-nib manufacture reach in Birmingham?

We say that three-quarters of the people writing in the world

with a steel pen were writing with one made in Birmingham.

Nobody came anywhere near us, really.

Most of the workers were women,

expected to produce tens of thousands of nibs everyday.

-Why women?

-Cheap labour, unfortunately.

Of course, women have got nimble fingers.

The other thing was that in the early days you could be fined for talking

or even singing, but the bosses then didn't realise women can multitask.

They can talk AND work,

where, unfortunately, men can only talk OR work.

So once the bosses realised this, the workplace became a lot happier

and the production went on.

The machinery worked by the women was simple but effective.

Each hand press completed one stage of the process,

the first being to cut the outline of the nib.

The first operation was blanking, which was done on a strip.

The women were expected to do 36,000 in a day on this.

That's in position, so if you'd like to pull that, a sharp snatch towards you.

That's it. Push it back.

-I've just pressed out the shape of a pen nib, have I?

-Yeah.

I wouldn't want to do 36,000 of those in a day.

There were machines for shaping, piercing and slitting the nibs.

But discerning Victorian customers demanded more than just functionality from their pens.

Right, on this last process here, this started from about the 1850s

where they started to do more decorative pen nibs.

And to decorate them, they embossed them.

For VIPs and big companies,

personalised nibs became a way of showing off

and in Bradshaw's day, no business was bigger than the railways.

All companies and people had their names

and things embossed on pen nibs.

They were supplying the railway companies - GWR, NER, LMS.

It even went on into the British Rail era as well.

Sadly, Birmingham's Victorian domination of the global pen trade wasn't to last.

In the 20th century, the invention of the ballpoint pen

dealt the industry a devastating blow.

'But one local firm continues the tradition.' Hello, Tim.

-Hi, nice to meet you.

-Very good to see you.

'Tim Tufnell's company makes traditional pens

'for the luxury market.'

And you're doing, I think, very intricate, high-end work.

-Using modern machinery?

-Not at all, no.

A lot of the tooling we're using is this sort of thing,

which goes back to Victorian times,

exactly how they would have produced this product in the 1800s.

-Is this what you start with?

-Yes, this is a piece of silver tubing,

so that's what we buy in from the manufacturer,

and then, believe it or not, it ends up looking like that.

That is exquisite.

'A far cry from the usual mass production of today,

'these solid silver pens are reminiscent of Birmingham's past.

'The techniques used would have been familiar

'to the Jewellery Quarter's artisans in the 19th century.'

How many hammer blows do you think you deliver to a single piece to build up the pattern?

-About 2,000.

-About 2,000?!

-Yes.

We're so used to admiring Victorian craftsmanship

but it's wonderful to know that it's alive and thriving here today.

I'm now leaving industrial Birmingham behind

to continue my progress through the Midlands.

In the past, I've been very rude

about Birmingham's New Street station, which is truly hideous.

But now they are completely rebuilding it

and in the meanwhile, they are keeping all the trains running,

which is an engineering achievement on a Victorian scale.

From this busy railway hub,

my next train takes me just 17 miles north-east,

crossing from Warwickshire into Staffordshire.

I'm on my way to Tamworth, which my Bradshaw's tells me

is "a market town with a population of 8,650 who return two members."

That means they elected two MPs to Westminster

and in Tamworth, unusually for me, I'm in search of a politician.

In the mid-1800s, Tamworth's Member of Parliament

was the great 19th-century statesman, Sir Robert Peel.

Today, he's seen as one of the founding fathers of the Conservative Party,

so I can't resist following my guidebook to the marketplace

to meet vice-chairman of The Peel Society, Nigel Morris.

-Hello, Nigel.

-Hello, Michael. Welcome to Tamworth.

-Sir Robert Peel, I presume?

-Yes, that's correct.

My Bradshaw's says he's looking towards Bury,

-the place of his birth.

-That's correct.

He was born there in 1788.

Peel entered Parliament in 1809 aged just 21.

By the 1820s, he'd risen to the rank of Home Secretary,

where he made a rather famous decision.

Now Londoners have good reason to remember Sir Robert Peel too, don't they?

Absolutely, because he passed through Parliament

the Metropolitan Police Act in 1829,

founding the police force as we know it today.

Originally, they were known as Peelers and they wore top hats

and bright white trousers,

but after that, it became, after his first name, Robert, bobbies.

Peel was to go on to be Prime Minister twice,

where his achievements included Acts of Parliament

curbing child labour in mines and factories.

He was also a keen supporter of the railways,

cutting the first sod for the Trent Valley line in 1845.

But for me, it's another local event

that is Peel's most important claim to fame.

And it took place here in the town hall.

This is a delightful and impressive council chamber.

And here's his portrait.

A copy of the one by Sir Thomas Lawrence,

and it shows him as a relatively young man still, about the age of 30.

And you can see his ginger hair.

Peel's first stint as Prime Minister came at a tumultuous time

in British history.

His political opponents, the Whigs, had recently instituted

constitutional reform, bitterly contested by the Tories.

When Peel came to power, he was determined to start afresh.

He set out his political vision in a document read out

to the people of Tamworth from the window of this town hall.

And what was in it, what was significant about it?

The main point about it was that he accepted the Reform Act of 1832.

Which had extended the franchise to many more voters?

Exactly, yes, including the great industrial cities

of Manchester and Birmingham.

'The Tamworth Manifesto, as it's become known,

'is seen as the first example of the kind of party manifesto

'that we know today. And it also set an important precedent.'

Actually, we've seen that in politics again and again,

that the party that's in opposition

has opposed something that the government does,

but then it finds that it becomes the norm,

that it becomes something irreversible,

and the party has to accept it if it's to have any chance of being re-elected.

Exactly, we see it time and time again

and it's very interesting that it started, really, in this room.

-Shall we go to the window and look down on the great man?

-Exactly, yes.

I'm now joining the Victorian-built Trent Valley line

to continue my journey north.

On this stretch, I'm following in the footsteps of 19th-century thrill seekers.

I'm on my way to Rugeley, which my Bradshaw's tells me

"will ever be memorable on account of its having been the residence

"of the sporting Dr Palmer, who was accused of poisoning

"his wife, his brother and friend, John Parsons Cook, by strychnine.

"But at the post-mortem examinations,

"not a particle of that poison was discovered."

Very intriguing. And the Victorians had a taste for the macabre

and the Victorian press was ever willing to feed their ghoulishness.

'In the 19th century, urbanisation saw people living side-by-side

'with strangers as never before.

'And this, combined with increasingly professional policing,

'fuelled a public obsession with crime.

'Cheap penny dreadfuls enabled the masses to read the lurid details

'of infamous murders.

'And railway companies even ran special trains to crime scenes.

'Dave Lewis has been researching the still-puzzling case

-'of Dr William Palmer.' David.

-Good morning, Michael.

Welcome to Rugeley.

Thank you very much indeed. Who was this Dr William Palmer?

Well, he was the most infamous person ever, I think, to live in Rugeley.

People were shocked because he was a respectable doctor.

He was early 30s when he came to trial.

And they were just shocked that somebody who had taken

the Hippocratic Oath could be accused of so many murders.

My Bradshaw's tells me that he poisoned his wife and his brother.

-Was he accused of that?

-He was accused of that

but he was never ever brought to trial for the murder of his wife

and his brother. He was only ever accused and tried of one murder,

that is the murder of John Parsons Cook.

-Shall I show you the grave?

-Let's go and have a look.

Cook was a friend of Dr Palmer

and the events leading to his death began in 1855.

By that time, the sporting doctor had all but given up medicine

to indulge his passion for horseracing

and had accumulated substantial gambling debts.

Well, they'd gone to the races at Shrewsbury

and John Parsons Cook's horse, Polestar, had won,

and he won a tidy sum.

Whereas poor old Palmer, his horse, Chicken, had fallen

and he's lost quite a lot of money

and was more heavily in debt than ever.

Palmer invited his friend to Rugeley,

installed him in the local pub and visited him frequently.

Cook became increasingly unwell and on the seventh night,

shortly after Dr Palmer had administered two pills,

his patient took a dramatic turn for the worse.

Here we have on the left the famous room number 10

where John Parsons Cook died.

-Was it a painful death?

-It was a horrendously painful death.

At one stage, he was described as resting on his heels

and the back of his head, he was in so much agony.

'At first, Cook's death was ascribed to natural causes,

'but when Palmer claimed to have lost his friend's betting book,

'suspicions were aroused. The accusation was

'that Palmer had dosed Cook with the rat poison, strychnine.'

But my Bradshaw's says that in the post-mortem examination

no trace of strychnine was found.

That was because of the incompetency of the people carrying out

the post-mortem.

The guy, the doctor in charge arrived from Stafford.

He had no medical equipment. He didn't even bring a pencil and paper.

The people who cut open the body, one was a medical student

and one was an assistant at a local chemist's.

Despite the botched post-mortem, Palmer was charged

and the case immediately captured the public imagination.

It was probably THE trial of the century.

Three months before the trial,

the London Illustrated Times produced a 15-page supplement,

which talked about the Rugeley tragedies

and all the suspicious deaths that occurred

that were linked to Dr William Palmer.

Amongst the most shocking claims was the accusation that Palmer

had killed his own wife and brother,

both of whose lives he'd insured for large sums.

He was never tried for those crimes,

but the Cook case was heard at the Old Bailey in London.

And, despite confused and contradictory evidence,

the doctor was convicted and sentenced to death.

The execution was back in Stafford in accordance with the sentence,

and at a time when Stafford had a population of 12,500,

30,000 turned up for his execution.

They had special trains laid on from Bristol, from Manchester

and from London.

And evidently his fame survived a long time after his death.

It did indeed. Being in Staffordshire,

they produced pottery figurines.

They have a figurine of William Palmer himself.

Good Lord!

And this is a photograph of his effigy

that stood in Madame Tussaud's, London,

in the Chamber of Horrors, for 127 years.

Labelled as a mass murderer.

Even though he was only ever tried for one murder.

Chilled to the marrow by grisly tales,

it's time to seek the sunshine.

I'm hunting out the picturesque charms of the Staffordshire countryside.

I'm on my way to Stafford and my guidebook tells me

that the line passes through "a country of single beauty,

"having almost the appearance of one continued park."

These were the estates of the great landed gentry,

of Harrowbys, Shrewsburys and Dartmouths

and of the Lichfields at their estate of Shugborough.

Most readers of my guidebook satisfied themselves

with a glimpse of Shugborough Park from the train.

But the upper crust of 19th-century society would arrive to stay.

In 1832, one visitor was a young princess,

destined to become one of our greatest monarchs.

I'm now following in her footsteps.

As I walk across the estate, across the park towards Shugborough,

the house appears in all its magnificence.

And this, I think, is my guide.

-Hello, Chris.

-Hello, Michael. Welcome to Shugborough.

'Chris Kopp is a local historian.'

When Princess Victoria came here,

would she have seen the house much as it is today?

Yes, it's very little changed from October 1832.

What had drawn her to the house?

Well, she was 13 years old

and she came with the Duchess of Kent on her first tour, really,

around the country, the grand stately homes of England.

The future Queen arrived at Shugborough by horse and carriage

but just 13 years later,

plans were drawn up to build the Trent Valley Railway through

the heart of the estate. The Earl of Lichfield was horrified

until he realised that there could be a silver lining.

He'd come into financial difficulties in the 1840s.

He basically negotiated with the railway company

£30,000 in compensation, and that included £2,000 for the land

the railway took up, and the rest of the money was to make good

the look of the estate

to avoid damaging the appearance of Shugborough.

My Bradshaw's tells me that the railway passes through a tunnel

in Shugborough Park, 779 yards in length.

"The north face of the tunnel

is a very striking architectural composition."

Part of their attempts to make it a more ornamental look,

to fit in with the other monuments,

the north portal looks like a Norman castle.

It's got turrets and this glorious Norman arch.

And then this side is slightly less impressive but still ornamental.

And it's meant to look like an Egyptian temple,

but it takes a bit of a leap of imagination, really.

'In its Victorian heyday,

'Shugborough employed 120 indoor and outdoor staff, including gardeners,

'gamekeepers and farm labourers.

'It's still run as a working estate and a look at the kitchen garden

'brings home the scale of the operation.'

A vast walled garden.

Yes, and this is only one of six compartments here.

Some of them are walled, four walled compartments,

and then the other two are hedged. But, yes, it is a large garden.

Were walled gardens quite an innovation?

They were very fashionable in 1805 when this was built.

Estates at the time were trying to be much more self-sufficient,

grow all their own produce.

So as well as the garden here for fruit, vegetables, flowers etc,

honey, you had the park farm built at the same time for meat,

dairy products, cereals and so on.

For illustrious visitors like the young Princess Victoria,

the estate would pull out all the stops,

offering the very best produce in lavish banquets.

'Above stairs, amid the splendour of this grand stately home,

'it would all seem effortless, but all that luxury came at a price.'

-Thank you. Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye.

'To get a sense of the graft involved,

'I'm visiting the kitchens,

'overseen today by resident cook Penny Locke.'

Oh, this is the kitchen on the grand scale, isn't it?

What equipment have you got here from Victorian times?

We have all sorts of things.

-We have a bottle jack there for spit-roasting meat on.

-Oh!

And it's actually clockwork, so we wind it up

and it spit-roasts the meat for us. We have the lemon squeezer.

-That is brilliant, isn't it?

-Works very well.

You put half a lemon in there and the idea is it turns it inside-out,

-as you squeeze it, so there's no wastage.

-Isn't that beautiful?

-What a fine invention.

-And even the squashed-out lemon

is then given to the youngest girl

to dip in salt and clean all the copper with.

'The kitchens were a model of efficiency,

'but 19th-century entertaining was extravagant.

'During Princess Victoria's three-day stay,

'the guests got through 76 pheasants and 67 bottles of sherry.

'But some Victorian delicacies have since disappeared into obscurity.'

They would make cucumber soup. That's cucumber soup there,

which actually tastes an awful lot better than it looks.

-And also stewed cucumbers.

-Look at that. What have they been stewed in?

-What do they taste of?

-Stewed in salted water to start with

and then you make a stock up

and put them into the stock and thicken the sauce from the stock.

It's believed very bad to eat raw cucumber,

it's very bad for your digestion.

And this I don't need to have identified.

Look at that. Wow.

-Did you make that?

-I certainly did.

That's got a real wobble factor on it, hasn't it?

What's different from a Victorian jelly and a present-day jelly?

It takes a long time to make a Victorian jelly.

You're talking a good hour or so.

Obviously, you have fresh gelatine from the farm come up

and all the ingredients are stewed and the gelatine's added.

It's quite a skill.

'With so many mouths to feed,

'there was no space for idlers in a Victorian kitchen.

'Time for me to get stuck in.' What's the recipe, Penny?

-Fresh trout from the river out the back.

-Mmm!

You've got a couple of beauties.

And can we have two glasses of beer in there, please?

Beer was a big Victorian thing, wasn't it?

This beer is made at the brewhouse on the estate here,

where staff were allocated eight pints of beer a day each.

Eight pints?! They must have been paralytic!

The brew is made to make the strong ale and the same mash

is brewed six or seven more times and that's what the staff will be given.

It's purely because it's safe to drink.

'A little wine, a little lemon.'

-Would you like a little thumb in there as well?

-Preferably not, ha!

'And my trout is ready for the coal-fired range.'

It'll go across the middle section there.

-And once it starts steaming, it'll take about 20 minutes.

-Marvellous.

-A delicacy fit for Princess Victoria.

-Definitely.

'Now for a taste of the kind of dish that George Bradshaw would have enjoyed.'

Cook, this looks very fine.

Excellent.

From the kitchen maid to the Earl,

every member of this grand household had a specific role to play.

Victorian Britain organised and stratified.

As ever, I've been impressed by Birmingham.

Once the metal-bashing centre of the world,

powered by the impersonal forces of capitalism and steam.

But this leg of my journey has been rich in Midlands personalities too.

Prime Minister Peel, the landed Lichfields

and the poisoner Palmer.

I encountered them all in the pages of my Bradshaw's guide.

'Next time, I'll explore one of the greatest locomotive factories in railway history...'

The records are sketchy but they talk about 20,000 people,

so the size of it was immense.

'..discover the dark side of the Industrial Revolution...'

The place was very heavily spoiled by pollution

and the stench of the sewage, it was like a large cesspit.

'..and learn how the potteries brought their products to the masses in Victorian times.'

This is incredibly difficult. This is fiendish!

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