Goes to Ireland - Newbridge to Roscrea Great British Railway Journeys

In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain and Ireland.

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 islands

to see what of Bradshaw's world remains.

For this leg of my train journey, across the Irish Republic,

I'm using an 1880s edition of my Bradshaw's guide

to travel across tracks that were laid in the 19th century

when Great Britain and Ireland were a single state under Queen Victoria.

On this stretch I'll visit the Irish National Stud -

a bucking experience...

Oh, the horse is going very fast now. This is absolutely exhausting!

..I'll discover that life was harsh for the Ireland's poor...

When you came in here you gave up everything and you,

you signed up to a life within the workhouse.

..and I'll uncover an astronomical feat of Victorian engineering...

-What a construction.

-It was known locally as The Monster.

Having sampled the rural charms of the south of the country,

I'm continuing my journey through the Irish Midlands

before veering out west

to end up on the impressive Atlantic coast, in Galway.

Starting out in County Kildare,

I'm travelling on what was, in Bradshaw's day,

the Great Southern and Western Railway,

through County Laois and finishing in County Offaly.

During Victoria's reign, the British Army made full use of the railways

to maintain order in an increasingly rebellious Ireland.

At my next stop, Newbridge, my Bradshaw's tells me,

"There was an encampment on a large scale,

"which was the temporary sojourn of the Prince Of Wales in 1861."

I shall be interested to find out more about that royal visit.

The encampment referred to is the Curragh Camp.

The vast open flats of the Curragh plain

had, for hundreds of years, provided the perfect terrain

for military manoeuvres and cavalry training.

At the outbreak of the Crimean War in the 1850s,

the British Army made it a permanent training base.

-Charlie!

-Hello, Michael.

Sergeant Charlie Walsh is the Curator of the Military Museum.

I see, here, you've got a display about the Prince Of Wales, 1861.

Now, this is referred to in my Bradshaw's guide -

his "sojourn" here.

Now, why was the Prince of Wales sojourned on the Curragh?

The Prince was to be based here for ten weeks,

where he was inducted and be trained in military manoeuvres.

He was also to be trained in how to conduct himself in social situations.

The Prince, eldest son of Victoria and Albert,

was considered, by his parents, something of a wild child

and at 19, he was sent to the Curragh for his military training.

His parents expected him to rise from ensign to Brigade Commander

in just ten weeks.

Even so, this sociable prince found time for fun.

Now this actually says, "The Prince and the Showgirl,"

what's this story?

"The Prince and the Showgirl," well, what happened one night

was that whilst the Prince was in the company of some senior officers,

that were having a function,

and when the senior officers went to bed

the junior officers and the Prince were still up drinking,

and what happened is, apparently,

that the junior officers then smuggled in an actress

into the Prince's quarters.

By the time news of the Prince's amorous adventures

with the actress Nellie Clifden had broken,

he was back in England and studying at Cambridge University.

Prince Albert was furious at his son's indiscretion.

Already unwell, on 25 November 1861,

the Prince Consort travelled to Cambridge to confront his son.

Although they reached a reconciliation,

just one month later Prince Albert died.

Now Queen Victoria,

has been said that she blamed the early death of her husband

on what happened here in the Curragh, due to the Prince's activities.

Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear.

So this showgirl was a lady

who was no better than she should be, as they say.

I'll leave that uncommented!

From the Crimean War through to the First World War,

the Curragh was one of the British Army's most important training bases

stationing up to 30,000 troops at any one time.

That was all to change, however.

In 1921, after years of conflict and bloodshed,

the Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed,

which ended British rule in much of Ireland

and, on 16th May 1922, the British handed over the camp

to the Irish Free State Army.

Do you get the impression that the British Army

left in a, kind of, careless hurry?

No, we've actually found documents where the British Army

were quite meticulous in the cleanliness of the camp

before they handed it over to the new National Army.

They went right down into the small detail,

they actually blackened the fire grates,

they ironed the billiard table cloths

and also even went as far as sharpening the billiard table cues

for the new National Army as they marched in.

A sign of respect after all that bitterness?

It is indeed, yes.

It's a sign, as I said, the way things are moving on now, as well.

On that momentous day,

the Irish tricolour was hoisted up the flagpole

and has flown over the camp ever since.

The Curragh is still an active training base

for the Irish Defence Forces,

now deployed in UN, EU, and Nato peace enforcing missions.

I'm on my own Irishman manoeuvres, however,

so it's back to Newbridge station.

As I continue my journey my Bradshaw says,

"A little to the side of the line is the Curragh racecourse,

"the Newmarket of Ireland, on a fine down, six miles long.#

So, it seems that the Curragh turf has not just be the home to armies,

it also has a horsey pedigree.

I'm not stopping to have a flutter, though,

I'm bypassing the racecourse and crossing the plain

to the next stop along - Kildare.

Because just a few furlongs from here is the Irish National Stud,

the seed of Irish horseracing.

I'm hoping that Chief Executive John Osborne can tell me how geology,

the military and the railways all combine

to help the sport of kings to reign supreme here.

Well, now, how did Irish racing start here, at the Curragh?

Well, racing is associated with the army officers, quite a bit,

wherever you go.

The army officers, for fun, would entertain themselves

by taking each other on at horse racing

and then they formed The Turf Club

and from The Turf Club they would challenge each other

to match races and racing evolved in the same way

it has done in other parts of the world.

And the Curragh was the perfect place to locate horse racing

as an open plain with plenty of areas to gallop your horse.

HORSE WHINNYING

There's a commentary on our conversation!

Erm, the origins of the National Stud, where we are now?

It was bought in 1900 by, er, a brewer, of Scots descent,

called William Hall Walker,

and he was a sportsman who won the 1896 Grand National,

and I think with the proceeds of that particular escapade

he bought this farm and converted it into an elite stud farm.

And he had some very eccentric ideas about how it should be done,

and from the very start he used to mate his mares by horoscope,

and he was fascinated by astrology. MICHAEL LAUGHS

And everybody laughed then too,

until he became the champion breeder for ten years between 1905 and 1915.

How important have the trains been in your history?

Well, the train would have been the artery for horse racing, as well,

and a lot of the Irish racecourses, you know, not coincidently,

evolved close to the mainline railways.

We take for granted how easy it is to ship horses

twice around the globe, nowadays,

but back then the racehorses travelled by rail as well.

In Bradshaw's day, so close was the relationship between the railway and racing,

that the course had its own sidings

and the Great Southern and Western Railway company sponsored an annual race,

which is still run today - The Railway Stakes.

I'm just wondering about any famous equine names

that would have been rail passengers over the years.

Ambush was a famous raid, he was the winner of the 1900 Grand National

for the Prince Of Wales, at the time.

And also great champions like Pretty Polly, who was a great race mare,

would have travelled by train,

and Bahram, the Aga Khan's Triple Crown winner in the '30s

would also have travelled by train.

In 1917 William Hall Walker gifted his farm,

lock, stock and saddle, to the Crown

with the intention that it would become the first National Stud

and Ireland has been rewarded with world class winners ever since.

Sinead Hyland, marketing coordinator,

has agreed to fill me in on the more intricate workings of the stud.

Sinead, I think I understand the word "stud"

but how does the business really work?

Well, we're one of the only stud farms open to the public.

Stud, I suppose it encompasses all of the stallions here,

they're our main source of income.

We've six stallions this year

and we're pretty much wrapping up our breeding season now.

The horses have ladies that will visit them up to four times a day.

-Four times a day?

-Four times a day, yes.

We have, we also have a teaser.

-He has, probably, the worst job on the farm...

-What's a teaser?

Teaser is, erm, for ladies,

it's their first time visiting one of our stallions

and erm he gets them, he gets them ready basically.

-But he's a horse?

-He's a horse, a little pony stallion.

-Right.

-And this is actually our top stallion here, Invincible Spirit.

-What a fantastic horse!

-Yeah, he's beautiful.

Even to someone who doesn't know what to look for in a thoroughbred,

I mean, he's a beautiful specimen.

He stands at 60,000 euros and he covered 136 mares this year.

So he is, erm, he's our top dog.

Just take that a bit more slowly,

your saying that every time he covers a mare it's 60,000 euros?

Just like that.

And he covered 134 in a year?

Yep, up to, he would have about four,

up to four ladies a day would visit him.

Impressive - that's over eight million euros a year.

However, the stud aims to produce not just thoroughbred horses

but also first class jockeys,

as, for the last 40 years, it's been home to Ireland's Racing Academy.

That is one of the most bizarre sights I ever saw,

I had no idea that this went on. This is how you train jockeys?

It is, this is Barry Walsh, here.

OK, guys, let's turn them off, there, for a sec.

Turn them off there, now.

He's raring to go!

-Barry!

-How are you?

-Pleased to meet you.

-I'm Michael. It's lovely to see you.

-So!

-HE LAUGHS

Would you like to have a go yourself?

How could I refuse?

So, if you just, sort of, swing your leg over then.

Good deal easier than getting on a real horse!

Oh, yeah. Well, you say that now!

THEY LAUGH

OK, one, two, three, up you get. Keeping your hands down.

Bring your knee back a small bit.

Head up and always looking where you are going, OK?

So you can just sit back down there and we're going to start her off.

OK. One, two, three, up you go.

Hands down. Knees back a small bit.

Don't crouch down too much now. Don't over exaggerate!

Make it quicker.

MICHAEL LAUGHS

Oh, my goodness! Now, I've got to relax, haven't I? I've got to relax.

Nice and relaxed. Just back and forwards.

Oh, it's so easy to relax in this position(!)

-Keep that left hand quiet.

-Enjoying the ride!

-"Hands down, knees in..."

-Stride quicker.

"..stride quicker." Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

"Look ahead!" Oh, the horse is going very fast now.

It's absolutely exhausting! I'm running out of breath!

I'm exhausted!

Ah!

Ah, a politician jockeying for position - unseated again!

I'm returning to the iron horse to resume my journey west.

I'll be crossing the border from County Kildare into County Laois.

-Is this free?

-It is.

-Thank you.

My next stop will be in Portarlington,

which my Bradshaw's tells me was formally called Cooletoodera.

William III gave it to General Ruvigny

who settled it with French and Flemish Protestants,

and built the two churches.

And I that the railway station also shows signs

of this little town's heritage.

-My stop. Bye-bye.

-Bye.

Opened in 1847,

Portarlington was and still is a focal point

on the Irish Rail Network.

On the Dublin to Cork mainline, today it's a busy junction

where passengers can branch off to Galway, Ballina and Westport.

Back in Bradshaw's day, the lines weren't as numerous

but this picturesque station provided a vital rest stop

for early travellers.

Portarlington really is the finest looking station

I've seen in the Irish Republic,

with its gables and its Tudor chimneys, and its bell tower.

Apparently there used to be a bell in the tower

because trains would make a special long stop here

to allow passengers to get off and eat and drink in the dining room,

and then the bell would ring to tell them that it was time to get aboard,

and the train was about to go.

Which makes Portarlington a pretty hospitable place

and somewhere that I am happy to break my journey and end my day.

It's a new day and I'm continuing through the Irish Midlands

deeper into county Laois before ending in County Offaly.

In Victorian Ireland third class tickets

made it possible for millions to take the train.

Even so, rail travel

would have been beyond the wildest dreams of the poorest.

I'm going to alight at Ballybrophy

to find out how life was lived by those who had nothing.

'We will shortly be arriving at Ballybrophy.

'Thank you for travelling with Iarnrod Eireann.'

Between 1720 and 1820 the population of Ireland exploded,

doubling in size from three million to over six.

Unlike England, which was undergoing an industrial revolution,

in rural Ireland employment was virtually non-existent

and land, upon which the Irish labourer relied,

was both costly to rent and overly sublet.

By the end of the 18th century

about one third of the country was near starvation level.

Poverty was endemic.

State intervention became unavoidable.

The Government's solution was the workhouse.

I've come to Donaghmore Workhouse, now a museum,

to meet its chairman, Trevor Stanley.

-Trevor.

-Michael.

Phew! An extraordinary complex of buildings here.

What were they originally?

Buildings were structured in such a way

that we had the girls and boys dormitories to the front,

the men and the women's dormitories in the middle

and the infirmary at the back.

So, first of all, you've told me something I hadn't realised

that the men and the women, and the boys and the girls were split up on arrival here.

Very much so, it was one of the strict rules

that they had within the workhouse, in Ireland,

was to divide the families.

And that was, ultimately, not to encourage people into the workhouse.

When you came in here you gave up everything

and you signed up to a life within the workhouse.

The 1838 Irish Poor Law Act decreed that poor relief

was available in the workhouse only.

It was this or nothing.

The country was divided into 130 administrative unions,

each containing a workhouse.

They were set up and run by an elected Board of Guardians,

financed by a levy on local landowners -

the principle being that property was to pay for poverty.

I know the law in Ireland,

although it is slightly later than the law in England,

was based on the same thing.

And the idea was that you were going to have poor people

but you had to absolutely discourage them from entering the workhouse.

It had to be the worst possible thing

and I think the expression was that the conditions in a workhouse

had to be less eligible than life outside.

They certainly had to be harsher,

they had to give up whatever holdings they had outside

and those holdings were divided up by,

to other people within the landlord estates -

when they came in here they, literally, lost their dignity.

The ethos of the workhouse was that inmates should be worse clothed,

worse lodged and worse fed than people outside.

However, even the Poor Law Commissioners

recognised that the standard of living for most Irish poor

was so low that it would be difficult

to establish one even lower.

The workhouse system was so despised that, despite widespread poverty,

in 1846 the number of inmates across the country's workhouses

stood at just 43,000 - less than half their capacity.

Unchanged since Victorian times?

I'm afraid so, Michael.

This was the boys' dorm?

You can see the whitewashed walls -

whitewash was used to keep disease down

because the lime would kill the bacterias and the bugs.

This room, I always say, is built for ventilation and not for comfort

because you have air vents between each window

and you have air vents under the plinth as well, too.

It's terrible but it's interesting

that the Victorians understood the connection between disease

and lack of cleanliness, and they understood the need for ventilation.

I mean, this is quite advanced in some ways.

It is, er, and I suppose they learnt very quickly

because when you put a group of 50, 60, 70 boys into any room,

and they have a sniffle or a cold it spreads through, like wild fire.

I imagine the death rate was pretty ghastly?

Death rates would have been pretty high in workhouses, in general,

because people were at such a low ebb in coming in.

The food, the accommodation, was not designed to fatten them up,

or to improve them, it was just basic maintenance

and that obviously led to a lot of disease.

Typhus, dysentery, cholera would have been the three main diseases.

Death inside the workhouse was common

but by 1847 those outside became victims of famine

as successive potato crops failed.

The Workhouses were deluged.

By 1851 their population stood at 217,000 -

more than double their intended capacity.

Workhouses designed for hundreds were forced to house thousands.

So, tell me how the system began to creak and crumble under the famine.

Well, I suppose the ultimate breakdown of the system

was that the people that came in here had no way of getting back out.

And emigration was a method of getting people out

and to reduce numbers

but, ultimately, that was only for families that were healthy.

So, for other people, they had to stay here

and, obviously, the whole system began to crumble after that.

By the early 20th century it was clear the workhouse system

needed radical reform.

A Royal Commission in 1906 recommended that the system be abolished.

The workhouses were designed to use public money to relieve poverty

but to make it shameful so as not to discourage people from working

if they could remain independent.

The scale of misery unleashed by the famine overwhelmed the system,

adding to resentment against landowners

and the British establishment.

My Bradshaw's enticingly tells me of, "The Roscrea and Parsontown line, 22 and a half miles long."

"On arriving at the town of Roscrea it divides into two branches,

"the one to the northwest to Parsontown or Birr.

"Near Parsontown Castle,

"seat of the Earl of Ross, with a famous telescope here."

Unfortunately, the line no longer stretches so far

and so my quest for that renowned astrological instrument

means I must alight at Roscrea.

Victorians were as passionate about scientific exploration

as they were about rail travel.

Whether professional or amateur,

their thirst for knowledge was insatiable.

And Birr Castle, an ancestral seat deep in the Irish bogs,

became an unexpected centre of scientific discovery.

The current Earl of Rosse is going to enlighten me.

Hello, you're welcome, Michael.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-Failte romhat, as we say in Ireland.

That's a very nice welcome.

The Parsons, family name of the Earls of Rosse,

have been at Birr Castle since 1620.

It's one of the oldest inhabited homes in the county

and one particular ancestor interests me.

My Bradshaw's says that there is a famous telescope here,

which ancestor was that?

That was my great-great-grandfather, the 3rd Earl - I'm number seven.

He was my great-great-grandfather,

who built this telescope, that we are going to see, here, in the 1840s.

It was completed just before the famine really struck.

I read about this telescope in the book

but it gave me no hint of how enormous it was going to be.

What a construction!

It was know locally as The Monster, His Lordship's Monster,

and it certainly was the biggest in the world

for three-quarters of a century.

It enabled him to see further into space

than anyone had ever been able to see before.

William Parsons, the 3rd Earl,

graduated from Oxford University

with a first class honours degree in mathematics

but he was simply an extraordinary and enthusiastic amateur,

that makes this 16 tonne telescope, with its 72 inch mirror,

an even more outstanding feat of engineering and architecture.

With a new telescope of this power, what discoveries were enabled?

I think the Whirlpool Galaxy

was the most significant of the discoveries that he made here

and, literally, during the first few months

of the operation of the telescope, in 1845.

The discovery, what, that galaxies

had a, kind of, spiral shape, is this?

Were spiral in shape, like the one that is called The Whirlpool,

of which we have one of the most beautiful drawings

in the galleries here because EVERYTHING he saw he drew.

But it all had to be made here entirely by the people of Birr,

mobilising the coopers to make the curved beams of the tube,

the carpenters to make things like the galleries

and, of course, the blacksmiths to make all the iron work.

And, luckily, Birr, as a garrison town,

then had a good supply of craftsmen to make everything.

So all the coopers, blacksmiths and carpenters

were mobilised to make this.

The Earl's Leviathan telescope

remained the world's largest for over 70 years

and put Birr on the map.

Scientists, stargazers and engineers from all over the globe came to see it -

their journeys much facilitated by the arrival of the railway in 1858.

Now, Michael, this is what we call our Muniment Room,

where we keep all the archives.

These go back to more or less when we came here in the 1620s.

There are about 18,000 historical documents in all these boxes.

This must be a very considerable archive, by national standards.

I think it's the largest private archive

that is still useable in Ireland.

And out of the archives I've got this old book,

which is the visitors book of the observatory at Birr Castle,

and maybe I'll just open the first page to show you the significance

of the initial signature, which is that of Charles Babbage

who the 3rd Earl invited to inaugurate this book

on September the 9th 1850.

And Babbage, what would you say was his place in history?

He is the grandfather or now maybe even the great-grandfather

-of the whole, of every computer in the world today.

-Extraordinary.

The story of science at Birr is far from over,

as, even now, astrophysicists are using the grounds

to measure solar flares, using a radio telescope.

The 3rd Earl would be proud.

In 19th century Ireland poverty stricken peasants

were caught between starvation and the workhouse.

The British army was here to keep them in order

but also bequeathed to the Irish a love of horse racing.

Meanwhile aristocrats expanded our knowledge of science,

the sort of progress so admired by George Bradshaw.

On the final leg of this journey,

I'll discover historic Irish jewellery with Royal connections...

I'm ready for my patient!

..meet an ancient people's king...

-Happy and glorious, long to reign over us!

-Oh, thank you. Thank you!

..and get to grips with some aural history.

# My old native land far away. #

Well done, Michael. Well done.

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