London King's Cross to Peterborough 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 now more than half way through a journey that began in Portsmouth

'and which has given me time to explore my home city of London.

'On this leg, I'll be continuing that exploration.'

'Today, I'll discover how derelict Victorian London

'is being rejuvenated.'

This used to be called Granary Square,

-and will be bigger than Trafalgar Square.

-Amazing.

'I'll put in a shift at a Cambridgeshire brick factory.'

Oh, dear boy, would you like to come and have a go?

Always one for a challenge.

'And I'll meet a brick-built immigrant community.'

THEY SING

'Using my Bradshaw's Guide,

'I began on the Hampshire coast in Portsmouth,

'travelled up through Surrey and on to London,

'and I'll soon push north east to Cambridgeshire,

'completing my journey at Grimsby in Lincolnshire.'

'The fourth leg of my journey starts in Kings Cross,

'heads north to Alexandra Palace,

'on to Knebworth, into Bedfordshire and ends in Peterborough.'

The Victorian railways made their biggest architectural impact

in our city centres, with the erection of vast termini,

cathedrals of steam.

Today, thanks to an enormous rebuilding programme,

they are returning to their Victorian exuberance,

revealing again architectural details

pointed out in my Bradshaw's Guide.

'Built by the Great Northern Railway

'and named in homage to King George IV,

'central London's King's Cross opened in 1852.

'Today, it's a busy London terminus

'with over 40 million passengers passing through it each year.

'And after decades of neglect,

'the station is finally being restored to its beautiful grandeur.'

This station is, to me, a wonder

and it was to George Bradshaw, too.

"King's Cross presents a most imposing appearance.

"In the facade, the two main arches mark the end of the arrival

"and departures platforms and each has a span of no less than 72 feet.

"On reaching the platform,

"the traveller cannot fail to admire

"the size and character of the station, the semi-spherical roof

"the immense area covered in."

And thanks to the recent refurbishment of King's Cross,

we are seeing it today as no-one has seen it

since Queen Victoria went to her grave.

'Affectionately dubbed The Great Station,

'King's Cross was designed in an Italianate style

'by architect Lewis Cubitt.

'Now the station and the 67 acres

'of previously derelict land and buildings behind it

'are undergoing one of the largest urban regenerations in Europe.'

'I'm meeting Roger Mann of the redevelopment team

'at the Grade II listed Granary Complex.

'At the height of the Victorian industrial boom,

'it was part of a goods interchange, and now forms a new campus

'for the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.'

This is a fantastic space.

And the railway history is written on the wall,

-so it's been left intact, hasn't it?

-It has.

There was a great debate about sandblasting this building,

but I think the right decision was made.

Originally, this was built purely for goods

and a passenger was something not necessarily thought of.

So it was always a bit of a by-product.

-Because the money was in freight?

-Exactly so.

What were the sorts of goods being moved through this part of King's Cross?

Potatoes and coal, together with fish and then lots of other goods.

Fantastic.

'The redevelopment of King's Cross isn't confined to its interior.

'The exterior is being transformed, too.'

I had no idea that this vast space existed. What was it?

This was a canal basin. The canal itself, just over there,

came into the site all the way to the granary building

and underneath and, in fact, there were two openings

under the main building and one on either end of the shed.

The barges could pass under the building?

Under the building and disgorged of their product or, in fact, took a load on.

And what will this space be now?

This is to be called Granary Square,

we'll have a number of fountains playing,

probably with music from time to time

-and will be bigger than Trafalgar Square.

-Amazing.

'The station's original roof,

'modelled on the Russian Tsar's riding school,

'was the largest in the world, spanning 105 by 800 feet.

'And the new 1,700-ton steel-and-glass dome

'covering the refurbished concourse is the centrepiece of architect

John McAslan's vision for King's Cross.

John...

-If you seek his monument, look about you.

-Exactly.

Congratulations, it's magnificent.

You've chosen to make this sweeping roof.

Are you making reference here to Victorian architecture?

We are. We are inspired by the original architecture,

the original train shed roof and we've tried to interpret that

and I think people genuinely enjoy the quality of the space

and understand the references we've made.

I've noticed, for example, that the passenger sheds,

the glazing has all been redone,

light is now pouring on to the platforms.

That didn't happen for many years.

That's right, all of the old polychromatic

coverings have been removed, we've reinstated glass.

We've put photovoltaics on top so energy is produced now, so yes,

they're represented. and I think as you'll agree,

fantastic light is streaming in to the shed

for the first time in about 50 years.

If George Bradshaw were writing today and he came here,

would he write with such admiration about your spans and arches?

I think he'd see the connection we've made between

Victorian engineering and 21st century architecture

and engineering and I'd hope he would respond well to it.

WHISTLE

'My next stop, like King's Cross,'

is another piece of iconic Victorian architecture,

built with its own railway station, looming over the railway tracks.

A palace named after the Princess of Wales.

But it wasn't built for the Princess's pleasure,

but for the pleasure of the public.

Alexandra Palace.

'Five miles north of King's Cross, in 1873,

'The People's Palace opened

'as a centre of recreation for Victorian Londoners.

'But after just 16 days, Alexandra Palace was destroyed by fire.

'Two years later, a new palace, covering seven acres, opened.

'In 1936,

'the first public television pictures were transmitted from here

'and then in 1980, the palace was severely fire damaged again.

'I'm hoping that current Chief Executive, Duncan Wilson,

'will tell me how it's recovered.'

-Duncan, hello.

-Hello.

So I take it from the architecture that this was a railway station.

Indeed. This was the booking hall of the railway station,

which lay between the hall and Alexandra Palace itself.

So when Alexandra Palace was built in 1873,

it already had its railway station?

Indeed, it was part of the whole concept to get people up here

in massive numbers to enjoy this enormous palace of entertainment.

And did the railway succeed in sucking people in?

It did, there were 94,000 people arrived on the Whit Monday

after it opened, although they did arrive rather late,

because there was a derailment just outside King's Cross.

'Alexandra Palace's entertainment spaces include its Palm Court,

'ice rink and - the largest of all - its Great Hall.'

This is absolutely extraordinary, isn't it?

So what did they build this vast space for?

It was built for, amongst other things, organ concerts

for audiences of ten to 15,000, choral concerts,

orchestral concerts, massive events.

It could accommodate nearly 2,000 performers.

From your knowledge of Alexandra Palace,

what impression do you get of what entertained the Victorians?

An amazing range of things by modern standards. I think, in a way,

it was the combination of the wildlife documentary

and the art history programme on television

all presented as an exhibition to the public, or a series of them,

so we had exhibitions of goat and rabbit breeding,

a Moorish bazaar and 1,000 monkeys exhibited in the Palm Court,

and they even brought elephants here by train,

led out through the front of the building to the circus.

-On the trunk line?

-On the trunk line, yes.

What plans do you have for all this in the future?

Currently, we operate the Great and West halls as a successful

concert venue, but there's a lot we can do more with Alexander Palace,

if we can get the money to invest in it.

It's heartening that, like King's Cross,

another great Victorian edifice is highly valued today.

From the current Alexandra Palace station,

I am catching my next train north, out of the capital.

I've left London well behind me now,

and my train is swishing through Hertfordshire.

For my last stop of the day, I have taken a tip from Bradshaw's,

which says that in the vicinity is Knebworth Hall,

"the fine seat of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton."

Bulwer-Lytton? That rings a bell. An author, I think,

but I don't think I have ever read anything by him.

The name Knebworth might be synonymous with its rock festival,

but it's been home to the Lytton family since 1490,

and in the 19th century, to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton,

author and member of Parliament.

I'm meeting descendant Henry Lytton-Cobbold.

Hi, Michael.

-Henry, lovely to see you.

-Very pleased you popped by.

-A fine seat, as my Bradshaw's says.

-Thank you very much.

-But Bulwer-Lytton, I don't know much about him.

-There's lots to tell you about Bulwer.

Let me show you round. Let me show you his influence.

So we have the most hideous and scary preachers here.

Yes, warding off evil spirits, which they still do to this day, I trust.

Does that tells us something about his mind?

It tells us a lot about his mind.

I mean, look at these. Everywhere you'll see bats on barrels.

Bats on barrels is a play on the word "Lytton",

the old English word for a bat being "lit", and for a barrel being "ton".

So everywhere you'll see different bats on barrels.

Some of these gargoyles seem to have a thirst on them.

Their very long tongues are hanging out.

In fact, English Heritage, which insisted everything go back

exactly the way it was,

when we were able to restore these a few years ago,

did allow us to shorten the tongues just a little bit,

just for decency's sake.

But great fun to restore them back up to their original position,

up above the library bay window here.

Having found out about Bulwer-Lytton's taste

in exterior decor, I want to discover more of the man himself.

He was perhaps best known for his historical novels.

This is his collection of medieval armour,

which is armour that still has dents in it

where spears and musket shell has hit it.

Here we are in Bulwer-Lytton's study,

where he wrote his enormous volume of work.

What was his reputation at the time?

He was the best-selling novelist in Britain in the 1830s,

until the young whippersnapper journalist Charles Dickens

came along and usurped him.

Of course, they were great friends, and they went on to work together.

Poor Lytton became very much a grand old man of literature

for the mid-19th-century authors and poets.

And would those other authors come down?

Yes, Dickens would bring his chums down, his actor friends down

for great weekend parties, and perform in the hall downstairs.

-So, this is his rather splendid library.

-Wonderful.

Literally built from scratch, a Victorian gentleman's library.

-Wonderful.

-It's funny to think, even right from the start of his career,

but even quite late into his career, he was writing for money.

I mean, he spent a lot of money on this towards the end of the 1840s,

when the railway was being built.

I think he relied rather too heavily on making money out of that,

and he ended up having to write the novel Harold

to help pay the solicitors' bills that he'd run up,

trying to fight for his fair share

for having the railway go right through his estate.

In the 1840s, like so many other landowners across these islands,

Edward Bulwer-Lytton had to decide whether he would

allow the railways to traverse his land,

and if he did, how much he would accept from them for the privilege.

So, here we have his estate at that time.

You can see how the railway literally seared it in two.

It really brings home to you what landowners

had to sacrifice in those days, if the railway passed through.

Yes.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the first writer to begin a novel

with the words, "It was a dark and stormy night."

He also gave us the phrase, "The pen is mightier than the sword,"

and the expression, "The great unwashed."

Which after the long day that I've had,

is rather the way I'm feeling now.

It's off to a local hostelry, and early to bed.

Rejuvenated, and set for the next leg of my journey,

it's less than a half-hour trip

on the King's Cross-to-Peterborough main line.

I'm now in Bedfordshire, and my Bradshaw's tells me

some of the finest vegetables are produced here for the London market.

They must benefit from all this rain.

My next stop is Biggleswade,

and Bradshaw's tells me it was formerly

one of the most extensive corn markets in England,

and that's the clue I'm going to pursue,

because in my view, you don't get a corn market without corn.

In Bradshaw's day, mills in this area were abundant.

In the 1850s, Biggleswade was the first town in Bedfordshire

to have a main line station.

I've come to one of the last working mills in the county

to meet Bill Jordan, whose family has for generations

pushed forward the technology of milling.

-Hello.

-Hello, Bill.

-Welcome.

Thank you so much.

This is a gorgeous mill. How old is it?

This was built in 1896, so it was a model mill in its day.

Had there been mills here before?

Yes, there's been a mill here since the Domesday Book, 1086,

because this was a great grain-growing area.

Yes, my Bradshaw's Guide refers to the corn markets

of Biggleswade being amongst the most important in the country.

It was a real bread basket area. 400 mills alone in Bedfordshire,

and the great thing here, the River Ivel is a tributary of the Ouse,

so there was always reasonably good water here.

We're wearing our hard hats in here. What are you doing with this mill?

It's all about showing people how milling is done,

how we use water power to drive the mill, so sustainable power.

So this is a great example of an old Victorian roller mill

driven by water.

When this mill opened, what were its features?

Was it advanced for its time?

Oh, this was the last word.

The whole thing about flour milling was survival.

Those 400 mills came crashing down to just one, which was this one,

only a few years ago,

and the whole thing about milling was to try and use technology

to just get a step ahead of your competition.

Looking at this machinery, what should I notice about it?

Well, you weren't paying much for your power,

because we're working on a four-foot drop in the River Ivel

to actually drive this turbine,

which develops something like 28 horsepower.

-So it was a clever piece of kit.

-Have you got it in working order?

This is absolutely in working order.

This will be one of the finest examples, really,

of a Victorian roller mill still in use.

You have to take your hat off to these Victorian engineers.

You really do.

This has been working for over 110 years, very little maintenance.

A few separate teeth occasionally, when there was a breakdown.

But absolutely.

All that power, 28 horsepower, just run off the river.

Very clever.

Bill's not merely an enthusiast for old mills.

In the 1970s, he and his brother saw a new future in breakfast cereals.

They swapped granary for granola,

traded in wheat for oats,

left flour milling behind,

and created their multi-million pound brand, Jordan's Cereal.

Paul Bell is a shift manager at their factory.

Paul, this is breakfast cereals on a industrial scale.

This whole thing we walked along is an oven.

It is indeed, 62 metres of it, yes.

This oven can do any cereal you like, can it?

Yes, essentially. We can do 13, 14 different types of base product.

Give me some idea of your output from this plant.

We produce, on average, 1,500 pallets of finished goods a week,

which is about 135,000 cases.

How many boxes of cereal is that? You multiply by what?

By six, as a rule. So that's quite some undertaking.

The technology that gets over 800,000 boxes of cereal per week

cooked, bagged, boxed, packed and distributed is a long step

forward from the water-powered mills of the company's Victorian history.

What we have here, flat-pack cartons,

and every time the sensor sees a bag on the belt,

it'll pull the carton down, push it into shape.

As we walk along the process,

we can watch the pushers push the bags into the boxes.

They're then folded and glued and sealed,

and fed down to the next process.

After going through a check weigher, which is obviously

a legal requirement for our 500g declarations.

From the bread basket of Bedfordshire,

I'm destined now for Cambridgeshire,

the county of my old university and for which,

unlike Bradshaw's, I have an affinity.

My Bradshaw's can be pretty opinionated.

Under the entry for Peterborough, where I'll be changing trains,

it writes "the country is flat and uninteresting in winter

"and when the floods are up, the roads are almost impassable."

It sounds as if some unfortunate personal experience

lies behind that. I find the Eastern Plain

rather more charming than Bradshaw's did.

Peterborough station serves all four points of the compass,

and four million passengers a year.

'Train just arriving at platform 5.

'Whittlesey is an additional stop today for this service.'

I'm taking the branch line east to Whittlesey.

Relying on the constituents of what Bradshaw's dismissed

as its boggy ground, since the 1880s

Peterborough and its surrounds

have built a prosperity based on the manufacture

of a construction product that most of us take for granted.

Bricks.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,

so much of our capital city was built with these,

that the product became known simply as London Brick.

I'm in Whittlesey to meet David Weeks,

whose company bought the original London Brick Company in the 1980s.

So this wonderful stuff is clay, is it?

Yeah, this is really the heart of the whole process.

It's called Lower Oxford clay, and interestingly,

when the brick works first started in Peterborough,

they used the very soft clay on the top,

and a guy called James Craig who set up the first brickworks

discovered this much harder clay underneath and purely by chance

as they dug further and further.

And there's a rich seam that goes from Oxford all the way

up to Yorkshire and all these brick works

were sited along the seam of clay.

With its high carbon content,

Lower Oxford Clay had a unique property -

it was combustible, so less fuel was needed

to fire the bricks in the production process.

In the late 19th century,

this industry was able to save energy,

and to make use of a raw material that was both natural and plentiful.

There's been quarrying around this part of Peterborough

for over 100 years now.

This is the last working clay quarry,

and when this is finished it will be the end of an era,

because the market for these bricks is gradually tailing off,

because although they're very hard-wearing and durable,

they don't have the insulation properties of a modern brick.

By the 1930s, the market for London bricks was huge...

..and most of the Peterborough brickyards

had their own railway sidings to transport their finished products.

David wants to show me how the very finest London bricks are produced.

So, tell me about this process here.

Well, at the back you can see what we call the green bricks,

which are just the natural clay as it's just come out

after the bricks have been pressed. This is one of the kiln chambers.

You put it into the kiln chamber ready to be fired

and these guys are now bricking it up with old reject bricks

and they will then seal it with a render

and then gradually the fire will then work its way round

into this chamber and fire these bricks

and move on to the next chamber.

How long will your green bricks stay there until they're proper bricks?

They'll be in the kiln for about five days.

To ensure that the enormous kiln is working to maximum capacity,

it's been given handy portholes to add fuel.

Oh, wow, that is a brilliant sight, isn't it?

Those are glowing, glowing bricks, are they?

Yep, a thousand degrees.

Oh, yes, so that's quite nice on a cold day!

The process starts with them, as they approach the fire,

they gradually dry out and then the temperature rises

up to 1,000 degrees when they're fired properly

and then there's a process when they cool down

and the whole cycle takes about 12 days

and the fire moves around the kiln. The bricks are static all the time,

the fire tracks its way around

and we load the green bricks in ahead of the fire

and then take out the fired bricks behind the fire.

And it's a continuous process.

Once fired and cooled, even in today's mechanised world,

London bricks are packed the old-fashioned way, by hand.

Oh, dear boy, would you like to come and have a go?

Always one for a challenge!

What do I have to do?

Just pick two bricks up like that and put them on there.

Just make sure they're...

That's it. Mind your fingers, because they bite.

They bite, do they?

The other thing is to go at speed, isn't it?

-Do you do this all day, do you, Reg?

-All day, yes.

-Goodness.

Do you do any of the other jobs around the brickworks?

No, not really, no.

We have done 'em, but, like, this is our main job, this is.

So, makes you pretty tough?

Yeah, exactly. It hurts at the end of the day,

and plus we just come back off holidays, so...

So you're a little bit out of practice?

Stiff, yeah, at the minute, yeah.

Many thousands have put in shifts at London Brick,

some of them from surprising backgrounds.

After the Second World War,

Britain's cities had to be rebuilt, and the demand for bricks soared.

The London Brick Company employed more than 3,000 prisoners of war.

But after they went home in the early 1950s,

London Brick began a recruitment drive in Southern Italy.

As a result, Peterborough has a thriving Italian ex-pat community.

-Anyone here connected with the brickworks?

-These two.

In 1955. We come from the same place in Italy.

Did you know each other in those days?

-Yes, I go to school with him.

-No!

-Yeah.

-Signora, when did you come to England?

-1952.

Now, what did you come to do?

You didn't come to work in a brick factory?

No, darling, I just came for my love. My husband.

And what did he do?

Work in the London Brick Company.

In the London Brick Company.

THEY SING IN ITALIAN

What better way to end a journey

than to be immersed in a vibrant community built brick by brick?

THEY SING: "Nessun Dorma"

The story of the Italian brick makers

reminds me that despite the industrialisation of Bradshaw's era,

most people continued to be manual labourers.

These tracks were laid by beef and brawn

and in the fields, the wheat was gathered

largely without the use of machines. In this era of mechanisation,

it's as well to remember those who lived by the sweat of their brow.

On the next leg of my journey,

I see how Lincolnshire farmers utilised rails

to improve their harvests.

That was fun!

I visit one of Britain's most ancient and impressive cathedrals.

The tower is like fingers of honey-coloured stone

against the blue sky. Absolutely breathtaking.

And I look to the future of rail freight.

It gives me the most enormous pleasure to be able

to name this locomotive Immingham 100.

APPLAUSE

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