Manchester to Birkenhead Great British Railway Journeys

In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.

His name was George Bradshaw

and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.

Stop by stop, he told them where to go,

what to see and where to stay.

Now, 170 years later, I'm aboard for a series of rail adventures

across the United Kingdom to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.

From 1830, booming Liverpool and Manchester were linked

by the world's first twin-track locomotive-hauled inter-city railway

and a region already enriched by the mass production of cotton goods

became globally dominant.

I'm beginning a journey around this Victorian industrial heartland,

starting in a notorious slum

and ending in one of its grandest stately homes.

Following my Bradshaw's guide,

my journey starts in the world's first industrialised city

before heading west to Merseyside and Birkenhead.

Hugging the coastline north,

I'll turn inland to the rugged foothills of the Pennines

and on to the gritty West Riding of Yorkshire.

My journey ends in Chesterfield,

where the father of the railway,

George Stephenson, is buried.

On today's leg, I'm travelling through Manchester

from Oxford Road Station to Old Trafford,

before heading along the Mersey

to its once famous ship-building port of Birkenhead.

On the first leg of this adventure, I travel back in time...

George Bradshaw never saw trams.

He didn't know what he was missing!

..go in search of some left-wing credentials...

Eventually their work after this time would culminate

in the Communist Manifesto.

Which must be one of the most important political documents of all time.

..and I surprise even myself by becoming a red.

At last, the adulation that I've always craved!

My guide book says,

"Watt's steam-engine, Arkwright's power-loom and factory system

"and inexhaustible supplies of coal have given superiority to Manchester

"which it has retained to this day."

You can perhaps hear the tone of pride,

for Bradshaw was Manchester-born,

but the Quaker George Bradshaw was probably both impressed

by the productivity of industrialisation

and appalled by its social consequences.

In Victorian times,

Manchester was the beating heart of industrial Britain.

During the 19th century,

most of the world's cotton was processed or woven here

before being exported throughout the British Empire.

I'm travelling into Manchester Piccadilly, where I'll change

to the local network to head southwest

to the city's Oxford Road Station.

It was the epicentre of Cottonopolis,

as Manchester had come to be known.

Today I want to look at those who toiled in the mills,

those who came from the wrong side of the tracks.

I'm meeting Manchester tour guide Phillipa Cave

who's offered to show me their side of the city.

In the Victorian era, this area was known as "Little Ireland"

and was notorious as one of the worst slums in Manchester.

We've descended into a shadowy hollow.

Why was this called Little Ireland?

Well, in Manchester in the early part of the 19th century,

there's a massive population increase,

people trying to find work in Manchester's mills.

One of those groups of people is Irish immigrants

and this area is predominantly inhabited by them.

And what were conditions like here for living?

They were dreadful.

There were probably two groups of cottages here.

Maybe 200 of them,

but 4,000 people living in them,

so in one room, you might get ten people living in a space

that's only ten feet by nine feet.

They are also really damp, these properties.

We're down in a little dip here surrounded by a river, and in fact

the cellar dwellings are below the level of the river

so they would frequently flood.

Anyone who could afford not to live here would move further out.

And the area was surrounded by chimneys that would be

belching out this dense smoke, and the noise, the crunching

of the machinery in the mills, the shrieking of boiler engines

and also the incessant beat of the loom, the rhythm of Manchester.

And I often think of the fact that George Bradshaw died of cholera.

What was public health like in the slum?

Very poor. By 1841, the average life expectancy is 26 years.

Friedrich Engels, the son of a German manufacturer,

highlighted the immigrants' plight

and created the text for a political movement.

He wrote a treatise, The Condition of the Working Class in England,

in 1844, documenting their shocking circumstances.

"A horde of ragged women and children swarm about here

"as filthy as the swine that thrive upon the garbage heaps

"and in the puddles.

"The race that lives in these ruinous cottages

"behind broken windows or in dark, wet cellars

"in measureless filth and stench,

"this race must really have reached the lowest stage of humanity."

Powerful writing. What was he doing in England?

Well, he would have come from Germany.

His family had a manufacturing business there

and it was always assumed that Engels would join that business.

He had rather other ideas.

He'd gone to military school in Berlin,

he'd become politically engaged and began to write a critique

of the manufacturers and what they were doing to their workers.

So his father thought the best way to bash these radical ideas

out of him and put him back on track would be to send him

to a business he co-owned here in Manchester.

His father couldn't have sent him to a better place to develop those radical tendencies.

As Engels said, "Here in Manchester, the modern art of manufacturing

"has reached its perfection."

Determined to find a way to eradicate the exploitation of capitalism,

Engels teamed up with his friend the philosopher Karl Marx.

Both were regarded as political troublemakers,

indeed Marx had recently been deported from Paris.

Manchester was the ideal place for the pair to develop their ideas

and can claim to be the womb of communism.

Chetham's Library was founded in 1653, and is the oldest

surviving public library in the English-speaking world.

I love libraries, and this one is absolute perfection.

What you're seeing here is how it would have looked from 1655,

through Engels' time and that of Bradshaw,

and it continues like this today.

Books were very expensive and so originally they would have

been chained to the shelves, but then later these gates were added.

So Marx and Engels were coming here

because this was a great resource for them?

Absolutely, all the manuscripts and volumes on philosophy

and economic theory, they had access to.

What we have here are some of the actual books that we know Marx

and Engels referred to when they were studying in the library in 1845.

Let's see what they were getting up to.

"An enquiry into the duties of men in the higher

"and middle classes of society in Great Britain."

"Discourses On The Publick Revenues And On The Trade Of England."

Solid topics, aren't they?

Light reading!

"The state of the poor.

"A history of the labouring classes in England."

Parochial records.

What was the intellectual relationship between the two?

Marx was perhaps the better known,

but Engels was working behind the scenes.

He's the more empirical, the more methodical,

and he gets the work done.

He gets the books written.

Marx is perhaps more impetuous, more impulsive.

He's personally indignant about the plight of the working classes.

There's one more place I'd like to show you before we leave Chetham's.

Lead on.

It's in this alcove, at this very table,

that Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx would sit

and do their research, and they were drawing on the experience of Engels

from places like Little Ireland, and eventually their work

after this time would culminate in the Communist Manifesto.

Which must be one of the most important political documents of all time.

A prescription for revolution,

without which there wouldn't have been a Soviet revolution.

No Lenin, no Stalin, no Mao Tse-Tung in China

And it all began here in Manchester.

Communism was hatched in this little alcove.

Marx and Engels proved that the word is mightier than the sword -

an idea honed amongst dusty library books had the power to change the world,

to shape the destiny of nations and humanity.

My own political career left somewhat less momentous marks

on the development of our species.

In 1989, when I was Minister for Public Transport,

I had the honour to approve the contract to build this.

The Manchester Metrolink.

The idea was to use trams to connect the suburban railways

running into Victoria and Piccadilly stations,

running along the streets of central Manchester.

Now it's carrying 21 million passengers a year and there

are plans to make it the largest light rail system in the UK.

And with a captive audience, I have an opportunity to find out

how those decisions have affected Mancunians.

Hello. Do you use the tram, the Metrolink, very much?

Yes.

-Are you using it on a daily basis to visit family?

-Baby-sitting.

Visiting family in Manchester.

And how do you find it?

Brilliant. Best thing Manchester has done.

Bradshaw's tells me that Old Trafford is in the vicinity

of Trafford Park, seat of Sir Humphrey de Trafford,

descended from one of the most ancient of old families.

Nowadays, Old Trafford is associated with Manchester United,

and having had a brother who was a keen supporter of the club,

my childhood memories are of its triumphs and tragedies.

And today I'm excited to be visiting its iconic stadium.

This temple of sport inspires awe

amongst believers and unbelievers alike.

I'm meeting Graham Simmonds, a lifelong Manchester United supporter

and one of the club's tour guides.

Imagine you are the captain of the opposition team

and I'm the captain of Manchester United.

All the United fans, the hardcore, passionate supporters,

will be here, traditionally, on this left-hand side,

known as the Stretford End.

It's amazing, isn't it? It's so vast,

the seats reaching up into the sky.

Incredible number of people. How many can be seated here?

Seats 76,000. It's the biggest in the football league.

I've sometimes spoken to 2,000 people. This is just vast.

How did it all begin?

It all started back in 1878 when we were known

as Newton Heath Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Cricket and Football Club,

all started by a group of lads who used to make

carriages for the railways, and of a weekend they would

get changed in a pub and go and play football in an open field.

The railwaymen of Newton Heath indulged their passion

for the sport, but couldn't have suspected what would grow

out of their football enthusiasm.

Rival departments and other railway companies became their adversaries.

These guys are having to work in the carriage works all day

and then they are playing soccer in their spare time.

Yes, very much so. More likely to be on a Saturday afternoon.

In those days, work took priority.

They would work long hours on the other five, five and a half days.

So how do we get from the early days of the railwaymen

to Manchester United?

Newton Heath joined the Football League in 1892.

Unfortunately, after only two seasons we were relegated

and we got into some financial difficulty.

But a local brewer saved the club

and the name was changed to Manchester United.

And I think it helped the supporters having to shout out

Newton Heath Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Cricket and Football Club.

Yeah, that is not very succinct.

Along with the change of name,

they changed their strip from the green and gold colours

of the railway company to their now familiar red.

As I walk around what Sir Bobby Charlton called

the Theatre of Dreams,

I can't help thinking about its most successful manager,

Sir Alex Ferguson.

Come on in, Michael, sit in the boss's seat. Middle seat, back row.

How does that feel?

A surge of power when I sit here.

Controlling the team, the whole stadium in the palm of my hand.

Now, what do you do? You do a lot of arm-waving, like that!

Arm-waving, clock-watching.

Yeah, feels great. Now, the team today is very successful.

Tell me about your triumphs.

Our triumphs just seem to go from strength to strength.

13 times we've won the Premiership trophy in its 21-year period.

Three European trophies, 11 FA Cups.

So it's one of the most successful clubs in the world?

I would say so, if not THE most successful.

At last, the adulation that I've always craved!

After so much excitement,

I've just enough energy for a short hop from Trafford Park Station.

I'm heading towards the Roman town of Warrington.

During the Industrial Revolution, the town developed

and prospered as a result of its position on the new railway network

and the Manchester Ship Canal.

As I'm halfway between Manchester and Birkenhead,

it's where I'm breaking my journey.

Evidence of the Industrial Revolution is all around in Warrington,

but communism was not the only response to the condition of the workers.

Whilst Marx and Engels regarded factory owners as ruthless men,

who ground the noses of the poor in the dirt,

there were entrepreneurs who took their social duties seriously.

Here at Warrington Bank Quay station,

I'm in the shadow of the Unilever factory.

And I'm now on my way to see the utopian workers' village

created by William Lever, who gave his name to the company.

But before I can witness the legacy of Merseyside's mighty soap baron,

I need to change trains at Chester,

and my next stop is just over 20 minutes away.

I'll be getting off at a station that didn't exist

when my guide was published - Port Sunlight.

The very name, borrowed from a bar of soap,

belied the general impression of industrial towns

as smoky places, enveloped in dark and gloom.

Port Sunlight was built in 1888

to house William Lever's soap factory workers,

and its 900 houses - set in 130 acres of parkland -

are a far cry from the filthy hovels of Little Ireland.

In fact, it's one of the finest surviving examples in Britain

of early urban planning.

Even today, Port Sunlight is a pristine haven of tranquillity and order.

The houses are built with generous proportions and in fine materials.

William Lever must have been an exceptional philanthropist.

I'm meeting Lionel Bolland,

chief executive of the Port Sunlight Village Trust.

Welcome to Port Sunlight.

Thank you very much.

Why did William Lever build Port Sunlight,

and why here?

He needed a site for his factory

because he wanted to expand his soap production and he wanted to realise

a dream to build a community for his factory workers.

He wanted to see his workforce prosper, and this was cheap land.

Marshy, riddled with tidal inlets and ravines,

but superbly located because it had a port at one side,

with access to the sea, and it had a railway line on the other,

from which he could draw sidings into the factory.

In fact, just over there is one of the original entrances

into the factory.

The desire to improve living standards for his workers

had its roots in William's early ambition to be an architect.

But his father insisted he become involved

in the family grocery business.

Looking at Port Sunlight, there's no doubt that William was able

to apply his ideas about architecture and society.

Lever obviously provided a lot of public space.

What other facilities are there in the village?

Well, he built a cottage hospital, so that anybody who worked

for Lever Brothers would have free medical attention.

Free schooling up to the age of 12.

At 12 you would have taken a job.

There was an institute technical college for those that wanted

to better themselves.

In 1907, there was a social study done.

The infant mortality rate in Port Sunlight was about half

of what it was in Liverpool.

Providing this level of care and commitment

was possible only thanks to Lever's prodigious ability as a businessman.

By the 1890s, his factory had become

one of the biggest soap suppliers in the world.

This looks like examples of his marketing.

What's this about?

In 1885, he put a £1,000 reward up for anybody

who could find an impurity in Sunlight soap.

That was an astonishing fortune.

A year's salary for a factory worker at that time

would have been about £100.

Nobody ever successfully claimed that £1,000.

This was an advertising gimmick?

Of course. And that's what he was so astonishingly good at.

This looks like the original product, is that right?

Indeed it is. This is from one of the early boils of soap.

And was this for the body or for washing clothes?

It was actually both, and that was quite significant.

One of the important features of it, it was very mild

because of what it was made of.

And you could use it as a household soap, for washing yourself

and also for washing clothes.

Washing clothes in the 19th century was a demanding physical activity

which began with grating your own soap.

It's quite slow work getting this grated.

Look at those luscious suds.

That was one of its great features, it lathered very well.

Made from coconut and palm oil,

Sunlight's slogan was "Mild because it's pure."

Twist it one way and then the other quite vigorously.

All right, Lionel! I'm doing it quite vigorously.

What you would very quickly get here

would be blisters all over your hands.

Right, let's consider that done.

As any housewife will tell you,

-Sunlight washes whiter.

-It does indeed.

Lever had business acumen, compassion and imagination.

His philanthropy has often since been ridiculed for its paternalism,

because the people housed on his model estates were required

to conduct orderly lives governed by Christian rules.

Marx might not have been impressed but I suspect Lever's workers were grateful.

The final stop on this first leg of my journey will be Birkenhead.

Bradshaw's tells me that

"The Cheshire side of the Mersey is now a prosperous suburb

"of Liverpool, with a softer climate and more attractive scenery.

"Birkenhead is chiefly engaged in shipbuilding,

"with a large docks of 150 acres, opened in August 1847."

The town's success was due to William Laird,

a Scottish shipbuilder who, in 1828,

received his first order for an iron vessel to be used

on the waterways in Ireland.

The business rapidly expanded

as the demand for large iron steamships grew.

This successful shipbuilding family also helped to establish

a new form of public transport in Europe.

Robert Jones will tell me how William's son John

shaped Birkenhead's history.

He was chairman of the town commissioners,

a bit like the chief executive we'd have these days,

and John brought street railways to this town -

an idea he got from an American called George Francis Train.

Have you heard of George Francis Train? Can you believe it?

-I have not.

-A wonderful guy.

He was the person Jules Verne based Phileas Fogg on -

Around The World In 80 Days.

And there had never been a tram in Britain before?

Was this a horse-drawn tram, or an electric tram?

They were horse-drawn and they were called horse railways in America.

We always went for the English tramway or tram car.

And John Laird said he'd give them a six-month trial,

and he was so thrilled that Birkenhead was going to be

the first town that would have street railways.

The first town in England?

The first town in Europe to have railways running in the street.

They were smooth-running, quiet, cheap.

And was the tram a success?

It was, after a lot of local opposition in certain places.

But gradually people came round and as George Francis Train said,

"The age of the omnibus is over,

"the age of the horse tramway has commenced."

So confident was Mr Train in his horse-drawn trams

that he made an agreement with Birkenhead

that if the tramway were a failure, he would return

the town's streets to their original state using his own money.

Luckily, the tramway was a success, and Robert's taking me

to Birkenhead's tram museum to see some of the surviving examples.

These are the most beautiful, wonderfully restored trams.

George Francis Train, he introduced a horse-drawn tram.

These are obviously electric.

When do these date from?

1901.

And you're involved in the business of restoring them here?

Yes, that's my hobby.

Well, you've done a wonderful job.

What condition are these trams in when you find them?

They were in a terrible condition.

This was found in a field on the River Dee in a place called Farndon.

And it was just the lower saloon, and we built an upper deck,

obtained the running gear from Barcelona, built the platforms on.

It was a very long job. It took us 15 years.

And it actually runs?

Yes, I'm hoping we're going to have a ride on it now, Michael.

Excellent.

Birkenhead 20 was built in the town by the firm of Milnes

in the 1900s.

The best way for me to experience George Francis Train's legacy

is to drive a tram, but I don't think that Marx

would fail to recognise me as unforgivably bourgeois.

-Hello!

-Hi, Michael. How are you today?

Very well. How do you drive this thing?

Number one, the key. This goes with you everywhere.

That makes sure nobody can pinch the tram.

-Good idea.

-So we make sure that the switch

is off on the circuit breaker.

Put the key in this way.

Push the key forward.

That releases the control.

What we normally use is four.

Today, because we're only going a short stretch,

we're only going to use two.

-Great.

-Switch it back off. You keep hold of the key. Power's now on.

-Key inserted.

-Forward. First notch.

Second notch.

Whoa, this is fun. You're doing the brakes, aren't you?

I'll do the brakes.

George Bradshaw never saw trams. He didn't know what he was missing.

Britain seemed not to know what it was missing,

as so many cities tore up their tram tracks,

but now trams have made a comeback.

Like trains, we cannot be without them.

The plight of the working classes required a revolution,

argued Marx and Engels.

William Lever thought a model village was the answer.

A group of Manchester railwaymen relieved

the tedium of the workplace by founding a football team.

In my view, Manchester United has endured better than Marxism.

On the next leg of my journey, I put a vintage truck to the test...

More than a century old and still going strong.

..learn how the railways transformed the seaside of the Northwest...

Without any doubt, they were fundamental

to the future success of the resort.

..and I bake a lunch-time staple of the 19th-century worker.

You have to get a lot of air into it.

-It's already feeling lovely.

-You're quite good at this.