Norwich to Brandon 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.

And now, 170 years later,

I am aboard for a series of rail adventures

across the United Kingdom

to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.

I'm embarked on a new railway journey

from one cathedral city to another, from Norwich to Chichester.

But even using my high Victorian guidebook, this journey

will be more secular than ecclesiastical,

not so much heavenly as earthy.

On this leg, I'll hang out with a notorious Victorian criminal.

This is a replica of James Rush's death mask.

It does show very clearly

where the rope has cut directly into his neck.

Isn't that grim?!

'Meet a polecat who is just a nipper.'

Ooh!

'And chip away at an age-old craft.'

Could you make a flint out of that?

Yeah, it's perfect.

My journey begins in Norwich and continues southwest into Suffolk.

From Ipswich, I'll head south to Chelmsford,

and travel across the Thames through the Medway towns to Dover.

After making my way back through Kent,

my journey will take me along the Sussex coast

and end in the cathedral town of Chichester.

This East Anglian leg begins in the ancient city of Norwich,

burrows southwest deep into Thetford's rabbit warrens,

before turning northwest

to finish in the flinty countryside of Brandon.

My first stop will be Norwich,

which, Bradshaw's tells me, "is an old cathedral town

"and the capital of Norfolk,

"agreeably situated on the banks of the Wensum.

"The prospect of the city is imposing and beautiful."

Until the arrival of the railways in the 1840s

the city depended on its river

for communication with the outside world,

and even now it has that feeling of being the end of the line,

for worse and better.

Today I am greeted by this grand terminus, built in 1886,

but when the railways first arrived in the city, in 1844,

the station was far more modest,

providing only a single-track line to the coast.

The rest of the country remained inaccessible by train until the completion

of this impressive swing bridge over the River Wensum in 1845.

The line was extended down to London

opening the door to trade,

and to fashionable tourists from the capital.

The first stop recommended in my Bradshaw's guide

is a marvel of medieval architecture.

Bradshaw's comments that "the lofty spire

"of Norwich Cathedral gives it the air of great magnificence."

Lofty, yes, at 315 feet. Begun shortly after the Norman conquest,

completed within a century.

Imagine how important Norwich must have been in those days

that they built here

a structure the like of which most people had never seen.

Built on the lucrative wool trade

Norwich was so important in medieval times

that it ranked as England's second city.

It remains East Anglia's largest city.

I'll start my visit by testing locals

on one of the city's most famous daughters.

She is immortalised in every purse and wallet.

Excuse me!

I'm not trying to bribe you.

I've got a £5 note here.

I wonder if you know who that is?

-Erm...

-She is Elizabeth Fry.

Well done!

-Hello there!

-Hello.

-So now, who's this on the back of the £5 note?

It's Elizabeth Fry.

And what's she doing here?

Well, I imagine she's in...

What was the name of that prison in London where she went to?

-New...

-Newgate! That's it!

Well, I had to help you a bit

so I'll give you 9.5 out of 10!

-Thank you very much.

-Bye-bye now!

-Pleasure to meet you.

-Thank you. Bye.

Born in Norwich in 1780 to a wealthy Quaker family,

Elizabeth Fry moved to London aged 20.

There she visited the notorious Newgate prison

and encountered cruel, squalid conditions,

particularly among women prisoners and their newborn babies.

Elizabeth Fry became formidable in the movement for prison reform,

and extraordinarily influential for a woman of her day.

Indeed, it's a former prison I'm going to visit next.

Originally a royal palace built for William the Conqueror,

it was used as a gaol from the 14th until the 19th century.

"The great Norman keep

"and the barbican bridge are incorporated

"with the county jail built in 1818 for 200 prisoners."

So elegant, I'm guessing that only the cream

of the criminal fraternity did their porridge here.

Nowadays, the castle is run as a museum.

I'm meeting Annie Perry, who knows more about its dark past.

-Annie.

-Hello, Michael.

Bradshaw's talks about parts of the castle

being incorporated in the county jail in 1818

but I suspect there have been dungeons here long before that.

There are parts of the castle,

the original castle keep, that were used as prison cells

and dungeons many hundreds of years before that.

What sort of conditions in Victorian times were the prisoners living in?

Well, you have John Howard,

who's considered one of the very early, if not the first prison reformer,

visiting all of the gaols and prisons in England in the 1770s.

He comes to Norwich castle on a number of occasions

and reports that there are really quite bad conditions here.

Campaigners like John Howard and Elizabeth Fry

championed the redesign of prisons.

Their work achieved a gradual change in attitude towards prisoners

in the late 18th and early 19th centuries,

balancing punishment with rehabilitation.

And what kind of a prison does that give us?

The prison is based on a design called a radial gaol,

there's a central area, which would be the governor's house,

which would also include the chapel and the school room,

and then different cells radiating out

around the edges as well, with exercise yards in between.

They're looking to have individual cells for prisoners

to be able to separate categories of prisoners

and to be able to separate male and female prisoners.

Interestingly,

people would commit petty offences

to actually get put into prison

because the conditions in the workhouses were actually worse.

As part of the restructuring of the gaol,

a new courthouse was built at the base of the castle mound

linked directly to the prison by an internal tunnel.

So, Michael, I've brought you here to our restored court room.

Judge behind us, dock just there, I imagine?

Yes, the dock is just up here. The judge's seat,

which is being restored at the moment, will be here behind us.

One of the most notorious trials

brought a local tenant farmer, James Blomfield Rush,

into the dock in April 1849.

It was a Victorian melodrama.

A sensation reported widely in the newspapers at the time.

The public gallery up here was absolutely packed. The judge,

Justice Baron Rolfe, actually sold tickets

so people could get a front row seat.

Accused of?

A double murder.

He was supposed to have

sneaked into a building called Stanfield Hall

and shot and killed a father and son whom he owed money to.

After conducting his own protracted defence

Rush was eventually found guilty and sentenced to hang.

Until 1868, hangings were conducted in public.

And they were popular.

Was the hanging a notorious event?

Extra trains were put on

to bring people from Great Yarmouth and London.

Possibly as many as 20,000 people

actually witnessed the execution,

which would take place publicly at the bottom of the bridge.

What a lovely day out, bring a picnic(!)

Well, if you wanted to pay for a picnic

you could go to the Bell Hotel

and if you rented the very top rooms

you've got an excellent view across the crowds of the execution

and you could pay for a room and supper.

The hotels were not alone

in capitalising on the public's gory fascination.

Staffordshire potteries produced collectable figurines

of the main characters in the Rush murders

to take home and display on your mantelpiece.

It's quite puzzling this, isn't it,

that the Victorians who have this interest in the connection

between mental health and criminality,

who are prison reformers, are nonetheless so ghoulish!

It is that real sense of macabre.

This fascination with the sinister

is borne out by a collection hidden in the castle's dungeon.

Well, it's horribly damp and dank and thoroughly creepy down here.

Well, we are in the castle's dungeons, Michael.

And this is what I wanted you to see.

This is a replica

-of James Rush's death mask.

-Wow.

Prisoners' death masks

were used to study the contours of the criminal cranium.

Known as phrenology,

this practice examined the lumps and bumps on the surface of the head

in the belief that they could reveal distinctive criminal shapes.

Sometimes a phrenologist could be summoned before a wedding

to check the head of a fiance for signs of bad character.

In James Rush's case

they would be very interested in this area behind here,

this is your destructiveness area.

Your aggressive nature.

And his is said in his report to be most pronounced.

I don't want to be political but he seems to be somewhat left leaning.

That would be from after the execution.

You are left suspended for one hour

to make sure there's no chance of you being revived or resuscitated.

And this mask, as well, does show very clearly

where the rope has cut directly into neck.

Isn't that grim?!

Phrenology has long since been discredited and is now obsolete.

The legacy of prison reformers like Elizabeth Fry

has been longer lasting.

While Norwich prison was improved,

in an area at the foot of the old Norman castle

another group was penned in.

"The Cattle Market, one of the largest out of London,

"is held on a piece of ground to the south of the castle," says Bradshaw.

It's not there any more, it's been moved. I'd better hoof it!

Norfolk has always been rich farming country.

Indeed, the considerable wealth of medieval Norwich

came from the wool trade,

and the livestock market

has always been important to the city's economy.

Originally situated in the city centre,

it moved to a more spacious plot two miles away in the 1960s.

It's one of the few livestock markets in Britain today.

David Ball knows more.

Welcome to Norwich livestock market!

Thank you!

My Bradshaw's tells me that Norfolk

is the biggest agricultural area, and talks about Norwich

as being one of the largest markets outside London.

I assume there's been a market here since, really, time immemorial.

Is that right?

This one's been here for 50 years.

The previous site of the market made extensive use of the trains, did it?

Without a doubt, especially to take stock away from market.

It was a collection centre for a big area of Norfolk

but then people came from all over the country.

A lot of people came from London and places like that,

and into that part of the world, to take the meat away

because it was still commutable

where they could do the journey and slaughter them the next day.

Do you think Victorian animal husbandry was quite good, actually?

Oh, I think it was, cos it was on a much smaller scale,

much more personal, that's what I think makes a huge difference.

Things have changed so much

that a townie like me might ask, why do you still need a market,

why do you need people to come to a single place to buy their sheep and their cattle?

Because it gives them an opportunity to know where they've come from,

how they're bred, what they're fed on,

and everything that goes with it.

The present market's fortnightly cattle auctions

draw scores of famers and traders from all over the region.

Hundreds of cattle and calves change hands,

with prime beasts selling for thousands of pounds.

I'm taking up my position

next to local calf and cattle salesman Roger Long.

You're buying the tiny calves, are you?

Yes, the smaller calves.

Something we can take home and produce into beef.

As the auction gets under way,

I've got little time to watch

and learn the minute bidding gestures of the experts

before Roger lets me loose to buy on his behalf.

Selling 126, Hamish.

I'm hoping that a subtle twitch of the Bradshaw's

will be enough to seal the deal!

5, 10, 15.

Come on, Michael, one more. 25.

Going at 25.

Selling on my left.

325.

Michael Portillo!

325.

That was absolutely thrilling,

my little gestures managed to get me a beautiful calf.

10, 12, 14.

I'd love to stay and perfect my bidding technique

but I've a train to catch.

I've retraced my steps to Norwich Station

and am heading 30 miles west on the mainline across East Anglia.

Next stop Thetford.

My guidebook tells me

that it was the ancient capital of East Anglia,

situated on the junction of the rivers Ouse and Thet.

After a long day I'm going to rest my head there

in a house that was once thought fit for a monarch.

Situated a few miles from Thetford Station,

local landmark Lynford Hall was commissioned in 1857

by Stephen Lyne Stephens,

a millionaire banker

considered the richest commoner in England at the time.

Not long after his death in 1860, it was put up for sale

and its lavish splendour came to the attention of Queen Victoria.

James Parry of the Breckland Society will tell me more.

James.

Michael, hello.

I find you in semi-regal splendour!

What exactly is the connection between Lynford Hall and the royal family?

Queen Victoria was becoming increasingly concerned

by the behaviour of her son, the Prince of Wales.

There had already been several scandals.

He was turning into a serial philanderer

and she and Prince Albert decided

that they had to get some stability into his life.

And they thought that by buying a country estate

they could perhaps have a little bit more control over him,

keep him there a little bit, spend more family time together.

Located on one of the best shooting estates in East Anglia

Lynford Hall was a serious contender for royal ownership.

A state-of-the-art, newly-built country estate,

it had 50 bedrooms with plumbed water,

and modern lighting, thanks to a pipe from a private gasworks.

It offered a mere 8,000 acres.

Nearby Sandringham had 20,000 and was bought instead.

It has remained a royal retreat ever since.

If things had turned out differently,

this could have been the place that the royal family

were sitting down for Christmas lunch, rather than Sandringham.

But instead you and I can celebrate midsummer at Lynford Hall.

-Cheers.

-Cheers.

After a restful night,

I'm striking out further into Thetford's surrounding countryside.

My Bradshaw's notes that

"the country consists of a sandy soil

"and is peculiarly salubrious and pleasant in nature".

Such terrain isn't ideal for farming

but is favoured by a particular breed of burrowing creature.

Anne Mason of the Breckland Society

will tell me how the landscape of "the Brecks"

was ideal for a form of animal husbandry.

-Hello.

-Hello.

So, what exactly is this building?

Well, it's known as Thetford Warren Lodge

and it was inhabited by a rabbit warrener.

And it's the symbol of a 600-year-old industry of warrening

which once dominated this area of East Anglia.

And why is it built to look like a castle?

It was built primarily as a defence against poachers,

because rabbits were highly prized luxury items in the Middle Ages.

It was the job of a medieval warrener

to nurture, protect and trap rabbits.

He was in effect a rabbit farmer.

Why were rabbits so valuable then?

Because they were a source of fresh meat in the winter

and also because their fur was used for robes and cloaks.

We know that Henry VII actually had a nightshirt

that was lined with black rabbit fur.

When did the rabbit business reach its peak, do you think?

Oh, it was actually linked to the railways.

Once the railway came to Thetford in 1846

it provided very quick and easy transport up to London.

And, of course, the meat could be then transported very freshly.

It was actually sold at Leadenhall market

and it was really in response to growing demand from centres of population,

such as London, which had expanded so much in the 19th century.

On this warren of Thetford,

from the 1850s onwards

the average annual cull was 28,800 rabbits.

Rabbit meat became so popular that Mrs Beeton's famous Victorian book

of household management

provided more than 20 recipes for its preparation.

And the demand for rabbit fur in Victorian England

was met by two large factories

employing 200 people in nearby Brandon.

It was a significant source of employment,

with much of the community

involved in processing thousands of rabbit skins

for the fur and felt-making industries.

So extensive and regular was that rabbit trade

that the early morning trains going up to London

carrying the rabbits were known locally as bunny trains.

In the trade's heyday in the mid-19th century,

bunny trains transported 30,000 carcases a year

to the London markets,

where they were sold by the hundredweight.

If you had your warren near a train station,

farming rabbits was a lucrative business.

With the passing of the Ground Game Act in the 1880s,

anyone was allowed to hunt wild rabbits

and the industry went into steady decline.

Has it died out completely?

Not entirely, no.

And, in fact, I think it's seen a revival.

With so much emphasis on using local produce

and naturally-produced produce,

I think we are seeing more people eating rabbit meat.

The bunny trains and the rabbit fur trade have long since gone,

but a few warreners survive.

With lean, healthy and sustainable rabbit meat back on the menu,

there's a business in bunnies again.

Andy Simpson continues the tradition of the warrener.

He learned his trade from his father

and is passing it on to his son Tim.

This ancient form of animal husbandry is important for another reason,

conservation of the natural environment and pest control.

What would happen if you were not controlling the rabbit population?

They'd destroy the countryside for cattle farmers, sheep farmers.

The rabbits are undermining the ground,

they're tunnelling underneath all the time.

The hole that you see, it's a bit like an iceberg.

The hole is the tip of it,

the warren is expansive underneath.

Many years ago this park would have been full of cattle and sheep

and the estate ponies.

There's none of them here. They daren't put them in here now

because the cattle and ponies break their legs walking over the rabbit warrens.

Now, I've been ignoring up until now your box of tricks.

We've got a few little noses coming out of there.

Yep, I've got a selection of these.

Molly's my main working bitch.

This is a cross between a ferret and pole cat.

This won't bite.

-Are you sure?

-Yep.

You are a sweet creature.

Where this one was a domesticated ferret,

these are captured wild polecats.

That's a little boy one.

Do they go rabbiting yet?

Not yet, no.

Ooh!

Got me!

You've got a claim to fame, you bit a politician!

With the two pesky polecats back in their cage,

it's time for me to hop back to Thetford Station

where I'm going to board my next train northwest to Brandon.

This train is going to take me out of Norfolk

over the border into Suffolk and the town of Brandon.

Bradhaw's tells me that,

"this place formerly supplied the government with gun flints."

Enough to spark anybody's interest.

Immediately I can see how important flint is to this area.

Even the buildings here are faced with the stone.

This place is blessed

with some of the best quality flint in Britain

and flint was key to the local economy for a very long time.

I've come to Grime's Graves,

an ancient flint mine just outside Brandon.

I'd like to find out how old the area's flint business is,

from archaeologist Dave Field.

-Hello, Dave!

-Hello, Michael, pleased to meet you.

My Bradshaw's tells me

that Brandon supplied gunflints to the government. Tell me about that.

Yes, that's very true.

In particular during the Napoleonic wars,

an enormous quantity of gunflints were shipped out.

There are stories of something like a million per month at one time.

There was a particularly good seam of flint here.

Jet black, very few imperfections.

Exceedingly good sparkability, and sparking properties

were of primary importance for musketry.

Particularly for military purposes.

You can imagine at the battle of Waterloo,

you wouldn't want your musket to misfire too many times!

Was it ever possible to mass-produce gunflints?

No, this was a cottage industry.

The Brandon knappers

had something like a five or six year apprenticeship

before they could be set loose and set up their own business.

We're in an area which bears the scars of human activity,

but I assume this is nothing to do with the Napoleonic era, is it?

No, no, no, this is all prehistoric.

The Neolithic miners got here long before the gunflint miners.

It seems that flint knapping is a skill that's as old as the hills.

This site has now been dated to over 4,000 years ago.

Grime's Graves contains traces of 400 Neolithic mineshafts

and is one of the most important prehistoric sites in Britain.

What was Neolithic man using it for?

They were using it for a variety of things.

It's reckoned that enough flint was extracted from here

in the Neolithic period

to make something like eight million stone axes.

Enormous quantities were shipped out.

Much more so in the Neolithic period than in the gunflint era.

I'm going to take a closer look.

You get a real sense

of descending into the bowels of the earth, don't you?

The greenery peters out, the rock begins, temperature falls.

It does indeed. It's pretty constant down here.

And it's a real labyrinth. All these little galleries interconnect.

Theoretically you could work your way right across the site underground.

You can see the hollows here where a large nodule has been extracted.

The idea, of course,

was to extract every available piece of good black flint

that you could do without the roof falling in.

So, how did these Neolithic mines come to light,

if that's the right expression?

Well, it was following

the period of publication of Darwin's Origin Of Species.

There was a new feeling of inquiry about.

And it was during that period

that Canon William Greenwell came to the site

and he dug one of the shafts

and found that it went down something like 12 metres.

And he found the seam of black flint

and it was quite clear then what was going on.

That they were actually mining this material in prehistory.

And he used some of the gunflint miners from Brandon

to help him in that excavation.

So the gunflint miners had a big hand in the discovery of the prehistoric mining.

Well, I'd like to find out more about flint knapping

-but for that I must return to the surface.

-Yes, let's do.

The flint knapping workshops

that were so busy in Brandon in the early 19th century are no more,

but today, some enthusiasts have revived the craft.

Will Lord provides traditional flints for flintlock guns

used by historical re-enactment groups across the globe.

Hello, Will!

Hello, Michael. Nice to meet you.

Good to see you.

I had no idea that flint would be such a big rock!

Yeah, we're really lucky,

we've got some of the best geology of flint in Britain around here.

What is it you are trying to make? What's the end product?

This is the final product.

And it has to be very precise, does it?

I notice not only that it's very square

but you've shaved off one side of it here.

Yeah, that chamfer there is really important.

It doesn't want to be too weak at the end of its journey.

First a suitable stone has to be selected

and quartered into a workable size.

Look at that, we have made an excellent choice in stone.

Look at this, pure black silica.

Isn't that absolutely glorious?!

Then a workable-sized flake has to be created

and Will is letting me have a bash.

Just lean it in a little bit.

It's all good. Just touch it on the flint.

Perfect.

Could you make a flint out of that?

Yeah, that's great!

Only now can the flake be honed

to the correct shape and size for a gunflint.

Got a bit of a shape there.

You have.

But it doesn't really, let's face it...

No, look at that, you've got a really good serviceable gunflint there!

-Well done.

-Thank you.

I'm no expert yet,

but I am glad that I've had a go at man's oldest profession.

When Norwich acquired its cathedral and castle

it was one of this country's most important cities,

using the river and the sea to export wool to the continent.

When railways became the main mode of transport,

Norfolk was left somewhat isolated from the capital, London.

In such tranquillity, rabbit warrening and flint knapping could survive,

unaffected by the Industrial Revolution

transforming the rest of Britain.

On the next leg

I experience 19th-century cutting edge technology.

And there it goes.

And the extraordinary thing is that a Victorian would recognise

that because it was made in much the same way.

I shell out for seafood near Mersea Island.

This is the sort of oyster that once cleaned up could appear on my plate?

It certainly is, yes.

And I'm tainted in an Essex orchard.

That's where the phrase caught red-handed comes from.

Indelible stain of crime.