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In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain. | 0:00:05 | 0:00:10 | |
His name was George Bradshaw | 0:00:10 | 0:00:11 | |
and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:17 | |
Stop by stop, he told them where to go, what to see and where to stay. | 0:00:17 | 0:00:23 | |
And now, 170 years later, I'm aboard for a series of rail adventures | 0:00:23 | 0:00:29 | |
across the United Kingdom to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:34 | |
My journey around northern England | 0:00:55 | 0:00:57 | |
has taken me from the great mill towns of Lancashire | 0:00:57 | 0:01:01 | |
to the grandiose scenery of the Yorkshire moors | 0:01:01 | 0:01:03 | |
and the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, opened in 1867, | 0:01:03 | 0:01:09 | |
closed to passengers in 1962, | 0:01:09 | 0:01:12 | |
gloriously reopened in 1968, and running steam. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:18 | |
'On this leg, I learn how Victorians marketed confectionery...' | 0:01:21 | 0:01:25 | |
On Saturday last, you were eating Mackintosh's Toffee at our expense. | 0:01:25 | 0:01:29 | |
Next Saturday, pay us another visit and eat it at your own expense. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
That's brilliant. Brilliant. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:33 | |
Which was a very unusual way of advertising. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:36 | |
'I get a tailor-made fitting...' | 0:01:36 | 0:01:38 | |
Most people have got one shoulder lower than the other, and you have. | 0:01:38 | 0:01:41 | |
Where I've been writing over the years, yeah. | 0:01:41 | 0:01:43 | |
-All them cheques. -HE LAUGHS | 0:01:43 | 0:01:46 | |
'And I help revive a cinematic railway legend.' | 0:01:46 | 0:01:49 | |
Oakworth! | 0:01:49 | 0:01:51 | |
Oakworth Station! | 0:01:51 | 0:01:53 | |
CHEERING | 0:01:53 | 0:01:54 | |
Oakworth! | 0:01:54 | 0:01:56 | |
My journey began in Manchester, headed west to Port Sunlight, | 0:02:01 | 0:02:05 | |
took the sea air in Southport, | 0:02:05 | 0:02:07 | |
traversed Lancashire towards Bradford | 0:02:07 | 0:02:10 | |
and now goes south to steely South Yorkshire, ending in Derbyshire, | 0:02:10 | 0:02:14 | |
where the father of the railways, George Stephenson, lies buried. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:18 | |
Today's Yorkist chapter begins in Haworth, | 0:02:20 | 0:02:23 | |
goes to the cinema in Oakworth, | 0:02:23 | 0:02:26 | |
invests in Bradford, | 0:02:26 | 0:02:27 | |
moves stickily south to Halifax, | 0:02:27 | 0:02:30 | |
weaving its way finally to Huddersfield. | 0:02:30 | 0:02:33 | |
This landscape looks benign in sun. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
But lashed by wind and rain, | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
it made the setting for a dark tale of passion, Wuthering Heights. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:47 | |
That and another love story, Jane Eyre, | 0:02:47 | 0:02:49 | |
are amongst my favourite novels | 0:02:49 | 0:02:51 | |
and they were written by sisters in a family of gifted siblings. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:55 | |
Yes, this is Bronte country. | 0:02:55 | 0:02:58 | |
I'm heading to Haworth, atop a hill in the Worth Valley | 0:03:01 | 0:03:04 | |
where novels of passion and genius | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
were created by three brilliant sisters. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
I want to know what inspired them | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
and whether the railway played any role in their lives. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:16 | |
I'm meeting Professor Ann Sumner of the Bronte Society | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
at the parsonage provided for their father, the local curate. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:25 | |
-Hello, Ann. -Hello, Michael. Welcome to Haworth. -Thank you very much indeed. | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
Who were this extraordinary family of Brontes? | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
Well, the Bronte sisters wrote some of the greatest novels | 0:03:35 | 0:03:38 | |
that we have in English literature of the 19th century. | 0:03:38 | 0:03:43 | |
Of course, Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre published in 1847, | 0:03:43 | 0:03:47 | |
Emily wrote Wuthering Heights in the same year, | 0:03:47 | 0:03:50 | |
and Anne, perhaps the least known of the three sisters, | 0:03:50 | 0:03:54 | |
she brought out Agnes Grey and The Tenant Of Wildfell Hall. | 0:03:54 | 0:03:59 | |
What were their circumstances? | 0:03:59 | 0:04:01 | |
Well, they were not a wealthy family. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
Very sadly, the mother died just 18 months after arriving here in 1821. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:11 | |
And the sisters went out as governesses or as teachers, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
and when they came back to write their famous novels, | 0:04:14 | 0:04:16 | |
they drew on that experience of life as well. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:20 | |
Before there had been Jane Austen, | 0:04:20 | 0:04:21 | |
but was it still quite rare to have a woman novelist? | 0:04:21 | 0:04:24 | |
It was unusual. | 0:04:24 | 0:04:25 | |
And pretty early on there was some rumour in London | 0:04:25 | 0:04:29 | |
that actually this was only one man writing the novels. | 0:04:29 | 0:04:33 | |
And so the two sisters, Charlotte and Anne, | 0:04:33 | 0:04:35 | |
walked to Keighley - by this time the railways were at Keighley - | 0:04:35 | 0:04:38 | |
five miles in a thunderstorm, and then they were whisked down overnight | 0:04:38 | 0:04:41 | |
to London and, of course, revealed themselves to the publisher | 0:04:41 | 0:04:44 | |
the next morning, who was somewhat surprised to find that they really were women. | 0:04:44 | 0:04:48 | |
Jane Eyre was an instant success. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
Charlotte spent some of her new-found wealth buying shares | 0:04:53 | 0:04:57 | |
in an industry which already played a part in the lives of the sisters. | 0:04:57 | 0:05:02 | |
She and her siblings had inherited money from their Aunt Branwell, | 0:05:03 | 0:05:07 | |
£1,400, which had been divided between them | 0:05:07 | 0:05:10 | |
and they had invested in the railway. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:12 | |
And they actually had good - initially - good income | 0:05:12 | 0:05:16 | |
from the railways, and now she writes to her publisher George Smith. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:20 | |
She writes, "The little railway property I possessed, | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
"scarcely any portion of it can with security be calculated on." | 0:05:23 | 0:05:28 | |
This was a real boom and bust set of stocks, wasn't it? | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
This was like the dot-com bubble of the early 21st century. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:34 | |
The railways were tremendously exciting. | 0:05:34 | 0:05:37 | |
They were transforming the Brontes' lives. | 0:05:37 | 0:05:39 | |
Charlotte herself travelled for the first time in 1839. | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
She went on holiday to Bridlington. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
Her sisters used the train, and indeed when Anne died, | 0:05:44 | 0:05:47 | |
it was very sad because Anne wanted to get to Scarborough, | 0:05:47 | 0:05:50 | |
she'd been there as a governess and she wanted to see the sea again, she thought that would make her well. | 0:05:50 | 0:05:55 | |
And sadly, just after she arrived in Scarborough, she did actually die. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:59 | |
So the trains were really important to the sisters. | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
And, in fact, Branwell, their brother, was very interested | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
in the railways, and he actually worked for the railways as well. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:09 | |
Branwell Bronte was the fourth child | 0:06:11 | 0:06:13 | |
and the only boy of the six Bronte siblings. | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
Partial to a drink and rumoured to take opium, | 0:06:16 | 0:06:19 | |
he was an aspiring portrait painter and poet | 0:06:19 | 0:06:23 | |
whose short but colourful life ended when he died of bronchitis | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
aged just 31. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:28 | |
So how was it that Branwell became a railwayman? | 0:06:30 | 0:06:34 | |
Well, his portraiture business was failing, so Branwell took | 0:06:34 | 0:06:38 | |
his own initiative and applied for a role as a clerk at Sowerby Bridge. | 0:06:38 | 0:06:44 | |
Here we actually have a notebook given to him, | 0:06:44 | 0:06:47 | |
so that he could keep a very close eye on what kind of goods trains | 0:06:47 | 0:06:51 | |
came through, and note the details down. | 0:06:51 | 0:06:55 | |
Most of it is around doodles, very good caricatures here of the men | 0:06:55 | 0:06:58 | |
he's working with, and a lovely caricature of himself, actually, | 0:06:58 | 0:07:01 | |
with his glasses on - he was very short-sighted with this pointy nose. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:04 | |
And then this list of his favourite poets | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
and there's some lovely drafts of poems in this book as well. | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
With his eye on the artistic, | 0:07:11 | 0:07:13 | |
Branwell's railway career hit the buffers | 0:07:13 | 0:07:15 | |
when his station's accounts failed to tally and he was sacked. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:19 | |
So these are by Branwell, are they? | 0:07:23 | 0:07:25 | |
Yes, they are. Branwell actually set up practice | 0:07:25 | 0:07:29 | |
and worked for over a year in Bradford, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
but wasn't financially successful. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:34 | |
This has been a real eye-opener for me. I had no idea | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
there was a railwayman Bronte, the forgotten sibling, | 0:07:37 | 0:07:40 | |
and a man of some talent. | 0:07:40 | 0:07:43 | |
GUARD WHISTLES | 0:07:52 | 0:07:54 | |
Resuming my steam journey, I'm heading north towards Oakworth. | 0:07:59 | 0:08:03 | |
There's another literary connection with this railway. | 0:08:15 | 0:08:19 | |
A lady who was a child at the time of my Bradshaw's guide, E Nesbit. | 0:08:19 | 0:08:24 | |
And she wrote a book, which became a film | 0:08:24 | 0:08:26 | |
with which the British people are still in love. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
Yes, it's The Railway Children. | 0:08:29 | 0:08:32 | |
Shot on location at Oakworth in 1970, | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
the film, directed by Lionel Jeffries, | 0:08:37 | 0:08:40 | |
tells Nesbit's Edwardian story of the adventures of three siblings. | 0:08:40 | 0:08:45 | |
Roberta, Peter and Phyllis move to live next to a Yorkshire railway | 0:08:45 | 0:08:49 | |
after their father is falsely accused of spying for the Russians | 0:08:49 | 0:08:52 | |
and imprisoned. | 0:08:52 | 0:08:54 | |
Former Members of Parliament Ann Cryer and her late husband Bob, | 0:08:54 | 0:08:58 | |
who were Keighley and Worth Valley committee members, | 0:08:58 | 0:09:01 | |
played a pivotal role | 0:09:01 | 0:09:03 | |
in securing this line's starring role in the production. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:07 | |
-Nice to see you. -Good to see you. | 0:09:07 | 0:09:09 | |
Now, what was your involvement and the involvement of your husband Bob? | 0:09:09 | 0:09:14 | |
On a particular day, the end of '69, I took a phone-call | 0:09:14 | 0:09:18 | |
on behalf of the railway, and this voice said, | 0:09:18 | 0:09:21 | |
"My name is Bob Lynn and I'm a friend of Lionel Jeffries | 0:09:21 | 0:09:25 | |
"and we want to make a film on your railway." | 0:09:25 | 0:09:28 | |
That was the beginning of it. | 0:09:28 | 0:09:30 | |
It was just so exciting. It was absolutely wonderful. | 0:09:30 | 0:09:33 | |
Bob had to organise the engines, | 0:09:33 | 0:09:36 | |
which way they were going to go, where they were going to be | 0:09:36 | 0:09:39 | |
and sometimes very early in the morning an engine would have to | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
go down to Shipley triangle to turn round, | 0:09:43 | 0:09:45 | |
so it was going in the other direction. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:47 | |
He was responsible for all that. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:50 | |
Did you actually get sucked into the making of the film? | 0:09:50 | 0:09:52 | |
Yes, we did. My son and daughter, John and Jane, and myself - | 0:09:52 | 0:09:56 | |
we became extras, and Lionel Jeffries was kind enough | 0:09:56 | 0:10:00 | |
to give them a close shot in the film, and that was how kind he was, | 0:10:00 | 0:10:04 | |
not to mention the fact that Lionel Jeffries also chose | 0:10:04 | 0:10:07 | |
to keep the name Oakworth. Whereas in the book it's Meadow Vale. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:11 | |
And it's been an absolute godsend to this railway, | 0:10:11 | 0:10:14 | |
the fact that Oakworth was used. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:16 | |
Today is Oakworth's annual Railway Children celebration, | 0:10:17 | 0:10:22 | |
when locals and members of the railway | 0:10:22 | 0:10:24 | |
re-enact scenes from the film. | 0:10:24 | 0:10:27 | |
-Hello. -Hello. -May I congratulate you on your costumes? | 0:10:28 | 0:10:31 | |
-You look absolutely wonderful. -Thanks. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
What are you playing today? What parts? | 0:10:34 | 0:10:36 | |
-Roberta. -Phyllis. -And Peter. -And which scenes are you playing? | 0:10:36 | 0:10:40 | |
We're doing the petticoat scene where we stop the train. | 0:10:40 | 0:10:43 | |
We come out of the station and jump off the platform, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:45 | |
run down the side of the grass and stop at the end | 0:10:45 | 0:10:48 | |
and wait for the train to come, and wave the petticoats and shout stop. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:51 | |
-And hopefully with train will stop. -Are you involved in that? -Yes. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:54 | |
-You haven't got a petticoat! -No. | 0:10:54 | 0:10:56 | |
-We'll lend you one. -SHE LAUGHS | 0:10:56 | 0:10:58 | |
Have fun! Bye-bye. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:00 | |
-Hello. -Hello there. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:04 | |
Are you taking part in the recreation today? | 0:11:04 | 0:11:06 | |
-I'm playing Mr Perks. -Perks! | 0:11:06 | 0:11:08 | |
Hmm, I was rather hoping to play a part myself. | 0:11:08 | 0:11:10 | |
-Is there a part that I can do? -Well, you could take my role for the next train, if you like. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:14 | |
That would be fantastic, but I don't exactly look the part, do I? | 0:11:14 | 0:11:18 | |
Oh, that's all right. I can kit you out. | 0:11:18 | 0:11:21 | |
-How's that looking? -That looks all right on you. You can use my blazer. | 0:11:21 | 0:11:24 | |
-That's really kind of you. -It's all right, no problem. | 0:11:24 | 0:11:27 | |
Thank you very much. | 0:11:27 | 0:11:29 | |
What do I have to do? | 0:11:29 | 0:11:30 | |
When the train arrives, you shout "Oakworth, Oakworth Station," | 0:11:30 | 0:11:34 | |
and this tells the passengers as the train arrives where they are. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:36 | |
Well, thank you. I must go and practise my line. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:39 | |
TRAIN WHISTLES | 0:11:41 | 0:11:43 | |
Oakworth! Oakworth Station! | 0:11:47 | 0:11:51 | |
Oakworth! Oakworth Station! | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
CHEERING | 0:11:54 | 0:11:55 | |
Oakworth! Oakworth Station! | 0:11:55 | 0:11:59 | |
Oakworth! | 0:11:59 | 0:12:01 | |
Still awaiting my first call from a casting agent, | 0:12:09 | 0:12:12 | |
I'm taking the steam service to Keighley, | 0:12:12 | 0:12:14 | |
then changing onto a Northern Rail service heading southeast. | 0:12:14 | 0:12:18 | |
My next stop will be Bradford. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:24 | |
Bradshaw's tells me that it's the great seat of the worsted trade, | 0:12:24 | 0:12:28 | |
finely placed among the Yorkshire Hills, where three valleys meet. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
I'm going there to find out how we became a nation of homeowners. | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
Because the names of Yorkshire towns - Bradford, Bingley, Halifax - | 0:12:36 | 0:12:40 | |
make me think of building societies. | 0:12:40 | 0:12:43 | |
Bradford is yet another northern town | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
transformed by the steam-powered mills of the Industrial Revolution. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:55 | |
Wealth poured in, but whilst the council built an opulent town hall, | 0:12:55 | 0:13:00 | |
many of Bradford's workers lived in abject squalor. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
Some put their faith in self-improvement, | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
in particular by saving with the building society. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:11 | |
Liz McIvor is curator of social history | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
at Bradford Museum in Eccleshill, northeast of the city centre. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:21 | |
What were housing conditions like in a place like Bradford | 0:13:21 | 0:13:24 | |
in the early part of the 19th century? | 0:13:24 | 0:13:26 | |
Basically, very old buildings that were tenemented | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
to take a whole family in one room. Very, very poor access to facilities. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:32 | |
What did they do for sanitation? | 0:13:32 | 0:13:34 | |
Well, mostly a couple of streets might have a middenhead, | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
which was literally a hole in the ground | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
emptied by night soil men regularly, | 0:13:39 | 0:13:41 | |
but the problem with that is that the private landlords were supposed to | 0:13:41 | 0:13:44 | |
arrange that, and a lot of them were very unscrupulous and didn't, | 0:13:44 | 0:13:48 | |
so you would have build-up, and basically the pits would become too full | 0:13:48 | 0:13:52 | |
so cellar dwellings at the bottom of the tenement buildings | 0:13:52 | 0:13:54 | |
would fill with sewage. | 0:13:54 | 0:13:55 | |
And what opportunity did working men and women's have to save, | 0:13:55 | 0:14:00 | |
to buy a place of their own? | 0:14:00 | 0:14:01 | |
Well, at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution | 0:14:01 | 0:14:04 | |
not very much, but some of the better-off workers who might earn | 0:14:04 | 0:14:07 | |
that little bit might have just a little bit of cash | 0:14:07 | 0:14:09 | |
to put aside in savings. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:10 | |
So what was the principle of these building societies? | 0:14:10 | 0:14:13 | |
Well, the basic idea of a building society | 0:14:13 | 0:14:15 | |
that makes it different from the bank | 0:14:15 | 0:14:17 | |
is that all the people that invest in the building society | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
are basically like the shareholders, they all get some profit, | 0:14:20 | 0:14:23 | |
they all get a return on their investments. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:25 | |
Whereas a bank is a private limited company | 0:14:25 | 0:14:27 | |
where the shareholders make all the profits. | 0:14:27 | 0:14:30 | |
The first building society, formed in Birmingham in 1775, | 0:14:30 | 0:14:35 | |
was a terminating society, | 0:14:35 | 0:14:37 | |
which closed when all its members had been housed | 0:14:37 | 0:14:40 | |
in the property for which they'd jointly paid. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:43 | |
The 1836 Building Societies Act | 0:14:43 | 0:14:46 | |
made it easier to form the permanent building societies | 0:14:46 | 0:14:50 | |
that we know today. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:51 | |
And by 1860 there were almost 3,000. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:54 | |
These back-to-back houses were some of the first | 0:14:57 | 0:15:00 | |
to be built by a building society in Bradford. | 0:15:00 | 0:15:04 | |
So welcome to number 25 Gaythorne Row. | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
So obviously this is a huge improvement | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
on insanitary and crowded conditions. | 0:15:11 | 0:15:13 | |
Still quite tight, I must say. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
What sort of a family would live here? | 0:15:16 | 0:15:18 | |
People would quite happily have lived here with maybe six children, | 0:15:18 | 0:15:21 | |
and yes, it is very cramped, | 0:15:21 | 0:15:22 | |
it's one room at the bottom, one room at the top, | 0:15:22 | 0:15:25 | |
but you have your own outside toilet, that's a massive improvement. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:29 | |
And where's the bathroom? | 0:15:29 | 0:15:30 | |
There isn't a bathroom unfortunately. | 0:15:30 | 0:15:32 | |
There's a tin bath on the wall on a hook, which you would bring in | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
in front of the fire and have your weekly bath. | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
So what stratum of society would be living in a house like this? | 0:15:37 | 0:15:40 | |
It would be a skilled worker or an artisan worker. | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
I'm going to show you an object. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:45 | |
This is a penny saving bank, and it looks like a book, | 0:15:45 | 0:15:49 | |
but it's actually got a hole in the back | 0:15:49 | 0:15:51 | |
for a penny or small coins to go into, | 0:15:51 | 0:15:53 | |
and then the idea was once you filled it up | 0:15:53 | 0:15:55 | |
you could take it to your building society officer, | 0:15:55 | 0:15:57 | |
he has the key, he unlocks it to put it into your savings account. | 0:15:57 | 0:16:02 | |
The building society movement really allowed for the first time | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
working people to think about saving and think about improving your life. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:09 | |
'It's been a long day. | 0:16:17 | 0:16:19 | |
'Hoping for the luxury of an inside bathroom, | 0:16:19 | 0:16:22 | |
'I'm heading back to the city centre.' | 0:16:22 | 0:16:25 | |
As so often, Bradshaw's provides the clue for my overnight stay. | 0:16:25 | 0:16:29 | |
Bradford, it says, is where three rail branch lines meet - | 0:16:29 | 0:16:33 | |
The Lancashire and Yorkshire, Great Northern, and the Midland mainline. | 0:16:33 | 0:16:37 | |
The Midland built a flagship hotel here, | 0:16:37 | 0:16:40 | |
and this opulently-tiled corridor led directly from the platform | 0:16:40 | 0:16:45 | |
to the elegance within. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:46 | |
'Opened in 1890, the hotel was designed with Renaissance grandeur. | 0:16:48 | 0:16:53 | |
'Today's general manager is Gary Peacock.' | 0:16:53 | 0:16:57 | |
It is a magnificent hotel. It must have superb history? | 0:16:57 | 0:17:01 | |
Absolutely. It was a significant part of the Victorian heritage of the city. | 0:17:01 | 0:17:05 | |
And I suppose in the 19th century great people were staying here? | 0:17:05 | 0:17:08 | |
The politicians, the celebrities, the actors, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:10 | |
the actresses of the day from all over the world. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
Are there any stories around the hotel that I should know? | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
Probably the most significant is the death, right here at the foot of the main staircase, | 0:17:16 | 0:17:21 | |
of Sir Henry Irving, the famous Victorian actor. | 0:17:21 | 0:17:24 | |
Felt a bit ill on stage, | 0:17:24 | 0:17:26 | |
came back from the Theatre Royal having played Beckett, | 0:17:26 | 0:17:29 | |
was put into a chair, | 0:17:29 | 0:17:30 | |
and unfortunately he died at the foot of the main staircase. | 0:17:30 | 0:17:33 | |
And prophetically the last words he ever uttered on stage were, | 0:17:33 | 0:17:36 | |
"Into Thy hands, O Lord - into Thy hands!" | 0:17:36 | 0:17:40 | |
Thankful for an uneventful night, I'm heading to Bradford Interchange | 0:17:50 | 0:17:54 | |
from where I'm travelling southwest. | 0:17:54 | 0:17:56 | |
Bradshaw's tells me that four centuries ago my next stop, Halifax, | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
had but 13 houses. But the spirit of commercial enterprise | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
has recently manifested itself by the rapid growth of the town. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:16 | |
One enterprise filled the streets of the town | 0:18:16 | 0:18:20 | |
with the sweet smell of success. | 0:18:20 | 0:18:22 | |
The Piece Hall in Halifax is the sole survivor | 0:18:25 | 0:18:28 | |
of the great 18th century cloth markets of northern England. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:33 | |
During the 19th century, textiles were industrialised, | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
forcing domestic cloth-workers to find jobs elsewhere. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:41 | |
The enterprising John Mackintosh turned to toffee. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
Alex Hutchinson is the Mackintosh company archivist. | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
-Hello, Alex. -Hello. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:50 | |
You have a lovely railway station. Why are we meeting just here? | 0:18:50 | 0:18:54 | |
Although this building says Halifax Flour Society, | 0:18:54 | 0:18:56 | |
right here is where the Mackintosh family of Halifax made their toffee. | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
How did it all start? | 0:19:00 | 0:19:03 | |
Violet Taylor, who later became Violet Mackintosh, who was born in 1866, | 0:19:03 | 0:19:07 | |
got an apprenticeship in a confectioner's shop where she learned to make a new type of toffee. | 0:19:07 | 0:19:11 | |
She invented it. Up until that point, all English toffee was brittle, hard butterscotch. | 0:19:11 | 0:19:15 | |
Tough stuff. And there was runny American caramel, and she worked out | 0:19:15 | 0:19:18 | |
how to blend the two and make a chewy toffee. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:21 | |
And she married a nice chap called John Mackintosh | 0:19:21 | 0:19:23 | |
and she and her husband, instead of having a honeymoon, | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
bought a little pastry cook shop where she sold it, and suddenly it | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
really took off, and then within a couple of years they had to | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
open a factory and were selling it nationwide and then internationally. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
It was such an accessible purchase for working people. | 0:19:36 | 0:19:38 | |
It was bringing confectionery to every man. | 0:19:38 | 0:19:40 | |
The fact that the factory is next to the railway | 0:19:40 | 0:19:43 | |
leads me to hope that there's a railway connection. | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
Mackintosh's needed to be near the railway so their ingredients could come in by train | 0:19:45 | 0:19:49 | |
and they could send their finished goods out the same way. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:51 | |
Methodist teetotallers, | 0:19:53 | 0:19:55 | |
the Mackintosh family legacy is certainly something to chew over. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:59 | |
Bring home Quality Street, and you'll be a prince in her eyes. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:03 | |
Their most famous boxed confectionery assortment, | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
currently exported to 70 countries, | 0:20:09 | 0:20:12 | |
was created and first manufactured in this factory. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:16 | |
Their product was affordable for the working man, | 0:20:20 | 0:20:22 | |
but it was still a luxury product and they knew that it wasn't an essential | 0:20:22 | 0:20:25 | |
so to entice their new consumers, for the first week, they gave their product away for free. | 0:20:25 | 0:20:30 | |
And then the following week they put in this ad. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:32 | |
"On Saturday last, you were eating Mackintosh's Toffee at our expense. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:35 | |
"Next Saturday pay us another visit and eat it at your own expense." | 0:20:35 | 0:20:38 | |
That's brilliant. Brilliant. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:40 | |
Which was a very unusual way of advertising. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
What else did they do to market the product? | 0:20:42 | 0:20:44 | |
We have an advertisement here, | 0:20:44 | 0:20:46 | |
and Mackintosh's are telling boys and girls everywhere on their holidays | 0:20:46 | 0:20:50 | |
to write the words Mackintosh's Toffee in the sand. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:52 | |
If they're seen by someone from Mackintosh's factory they'll be given a prize. | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
There must have been thousands of children up and down the nation | 0:20:55 | 0:20:58 | |
writing Mackintosh's Toffee everywhere you go. | 0:20:58 | 0:21:00 | |
Absolutely brilliant. What kind of people were they, the Mackintoshes? | 0:21:00 | 0:21:04 | |
John, I think, was what we would call now a little bit of a workaholic. | 0:21:04 | 0:21:07 | |
-He really, really lived for the business. -And she? | 0:21:07 | 0:21:10 | |
She loved wearing ermine. And looking glamorous. | 0:21:10 | 0:21:13 | |
Once she'd invented this new type of toffee, | 0:21:13 | 0:21:15 | |
she was more than happy for John to take all of the credit, | 0:21:15 | 0:21:17 | |
call himself the Toffee King and she took a back seat and enjoyed life. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:22 | |
The company, acquired by Nestle in 1988, | 0:21:23 | 0:21:26 | |
produces billions of toffees every year at its Halifax factory. | 0:21:26 | 0:21:30 | |
There is absolutely an unmistakable smell of toffee, isn't there? | 0:21:32 | 0:21:36 | |
And this here is our toffee machine. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:40 | |
It's making toffee to exactly the same recipe | 0:21:41 | 0:21:44 | |
that Violet would have been using. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:46 | |
That is a toffeeholic's dream, isn't it? | 0:21:49 | 0:21:52 | |
I'm tempted to linger and gorge myself on toffee, | 0:21:57 | 0:22:01 | |
but I must continue my journey south to this leg's final destination. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:05 | |
Huddersfield is my next stop. Bradshaw's tells me | 0:22:10 | 0:22:13 | |
it's the seat of the woollen trade in the West Riding of Yorkshire. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:17 | |
"Woollens, fancy Valencias, shawls are the staple articles | 0:22:17 | 0:22:20 | |
"of manufacture besides corduroy," which I am wearing at the moment. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:25 | |
Huddersfield had a reputation for quality. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:27 | |
I wonder whether it has it still. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:29 | |
As the town industrialised, the merchants who traded in it | 0:22:30 | 0:22:34 | |
and the Ramsden family, who owned most of it, | 0:22:34 | 0:22:37 | |
decided that Huddersfield | 0:22:37 | 0:22:38 | |
should retain the long-established reputation for upmarket cloth. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:43 | |
The neoclassical railway station, completed in 1850, | 0:22:45 | 0:22:49 | |
was clearly the result of burning civic pride. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:54 | |
I've never been to Huddersfield before, and I am overwhelmed. | 0:22:54 | 0:22:58 | |
This square is beautiful, and above all the railway station | 0:22:58 | 0:23:02 | |
is one of the best I've seen in Britain. | 0:23:02 | 0:23:05 | |
I believe someone once described it | 0:23:05 | 0:23:07 | |
as a stately home with trains passing through it. | 0:23:07 | 0:23:10 | |
And sadly, with his back to this architectural gem, | 0:23:10 | 0:23:14 | |
my childhood hero Prime Minister and Huddersfield boy Harold Wilson. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:20 | |
Wilson famously described 1960s Britain | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
as being forged in "the white heat of technology." | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
He could have been speaking of his home town a century before, | 0:23:30 | 0:23:33 | |
for in Victorian Huddersfield, new designs of looms and processes | 0:23:33 | 0:23:38 | |
produced the very finest cloth. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
Established in 1883, Taylor & Lodge makes luxury fabric | 0:23:43 | 0:23:47 | |
for suits that can cost up to £25,000. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
For more than a century, generations of skilled craftsmen | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
have toiled on the original looms | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
still operated by pattern weavers like Brendan Crowther. | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
-Hello. -Hello. Hiya. | 0:24:04 | 0:24:06 | |
What sort of cloth is this? | 0:24:06 | 0:24:09 | |
This here, this is a two and two twirl, this. It's a worsted. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
A worsted. And I suppose you've got warp and weft. How does all that work? | 0:24:12 | 0:24:18 | |
Well, this is your warp. These go through here. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:21 | |
And your weft is sent across by the shuttles. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:24 | |
Now that is a good old-fashioned methodology, isn't it? | 0:24:24 | 0:24:27 | |
May we actually see the thing in action? | 0:24:27 | 0:24:29 | |
Yeah, I don't see why not. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:30 | |
And now we see the pattern building up. | 0:24:34 | 0:24:36 | |
That is mesmerising. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:42 | |
You know, Brendan, I often see machines | 0:24:42 | 0:24:44 | |
and I have no idea what is going on. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
But this one, I suppose because it's quite an old technology, | 0:24:46 | 0:24:49 | |
it's perfectly clear how that is working. | 0:24:49 | 0:24:53 | |
Real Victorian engineering. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:56 | |
With 83 tailors in Huddersfield in Bradshaw's day, | 0:25:01 | 0:25:04 | |
it would be remiss not to meet one while I'm here. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:08 | |
I'm visiting Jon Fairweather at Carl Stuart. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:11 | |
Very good to see you. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
I've often had suits made, | 0:25:15 | 0:25:17 | |
and tailors tend to be very polite, almost flattering. | 0:25:17 | 0:25:21 | |
If you assess me as a customer, what are you really thinking? | 0:25:21 | 0:25:23 | |
Firstly, you've got to make the customer relax | 0:25:23 | 0:25:26 | |
because you don't want to be stood shoulders out, stomach in. | 0:25:26 | 0:25:30 | |
Most people have got one shoulder lower than the other, and you have. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:33 | |
-This one, right? -Correct. | 0:25:33 | 0:25:35 | |
That's where I've been writing over the years, here. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
All them cheques! HE LAUGHS | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
We can make you look normal. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
OK, so you've measured me up, let's say, I've chosen my cloth. | 0:25:43 | 0:25:48 | |
-Right. -What do you do next? | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
We put all the figurations down on the cutting sheet, | 0:25:50 | 0:25:53 | |
and then it's all adjusted from the block patterns. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:56 | |
You're doing that just by eye now? | 0:25:56 | 0:25:58 | |
-Yeah. -So how many years has it taken you to learn those tricks? | 0:25:58 | 0:26:02 | |
I've been doing it 50 years. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:04 | |
It used to be a seven-year apprenticeship | 0:26:04 | 0:26:05 | |
to be a tailor and cutter when I started. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:07 | |
And it's only five years for brain surgeon, so... | 0:26:07 | 0:26:11 | |
We should be on a level. | 0:26:11 | 0:26:12 | |
So anything very different about what you're doing here | 0:26:12 | 0:26:15 | |
and what your Victorian predecessors would've done? | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
In the bespoke trade, doing this, it would be exactly the same. | 0:26:18 | 0:26:23 | |
So we've now made our adjustments here. What do you do next? | 0:26:23 | 0:26:25 | |
Right. When the whole suit's chalked in, then you start cutting. | 0:26:25 | 0:26:30 | |
-You can have a go, if you want. -Oh, thank you. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:34 | |
You start at that end and go around, if you wish. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:37 | |
This says Made in Huddersfield. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:39 | |
And is that still an important cache? | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
Oh, yeah. Made in England definitely. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
Made in Huddersfield is cream on the top. | 0:26:44 | 0:26:48 | |
-Where does that go then? -That's the front. | 0:26:48 | 0:26:50 | |
That's your button. | 0:26:54 | 0:26:55 | |
That's your lapel. | 0:26:55 | 0:26:57 | |
-Now where does this bit go? -That's the other side. | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
You cut everything on the double. Two fronts, two backs, two sleeves. | 0:27:00 | 0:27:04 | |
-How do I look? -Amazing! | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
JON LAUGHS | 0:27:08 | 0:27:09 | |
I've been thinking, | 0:27:19 | 0:27:20 | |
how many more great novels the Bronte sisters might have written | 0:27:20 | 0:27:24 | |
had they not died aged 29, 30 and 38. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:29 | |
Tuberculosis stalked 19th century Britain | 0:27:29 | 0:27:32 | |
and cholera killed many in their prime, including George Bradshaw. | 0:27:32 | 0:27:38 | |
Fortunately, later in Queen Victoria's reign, | 0:27:38 | 0:27:41 | |
engineers and reformers made progress with sanitation and public health. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:46 | |
'On the next leg of my journey, | 0:27:55 | 0:27:57 | |
'I'm given a Victorian music lesson...' | 0:27:57 | 0:27:59 | |
HE PLAYS INSTRUMENT WITH DIFFICULTY | 0:27:59 | 0:28:03 | |
-CHEERING -Wow! | 0:28:03 | 0:28:06 | |
'I learn of a watery tragedy in the Peak District...' | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
The final death toll was about 81, of whom half were children. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:14 | |
'And I make a splash in Derbyshire.' | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
Whoa! | 0:28:17 | 0:28:18 | |
I never produced as big an impact as that! | 0:28:18 | 0:28:22 |