Greenock to Larkhall Great British Railway Journeys


Greenock to Larkhall

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For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name.

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At a time when railways were new,

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Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks.

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I'm using a Bradshaw's Guide to understand how trains

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transformed Britain - its landscape, its industry,

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society and leisure time.

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As I crisscross the country 150 years later, it helps me

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to discover the Britain of today.

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My journey this week will take me across Scotland from west to east.

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I began at the Firth of Clyde

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and am now heading through the Scottish Lowlands towards Glasgow.

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Then north to Stirling and Perth,

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close to where the kings of Scotland were crowned.

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I'll travel on east to Fife and the famous university town

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of St Andrews, finally heading south to Scotland's capital,

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where my journey ends.

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This leg begins at Clydeside's westernmost industrial town...

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crosses by paddle steamer

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to the Victorian holiday resort of Helensburgh.

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From there, it's on to the mighty city of Glasgow,

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before heading south to the former mining town of Blantyre.

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And my journey ends in Larkhall in South Lanarkshire.

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I meet a seagoing beauty...

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And she was the last of the Clydebuilt excursion

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paddle steamers to work on the Clyde.

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..discover how a Victorian hero nearly met his end...

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LION ROARS AND WHIP CRACKS

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RIFLE BLASTS

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..and rise to a bake-off challenge.

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There's always a point when a dough says to you that it's had enough.

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-Oh.

-And I believe that was about two minutes ago.

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MICHAEL LAUGHS

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I'm continuing my journey across southern Scotland,

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which has now brought me to the area of Glasgow.

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A city which had a university in the 15th century,

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was a centre of The Enlightenment in the 18th,

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laid claim to being the second city of the British Empire

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in the 19th and then led in design and fashion.

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There's a clue in Bradshaw's

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to Glasgow's success in industrialisation.

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"At Bowling, near Dumbarton, is a pillar to the memory of Henry Bell,

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"who ran the first steamer on the Clyde, The Comet, in 1812."

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Incredibly early for a steam-powered vehicle,

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before the Napoleonic Wars had run their course.

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AUTOMATED VOICE: We are now approaching Greenock Central.

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Please mind the gap when alighting from this train.

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The impressive River Clyde is the heart of Glasgow.

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In Victorian times,

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the deepwater port was the centre of its great shipbuilding industry.

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The city made some of the world's greatest vessels,

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and also exported some of the finest railway rolling stock.

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I'm meeting local historian Stewart Noble to

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find out about the pioneering steamship Comet.

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Stewart, for me, with my interest in railways,

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it's kind of surprising that this took to the water in 1812!

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Long before railway locomotion.

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Because roads were in such bad condition

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and the River Clyde was only just navigable and no more,

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Henry Bell, the developer, the man who had the idea, he wanted to

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bring his guests in comfort and speed from Glasgow

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to his hotel in Helensburgh.

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Born in 1767, Bell trained as a stonemason before

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pioneering steampower in vessels.

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How did Henry Bell have the idea of putting a steam engine into a ship?

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Well, he was trained as a millwright,

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so he had a good idea of how machinery worked.

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He'd also seen steam engines working in industry and so on, and so because

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transport was so difficult between Glasgow

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and Helensburgh at that time,

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he decided to put a steam engine into a ship and had it

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built here in Port Glasgow, very close to where we're standing.

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Bell commissioned a local shipbuilder to construct

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a 25-ton wooden paddle steamer driven by

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a then-mighty three-horsepower engine to transport his hotel guests

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the 20 miles between Glasgow and Helensburgh.

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How successful was it against its more old-fashioned competition?

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It depends how you define success. It wasn't

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much faster than it could be coming by coach, it depended partly

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whether the tide and the wind were in favour of The Comet or not.

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But it was certainly more comfortable.

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Following Comet's maiden voyage in 1812, Bell inaugurated

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a regular passenger service between Glasgow, Greenock and Helensburgh.

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And in the following years,

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The Comet spawned a range of other steamships sailing on the Clyde.

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To celebrate The Comet, this replica was built.

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NEWSREEL MUSIC

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-NEWSREADER:

-At Lithgow's Yard, thoughts would turn back 150 years

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to the day when Comet was launched.

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That was the name given to the first practical steamship

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to carry passengers.

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I wouldn't want to wound your Glasgow pride,

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but it's quite a small ship, why so?

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Well, ships weren't very big in those days,

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shipyards really were just places where people built boats

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on beaches, they weren't the big modern items we think of nowadays.

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While the replica is landlocked, happily, there is

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a paddle steamer still plying the old route.

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The Waverly has been crossing the Clyde for more than 60 years.

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Bradshaw's remarks that, "Any traveller, for pleasure,

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"who finds himself within Glasgow's smoky and dingy precincts in search

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"of the picturesque, the beautiful and the romantic,

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"has only to choose the first conveyance westward,

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"whether it be a Greenock train or a Clyde steamboat,

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"to find what he seeks and be gratified."

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And on a day like today, you can see what the book means.

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The industrial worker in the slums of Glasgow could escape to this

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magnificent waterscape if he or she had the price of the fare.

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PIPER PLAYS

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But back in 1975, The Waverly seemed destined for the shipbreaker's,

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until a charity rescued her in a deal that was sealed for £1.

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What an exciting moment - boarding a wonderful, beautiful paddle steamer.

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HORN BLARES

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A moment to savour,

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because she's the last seagoing paddle steamer in the world.

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Magnificently restored, with towering funnels and timber decks,

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it's a delight to feel the power of her steam engines beneath my feet.

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For those of us whose image of the Clyde is of shipbuilding yards,

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this vision is a great surprise.

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As Bradshaw says,

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"The scenery is remarkable for its picturesque beauty."

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The hills, the valleys,

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the mountains...and these wonderful skies.

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Captain, what is the history of The Waverly?

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Waverly was built in Glasgow by

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The London and North Eastern Railway Company.

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She was the last of the Clydebuilt excursion paddle steamers

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to work on the Clyde, and indeed, anywhere in the UK and the world.

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It's lovely to think that this old girl is still

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pulling in the passengers.

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-Hello, ladies.

-ALL: Hello!

-What's the attraction?

-It's a good day out.

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Especially when you get lovely Scottish weather, as well.

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-What made you come on today?

-My daughter.

-Yes.

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Did you know the ship?

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We know the ship, my father worked on the paddle steamers, so...

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-Bit of a trip down memory lane, then?

-Exactly.

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Helensburgh was founded in the 18th century by Sir James Colquhoun.

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He planned the resort and built and named it after his wife Helen.

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But I'm bound for Glasgow,

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so it's back on the train for a short trip to the city.

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"40 years ago, there were scores of towns within the kingdom

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"superior to Glasgow in wealth, extent and population.

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"Now, it has a larger population than Edinburgh, Dublin, Liverpool

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"or Manchester, and combines within itself the advantages

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"possessed by the last two mentioned."

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But Glasgow didn't want to compete only in terms of industry

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and size - but also for style.

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Glasgow at the time of my guidebook was

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the second city of the British Empire.

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It was riding an industrial boom,

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and its wealth and outlook were evident in its grand architecture.

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Many of its most iconic buildings were designed by

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the architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

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I'm meeting Alison Brown, an expert in the Glasgow Style.

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-Hello, Alison.

-Hello, Michael, nice to meet you.

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What a fantastic spread, and what a beautiful tearoom, tell me about it.

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Well, this is the Willow Tearooms,

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it was designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh for

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tearoom entrepreneur Catherine Cranston,

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and it opened on the 28th of October 1903.

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Was Charles Rennie Mackintosh in the habit of designing tearooms?

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He was, this was his fourth tearoom that he designed for Miss Cranston.

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What distinguishes this tearoom was that Mackintosh designed

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the whole tearoom in one go,

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from the external facade to the tearoom interiors, and we are in the

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Room de Luxe, and to come up here to have your tea you paid

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a penny extra, because the design was extra special.

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This innovative setting reflects Miss Cranston's personality.

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At a time when few women were in business, she defied convention.

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She cannily spotted a gap in the market for

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respectable places for people of quality to meet.

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She was ahead of her time.

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She understood ideas of marketing

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and branding before they became the terms that we now know today.

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She championed the young artists and designers that were coming up,

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emerging not just from Glasgow,

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but from Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland.

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Glasgow is the one industrial city in Britain that actually

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created its own distinct version of Art Nouveau.

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Slightly geometric, elongated sinuous forms.

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Basically, the Glasgow style refers to the art that was coming

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out of the Glasgow School of Art and from the pupils and teachers that

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were working there from the period from 1890 through to about 1914.

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Mackintosh, also a student,

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developed his very distinctive trademark style.

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The pierced square motif is instantly recognisable.

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This is Mackintosh's most luxurious tearoom.

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I think you can see by the quantity of mirrored glass

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and stained-glass and metalwork and the furniture design.

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And the reviews that were in the local newspapers today after

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this building opened commented on this

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being the sort of high point of his tearoom design.

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But, fully to appreciate his genius,

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I'm told that I must visit the Glasgow School of Art.

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The School of Art is considered his masterwork.

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It's an absolutely incredible building.

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Purpose-built and still used for its original function

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of being an art school.

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Mackintosh was 28 years old and a junior draughtsman

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at a Glasgow architecture firm

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when he drew up the plans for the building.

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The dramatic Art Nouveau design took about 12 years to build

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and opened in 1909.

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The use of heavy sandstone walls, combined with huge glass windows,

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was bold for its time.

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Even the decorative ironwork had a function,

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as a support for the window cleaner's ladder.

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Scotland almost lost its internationally celebrated treasure.

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Fire crews from across the country

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have spent the afternoon trying to douse the flames.

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This, a school famous for its architecture,

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and the artists it's produced.

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It was full of students when the blaze broke out.

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All were led to safety.

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I'm meeting Douglas Anderson, former pupil,

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now architect in charge of the restoration.

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So, Douglas, given the severity of the fire,

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I'm rather amazed to find so much of the building intact.

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Yes, we were fortunate that the fire service was able to save

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most of the building as it is.

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Architecturally speaking, what was so special about this building?

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Mackintosh was an innovator.

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At his time, he dragged architecture in Glasgow away from

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the Victorian styles and started looking at modern styles and efforts.

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As Art Nouveau was coming in, he embraced Art Nouveau.

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He understood what was happening on the Continent. And this was fresh.

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But sometimes it was difficult for Glasgow to understand

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what he was trying to achieve.

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The building was criticised in its day when it opened

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but, everybody, as the years went on, people embraced it, understood it

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and really, looked upon it as an inspiration for new building.

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The key to Mackintosh's approach was practicality.

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Here, he created rooms for artists filled with light.

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Mackintosh had a fantastic eye for detail.

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If you can see round about you what he's developed here

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in terms of timber engineering, the detail, the Art Nouveau details,

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the carvings, this is what really made him very famous.

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He couldn't pass by any detail, whether it was doors, trusses,

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walls, panelling.

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All this was magnificent.

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What does the building mean to Glasgow?

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Glasgow's in love with Mackintosh architecture.

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This building is such a special place for Glaswegians

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to understand, they visit it.

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I grew up here, I studied here.

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It was a very important part of my career,

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as it was for many artists in Glasgow.

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Throughout the whole century it's been here,

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it's such an important building.

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The architect introduced ingenious and innovative practical touches

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to the Art School's bold design.

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He added a frame to the director's studio, a portcullis to draw

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and lower canvases too big for the director's stairs.

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Mackintosh leaves nothing, however small, to chance.

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This is the Mackintosh Room, which is our main meeting room.

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But Mackintosh was a master of light.

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This is what's so appealing about this space.

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Natural light coming through these east windows, as well as

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artificial light that he designed, uniquely, to illuminate the space.

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Thankfully, much of Rennie Mackintosh's design

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has survived, but the upper studios were destroyed

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and the roof was left in a very poor condition.

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Now, you were a student here.

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Do you regard it as a great honour that you are charged with

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the restoration of Mackintosh's work?

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Absolutely. I loved my time here.

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This is a good way to end a career the way I started it,

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in the Mackintosh School.

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At the end of another day led by Bradshaw's,

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I'm staying at Glasgow Central Station's own hotel.

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I'm up early to leave behind the city's grandeur and hurly-burly.

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Bye.

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I'm ten seconds from the lobby of my hotel and I'm in the heart

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of the concourse of Glasgow Central Station,

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I believe, one of the finest in the British Isles.

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Built by the Victorians, amplified by the Edwardians,

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with its very distinctive rounded shop fronts in dark wood.

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It provides a magnificent gateway to Glasgow,

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not least for intercity passengers arriving from England.

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I'm negotiating the station's lower platforms

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to head south to Lanarkshire.

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In the 19th century, coal and iron manufacture took off,

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and Scotland's boom began.

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People flocked to open mines and set up furnaces to make their fortunes.

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I'm headed now for Blantyre,

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and an 1880s edition of my Bradshaw's reminds me

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of the dark side of the Industrial Revolution.

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"200 miners were killed here by an explosion in 1877,

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"on Blantyre's blackest day."

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The tragedy happened

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when a flammable gas was ignited by a naked flame.

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The explosion left 92 widows and 250 fatherless children

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and was Scotland's worst-ever mining accident.

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Blantyre.

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Today, the colliery is long gone, but along the banks of the Clyde,

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there are still traces of Blantyre's heyday as a cotton manufacturer.

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It feels as though I'm crossing a bridge to another time.

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Conditions in the mills were terrible.

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Today I'm interested in a self-made,

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working-class hero who clawed his way out of them,

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out of poverty and on to help abolish slavery in Africa.

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David Livingstone was one of the first medical missionaries to

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enter southern and central Africa.

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Alison Ritchie is the manager of the David Livingstone Museum.

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This is the Livingstones' home.

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It all seems very picturesque.

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What was it actually like in their day?

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Probably not so picturesque.

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This room was the entire house. There were nine people that lived in here.

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You had absolutely no privacy.

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Everything was done in this room from the cooking, sleeping,

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and under the bed is the toilet.

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But not nearly enough beds for so many people.

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No, we think his parents slept in this bed here.

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The five children on the higher bed together and the grandparents

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would have slept on this bed here, which would come sliding out.

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The families must have been packed like sardines into these

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tenement blocks, because the mill employed 2,000 workers.

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And David Livingstone himself worked as a cotton hand.

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He did, he worked as a piecer in the mills, from the age of ten.

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He would have worked for 14 hours a day, six days a week,

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in really horrendous conditions..

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Lots of mill children suffered horrendous injuries

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and illnesses from the strain and danger of their work.

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So how on earth did this child break out from his background?

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Education, really.

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He went to school at eight o'clock after he finished work

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and would go to school until ten o'clock at night.

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After that, he would come back here and sit out in the hallway

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and read books until midnight, even one in the morning,

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when he would come back in and go to bed.

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He would then have to get up at five o'clock the next morning

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to do it all over again.

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At age 19, Livingstone was promoted and his increased salary

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enabled him to save to study medicine at University.

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He became a missionary doctor and, in 1841,

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was posted to the edge of the Kalahari desert.

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He made it his mission

0:21:190:21:20

to fight against the evils of the slave trade.

0:21:200:21:22

This is a letter he wrote to his son. It's very religious in tone.

0:21:220:21:29

It starts, "I hope you're a good boy and remembering your Creator,

0:21:290:21:32

"and his son, Jesus, with love, every day of your life."

0:21:320:21:35

So religion is really what drove Livingstone in Africa.

0:21:350:21:39

Yes, although he later expanded this to both his crusade against

0:21:390:21:43

the slave trade and his ideas of how Africa could develop economically.

0:21:430:21:48

He believed that fair trade, along with the end of the slave trade,

0:21:480:21:52

could bring peace and prosperity to many regions of Africa.

0:21:520:21:57

In 1852, Livingstone began a four-year expedition to find

0:21:570:22:01

a route from the Upper Zambezi to the coast.

0:22:010:22:04

He travelled through swamps and nearly died from disease.

0:22:040:22:07

In 1965, naturalist David Attenborough retraced

0:22:090:22:14

the great man's footsteps.

0:22:140:22:16

And so he came to this spot

0:22:170:22:19

and looked right over the very edge of the falls.

0:22:190:22:23

The first white man ever to do so.

0:22:230:22:25

Even today, this spot is seldom visited

0:22:250:22:28

because in order to get to it, you have to weave your way through

0:22:280:22:31

the rapids just above the edge of the falls and when you contemplate

0:22:310:22:36

what lies immediately ahead this can be a little alarming.

0:22:360:22:40

Until then, Livingstone had used only local geographical

0:22:400:22:44

names for his discoveries, but here for the first time

0:22:440:22:48

he broke with tradition and called these the Victoria Falls.

0:22:480:22:53

-And this is how he found his way.

-This is his sextant.

0:22:530:22:56

So he used this to calculate latitude and longitude

0:22:560:23:00

and he was very accurate, despite having no formal training.

0:23:000:23:03

Because of the measurements he took we can actually trace his

0:23:030:23:06

position every day to within about half a mile.

0:23:060:23:08

But perhaps what sealed Livingstone's fame

0:23:110:23:13

in Victorian Britain was his escape from the jaws of a lion.

0:23:130:23:17

ROARING

0:23:170:23:20

When his body was examined years later, his identity was

0:23:220:23:25

verified by his damaged arm bone.

0:23:250:23:28

Livingstone died of malaria and dysentery in 1873.

0:23:300:23:34

His heart was buried in Africa,

0:23:360:23:38

but his body was laid to rest in Westminster Abbey.

0:23:380:23:42

David Livingstone was the perfect Victorian hero.

0:23:440:23:47

The Christian self-made man opposed to slavery with modern

0:23:470:23:51

ideas on economy.

0:23:510:23:52

A brave and ambitious explorer who took the British flag to the

0:23:520:23:56

darkest corners of the earth.

0:23:560:23:59

He was a lion amongst men.

0:23:590:24:01

My journey continues south,

0:24:080:24:10

this time for a short 15-minute hop to Larkhall

0:24:100:24:12

before carrying on to Strathaven.

0:24:120:24:15

Situated on the edge of the Avon Valley, Bradshaw's notes its

0:24:260:24:30

fine reputation for weavers and horses.

0:24:300:24:33

It's also a home to Scotland's oldest bakery.

0:24:330:24:37

And I'm meeting its baker, Barry Taylor.

0:24:370:24:41

Barry, in the mid-19th century, in the west of Scotland,

0:24:410:24:45

would the working man and woman have had access to good bread?

0:24:450:24:48

I believe so, yes, on a local basis,

0:24:480:24:50

little bakeries working on the corners.

0:24:500:24:54

As I came in the door I see that the business has been here from 1820.

0:24:540:24:59

-A family business?

-It is, yes.

0:24:590:25:01

I am the sixth generation of Taylors to take the helm here.

0:25:010:25:06

We have been in the same premises,

0:25:060:25:08

albeit it has changed over the years.

0:25:080:25:10

Our family were farmers outside Strathaven.

0:25:100:25:14

And one of the family decided to be a baker. And good on him.

0:25:140:25:19

It's a good decision.

0:25:190:25:20

And keeping up with the family, Barry makes a point of using

0:25:210:25:24

traditional unrefined grains, such as spelt.

0:25:240:25:28

We are going to get stuck into this as a Victorian baker would.

0:25:300:25:35

-That's a lovely sticky mess, isn't it?

-It is.

0:25:350:25:39

But hopefully by the end of all its manipulation it should be

0:25:390:25:43

a lovely smooth dough.

0:25:430:25:45

And this point you can perceive how hard making bread on a big

0:25:450:25:49

scale would be.

0:25:490:25:50

I am finding it pretty hard work now.

0:25:500:25:52

I think we can safely say that you have produced a sticky mess.

0:25:540:25:58

But one which we can make into something beautiful, I assure you.

0:25:590:26:03

Victorian bakers worked over 100 hours a week

0:26:050:26:08

in gruelling temperatures up to 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

0:26:080:26:12

Basically you need to fold and stretch,

0:26:120:26:15

but what you want to avoid is tearing the structure of it.

0:26:150:26:19

Yikes!

0:26:190:26:21

We are going to start, really gently, fold the dough.

0:26:220:26:26

You can repeatedly fold over a piece of dough, gently squeezing it,

0:26:260:26:34

but not tearing it

0:26:340:26:36

and you will end up with something that is a super-smooth-looking dough.

0:26:360:26:39

-Hmm!

-OK!

0:26:390:26:41

And there is always a point

0:26:410:26:43

when a dough says to you that it's had enough.

0:26:430:26:46

And I believe that was about two minutes ago.

0:26:460:26:50

Thankfully, I don't have to trust my bread to a Victorian

0:26:530:26:57

range with its fluctuating temperatures.

0:26:570:26:59

After 40 minutes, the loaves are ready.

0:27:030:27:06

'And that fantastic aroma helps me to understand

0:27:060:27:10

'the good odour in which each generation of Taylors was held.'

0:27:100:27:14

I had no idea that spelt smelt so good!

0:27:140:27:18

At the end of the 19th-century, Glasgow produced half Britain's

0:27:240:27:28

tonnage of shipping and a quarter of the world's locomotives.

0:27:280:27:32

As the second city of the British Empire, it became

0:27:320:27:35

a centre of culture and design.

0:27:350:27:38

With its art school and Charles Rennie Mackintosh,

0:27:380:27:41

pride in the city swelled as surely as a spelt loaf.

0:27:410:27:46

'Next time I meet the kings of molten metal...'

0:27:520:27:55

Oh, my goodness. That is an extraordinary sight.

0:27:570:28:00

-Absolutely vast, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-What a scale this was built on.

0:28:000:28:03

'..uncover the Victorian love affair with Scotland...'

0:28:030:28:07

Everybody came to the Falls of Clyde specifically to see Corra Linn,

0:28:070:28:11

the largest waterfall,

0:28:110:28:12

and the largest waterfall in Britain as well.

0:28:120:28:15

'..and visit the home of a mighty brew.'

0:28:150:28:17

It's still a family secret. I had passed down to me by my father

0:28:170:28:22

and I've now passed it through to my daughter.

0:28:220:28:25

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