Deptford to West Silvertown Great British Railway Journeys

For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name.

At a time when railways were new,

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

I'm using a Bradshaw's Guide

to understand how trains transformed Britain -

its landscape, its industries, society and leisure time.

As I crisscross the country, 150 years later,

it helps me to discover the Britain of today.

I'm undertaking a series of journeys in and around London,

which, at the time of my railway handbook,

was the epicentre of the biggest empire

that the world had ever known.

In the century before my Bradshaw's Guide,

the foundations of Britain's wealth were laid

by scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs.

London's riches depended upon the River Thames -

narrow enough to provide a highway for the capital,

deep enough to dispatch ocean-going ships to carry trade

and project military might around the globe.

'Today, I start in the east of the capital,

'where the city's port launched many an imperial adventure.

'Starting in Deptford, I'll explore Maritime Greenwich

'before uncovering Britain's military might at Woolwich Arsenal.

'Finally, I'll delve beneath the Thames, surfacing in the Docklands,

'which were dramatically expanded around the time of my guide.

'Along the way, I'll visit the celebrated ship

'that supplied Victorian Britain with its national drink...'

Every journey back from China, she was bringing 600 tonnes of tea.

That was enough tea to make over 200 million cups.

'..taste a by-product of 19th-century global trade...'

Mmm!

Deliciously warm,

as though it has just come off a hot sticky toffee pudding.

'..and learn about the nation's top award for gallantry.'

And this one...

-is made from the barrel you're leaning on.

-Really?!

Curiously, the first railway in London was built

a decade after the first steam-hauled trains

had run between Stockton and Darlington.

The pioneering line that brought rail travel to the capital

was the London And Greenwich Railway,

and the first stretch to open, in 1836,

linked Bermondsey with Deptford.

'We will shortly be arriving at Deptford.'

Bradshaw's tells me that "the principal object of attraction

"at Deptford is the Dockyard, which has three building slips

"and is chiefly used as a victualling yard,

"the river being crowded with transports."

This would be the place, then, to meet every class of society,

from the poorest beggar to the richest ship-owner.

Built on a remarkable viaduct comprising 60 million bricks,

the railway transformed the Deptford landscape.

Meanwhile, beneath its arches, the advent of the Age Of Steam

heralded extraordinary social upheaval.

Driven by the Victorian spirit of inquiry,

one man revealed the starkly contrasting fortunes

of Deptford's population.

Historical tour guide Sean Patterson knows his story.

Sean, I'm here in Deptford to talk about Charles Booth.

Who was he?

Charles Booth was a Victorian businessman and philanthropist.

He heard that, in the Whitechapel area,

around a quarter of the families were living below the poverty line.

He thought that was nonsense and he decided to conduct a survey

to see for himself just how bad it was.

Suspecting that poverty in Whitechapel had been exaggerated,

Booth was shocked to discover

that a third of households lived in penury.

He determined to map the rest of the capital.

How did he conduct this survey? What was the method?

Well, the method was to walk the streets of London -

ultimately the whole of what we would call zones one and two

on the travel map now, so a huge area -

and to make notes as he went

about the conditions that people were living in.

In 1899, Booth and his researchers came to Deptford,

where they discovered an extraordinary range

of social classes living almost cheek-by-jowl.

What we've got here is the seven categories.

As you can see there, the yellow

and then going down to semi-criminal at the bottom.

But, interestingly, here you see this line of red.

That's the High Street which we're on at the moment.

Well, that's pretty good - that's just one down from the top.

But, look, we just go off the side

and you go straight down into dark blue

with a line of black along it,

which is almost... Well, it is the opposite end of the scale.

So Booth produces, really, this very eloquent rainbow of poverty.

-Shall we move on?

-Certainly.

'Deptford had long owed its livelihood to the dockyard

'described in my Bradshaw's.

'It dated back to Henry VIII's reign

'and had been the source of great wealth over the years.'

A very attractive terrace of houses. From what period?

These houses are from the early-to-mid 18th century.

From the Georgian heyday of Deptford, if you like.

These were built for sea captains.

But by the time of Booth's survey in the 1890s,

the river had silted up,

making it difficult for Deptford to compete with newer docks

more suited to modern steam vessels.

Dockers struggling to find work were soon also suffering

the consequences of railway expansion.

Where are we now on your map?

Well, we're in this area here which, as you can see, is dark blue,

with even some black lines along it.

Very close to the High Street, where we were earlier,

just a few yards away.

But, gosh, it's an awful lot worse just here.

The policeman that Booth is with

describes this as the worst part of Deptford.

Where this 1930s estate is

used to be a street called Addey Street

and the policeman notes that that morning, at 5am,

he went into a house to arrest a man

and found father, mother and five children living in one room.

And this is what was happening in this area that's been squeezed by...

what we're standing under, which is Britain's largest listed structure,

the 800 or so railway arches from London Bridge to Greenwich.

By Booth's time, the London to Greenwich railway

had been joined by others crisscrossing Deptford.

Seeking land for their lines,

the railway companies had gobbled up cheap housing,

adding to the overcrowding depicted so vividly by Booth.

As well as producing his maps,

which helped to change the way Victorians thought about poverty,

Booth campaigned for an old age pension,

which was eventually introduced in 1909.

This is really a very Victorian story, isn't it?

It is the scientific approach.

The collection of evidence, the presentation of a case,

the drawing of conclusions and the call for action.

Absolutely, and it's Booth's skill

that allows him to take that meticulous, forensic approach.

I'm now continuing my journey on the driverless Docklands Light Railway

from Deptford Bridge into the heart of Maritime Greenwich,

which Bradshaw's tells me "presents a striking appearance from the River."

Soon after the London And Greenwich Railway was built,

day trippers from the city were coming here

to admire the glorious historic architecture.

Greenwich has long been associated with the Royal Navy.

Bradshaw's mentions the Royal Observatory.

Warships would anchor within sight

to set their chronometers to Greenwich Mean Time

and their sailors might retire to the Royal Naval Hospital

designed by Sir Christopher Wren.

But I'm drawn today to the town by a merchant vessel,

a tall ship whose motto characterised the spirit

of the British Empire at its peak -

"Where there's a will, there's a way."

Morning. Um, which way to the Cutty Sark, please?

Come with me, please.

If you will keep straight, and then left,

you will see the boat on your right-hand side.

It's quite big, isn't it? I can't miss it!

-Yeah, it is quite big. Have a nice day, take care.

-Thank you.

Greenwich remains a popular tourist destination -

the sights pull in 2.5 million visitors per year.

And Victorian Britain's most familiar trading ship

is an essential stop on their itineraries.

Curator Jessica Lewis is showing me the ropes.

It's a fantastic view from here, isn't it?

Looking up at the mast and the spars - is that right?

Yes, yes. That's right.

The ship had 11 miles of rigging and 3,000 square metres of canvas.

Launched in 1869, Cutty Sark was built for speed,

to a bold design that combined a sleek, streamlined hull

with one of the biggest sail areas of any ship of her day.

The ship's crew spent half its time maintaining her, even in high seas,

but Jessica is letting me off with some light duties!

So what exactly am I doing with this?

So it's just a little bit of modern marine oil.

And you just need to work it into the block.

So a little bit... That's it. And it goes quite far.

And this is to moisten the wood,

to keep it flexible so it can carry on doing its job.

Because, what, the sun is blasting away at this...?

Yes, particularly over here on the port side.

What kind of puzzles me is why, in 1869,

you would build a sailing ship,

which is way into the Age Of Steam, isn't it?

Well, Cutty Sark's owner, John Willis, was thinking,

"Why would I pay for coal when I can get wind power for free?

"Why would I want to give up some of that valuable cargo space

"with engines and the storage of fuel

"when I could just do it all by the power of the wind?"

Known as clippers, super-fast sailing ships like Cutty Sark

carried one of Victorian Britain's most prized commodities.

Cutty Sark's cargo of tea was worth over £272,000 then

and that's about £18.5 million in today's money.

So, every journey back from China, she was bringing 600 tonnes of tea.

That was enough tea to make over 200 million cups.

1869, the year of Cutty Sark's launch,

was also the year that the Suez Canal was opened.

It provided steamships with a short cut to Asia -

but it was impossible to sail through the canal,

so clippers like Cutty Sark had to slog around Africa.

Steamships are coming back from China in 60 days

and Cutty Sark is only coming back in about 100 days, 109 days.

Cutty Sark's maiden voyage, in 1870,

there were 59 sailing ships loading tea in China that year.

Her last voyage, in 1877, there were just nine.

With Cutty Sark's tea trade with China scuppered,

in the 1880s, her owner diverted her to the Australian wool trade.

Her daring captain made the gruelling long-distance voyage

work in her favour, charting a course around Cape Horn,

where Cutty Sark harnessed the strongest -

and most dangerous - winds in the world.

Her fastest passage was 73 days from Sydney to London

but she was regularly making the fastest passage of the season

by about three or four weeks.

And she became known as the fastest ship of her day.

Well, I declare this vessel shipshape. Let's go below.

In 1922, her days as a trading vessel were over

and Cutty Sark was eventually put to rest here in Greenwich in 1954.

But that wasn't the end of her troubles.

In November 2007, an electrical fire broke out

at the start of a six-year project to conserve her.

Luckily, a lot of original structure -

half of the hull planks, all of the masts, the deck houses -

had already been removed to storage at the time of the fire.

And so they were saved?

Absolutely, and we were very lucky

and the quality of the original construction

withstood the heat of the blaze.

'Today, this glorious blade of a clipper that once cut through

'the world's oceans with its zinc-and-copper-bottomed hull

'is on view for us all to enjoy.'

And so, in the 21st century, we're still able to appreciate

-this extraordinary piece of Victorian engineering.

-Absolutely.

This project was about ensuring Cutty Sark had a future,

a sustainable future, so that future generations can enjoy the ship.

From a restored relic of the Victorian docks,

I'm moving on to a more modern vessel - the Thames Clipper,

part of Transport For London's network along the River Thames.

Following a special London edition of Bradshaw's, I'm heading east,

towards an institution that provided firepower

for the mighty British Empire.

According to Bradshaw's London guide,

"the government establishments of Woolwich

"are acknowledged to be the finest in the world.

"At the Royal Arsenal, the manufacture of implements of warfare

"is carried on upon the most extensive scale,

"casting the largest pieces of ordnance,

"for which steam power has lately been applied.

"The Arsenal contains no less than 24,000 pieces of ordnance

"and three million cannon balls piled up in huge pyramids."

During the largely peaceful 19th century,

the Victorian attitude to war was summed up in an 1878 song -

We don't want to fight

But, by jingo, if we do

We've got the ships, the men

And the money, too!

In Bradshaw's day, this important military installation

was situated just a few steps from the jetty.

Today it's the home of the Royal Artillery Museum

and Paul Evans is my guide.

Paul, why did the government establish its arsenal at Woolwich?

It's established here because of an accident.

An accident took place in 1716 in a gun foundry over in London.

Gun founding is a really impressive thing, molten metal,

pouring over, it looks fantastic, but it's got to be done right.

They went down one day,

took a party of MPs with them to show it off and their sand was damp.

And there was an explosion. It killed 17 of them.

And the powers that be said,

"You can't do this in the centre of London.

"This is the centre of the world.

"You need to go somewhere where you've got space to do this.

"We want you close enough to London to come and talk to us

"but far enough away to be safe."

Woolwich.

By the time of my guidebook,

this was the primary site for ordnance manufacture in the country.

Railways were at its heart.

We are walking down the trackway

where the Royal Arsenal had its own railway.

It was attached to the main line and it's making thousands and thousands

of tonnes of material, so it needs that railway to be able to move it.

To our left here we've got Crimean War vintage storerooms

and work sheds that were state of the art in the Crimean War,

built specifically so you can work in them 24 hours a day.

To the right we've got the brass foundry building.

So all of these buildings are making parts of the whole

and you put them on the railways, move it to the dockyard,

drop them onto the ships, down the Thames and off to war.

The Crimean conflict of 1854 changed

public perceptions of the military in Britain.

Thanks in part to the new system of telegraph wires that had

grown up alongside the railways, this was the first ever media war.

The disastrous Charge of the Light Brigade shocked the nation.

Equipment and clothing shortages and outbreaks of cholera

and typhoid fever contributed to the deaths of 20,000 men.

The officer class was vilified in the press,

while the ordinary soldier became a national hero,

but at this time

only high-ranking officers could be awarded medals for gallantry.

Queen Victoria herself agreed that this had to change.

One of the consequences of the Crimean War was people

started asking the question, what is there

that we give our soldiers as the ultimate prize for gallantry?

And you get the Victoria Cross.

The Victoria Cross. And what actually is that made of, that medal?

The Victoria Cross is made of gunmetal.

And this one...is made from the barrel you're leaning on.

-Really?!

-Absolutely.

And then it was awarded to men from the Crimean War, was it?

Yes. Originally you had to have survived the action

for which you were put in for it.

If you died, a little line went in under your mention in dispatches

saying "would have been awarded the Victoria Cross had he lived".

And then Queen Victoria lined up her heroes, did she,

and actually presented these VCs?

Absolutely, and she did more than that, she designed

the majority of the medal as well.

It's very much her personal medal.

I'm continuing my journey from Woolwich station, which was

first linked to the metropolis by rail as far back as 1849.

Today this south-eastern corner of London is also

connected to the capital's heart via the Docklands Light Railway.

And soon there'll be a third, much faster way to get into town.

Travelling with my Bradshaw's I've often been nostalgic

for the Victorian railway age, wondering why

we can't do things on the same scale and with that imagination.

Well, now I've been partly answered, because they're building Crossrail,

an immense railway undertaking beginning at Heathrow

and in Berkshire in the west, passing under the West End, the City

and Canary Wharf and popping out into Essex and Kent in the east.

It is the largest construction project in Europe.

The recently completed tunnel from Woolwich

under the river to North Woolwich isn't yet open to the public.

But there's one locomotive already running here.

I'm joining construction manager Barrymore Nicholls on board.

Ah! First class!

Barrymore, I'm guessing this is not the final design

for the new Crossrail trains.

No. This is the railway we use to help construct the tunnel.

You make pretty good use of tracks in the construction process.

Very much so.

It's a logistics exercise to keep the tunnel boring machine going.

'For a year, this locomotive has been hauling tonnes

'of reinforced concrete, used to build the tunnel walls.

'But first the gigantic boring machine, quaintly dubbed Mary,

'has to do her bit.'

This is us approaching the back of Mary,

the tunnelling machine that's come all the way from Plumstead

through the Woolwich box and under the Thames.

It's a little strange to me because we've had a year of

frenetic activity and now it's being carved up to be pulled out.

Oh, you sound quite emotional about that.

It is weird.

'Mary's cutter head is seven metres in diameter,

'while the whole machine is an impressive 110 metres long.'

And here we are at the build area,

it's just behind the cutter head, so the backup starts behind.

Everything in front is about digging

and everything behind is about logistics to keep the digging going.

The way this works is we build a ring, the rings are 1.6 metres long.

There's eight pieces go together to make a ring.

They fit together, they've got bolts and dowels that fit between them.

And what happens is we pick them up from the erector,

there's a vacuum pad on the bottom that can spin through 360 degrees,

place them anywhere in the circle.

We finish the ring, all eight pieces,

and then it's self-supporting, it's like the arch of a bridge.

And how often have you done that here?

We've done that 3,409 times now.

I'm now surfacing on the north side of the Thames

to see how Mary has fared.

So here we see the teeth of the cutter head

that's brought you to the other side of the Thames.

Yeah, a bit rusty and battered. Mary did very well.

When Isambard Kingdom Brunel was working on his father's tunnel

under the Thames he was swept away by a torrent of water

and nearly lost his life, but you have come safely under the river.

Until Crossrail is complete,

I have to continue my journey on the Docklands Light Railway.

I'm travelling west along the north bank of the Thames,

where vast new docks had been constructed in the mid-19th century.

London was at the heart of a global empire and lived by trade.

The pride that Victorians felt

is evident in an 1870s version of Bradshaw's.

"Docks in the East End of London cannot be omitted

"in a summary of the characteristics of the metropolis.

"They are the storehouses of widest commerce in the world,

"and their extent and skilful and economical arrangement

"will serve as a suggestive index

"of the merchandise brought from all parts of the world."

And from the sticky climes of the Caribbean

came a delicious sticky substance.

One of the joys of my childhood.

Imperial expansion changed British eating habits,

and the Victorians developed

a seemingly insatiable appetite for hot, sweet tea,

which saw their consumption of both tea and sugar quadruple

during the course of Victoria's reign.

As the sugar industry boomed in the late 19th century

two rival sugar tycoons, Henry Tate and Abram Lyle,

set up processing plants here in the Docklands.

It's said that the two competitors never actually met

but in 1921, more than two decades after both their deaths,

their companies merged.

I'm visiting a legacy of the Victorian sugar industry

with Gerald Mason.

Ah!

An extraordinary sight with all the tins tumbling down here.

What is the origin of this plant on the River Thames?

Well, Abram Lyle was a partner in a sugar refinery in Scotland

but he wanted his own refinery.

So in 1880 he sent his two sons to London with a bank loan of £150,000

to find land and build the refinery.

The factory remains on the site that they chose,

ideally situated for the docks.

And soon this refinery was producing more than just

sugar for the tea table.

The Lyles were fantastic sugar refiners

and what they soon realised was there was sugar

being lost in the process which was costing them money.

'These canny Victorian businessmen turned what had been a waste product

'into a cheap sugar substitute dubbed golden syrup.'

So very, very quickly the product grew from

a local following around London

to being a product that's sold all across the UK.

A golden legacy!

The secret recipe of the syrup remains the same,

as does its iconic trademark.

The famous lion that I remember from my childhood.

It's been one of the most enduring

logos and trademarks of all time, hasn't it?

Yeah, it's actually the oldest

unchanged brand packaging in the world.

To ensure that this product tastes

just the same as it did in Bradshaw's day,

the secret recipe is carefully monitored.

-This is Chris, one of our long-serving employees.

-Hello, Chris!

-Hello.

-Long-serving? How long?

-31 years.

31 years. And are you in the business of sampling the product?

Yeah, I'm just doing a brick sample,

and that measures the amount of sugar syrup

in the solution as a percentage.

Do you ever just stick your finger in there and...

Erm...not often, no. Not any more. A while ago maybe.

The employees here might not be tempted, but before I leave

I can't resist a taste hot off the production line.

There you go, Michael.

Whoa! The tin is warm.

Mmm!

Deliciously warm, as though it had just come off

a hot sticky toffee pudding.

This factory is one of the docklands' few

remaining links with its trading and industrial past.

The area suffered badly during the Blitz,

and the post-war years ushered in a long period of decline.

More recently, it's been a target for regeneration,

and one of the latest additions to the landscape

is the striking Emirates Air Line,

a bird's-eye link between the Royal Victoria Docks and North Greenwich,

opened in 2012 for the London Olympics.

In my time, I have crossed the River Thames by boat,

by bridge, by tunnel, by foot,

by car, by bus, by train, by Underground,

by Docklands Light Railway, but today for me I'm attempting a first.

I'm crossing the river by air line, a bold piece of engineering

that takes my cabin soaring to 295 feet above Old Father Thames.

As it grew into the world's first truly global city,

Victorian London underwent an extraordinary metamorphosis.

What I love about my home town is that it never stops changing -

from the waxing and waning fortunes of areas like Deptford

to the new transport projects that will keep Londoners moving.

A century ago this was the West India Dock,

covering more than 50 acres with berths for 600 ships.

Today it is home to more than 14 million square feet

of commercial floor space.

We may lament the passing into history

of so much of our shipping and manufacturing

but if we feel sentimental about the Victorian age we should recall

that it was also an epoch of poverty, squalor and disease.

George Bradshaw could never have dreamt of Britain's

21st-century wealth.

Next time, I'll experience the Olympic legacy hands on.

My knowledge will be tested by a cabbie.

How can you get from Bishopsgate to the Old Bailey without

crossing a road?

By hiring a cab with a knowledgeable driver!

And I'll see how London's Victorian infrastructure

is getting a remarkable 21st-century upgrade.

I had no idea that this great big box was here.