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For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:08 | |
At a time when railways were new, | 0:00:09 | 0:00:11 | |
Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:16 | |
I'm using a Bradshaw's Guide to understand how trains | 0:00:16 | 0:00:20 | |
transformed Britain, its landscape, its industries, society | 0:00:20 | 0:00:25 | |
and leisure time. | 0:00:25 | 0:00:27 | |
As I crisscross the country 150 years later, | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
it helps me to discover the Britain of today. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:34 | |
I'm nearly halfway through my exploration | 0:00:51 | 0:00:54 | |
of the web of tracks that links up London. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:56 | |
Today I'm approaching east London on Britain's first high-speed line. | 0:00:57 | 0:01:02 | |
Upper and middle class Victorians viewed the East End of London | 0:01:04 | 0:01:08 | |
with horror. | 0:01:08 | 0:01:09 | |
Its slums were the scene of unspeakable depravity, | 0:01:09 | 0:01:13 | |
its dark streets lent themselves to robbery and murder. | 0:01:13 | 0:01:17 | |
And respectable folk feared revolution, | 0:01:17 | 0:01:20 | |
the mob and cholera sweeping down the Thames. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
I hope to see how the East End was transformed by railways | 0:01:23 | 0:01:27 | |
in the 19th century and again in the 21st. | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
Supplementing my usual guidebook with Bradshaw's special London edition, | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
I'm following a route from east London's | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
railway hub at Stratford | 0:01:44 | 0:01:45 | |
towards the centre of the metropolis, | 0:01:45 | 0:01:47 | |
pausing at Temple en route to Victoria station. | 0:01:47 | 0:01:50 | |
I'll learn how the Olympic Park sustains a Victorian ideal | 0:01:51 | 0:01:56 | |
of providing leisure space for Londoners... | 0:01:56 | 0:01:58 | |
-Whoa! -Oh! | 0:01:58 | 0:02:01 | |
..hear how a lawyer who learnt his trade in Victorian London | 0:02:01 | 0:02:04 | |
went on to change the world. | 0:02:04 | 0:02:06 | |
To this day, every meal served | 0:02:06 | 0:02:09 | |
at the Inner Temple has a vegetarian option in memory of Gandhi. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:13 | |
And meet a modern descendant of the Hackney cab drivers | 0:02:13 | 0:02:16 | |
that Bradshaw would have known. | 0:02:16 | 0:02:18 | |
How can you get from Bishopsgate to the Old Bailey without crossing a road? | 0:02:18 | 0:02:24 | |
Ha-ha! By hiring a cab with a knowledgeable driver! | 0:02:24 | 0:02:28 | |
My Bradshaw's tells me that my first stop is "an important junction" | 0:02:34 | 0:02:38 | |
and at the time of my guidebook, it was also home to | 0:02:38 | 0:02:42 | |
the Great Eastern Railway's locomotive works. | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
A few years ago, I came here to Stratford to see how | 0:02:45 | 0:02:48 | |
one of Victorian London's largest railway sites was being | 0:02:48 | 0:02:51 | |
transformed to host the Olympic Games. | 0:02:51 | 0:02:54 | |
Today, I want to see whether tracks laid at the dawn | 0:02:54 | 0:02:58 | |
of the railway age coped with the crowds of spectators | 0:02:58 | 0:03:02 | |
and whether the flame of regeneration still burns brightly in the east. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:07 | |
The former Olympic Park has recently reopened to Londoners, | 0:03:11 | 0:03:14 | |
creating a vast new public space the size of Hyde Park, | 0:03:14 | 0:03:18 | |
studded with contemporary sculptures, | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
including Anish Kapoor's striking ArcelorMittal Orbit. | 0:03:21 | 0:03:24 | |
Parks, as we now know them, were invented in the 19th century, | 0:03:25 | 0:03:29 | |
green oases, ringed by elegant homes, | 0:03:29 | 0:03:32 | |
in the midst of industrial Britain's smoky cities. | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
Dr Paul Brickell has been working to ensure that the Olympic Games | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
bequeathed London a worthy park. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:42 | |
Paul, I was here before the Olympic Games | 0:03:43 | 0:03:46 | |
and the expectation was that many, many people, | 0:03:46 | 0:03:48 | |
most people would come by train. Did it work out that way? | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
Well, it did and there were many. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
You imagine the park down below us, quarter of a million, | 0:03:53 | 0:03:56 | |
third of a million people every day. | 0:03:56 | 0:03:58 | |
Plus the tens of thousands of people going to the shopping centre, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
plus the tens of thousands of people going about their normal business. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
And it worked. The railway was astonishing. | 0:04:05 | 0:04:08 | |
It's such a connection with the Victorian period, isn't it? | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
This was the most extraordinary railway works. | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
Of course, you can still see the pattern of the railways all around. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:17 | |
Yeah, I think they were the biggest railway engineering yards in Europe. | 0:04:17 | 0:04:21 | |
Stratford works opened in 1847 and were the creation of the so-called | 0:04:21 | 0:04:25 | |
"Railway King" George Hudson, chairman of the Eastern Counties Railway. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:30 | |
At the peak of its 115-year history, the works employed some 6,500 people | 0:04:31 | 0:04:37 | |
and to this day, the whole area is | 0:04:37 | 0:04:39 | |
criss-crossed with railway lines dating back to Victorian times. | 0:04:39 | 0:04:44 | |
One of the big challenges of building the Games was to | 0:04:48 | 0:04:50 | |
weave this new piece of city around all this hard infrastructure, | 0:04:50 | 0:04:54 | |
this hard railway and I think to get the beautiful view | 0:04:54 | 0:04:57 | |
that you now see in the midst of all that is a tribute | 0:04:57 | 0:04:59 | |
to the people who built the Games. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:01 | |
Another thing that makes me think of Victorian times | 0:05:01 | 0:05:04 | |
is that you have created a park here. | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
Now, of course, Victorians had to create parks because their city was growing so fast. | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
But it's a while since London had a new park. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
Tell me about yours. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:15 | |
Like those Victorian parks, it's for the local population. | 0:05:15 | 0:05:17 | |
Half the people who come here live around the park. | 0:05:17 | 0:05:20 | |
But also it's a great park for London, for the world. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:22 | |
We're here in the south with the stadium, the aquatic centre. | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
The South Park Plaza is a waterside promenade, | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
tree-lined promenade with lots of break-out spaces | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
and lots going on in it. | 0:05:31 | 0:05:32 | |
As you get further north, you can see the river winds, you get this | 0:05:32 | 0:05:35 | |
sense of river valley, it's a much quieter park up there | 0:05:35 | 0:05:38 | |
and it leads then of course to the Hackney Marshes and the Walthamstow Marshes. | 0:05:38 | 0:05:42 | |
Now, you're a Stratford boy, I think. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:44 | |
The East End was traditionally seen as the place of Jack the Ripper, | 0:05:44 | 0:05:47 | |
Fagin from Oliver Twist | 0:05:47 | 0:05:49 | |
and then the terrible bombings during World War II. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:52 | |
Is all of this changing | 0:05:52 | 0:05:53 | |
the way we feel about the East End of London? | 0:05:53 | 0:05:56 | |
The positive side of that is that it was always | 0:05:56 | 0:05:58 | |
full of entrepreneurial vim and vigour, which has mostly | 0:05:58 | 0:06:02 | |
been on the right side of the law and occasionally perhaps not! | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
The kind of people who are coming here are people who want to do new things. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:08 | |
Some of them are old institutions. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:10 | |
We're talking to the Victoria and Albert Museum, | 0:06:10 | 0:06:12 | |
Sadler's Wells, University College London about coming to sites here. | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
So, I think that that same spirit is here in east London. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
But hopefully more regulated, more legal. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
-Stratford on track. -Yes. | 0:06:23 | 0:06:25 | |
Just as the creators of Victorian parks sought, | 0:06:29 | 0:06:32 | |
the promoters of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park aim to provide | 0:06:32 | 0:06:36 | |
space for Londoners to mingle, relax and exercise. | 0:06:36 | 0:06:40 | |
But no park in Bradshaw's day could offer Olympic-standard | 0:06:40 | 0:06:44 | |
amenities like the Copper Box Arena, | 0:06:44 | 0:06:47 | |
designed for sports as diverse as basketball, fencing and netball. | 0:06:47 | 0:06:52 | |
Get it back, Blue! | 0:06:52 | 0:06:53 | |
-Hello! -Hi. -Sorry to interrupt your game. | 0:06:57 | 0:07:00 | |
How does it feel playing in an Olympic facility? | 0:07:00 | 0:07:03 | |
It's really, really good. | 0:07:03 | 0:07:04 | |
We've been playing here for one season now. | 0:07:04 | 0:07:07 | |
We've been practising for some really interesting events | 0:07:07 | 0:07:09 | |
while playing in the Copper Box. It's a really good experience. | 0:07:09 | 0:07:12 | |
And make my day. Who comes here to play by train? | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
Hands up. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:16 | |
Yeah? | 0:07:16 | 0:07:17 | |
-Do you use the train? -Yes, I do. | 0:07:17 | 0:07:19 | |
It's the perfect way to travel. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:20 | |
That's the best thing about this location is how easy it is to access. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:24 | |
We've attracted a lot of new players because of it. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:28 | |
-Well, I guess I'm in the blue team. -I think so. Let's go. | 0:07:28 | 0:07:32 | |
-Here we go. Straight away. -Someone throw to Michael. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:36 | |
To me, Michael. | 0:07:36 | 0:07:39 | |
Back to Michael. Let's go. | 0:07:39 | 0:07:41 | |
Don't make it easy for him, girls! | 0:07:41 | 0:07:43 | |
-Whoa! -Oh! | 0:07:47 | 0:07:48 | |
Having caught my breath, I'm continuing my journey | 0:07:52 | 0:07:55 | |
on the capital's newest rail service, London Overground. | 0:07:55 | 0:07:58 | |
I'm travelling from Stratford to Hackney Central, | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
passing straight through the Olympic Park. | 0:08:02 | 0:08:05 | |
Long before Victorian train tracks wove their way across the city, | 0:08:07 | 0:08:11 | |
Londoners travelled by carriage, | 0:08:11 | 0:08:13 | |
and its descendant still works the streets today, | 0:08:13 | 0:08:17 | |
recognised the world over as a symbol of the British capital. | 0:08:17 | 0:08:21 | |
Hackney Central seems like a good place to take a hackney carriage, | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
which is the official name of a London taxi. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:29 | |
According to Bradshaw's London guide, | 0:08:29 | 0:08:31 | |
"Every driver of a hackney carriage shall, when hired, | 0:08:31 | 0:08:35 | |
"deliver to the hirer a card whereon | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
"is printed the number of the stamp office plate fixed to the carriage. | 0:08:38 | 0:08:42 | |
"The utility of this ticket will be readily seen | 0:08:42 | 0:08:45 | |
"in the case of loss of luggage." | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
I must say, I would find it very useful if that rule still applied. | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
So handy when you leave your spectacles in the back of a cab. | 0:08:51 | 0:08:55 | |
Taxi! | 0:08:55 | 0:08:56 | |
Spitalfields, please. | 0:08:57 | 0:08:59 | |
My driver, Howard Taylor, has been a cabbie for 27 years. | 0:09:03 | 0:09:08 | |
What is the origin of calling a London taxi a hackney carriage? | 0:09:08 | 0:09:11 | |
There's nothing written in stone | 0:09:11 | 0:09:14 | |
but most people think it derives from the French term haquenee, | 0:09:14 | 0:09:17 | |
which was a horse-drawn carriage, I believe. | 0:09:17 | 0:09:21 | |
Ah, so not necessarily anything to do with good old Hackney at all. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
How long have hackney carriages been around then? | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
Over 300 years now. We were licensed at the end of the 17th century. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:31 | |
-Good heavens. -I wasn't there at the beginning! | 0:09:31 | 0:09:34 | |
HE LAUGHS | 0:09:34 | 0:09:35 | |
London taxis are the oldest regulated transport system in the world, | 0:09:35 | 0:09:40 | |
and their drivers are famed | 0:09:40 | 0:09:42 | |
for knowing the city like the back of their hand. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:44 | |
That's because of the daunting exam they have to pass called | 0:09:44 | 0:09:48 | |
"the Knowledge". | 0:09:48 | 0:09:49 | |
-How far back does the Knowledge go? -Well before my time. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:53 | |
And my father's before him. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:55 | |
My father was a taxi driver, that's why I am, in truth. | 0:09:55 | 0:09:59 | |
What did you have to learn? | 0:09:59 | 0:10:01 | |
I had to learn everything within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. | 0:10:01 | 0:10:05 | |
So that's about 25,000 streets, | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
and 70, 80, 90,000 places of interest. | 0:10:09 | 0:10:14 | |
I reckon I know my city pretty well, but I'm no match for Howard. | 0:10:16 | 0:10:20 | |
How can you get from Bishopsgate to the Old Bailey without | 0:10:21 | 0:10:26 | |
crossing a road? | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
Ha-ha! By hiring a cab with a knowledgeable driver! | 0:10:31 | 0:10:35 | |
With a knowledgeable driver who'll tell you that the | 0:10:35 | 0:10:37 | |
City of London has streets, alleys, hills and places, but no roads. | 0:10:37 | 0:10:43 | |
-Ah! -Little bit unfair, I think. -That's a clever one. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:48 | |
In Bradshaw's day, the railways rivalled the hackney cab trade | 0:10:48 | 0:10:52 | |
and new technology is still affecting business today. | 0:10:52 | 0:10:56 | |
-Nowadays we have these sat-nav Johnnies. -Satnav Johnnies! | 0:10:56 | 0:11:00 | |
Private hire vehicles, if that's what you want to call them, pull up next to me totally confused. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:05 | |
And the passenger in the back is asking me | 0:11:05 | 0:11:07 | |
for directions cos the driver's not sure where they're going | 0:11:07 | 0:11:10 | |
and the sat-nav has really lost them. | 0:11:10 | 0:11:12 | |
So you can't beat the Knowledge. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
My hackney cab has brought me to a part of town which, | 0:11:15 | 0:11:18 | |
at the time of my guidebook, | 0:11:18 | 0:11:20 | |
was the capital's multicultural melting pot. | 0:11:20 | 0:11:22 | |
Thank you. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:23 | |
I'm a few yards from the City of London, | 0:11:29 | 0:11:32 | |
but those who broke off from investing in the Victorian railway bubble, | 0:11:32 | 0:11:36 | |
and ventured from their counting houses as far as Spitalfields, | 0:11:36 | 0:11:41 | |
entered a different world. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:42 | |
Here they encountered foreign immigrants. | 0:11:42 | 0:11:45 | |
Your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. | 0:11:45 | 0:11:51 | |
For hundreds of years, this area just outside the old city walls | 0:11:52 | 0:11:57 | |
has been home to wave upon wave of immigrants. | 0:11:57 | 0:12:00 | |
Dr Daniel DeHanas has researched migration in Spitalfields | 0:12:04 | 0:12:07 | |
over the years. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:09 | |
Dan, you've really taken me back in time, | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
but a long way back, way before my Bradshaw's guide? | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
Absolutely, we've moved into a Huguenot weaver's house. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
This is probably from around 1720. | 0:12:22 | 0:12:24 | |
And you can see that Huguenots were masterful silk weavers, | 0:12:24 | 0:12:28 | |
that was their main trade. | 0:12:28 | 0:12:30 | |
But they were forced to leave Catholic France because | 0:12:30 | 0:12:34 | |
they were Calvinists, Protestants who were being persecuted. | 0:12:34 | 0:12:39 | |
In the late 17th century, following violent persecution in France, | 0:12:39 | 0:12:44 | |
some 50,000 Huguenots fled to Protestant England. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:48 | |
Within the City of London, the textile trade was tightly controlled | 0:12:48 | 0:12:52 | |
by the city's guilds, which were largely closed to foreigners. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:56 | |
So a community of Huguenot weavers set up shop here, just outside | 0:12:56 | 0:13:01 | |
the city walls, where they found a ready market for their beautiful silks. | 0:13:01 | 0:13:05 | |
Overall, the Huguenots were quite a prosperous group who did | 0:13:07 | 0:13:10 | |
very well from their silk trade which was really | 0:13:10 | 0:13:13 | |
valued by the upper classes at the time. | 0:13:13 | 0:13:16 | |
-Did they face prejudice here? -They certainly did. | 0:13:17 | 0:13:20 | |
There's record actually from Parliament about a swarm | 0:13:20 | 0:13:24 | |
of frogs which had invaded England. | 0:13:24 | 0:13:26 | |
And that actually is something which was mirrored by other | 0:13:26 | 0:13:30 | |
waves of immigrants that have come to this area as well. | 0:13:30 | 0:13:33 | |
In the late 18th century, | 0:13:33 | 0:13:35 | |
the opening up of global trade led to the decline of the London silk weaving industry, | 0:13:35 | 0:13:40 | |
and the Huguenots gave way to Irish immigrants, | 0:13:40 | 0:13:43 | |
escaping the great famine of the 1840s and '50s. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:46 | |
They were drawn to Spitalfields by its abundant employment | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
opportunities in the nearby docks | 0:13:51 | 0:13:53 | |
and in the vast Truman Brewery on Brick Lane. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
It's called Brick Lane because this was where | 0:13:58 | 0:14:00 | |
they would have carted bricks back and forth. | 0:14:00 | 0:14:03 | |
The bricks had to be made outside of the city walls | 0:14:03 | 0:14:05 | |
and this was actually a very, very busy and noxious | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
and loud and noisy sort of lane. | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
Then, around the time my guidebook was written, | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
Spitalfields began to change again as Russian | 0:14:14 | 0:14:18 | |
and East European Jews fleeing persecution settled here, | 0:14:18 | 0:14:23 | |
earning the area the nickname Little Jerusalem. | 0:14:23 | 0:14:26 | |
And now, as I look around me, we've got balti houses, | 0:14:26 | 0:14:29 | |
we've got curry houses, | 0:14:29 | 0:14:30 | |
so evidently there was another wave of immigration after that. | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
Well, there was. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:34 | |
The Bangladeshis are the wave since the '60s. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
They've really reshaped Brick Lane as a real curry mile. | 0:14:38 | 0:14:42 | |
But beneath the trappings of so-called "Banglatown", | 0:14:42 | 0:14:45 | |
it's possible to glimpse this area's many-layered past. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:48 | |
Well, it seems that the minaret has been purpose built, | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
but the mosque behind is not, I think, tailor-made. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
That's correct. The building is from 1743 | 0:14:57 | 0:15:02 | |
and what's remarkable is that it's been a place of worship | 0:15:02 | 0:15:05 | |
for all of these successive waves of immigrants over time. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:09 | |
So it was built as a Huguenot chapel. | 0:15:09 | 0:15:12 | |
It spent part of its life as a Wesleyan chapel | 0:15:12 | 0:15:14 | |
and a Methodist chapel. | 0:15:14 | 0:15:16 | |
In the late 1800s, this became the great synagogue | 0:15:16 | 0:15:19 | |
and at that time, there were more than 100,000 Jews | 0:15:19 | 0:15:23 | |
living in the East End of London. | 0:15:23 | 0:15:25 | |
And today, this is the great mosque. | 0:15:25 | 0:15:28 | |
It's like the archaeology of all the religions that have been | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
here in Brick Lane. Anyway, thank you so much. | 0:15:32 | 0:15:35 | |
I'm off to see if I can have a really spicy evening! | 0:15:35 | 0:15:37 | |
I hope you do. | 0:15:37 | 0:15:38 | |
My journey is now taking me away from the East End as I travel | 0:15:47 | 0:15:51 | |
towards central London on the District Line. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:54 | |
I'm alighting at Blackfriars, where Bradshaw's Handbook of 1875 | 0:15:54 | 0:15:59 | |
promises a "new and truly magnificent bridge". | 0:15:59 | 0:16:03 | |
Indeed it is, but Bradshaw was referring to the road bridge, | 0:16:03 | 0:16:06 | |
which was new then. | 0:16:06 | 0:16:08 | |
Today we can admire a bridge which arguably might have excited him even more. | 0:16:08 | 0:16:13 | |
Since 1831, when London Bridge was demolished, | 0:16:17 | 0:16:20 | |
there hadn't been a bridge | 0:16:20 | 0:16:21 | |
spanning the River Thames with buildings on it. | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
But that's all changed now with the new Blackfriars station. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
It spans the river and it has entrances on the north bank | 0:16:28 | 0:16:32 | |
and the south bank. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:34 | |
My Bradshaw's guide loves statistics about railway stations, | 0:16:34 | 0:16:38 | |
so let me tell you that it's part of a £6.5 billion refurbishment | 0:16:38 | 0:16:42 | |
of the Thameslink system. | 0:16:42 | 0:16:44 | |
And that this station has 4,400 solar panels. | 0:16:44 | 0:16:50 | |
I'm making my way just upriver, to the so-called Inner Temple, | 0:16:53 | 0:16:58 | |
where Victorian lawyers learnt their craft. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:00 | |
The Temple, according to Bradshaw's, | 0:17:04 | 0:17:07 | |
"formerly the residence of the Knights Templar, | 0:17:07 | 0:17:10 | |
"that was a medieval Christian military order | 0:17:10 | 0:17:13 | |
"and now leased by the common law students. | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
"There is, in the tranquil retirement of these buildings, and the garden | 0:17:16 | 0:17:20 | |
"facing the river, an appearance of delicious quietness." | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
And yet it was the brief of one of those students to shake the world. | 0:17:24 | 0:17:29 | |
Much of the Inner Temple was rebuilt in Bradshaw's day, | 0:17:34 | 0:17:38 | |
but its legal pedigree dates back to medieval times. | 0:17:38 | 0:17:41 | |
Patrick Maddams is a member of the Inner Temple | 0:17:43 | 0:17:46 | |
and is showing me around. | 0:17:46 | 0:17:48 | |
Patrick, the Inner and Middle Temple take their names | 0:17:49 | 0:17:52 | |
from the Knights Templar, but then lawyers came here and occupied | 0:17:52 | 0:17:57 | |
Inns of Court. What are Inns of Court? | 0:17:57 | 0:17:59 | |
Inns of Court were places where you would work, where you would sleep, | 0:17:59 | 0:18:04 | |
where you would eat and drink and see friends. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:08 | |
You have a good example of an Inn of Court here in King's Bench Walk. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:11 | |
It was a single building where at the basement | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
you would have the kitchen and where the servants lived. | 0:18:14 | 0:18:18 | |
On the ground floor you would have the chambers where | 0:18:18 | 0:18:21 | |
the barristers would see their clients. | 0:18:21 | 0:18:23 | |
Above that you would have the rooms where the barristers lived | 0:18:23 | 0:18:27 | |
and right at the top in the eaves was where the student barristers, | 0:18:27 | 0:18:31 | |
called pupils, would live. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:33 | |
By the time of my guidebook, | 0:18:33 | 0:18:35 | |
this quiet corner of London was becoming a global centre for law, | 0:18:35 | 0:18:39 | |
as Britain exported its legal expertise across the Empire. | 0:18:39 | 0:18:43 | |
Is the opposite happening, | 0:18:43 | 0:18:45 | |
are students coming from the Empire to here? | 0:18:45 | 0:18:47 | |
It is. It's a two-way trade. | 0:18:47 | 0:18:49 | |
By the time of the late Victorian era there are many, many, | 0:18:49 | 0:18:52 | |
for example, young Indian barristers practising English law in India. | 0:18:52 | 0:18:56 | |
Any notable examples? | 0:18:56 | 0:18:57 | |
Well, of course, the most famous of all is Gandhi. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:01 | |
Mohandas Gandhi would become the leader of the Indian nationalist movement against British rule. | 0:19:03 | 0:19:09 | |
But his extraordinary career began in Victorian London | 0:19:12 | 0:19:16 | |
as a young law student. | 0:19:16 | 0:19:18 | |
So here we have, clearly, a bust of the great man. | 0:19:20 | 0:19:23 | |
-Here he is. -And these documents? | 0:19:23 | 0:19:26 | |
These are very important because Gandhi arrived at the Inner Temple in 1888 | 0:19:26 | 0:19:30 | |
and, as every student has to do to this day, he has to fill | 0:19:30 | 0:19:35 | |
in an admission form. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:36 | |
Here we see in his own handwriting, | 0:19:36 | 0:19:39 | |
"I, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, of 20 Baron's Court Road, West Kensington," | 0:19:39 | 0:19:45 | |
signing his declaration that he is a fit and proper person. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:49 | |
Luckily for historians, Gandhi kept a diary during his three years here. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:55 | |
He took dancing lessons, he played the violin | 0:19:55 | 0:19:58 | |
and he just seemed to be absorbed by everything that London had to offer. | 0:19:58 | 0:20:02 | |
There's a very poignant final entry in the diary | 0:20:02 | 0:20:06 | |
when he is on the boat leaving London and there's | 0:20:06 | 0:20:11 | |
a copy of it there, Michael, if you'd like to have a look at it. | 0:20:11 | 0:20:15 | |
Gandhi's final thoughts on London. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:18 | |
"So much attached was I to London | 0:20:18 | 0:20:20 | |
"and its environments, for who would not be? | 0:20:20 | 0:20:23 | |
"London with its teaching institutions, | 0:20:23 | 0:20:25 | |
"public galleries, vegetarian restaurants is a fit place | 0:20:25 | 0:20:28 | |
"for a student and a traveller, a trader | 0:20:28 | 0:20:30 | |
"and a faddist, as a vegetarian would be called by his opponents. | 0:20:30 | 0:20:35 | |
"Thus it is not without regret that I left dear London." | 0:20:35 | 0:20:38 | |
And this reminds us of one final legacy. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:41 | |
Gandhi gave to the chef here some recipes | 0:20:41 | 0:20:45 | |
that his mother had sent him | 0:20:45 | 0:20:47 | |
and the chef took kindly on him and cooked a vegetarian curry. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:51 | |
It soon became very popular | 0:20:51 | 0:20:53 | |
and to this day, every meal served at the Inner Temple has | 0:20:53 | 0:20:57 | |
a vegetarian option in memory of Gandhi. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:00 | |
-This place is full of traditions. -It certainly is. | 0:21:00 | 0:21:04 | |
After Gandhi qualified as a lawyer in 1891, he briefly returned | 0:21:04 | 0:21:08 | |
to India before heading to join an Indian law firm in South Africa. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:13 | |
Until that point, Gandhi had shown little interest in politics. | 0:21:13 | 0:21:17 | |
Indian barrister Ram Viraraghavan knows more. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:21 | |
-Ram, hello. -Hello, Michael. -Very good to see you. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:28 | |
What has brought you from India to London? | 0:21:28 | 0:21:32 | |
I wanted to taste the waters at the fountain of justice. | 0:21:32 | 0:21:37 | |
That was why I came to the Inner Temple. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:39 | |
What a lovely answer. | 0:21:39 | 0:21:41 | |
I've been learning about Mahatma Gandhi, | 0:21:41 | 0:21:43 | |
it seems that when he was in London he was not particularly | 0:21:43 | 0:21:46 | |
interested in politics, so what changes him? | 0:21:46 | 0:21:50 | |
I should think the provocation was he was | 0:21:50 | 0:21:53 | |
thrown off a train in South Africa | 0:21:53 | 0:21:56 | |
and that, I should think, | 0:21:56 | 0:21:57 | |
was the beginning of his political consciousness. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:00 | |
He was brown and the South Africans would have nothing of it. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:04 | |
They threw him out of the train. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:06 | |
This is what he says: | 0:22:06 | 0:22:08 | |
"The hardship to which I was subjected was superficial, | 0:22:08 | 0:22:12 | |
"only a symptom of the deep disease of colour prejudice. | 0:22:12 | 0:22:17 | |
"I should try, if possible, to root out the disease | 0:22:17 | 0:22:21 | |
"and suffer hardships in the process. | 0:22:21 | 0:22:24 | |
"Redress for wrongs I should seek only to the extent | 0:22:24 | 0:22:28 | |
"that would be necessary for removal of the colour prejudice." | 0:22:28 | 0:22:33 | |
And so began in a small way, | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
the road which ultimately leads to free India. | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
It's quite extraordinary when you think that such important | 0:22:39 | 0:22:43 | |
-history begins with an incident on a train. -Of course it does. | 0:22:43 | 0:22:46 | |
It's time for me to take a train from the very same | 0:22:49 | 0:22:52 | |
station that the young Gandhi would have used all those years ago | 0:22:52 | 0:22:55 | |
and travel on the District Line to my final stop - Victoria. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:59 | |
Here the District and Circle Lines, constructed in the 19th century, | 0:23:01 | 0:23:05 | |
meet the 1960s-built Victoria Line | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
and the result can be chaotic. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
It's a complete mess. | 0:23:11 | 0:23:12 | |
They are at the moment doing some improvements. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
Do you think that's going to make it better? | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
I'm hopeful that it will, and just ease some of the congestion. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
It's not intuitive, the way you get around the station. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
They tell us that in a few years' time we're going to have great big new ticket halls. | 0:23:23 | 0:23:26 | |
-That's something to look forward to, isn't it? -Yeah! | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
As Bradshaw says, "Occupying the site of the Grosvenor Canal basin, | 0:23:34 | 0:23:38 | |
"the Victoria station is now the busy scene of the arrival | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
"and departure of the West End and Crystal Palace, the Brighton | 0:23:41 | 0:23:45 | |
"and South Coast and the Chatham and Dover lines." | 0:23:45 | 0:23:49 | |
Not surprisingly then, Victoria has become cluttered, congested | 0:23:49 | 0:23:54 | |
and confused, and clearly in need of an upgrade. | 0:23:54 | 0:23:57 | |
Since 2009, the Underground station that serves this busy | 0:24:01 | 0:24:05 | |
terminus has been undergoing a £700 million makeover, | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
due to be completed in 2018. | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
David Waboso is showing me | 0:24:15 | 0:24:16 | |
what will eventually be a vast new ticket hall. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
David, Victoria Underground station is very badly congested, | 0:24:25 | 0:24:28 | |
what is your master plan? | 0:24:28 | 0:24:30 | |
We want to increase capacity of this station by a whopping 33%. | 0:24:30 | 0:24:35 | |
We have more passengers use just Victoria Underground station | 0:24:35 | 0:24:39 | |
than Heathrow Airport. | 0:24:39 | 0:24:40 | |
Over 80 million passengers a year come through here. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
To link the new and old ticket halls | 0:24:43 | 0:24:45 | |
and to improve connections between the Tube lines, | 0:24:45 | 0:24:48 | |
280 metres of new tunnels are being squeezed in | 0:24:48 | 0:24:52 | |
amongst the existing underground infrastructure. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:55 | |
The trouble with that, from an engineering point of view, | 0:24:55 | 0:24:57 | |
is we're having to basically tunnel through water-bearing sands, | 0:24:57 | 0:25:00 | |
which is not very good material to tunnel through. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
How do you cope with that? | 0:25:03 | 0:25:04 | |
We've effectively here put in over 2,000 jet grouting columns. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:08 | |
Basically vertical columns of concrete that we pour | 0:25:08 | 0:25:11 | |
into the ground under controlled methods, and that stabilises | 0:25:11 | 0:25:14 | |
the ground so that we can then build these huge underground caverns. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:18 | |
I walk past here probably most days of my life, | 0:25:18 | 0:25:21 | |
I had no idea that this great big hole, this great big box was here, | 0:25:21 | 0:25:25 | |
I just wish everybody could see it. | 0:25:25 | 0:25:28 | |
It's a great achievement that during these vast works | 0:25:28 | 0:25:31 | |
going on below ground, Victoria station has stayed open. | 0:25:31 | 0:25:35 | |
David is now taking me to the cutting edge. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:40 | |
DRILLING | 0:25:40 | 0:25:43 | |
-Hello! -How are you? | 0:25:45 | 0:25:48 | |
-Michael. -Eugene. Pleased to meet you. -Good to see you. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:50 | |
And what is it that Eugene's doing? | 0:25:50 | 0:25:53 | |
I'm used to seeing great big boring machines. | 0:25:53 | 0:25:55 | |
I'm quite surprised to see Eugene doing kind of hand-mining, really. | 0:25:55 | 0:25:59 | |
Yeah, when you get this close in, the space is so limited | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
that you really need manual methods of doing it, and we exploit | 0:26:02 | 0:26:07 | |
the skills of people like Eugene who have hand-mining capabilities. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:11 | |
In Victorian times, they had to do all this hand-mining, | 0:26:11 | 0:26:14 | |
but without these wonderful pneumatic tools. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:16 | |
They must have been really good men, mustn't they? | 0:26:16 | 0:26:18 | |
Yeah, they were, it's heroic stuff and we owe them a huge debt | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
because a lot of the stuff we use today is based on | 0:26:22 | 0:26:24 | |
the Victorians who built the first sections of the Tube in the 1860s. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:28 | |
Where exactly are we now? | 0:26:28 | 0:26:30 | |
So we're about 24 metres below ground level. | 0:26:30 | 0:26:32 | |
Right on top of us is the Victoria Palace Theatre, which is | 0:26:32 | 0:26:35 | |
currently having a matinee concert. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:36 | |
Either side of that will be London buses | 0:26:36 | 0:26:39 | |
and there'll be taxis and cars | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
and people walking around and all this stuff is going on underground. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:46 | |
Just behind us, about a metre behind that clay, will be | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
the running tunnels for the Victoria Line. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:51 | |
-Just behind that wall? -Yeah. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:52 | |
On this journey I've witnessed London's insatiable restlessness | 0:26:54 | 0:26:58 | |
and constant reinvention. | 0:26:58 | 0:26:59 | |
Today, as in Bradshaw's day, | 0:27:01 | 0:27:03 | |
its energy attracts visitors and settlers from around the world. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
As a new Underground station takes shape in the heart of the capital, | 0:27:09 | 0:27:13 | |
in East London, Victorian railway sidings have become an Olympic Park. | 0:27:13 | 0:27:18 | |
The East End is used to change, | 0:27:18 | 0:27:21 | |
because waves of immigration altered it from one generation to another. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:26 | |
As the son of a refugee, let me urge you to speak kindly to foreigners. | 0:27:26 | 0:27:31 | |
After being insulted on a train, | 0:27:31 | 0:27:33 | |
Mahatma Gandhi led a movement that deprived the British Empire | 0:27:33 | 0:27:38 | |
of what had once been the jewel in Victoria's crown, India. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:43 | |
Careless talk can be expensive. | 0:27:43 | 0:27:46 | |
Next time, I'll discover how 19th century engineering | 0:27:50 | 0:27:53 | |
made for spectacular theatricals. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:56 | |
Ben Hur was produced there twice. | 0:27:56 | 0:27:58 | |
To make it more exciting, they turned the treadmills round | 0:27:58 | 0:28:01 | |
so that the horses were running towards the audience. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:03 | |
Discover a Victorian luxury fit for a Queen... | 0:28:03 | 0:28:07 | |
If I dab this behind my ears, I can smell like Queen Victoria. | 0:28:07 | 0:28:12 | |
And come face to face with my hero... | 0:28:12 | 0:28:15 | |
George Bradshaw. | 0:28:15 | 0:28:16 |