Bristol to Glastonbury 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 industry, society and leisure time.

As I crisscross the country 150 years later,

it helps me to discover the Britain of today.

Britain's industrial heartland is far behind me as I travel south,

discovering some of the great Victorian ideas and innovations

that swept aside the old order and ushered in the modern age.

My route, which began in Birmingham, now arrives in South West England,

where I'll be visiting ancient ports and sacred sites

before ending up in one of Britain's most glorious national parks.

This fourth leg begins in Bristol, moves up to Avonmouth

and turns south to Nailsea

before ending up at Highbridge and Burnham-on-Sea.

On this part of the journey,

I enter the foul smelling world of a Victorian tannery.

I find myself well out of my comfort zone here.

-Is it dangerous?

-It's pretty dangerous.

HE LAUGHS

Soak up the splendour of one of Britain's finest Gothic mansions.

Ha, a gentleman's library indeed.

And get in touch with my spiritual side in Glastonbury.

-Stay bright.

-Yeah, absolutely, and you.

Birmingham seems far behind me as I approach the county of Somerset.

Bradshaw's tells me that,

"The county, from its favourable climate and soil,

"stands very high in reputation for agricultural and rural produce."

And amongst those products were farm animals,

of which we make use of every part, from heart to soul.

Bristol, from the Middle Ages to the 18th century,

was one of the three most prosperous cities in England

thanks to its seafaring links,

and my guidebook points out its fine historic buildings.

By the 19th century, the population was expanding rapidly

and Bristol, like any other Victorian city,

was blighted by dirt and disease.

A major contribution came from the 60 or so tanneries

that surrounded the city.

Necessary providers of leather for the new industries

but filthy and unhealthy.

Thomas Ware and Son was founded in 1840,

and I'm heading there to meet Barry Knight,

who has 30 years of experience in the business.

I find myself, Barry, well out of my comfort zone here.

An extraordinary sight all these pits filled with goodness knows what

and, I have to say, a terrible stench.

What's going on here?

Well, we're taking domestic cattle hides

that have come from Somerset.

They've come to us packed in salt,

and then we need to remove the salt

and put them through a series of pits...

And I'm just smelling the natural smell of cow, am I?

This is a fatty animal smell basically, but a lot of the smells

are chemicals that are coming from the pits.

What chemicals are you putting in those pits?

It's largely lime, slaked lime,

that have come out of lime kilns from close by in Somerset

and the slaked lime turns into hydrated lime.

It's going to loosen the hair and open the fibre structure

in such a way that we can actually tan the leather in a later stage.

Is this process very different

from what one would have seen 150 years ago?

If a tanner was to come back from 150 years ago, 500 years ago,

he would instantly recognise everything that's going off here.

You're obviously doing something very traditional here.

How rare is that?

Well, we've gone from about 6,000 heavy-leather tanners in the UK

since World War II,

but unfortunately, there's only three of us left

doing traditional methods.

What's the difference between traditional

and whatever the modern method is then?

Well, traditional, by that I mean it's vegetable-tanned leather.

And basically, it's a long, slow process -

three to four months would be typical.

The more commercial tanneries would be turning leather over

in three, four, five, maybe ten days, start to finish.

One natural ingredient that played a key role

in traditional leather tanning was dog dirt,

which was collected from the local hunt kennels

and added in with the lime.

The enzymes that it contained helped to flatten the hides

and make them more pliable.

Do you yourself remember using dog dirt?

No, I don't, but when I first came into the industry,

I was working alongside some of the old guys who were using dog dirt.

They told me it stopped them from biting their fingernails.

After the hides were removed from this noxious cocktail,

they were scraped clean of hair, a job which is now done by machine.

Next, it's through to the tanning area,

where the preservation of the leather takes place.

What a vast space, Barry.

What part of the process have we reached now?

What are you doing to the pelts?

All of the pits have got vegetable matter inside them.

The vegetable matter will actually penetrate into the hide structure

and it'll change the chemical composition.

And once it's tanned through,

it's almost impossible for the leather to rot or decay.

So it's a permanent means of preservation.

What is going on in all of these pits?

Well, there's 320 pits.

There's two separate parts of the yard

but each has got a slight slope,

so the hides will come into the first bit for one day

and we pull the hide into the next bit on the second day

and so on and so on as it goes down.

It's a countercurrent system, so the hide will travel one way

and the liquors, fed by gravity, travel the other way.

And what are the liquors?

The liquors, basically it's extract from the vegetable matter.

So, the main tanning ingredients are mimosa, which is an acacia tree.

We have chestnut, obviously you know what a chestnut tree is.

There's quebracho, which is a South American hardwood

and myrobalan, which is a nut that comes from India.

And is the liquor changing as it goes through these pits?

Yeah, it becomes weaker

because the hide is actually drawing up all of the nutrients.

What do you think conditions would have been like in tanneries,

say, 150 years ago?

It must have been grim.

In winter, it's absolutely freezing cold here.

In summer, it gets roasting hot.

The chemicals that we use now, the guys are protected,

but back then, there were no health and safety.

The hides when they come, they're packed with bacteria,

it would have been a horrible place.

In the 19th century, leather was more in demand than ever.

In a pre-plastic world, it was needed for everything,

from drive belts for machinery to ladies' shoes and corsetry.

The railways were big consumers.

The seats had leather upholstery

and a thin strip inserted in the window frames

prevented them from rattling.

These days, Barry's high-quality product

goes to make luxury items like saddlery and ladies' handbags.

And there's nothing to rival leather in a shoe.

Les, can I introduce you to Michael?

-Hello, Les.

-Hello, mate.

So, obviously, you're cutting out...

What, these are half soles are they?

These are half soles for the shoe pair, yeah.

Any chance I could have a go at that?

Yes, you can have a go, by all means.

-Is it dangerous?

-It's pretty dangerous.

HE LAUGHS Thank you.

So, this is obviously a very sharp thing.

Yes, a very sharp knife.

-And the idea is to maximise the space, yeah?

-That's correct.

-Is that looking good?

-Yeah, it's fine.

Let's have a go at that.

-Press here and...

-That's it.

-..there we go.

Have a go at another one.

Put them in tighter, a little bit.

You don't want to waste anything do you, Les?

-No, not to waste anything.

-There we go.

Upon my soul, I didn't know I was capable of that.

-Les, thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Leaving behind the distinctive Victorian whiff of the tannery,

I'm heading for the purer air of the old port.

In the 15th century, the Italian explorer John Cabot

set sail from here to become the first European to make landfall

on mainland America.

During the 18th century,

Bristol was the second busiest harbour in England, after London.

These days, much of the traffic is made up of tourists

coming to visit Brunel's mighty iron passenger ship, SS Great Britain.

"Bristol has from the earliest times been an important seaport

"from whence old navigators used to start."

But even by the time of my Bradshaw's Guide,

the winding river in the centre of the city

was becoming too small for modern ships that were larger,

and the solution was new docks closer to the mouth of the Avon.

'For 2,000 years, give or take a few,

'ships have been coming to the mouth of the Avon from abroad

'but not until a mere century ago, to Avonmouth docks.

'That is the name of the Port of Bristol's front door,

'the great dock system

'where the Avon flows into the Bristol Channel.

'That is where the big ships go, carrying the cargoes of the world.'

To take a closer look at these docks,

I've caught the train out to Avonmouth.

All tickets and passes, please.

-There we go.

-That's great.

Will I get much of a view of the river as I go down?

For Avonmouth, this side, you will do, yes.

-Oh, good, good, good. Thanks very much.

-OK.

This six-mile stretch of line was built in 1862

by the newly-created Bristol Port Railway and Pier Company

to ferry goods and passengers out to the new docks.

The man in charge today is Simon Bird.

-Simon, very good to see you.

-Welcome to Avonmouth.

What were the sorts of changes in ships

in the middle of the 19th century

that made it necessary to move them out of the centre of Bristol?

We saw ships getting larger and as those vessels got larger

the vessels are unable to go up into Bristol docks.

As the rise and fall of the tide here between high and low water

is 15m,

the vessels needed somewhere safe to berth and secure.

At low water, the Avon largely dries out.

And there's a lovely picture, which shows the SS Gypsy,

which broke her back on a bend in the River Avon

called Horseshoe Bend.

She just lost the water,

she blocked the river entrance for weeks on end,

which meant ships couldn't go up or come out of Bristol docks

at that time.

When the port first opened in 1877,

much of the cargo arriving at Avonmouth

came from the West Indies, including sugar, cocoa and tobacco,

as well as tea.

By the 1930s, it was also a busy passenger terminal

for pleasure cruisers to the Mediterranean and Scandinavia.

Meanwhile, British manufactured goods bound for export

arrived by rail from all over the country

within feet of where the ships were tied up.

Well, here, evidently, are some railway tracks

but no trains, of course.

Sadly, in the 20th century, rail seemed to fall out of fashion,

I think in the country generally, let alone in the port.

The humble truck is far more flexible,

has been flexible in moving cargoes around.

But here we are today, rail is going back into ports.

And you'll see lots of the major ports,

Bristol are no exception,

is increasing its rail infrastructure and links.

For which trades?

Our containers are a big user of the rail sector,

cars will use more and more rail

and then you look at steel - steel slabs, steel coil.

Now, the Victorians had to take account

of increasing sizes of vessels and move their port.

Will you, like the Victorians, have to build a new dock, a new port?

Yes, we are.

Ships just keep getting larger,

that's been the constant theme in the maritime world.

The current container vessels,

which are operating from Asia to Europe,

are 400m long and are 60m wide,

so we here in Bristol have a project to build a new port facility

into the estuary, outside the lock entrances.

By going into the deep water, we're able to accommodate those vessels

at all states of the tide.

And so just like the Victorians,

-the answer is to go further and further out to sea?

-Absolutely.

Ingenious and ambitious Victorian engineers

battled nature and the elements

to maintain Bristol's position as a major West Coast seaport.

I've arrived back in the city centre, where I'll spend the night.

But first, I'm heading to the old docks

to find out about a much earlier and less admirable period

in Bristol's maritime history.

The 7 Stars pub, down by the old port,

is famous thanks to its connections with Thomas Clarkson,

leading campaigner against the slave trade,

who between 1787 and 1793 - with the help of the pub landlord -

risked his life to expose the true horrors of the trade in human beings.

Present-day landlord Steve Smith is well versed in the story.

Now, slaves weren't actually passing through the city of Bristol,

were they?

No. It was a triangle, a trading triangle, if you like.

So, the ships would leave here, go to West Africa,

and they'd pick the slaves up to the Caribbean

and later on, the eastern seaboard of the States,

and then they would bring back to Bristol

the cargo they picked up there - sugar, molasses, tobacco.

So, the vessels, the crews, the captains that were in Bristol,

they were part of the slave trade?

And the merchants that ran it were the merchants of Bristol.

What role did the landlord here, Thompson, play in all of this?

Thompson befriended Clarkson,

Clarkson stayed here on some 13 occasions.

And those two together would go out late at night...

..and seek out the captains and members of the crew

that were willing to talk.

Many weren't, but over a period of time,

that's when the evidence was put together.

And the evidence that he put together on the mistreatment of the slaves,

do you think this was quite important in the abolition campaign?

Incredibly so.

It was, you know, he was trying to break down a wall of silence,

in a way.

You know, huge sums were made through the brokerage of slaves,

and the city has done very well on it,

and nobody wants to kill the goose.

Steve, the abolition of the slave trade

is something we can be quite proud of as Brits.

Shall we raise our glasses to Thomas Clarkson?

Thomas Clarkson and the abolition of slavery.

The next day, I'm up early to return to Bristol Temple Meads station

to pick up the First Great Western service

heading towards the coast.

My word of the day is guano.

It's posh speak for bird droppings.

But with the Midas touch of a Victorian entrepreneur,

it could be converted into gold.

I shall be leaving the train at Nailsea,

which Bradshaw's tells me "is a place of no importance,"

but it's of great interest to me.

Nailsea and Backwell is the nearest station to Tyntesfield,

a Gothic mansion, one of the most extravagant in the country,

built on the proceeds of one of the greatest fortunes

made in the Victorian age.

It was the family home of William Gibbs,

an entrepreneur whose business transporting and selling

Peruvian guano to the farmers of Europe,

capitalised on the recent discovery

that its high nitrogen, potassium and phosphate content

made it a potent fertiliser.

Eric Evans, one of Tyntesfield's tour guides, is showing me around.

Tyntesfield really is quite a pile, isn't it?

Tell me about William Gibbs, who built it.

He was a very successful wool and cloth trader

across the whole of Europe, in fact beyond, into South America.

And at some point, he makes the discovery that guano is useful.

Well, this was sort of accidental.

His junior partner in Peru sent a message back.

He said he had the opportunity to sign this contract

with the Peruvian government to bring the guano back

to Europe and to England.

And William was, I think, reluctant

and sent back the message accordingly.

However, by the time the message had got back

to the junior partner in South America,

he had actually signed up the contract,

so William had to then make the best of it, which he of course did.

Gibbs' great wealth made Tyntesfield

a most luxuriously-appointed country house.

It's regarded as a masterpiece of the Gothic Revival style,

inspired by mediaeval design but unusually full of light

thanks to its multitude of large arched windows.

The staircase is really a gem, isn't it? Absolutely magnificent.

No expense was spared.

The slate bed of the billiard table was heated

to prevent the cloth from getting damp.

The redevelopment bill came to £70,000 in 1865,

the equivalent to the profit that he made in just one year.

Ha, a gentleman's library indeed.

What was it about the guano that made it so valuable?

Really, it was so high in nitrates,

which is the product that actually gives you the fertiliser.

Now, I kind of imagine them down in Peru, on those islands,

scraping the bird droppings off the rock,

-but it didn't really look like that, did it?

-No, no.

It was on a massive scale.

You were talking about mountains of the stuff.

Over centuries, the birds had dropped the guano.

And what sort of quantities are we talking about?

Well, we're not sure exactly,

but we think that something in the region of 60,000 tonnes.

And in the harbour in South America,

it was just full of ships of the stuff,

waiting to be brought back to Europe.

And who was it that extracted the guano?

Well, it was the Peruvian government who were doing the mining,

and they had had indented Chinese labour,

probably slaves, effectively, in those days.

And then the Gibbs family

shipped the stuff back to Europe and to England.

And what were conditions like for these labourers?

They were pretty grim.

You know, the sort of dust of the stuff would have been awful

in terms of breathing and that sort of thing.

Like many new Victorian millionaires,

William Gibbs was known as a pillar of the establishment

and a religious man.

He was an adherent of the Tractarian movement of High Church Anglicans

and his family motto, translated from the Spanish, reads,

"God is my shelter and my hope."

In later life, he paid for the construction

of several churches and chapels all over the country,

including his private chapel at Tyntesfield,

which was completed only in 1875, the year that he died.

He was a religious man,

did that mean that he lived an austere sort of life?

Yes, he was teetotal, he believed in prayer twice a day,

morning and evening.

In fact, all the staff were expected to attend as well.

Before we had the chapel, they had an oratory within the house

with pews for 50 people,

so that the staff could come together with the family.

And how would you describe William Gibbs' legacy?

Well, there's Tyntesfield for a start.

But he also contributed to the building and restoration

of 19 churches and chapels.

-That's a lot of building on a foundation of guano.

-Yes.

Leaving the splendour of Tyntesfield behind,

I'm rejoining the train at Nailsea

en route to my final destination of the day.

How are we all enjoying the English summer then?

We're waiting for it.

There we are. At least he's stopped near the shelter, which is nice.

I shall be leaving this crowded train at Highbridge and Burnham,

headed for Glastonbury.

Bradshaw's says,

"Here are considerable ruins of a famous abbey,

"which occupied an area of 60 acres."

For the Victorians, ruins were romantic,

and ancient vestiges were shrouded in myth and legend.

The town of Glastonbury is situated on the low-lying Somerset Levels

and has been inhabited since Neolithic times.

The area that surrounds it is known as the Vale of Avalon,

which lays claim to be Britain's most spiritual site

thanks to its early Christian, pagan and Arthurian connections.

Something for everyone, it seems.

What's attracted you to Glastonbury today?

I really like the history.

Oh, which part of it?

The ancient history, all the legends.

They say the tor was Merlin's Tower. I just like all that magic.

What attracted you to Glastonbury?

I'm just trying to get away from the matrix of society, really.

What made you come here today?

-I've come here today cos I'm part of a hen party.

-No!

So, we're having a cream tea down near the abbey.

-Hello.

-Hello.

I don't often meet someone more brightly dressed than I am.

-I know who you are.

-Yes.

-Michael.

-Is this your shop?

-It is.

-What do you do in this shop?

We offer cosmic wares of the universe.

-Stay bright.

-Yeah, absolutely, and you.

-Bye.

Just to the south of the town stand the ruins

of the 7th-century Glastonbury Abbey,

which was destroyed when King Henry VIII

ordered the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536.

I'm meeting tour guide Tor Webster,

a Glastonbury resident of some 14 years,

who's going to show me around.

Bradshaw's tells me about Glastonbury Abbey covering 60 acres,

it must have been enormous.

Give me an idea of the dimensions of the buildings that arose here.

Yeah, well, the height was 580ft, which is enormous.

This was the second largest and most affluent abbey after Westminster,

sometimes even greater than Westminster

in historical references. So it was pretty big, yeah.

Benedictine, I think?

Benedictine monks, yeah.

There was about 50 or 60 monks living here,

and then you had a lot of lay brothers

that were doing the farming and such.

They were completely self- sustainable.

And what were they engaged in?

Glastonbury was a major scriptorium

where they were writing and copying religious text.

They had what was known as the perpetual choir here,

one of the perpetual choirs of England,

where a monk was singing all the time.

So, they had services going through the night.

So, it was a very important place, you know.

In amongst the swirling mists of myth and legend that surround this place,

the most potent is that Christ himself travelled here

from the Holy Land as a young man.

Another popular theory is that his uncle

brought the Holy Grail here after the crucifixion,

which in turn leads to the Arthurian legends,

which have at their heart the quest for the Grail.

Whatever we think about them,

these stories have been around for 1,000 years,

which might go to explain why many people

have come to treat them as historical fact.

In 1191, the monks dug to find the tombs of Arthur and Guinevere.

Do you think they were successful?

Yeah, they found the plaque saying

"Here lies King Arthur and Guinevere,"

so it was pretty conclusive.

But excuse me, aren't these people legends?

Well, I personally believe that it was King Arthur,

who was more of a, kind of, archetypal character.

To me, he's a hero, you know? And everybody loves a hero.

And he is an ancient hero connected to the histories of...

the spiritual history of England and the Celtic Christian church.

I think in Victorian times, there was quite a resurgence of interest

in Arthur and Guinevere, whether a myth or not.

Why do you think that would be?

Well, there was a resurgence of mystic spirituality

and I think that people were getting a bit disillusioned

by the church at the time and were looking for new ways,

new connections, and Glastonbury definitely offered that.

Glastonbury, and particularly the abbey,

is clearly a place of great spirituality

that attracts many different religions.

Yeah. We have over 70 practising faiths and traditions

in Glastonbury,

and we all pretty much get along.

You know, we can get along because there's a thread of love.

-Love is all you need.

-Love is all you need.

HE CHUCKLES

With that very modern sentiment echoing in my ears,

it's time to take leave of this Victorian place of pilgrimage

and reflect on the huge social changes witnessed by that age.

You wouldn't want to enquire too closely

into how some Victorian fortunes were made.

Conditions for tanners were appalling

and the chemicals that they used, damaging to health,

as was the guano to those Chinese workers

who mined it for William Gibbs.

But when Victoria was still a girl,

thanks to abolitionists like Thomas Clarkson of Bristol,

Britain had set an example to the world

by abolishing slavery throughout the Empire.

That great reform invoked the idealism of a legendary age

when Arthur reigned at Camelot.

Next time, I get to grips with a miracle of Victorian engineering...

I've never felt so much power.

-ALL:

-Traitor! Traitor!

..stand trial in Taunton and suffer the full weight of the law.

I plead guilty and throw myself upon the mercy of this court.

And go looking for hidden treasure on Dartmoor.

-I've found it!

-Whey!