Littlehampton to Beaulieu 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 criss-cross the country 150 years later,

it helps me to discover the Britain of today.

I'm continuing my journey along Britain's south coast,

where defence is a recurring theme.

From the threat of invasion by the French,

to the incursion of new disease,

Victorians along these shores fought to maintain the upper hand.

With my Bradshaw's guide in hand,

I'm travelling the length of this coast.

I started in Dover,

and travelled through important coastal defences.

My journey continues along seaside resorts

and through Thomas Hardy country

before ending at the foot of the British Isles.

Today, I start in Littlehampton,

move on to Portsmouth Harbour for an explosive excursion,

continue through Romsey...

to finish at Brockenhurst in the New Forest.

On this leg of my journey,

I find out how shells went ballistic...

You're kidding! Inflexible, which is only 15 years after Warrior,

is firing this sort of ammunition.

..trace the inspiration of a most-revered Victorian...

It's underneath this very tree that Florence felt very strongly

that she was called by God to serve her fellow man.

..and abandon the tracks to check out the railways' greatest competitor.

Tally-ho!

ENGINE SPUTTERS

Oh...

My next stop will be Littlehampton,

a small hamlet on the coast

which has some admirers as a watering place.

At the time of my Bradshaw's guide,

an increasing number of people understood that

water carried cholera after a series of epidemics

had killed tens of thousands of people in Britain,

and at Littlehampton, they realised that,

in order to obtain clean supplies, you might need to plumb the depths.

The railways came to Littlehampton in 1863,

and like the neighbouring towns along the south coast,

its fresh sea air drew Victorian tourists.

But even a salubrious resort couldn't escape

the terrifying scourge of cholera.

Originating in India, the disease swept across the Empire,

arriving on UK shores in 1831.

It caused panic,

but there was no practical proposal to stem its spread.

An engineer in Littlehampton offered a way forward.

I'm meeting Martin Fitch-Roy,

managing director of the Dando Drilling company to find out more.

Martin, in 1866, there's yet another outbreak of cholera in Britain.

Does it affect Littlehampton?

Yes, unfortunately, there were 18 deaths in Littlehampton.

But the trigger for the beginning of our company was

the death of a lady called Mrs Hogben.

The local physician realised that the reason for the cholera

was the contamination of the well.

They had hand-dug wells in those days,

which were very easy to contaminate,

because they also used pit latrines in the same areas.

So, Mr Albion Ockenden, an engineer, found a way of

drilling through the bottom of the well

to access clean water further down.

How much further would he have had to go?

He probably went another ten metres.

But that was sufficient, then, to get down below the danger level?

Into another geological strata.

Using this simple principle, Ockenden and his partner, Reginald Duke,

sank wells to reach a clean water supply for the whole

of Littlehampton, the neighbouring town of Wick and then Worthing,

halting the spread of the disease and saving many lives.

Their method is known as tube well drilling.

They used tubes from the boiler of an old steam tug, which would have

been slightly smaller, but this is a modern tube, we now call a casing.

You sink this down and this is where the water passes up again?

The water would come up through the centre.

This would protect the geology

and the water from any contamination on the outside.

So, the first tube well was sunk

through the bottom of a hand-dug well,

but now they would start from the surface

and they would use a method we call cable percussion drilling.

This is a cable percussion rig.

So, percussion means you just keep banging...?

There's no rotary component, it's just,

there's a series of special tools that goes down inside, because

you have to displace the geology for the tube to move downwards.

So, the tools break and retrieve the geology from the centre

and then drive the tube downwards.

The drills were used to access clean water across the British Empire.

After the outbreak in the 1860s,

cholera never again reached epidemic proportions in the United Kingdom.

But it is still a significant killer around the globe.

This water well drill is destined for villages in Africa.

So, really, identically to what happened in Littlehampton

in 1866 is what you are replicating in those villages?

Absolutely identically, yes.

The diseases that cause most problems are cholera

and typhoid, still, in Africa.

I'm giving it a final test before it's shipped out.

It's remarkable to think that what the Victorian well drillers struck on

here in Littlehampton is still saving thousands of lives across the world.

From Littlehampton, I'm taking the train to Portsmouth,

which on this journey means a change at Barnham.

The next leg takes me across the county border

from Sussex into Hampshire.

When I last visited Portsmouth, I attended

the commissioning of HMS Dragon and indeed,

my guidebook says the town's chief attraction

"consists in the fortifications, the dockyard and the men-o-war" -

an old-fashioned expression for warships.

In the middle of the 19th century, something that worried everyone,

including the Bradshaw-wielding tourist, was the French Peril.

I alight from the train at the station of Portsmouth harbour.

Protected by the Isle of Wight, Portsmouth has been

an important naval port since the 12th century.

It's still the main dockyard for the Royal Navy,

being home to two thirds of its service fleet.

As an island city, Portsmouth became densely populated

and in the 18th century, locals campaigned for the Navy's

stores of gunpowder to be moved across the water.

I'm on the ferry to Gosport.

According to Bradshaw's, "It rarely takes more than eight minutes

"and the toll is one penny."

Some chance!

'Today, as in Bradshaw's day, visitors can marvel at the men-o-war,

'including Nelson's flagship, HMS Victory,

'and the formidable HMS Warrior.'

Imagine the impact that HMS Warrior had when she first appeared in 1860.

Britain's first ironclad warship,

built in response to France's first ironclad warship -

but this one was much bigger.

And so, the two countries began to leapfrog each other

in a Victorian arms race.

Warrior was the largest warship in the world,

60% bigger than France's La Gloire.

It incorporated important advances in armour and ammunition.

I'm heading to the historic munitions store to meet

Andrew Baines of the National Museum of the Royal Navy.

So, we have here a piece of armour plate from World War II,

which actually rather neatly illustrates

a point about the way armour plating develops in the Victorian period.

When Warrior's commissioned in 1861,

she has four and a half inches of wrought iron armour plate

and 18 inches of teak at the back of it.

No gun can get through it, and that's the challenge, then,

someone's got to go and build a gun, which happens, so then, somebody has

to come along with thicker armour plating,

and that's the race we get, back and forth.

15 years after Warrior, in Portsmouth harbour,

the Navy launches the appropriately named HMS Inflexible.

Her armour plating is 41 inches thick, about 1,100lb weight

for every square foot of armour on the ship's side.

And so, the challenge to the gunmakers is,

-how do you penetrate it?

-It certainly is,

-and that's something else we can go and look at.

-Thanks.

A most impressive display of firepower over the ages.

Where shall we start?

Well, probably the best place to start is with one of these.

A cannonball, solid shot.

This is what the Royal Navy has been using for a couple of hundred years,

come the mid-Victorian period.

It smashes through an enemy's wooden hull, creates splinters,

and those splinters kill and maim the crew.

Once armour plate is introduced, however, a small cannonball like

that isn't going to do very much, it's going to bounce off the side.

So, whatever you throw at the opponent, you have to make heavier.

You can make a bigger sphere,

but that eventually pushes you to the edge of gun founding.

Or you can elongate the shape, and that's what's happened here.

And this is actually the type of projectile that Inflexible

-would have been firing.

-You're kidding.

-Inflexible, which is only 15 years after Warrior...

-Yeah.

..is firing this sort of ammunition?

Yeah, Warrior's maximum size of projectile

is about 100lb weight, seven inches wide.

This is 16 inches wide, weighs in at 1,700lb.

And that change has been made possible because no longer

do we have smoothbore guns, but we've gone over to rifling.

Rifling was an important innovation.

Grooves in the barrel of a gun made the projectile spin,

greatly improving aerodynamic stability and accuracy.

In the 1860s, Warrior's guns had a range of around 2,000 yards.

Just 15 years later, guns could fire 8,000 yards.

That firepower provoked the next development in the arms race,

the torpedo.

The torpedo, mid 1860s, the Royal Navy adopts it from the 1870s,

cheap as chips to produce, you can build small ships,

35 tonnes weight as opposed to the 11,000 tonnes of Inflexible,

and they can go in and with a single-shot weapon

sink a battleship.

Now, if I've got your drift right,

you've got to develop a technology to kill the torpedo?

Now you've got to develop a technology to kill the torpedo,

and that's where the 3lb quick-firing Hotchkiss gun comes in.

-Do you have one of those?

-We do indeed, just this way.

Small, light and rapidly loaded, the Hotchkiss gun was used

to defend warships against the fast-moving torpedo attack boats.

Here is one that still fires.

OK, so, if you'd like to pop the gloves and the ear defenders on.

And what we have here is a blank,

the projectile would have sat in the top there.

If you'd like to take that, we can come over to the Hotchkiss.

I am ready to defend my country!

Take that for defying Her Majesty, Queen Victoria!

After France was crushed by Prussia in 1870,

the United Kingdom became less nervous about her closest neighbour.

But war technology had moved forward dramatically and Britain would

then engage in a new arms race, this time with Germany.

It's the start of a new day

and I'm picking up my journey in Fareham to continue westwards.

Although in Bradshaw's day the French were our traditional enemy,

for three years in the 1850s, Britain

and France were allies against Russia in a gruesome conflict far from home.

Over the years, I have been struck

that Bradshaw gives me a very accurate impression

of the United Kingdom in the mid 19th century,

with one exception -

it doesn't reflect the horror

that the country had felt over the recent Crimean War,

one of the very few conflicts in which Victorian Britain was involved.

In order to put that right,

a little bird tells me that I should visit Romsey.

In 1847, the railway reached Romsey -

a beautiful market town outside the New Forest.

Bradshaw's remarks that, "Like many other places of great antiquity,

"Romsey owes its foundation to a monastic establishment -

"a Benedictine abbey on a very extensive scale."

So I'll look at that.

The Crimean War was characterised by courage and carnage.

It shook public confidence in the British establishment.

It led to army reforms, the creation of the Victoria Cross

and big changes to military medical services.

Those dark times were brightened by the story of Florence Nightingale.

Here in Romsey is her family home of Embley Park.

I am meeting Natasha McEnroe,

the director of the Florence Nightingale Museum.

Natasha, what sort of people were the Nightingales?

They were rich.

They came from the industrialised money of the Midlands.

So when they took over Embley,

it was quite a modest Georgian house.

It only had five bedrooms, and so they drastically remodelled it.

What did the family consist of when they came here?

Nightingale's parents had the two daughters -

Parthenope, who was Florence's older sister,

and then Florence, who was just a year younger.

What sort of education did the young Florence have?

It's quite an unusual one for the time.

Florence's father believed that women should be educated

as well as men, so he ensured that the girls were taught the sciences,

the classics, and Florence's own passion - mathematics.

Embley Park was a place for entertaining.

This fiercely intelligent Florence encountered guests,

who were eminent scientists or literary figures,

such as Charles Darwin and Elizabeth Gaskell.

In the grounds of Embley Park,

the course of Florence's life was set.

So this is a hugely significant place

in the story of Florence Nightingale,

because it's underneath this very tree

that Florence felt very strongly that she was called by God

to serve her fellow man through nursing.

So how did she actually become a nurse?

Well, it was something that was very, very difficult.

Nursing was not a profession at this time.

It was very much looked down on.

So she managed to pick up various bits of experience

while travelling around Europe, and then finally, in her late 20s,

became a superintendent of a small charitable hospital.

So how was it that she went off to Crimea?

She was approached by Sidney Herbert,

the Secretary at War,

and asked if she would lead a group of 38 nurses

to go out to protect and to care for the soldiers

in the appalling conditions that they found themselves in.

The sanitation was non-existent,

so latrines were backed-up and coming into the rooms.

The soldiers had no beds,

they were wearing their bloodstained shirts from the battlefield.

So this was a huge challenge Florence and her nurses.

Nightingale referred to the facility as the Kingdom of Hell.

The majority of the 25,000 British deaths during the Crimean War

were caused by infection and disease rather than battle wounds.

As a result of her passion for statistics,

she recorded valuable and persuasive data

and wrote countless reports in support of her demands for change.

Florence became a megastar very quickly.

Her name was all over the British press,

and she wanted use that fame

to ensure that the terrible experiences

of the Crimean War shouldn't be repeated,

and that public health should be reformed and improved

as a result of her experience.

She basically campaigned and lobbied

for health reform for the rest of her life.

Amongst her many achievements,

she transformed nursing into respectable profession for women,

establishing in 1860 the first professional training school

for nurses at St Thomas' Hospital in London.

It might seem corny to place a candle at the grave of Florence Nightingale,

the lady with a lamp, but during a grim period in Victorian Britain,

her courageous deeds shone through the darkness like a light.

From Romsey, the next leg of my journey

takes me south to the New Forest,

which is served by the station of Brockenhurst.

Tickets, please. Thank you.

Thank you.

'I am changing at Southampton to continue my journey

'through Forest landscape to Dorchester.'

The straight lines of the railway enabled trains to travel fast

and to avoid the slow meanders of roads and canals.

At the time of my guidebook and indeed throughout the 19th century,

travel by rail was superior to travel by road

because tracks provided stability and speed,

but improvements to roads and to engine technology

tipped the balance in the other direction during the 20th century.

Where better to find out about those changes

than at the house of the Montagus, Beaulieu?

Built on the site of an old Cistercian abbey,

Beaulieu is the home of the Montagu family

and, since 1972, the National Motor Museum.

HORN BEEPS

Beaulieu's motoring heritage

originates from the late 19th century,

with the second Lord Montagu,

who was an avid campaigner for the motorist.

I'm meeting his grandson, the current Lord Montagu.

So what was it that your grandfather was able to do

to make the motor car more acceptable in the United Kingdom?

He introduced motoring to royalty.

He took the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII,

for his first drive in a car.

That then made motoring much more acceptable to people.

He also took his car, as an MP, to the House of Commons.

He wanted to drive into the yard, but was stopped by the policeman,

so he appealed to the Speaker who said, "Yes, you can come in."

And so he was the first person to bring a petrol car

into the yard at the House of Commons,

which I'm sure at the time was quite an excitement.

The Museum charts the history of the automobile over the ages.

Volunteer John Richardson is going to show me the early motoring machines,

which, like the railway locomotives of the time, ran on steam.

Hello, John.

I think most people know how locomotives developed

on the railways during the 19th century,

but not much idea of what was going on on the roads,

but I suppose that this is part of the answer.

Well, this, yes. This is the 1875 Grenville,

which really is the sort of end of the steam development

of road-going vehicles.

How did it actually operate?

Well, you have the poor old stoker at the back,

who's going to put coal into the boiler here to make the steam,

which is going to work the engine down here.

Additionally, you have two men at the front.

One is the steersman, he is going to point it in the right direction.

The other one is the driver.

So, you have a crew of three for, what,

a maximum of three passengers, by the look of it?

You can get one passenger in the front and three at the back here,

so it's not a very large load-bearing vehicle.

The condition of the roads is quite an issue, isn't it?

People who own roads are not very favourably disposed

towards these large, heavy vehicles.

Oh, no. The roads were in a pretty shocking state at the time.

Though they had the turnpike trusts,

who were empowered to raise tolls and look after the roads,

there was a great resistance to these steam vehicles,

so they introduced the Red Flag Act,

which required a gentleman to walk 60 yards in front with a red flag.

So how do we date the origins of the internal combustion engine?

Well, we have to come to the very early 1860s,

when Etienne Lenoir developed his gas-powered engine,

and followed by Nikolaus Otto

with the four-stroke cycle engine as well.

And neither one of those British.

I'm afraid not. No, they were German.

'In Britain, as a result of intense opposition

'to anything other than horse-drawn road transport,'

Parliament imposed a speed limit of 4mph.

While Britain had led the way with the railways,

it fell far behind in early automobile development.

France and Germany were the pioneers of the motor car.

By the end of the 19th century,

are motor cars in Britain becoming quite popular?

Well, they are becoming very popular indeed.

There is a growing sort of opinion that wants to get cars onto the road.

The removal of the Red Flag Act in 1896

and the Emancipation Run,

when the cars were allowed to drive on the roads.

The drove from London to Brighton.

Then the public could see the cars,

and it even gained further popularity.

I am intrigued to try out one of these early models,

perhaps to be enthralled and terrified as Victorians were.

Engineer Ian Stanfield will be my instructor.

Ian, hello.

-Hello, Michael.

-What a splendid vehicle. What is it?

It is an 1886 Benz replica.

-Basically the first motor car.

-Really?

-Are we able to take a spin in it?

-Yeah, for sure, yeah.

How do you get it going?

Well, I'll have to fiddle around the back here

and spin the flywheel to get it going.

So if you want to sit up in the driving position...

OK. I'll do that.

..I'll show you where the controls are.

So it is very simple. This is your steering.

-That's right, and that's left.

-That is clear enough.

This lever here, if you pull it all the way back on,

that is your brake.

And as you ease it forward, that puts it into gear,

so you basically creep forward.

Let's see if I can get it to go.

ENGINE CHUGS

So, brake off, push the lever forward,

ease it into gear and off we go.

-Tally-ho!

-Off we go.

We'll turn round to the right here.

CHUGGING CONTINUES

If I make this prediction,

the motor car will never catch on or be a threat to the railways.

'The car went on to challenge the railway's pre-eminence.'

And it is one of the many innovations first seen in Victorian times

that dominate our world today.

Britain was rarely troubled by war during the Victorian period,

partly because we were so well-prepared,

matching every French improvement in military technology

and then trumping it.

It's an irony that when war did break out in the Crimea in the 1850s,

France was our ally.

We then rediscovered the horrors of warfare,

and our national compassion was personified by Florence Nightingale -

the most admired of all Victorians.

'Next time, I investigate the ins and outs of carpets.'

This is how you weave.

'Discover the little-known railway verse of Thomas Hardy.'

"And the wheels moved on.

"O could it but be That I had alighted there!"

-He missed his chance.

-He did indeed.

'And brush up on a forgotten artist.'

You're doing a grand job, Michael. I think Danby would be proud of you.

MICHAEL LAUGHS You old flatterer!