Lymington Town to Exmouth 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.

The southern shores of Britain inspired creative Victorians.

On today's journey, I want to find out how,

during a period of great social change, works of art, literature

and design helped to transform, improve and even save lives.

With my Bradshaw's Guide in hand,

I'm travelling the length of England's south coast.

I began in the east, taking in forts and resorts.

I'll pass through the literary landscape of the West Country

before concluding at the most south-westerly tip of England.

Today, my journey begins by the sea in Lymington.

Travelling inland to the town of Dorchester, I pass through Axminster,

before concluding my journey back on the coast in Exmouth.

'Today, I investigate the ins and outs of carpets...'

This is how you weave.

MACHINERY GRINDS

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

"And the wheels moved on.

"Oh 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, um, Danby would be proud of you.

You old flatterer! LAUGHTER

My first stop will be Lymington.

Bradshaw's tells me that it's a "prettily situated town, whose

"maritime operations are chiefly confined to the Isle of Wight."

Intriguingly, in 1901, there was a plan to build a train tunnel

from Lymington to the island.

For me, that is one of the great railway might-have-beens.

As it is, tourists have been left to cross the brine,

with all its charms and perils.

With no tunnel, the pretty Georgian market town of Lymington has been

connected to the Isle of Wight by ferry since the mid-19th century.

Located at the western end of the Solent, sailing defines Lymington.

There have been boatyards here since medieval times

and it's famous for yacht building and racing.

With such a watery heritage,

it's appropriate that I'm arriving on a wet day.

Heading to the Berthon Boat Company,

which builds lifeboats and began in Bradshaw's day.

It's run by Brian May.

-Hello, Brian?

-Good morning, Michael.

-What have we here?

We have a genuine original

19th-century Berthon collapsible boat.

-And I'd like you to help me build it.

-Let's go.

What an intriguing object.

'The Berthon collapsible boat was invented by

'the Reverend EL Berthon.'

'He was Vicar of Romsey from 1860-1892

'and displayed a keen interest in mechanical science.'

Wow, this is quick to do, isn't it?

It is. It was designed to be a very quick object to put together,

so that the users could either use them for safety on board ships,

or for deployment in exploratory expeditions.

We've locked the seat in with that pin!

'Even as a novice, I could assemble it in just two minutes.'

And these could be used as a mast,

so some of them would be used for sailing,

Otherwise you would get in and row the boat with your passengers.

All set! Brian, come and join me.

At the beginning of the 19th century,

what was the legislation regarding lifeboats on ships?

There was none, literally.

Um, the SS Orion in 1850 was what started it all.

She was a packet boat that went between Liverpool and Glasgow

and she foundered and the Reverend Clark,

who was a friend of the Reverend Berthon, was on board

and he was one of the very few to escape with his life.

And he then went to visit the Reverend Berthon and said,

"You must, with your inventive mind, be able to do something about this,"

so he set about inventing this boat.

Obviously, you could pack a lot of these onto a ship.

How does it work? What are the sides made of?

The sides are made of flax, a canvas, double skinned.

And he came up with a turpentine, linseed and soap mixture

to make it waterproof and, because the canvas was so well protected,

it was sold as "for use in all weather",

whether it was 40 or 50 degrees outside, or minus 40 or 50.

'This ingenious craft was

'demonstrated to Queen Victoria at the Great Exhibition of 1851.'

However, before it was used as a lifeboat,

other applications presented themselves.

During the Crimean and Boer wars, the military appreciated a light,

collapsible vessel, which could be hauled into remote environments.

It took a catastrophe for its value as a lifeboat to become evident.

Now, one of the most infamous cases,

where there were not enough lifeboats,

was the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

Were there Berthon boats on board?

No, they did have a competitor's boats on,

that took about 20-25 people, but the sad thing was,

they could only cater for a third of the maximum capacity.

On the first voyage, there was two thirds capacity,

so they only had enough lifeboats for half the people,

which is why so many people died.

When the Titanic sister ship, the Olympic,

came into port a week later, there was a furore, so 24 boats

immediately were put on board - Berthon boats - for the hands,

cos the deckhands wouldn't go to sea without sufficient boats.

But shortly afterwards,

another 300 were placed on board for the passengers.

Essentially, it took 62 years to achieve its status as a lifeboat.

In the meantime, it had been used for theatres of war and exploring.

'Thousands were made for lifeboat use up to the 1930s.

'As lighter materials were developed,

'collapsible lifeboats of Berthon's ilk were superseded.

'Today, the company that bears the Reverend's name

'still produces boats to save lives, but they're on a larger scale.'

-Evidently, Brian, the business is still lifeboats today?

-That's right.

We've built 14 lifeboats for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute

in the last 2½, 3 years.

-Quite a complicated thing, a lifeboat, these days?

-They are.

They're £2.5 million each, for a 45-foot boat.

These ones are designed very shallow, with jet engines,

so that they can go up beaches and go very shallow.

Up beaches? They actually come up the beach?

They get deployed off the beach and, when they come back,

they whizz up the beach at 30 knots and the passengers,

or the people being saved, can get off the boat.

'The life-saving work, begun by the Reverend Berthon,

'is continued in the modern era.'

Leaving Lymington behind, I return to the rails

to continue my journey, rejoining the main line at Brockenhurst.

My next stop will be Dorchester. The guidebook says that it's

"The capital of Dorsetshire in a pretty part of the South Downs,

"at the termination of the South Western Railway."

Strange to think that the line didn't yet go on as far as Weymouth.

For Thomas Hardy fans, Dorsetshire will always be Wessex

and Dorchester will always be Casterbridge.

The arrival of the railways in rural areas like Dorset

was met with a mixture of excitement and concern.

Many believed that rural life would change forever,

and none more so than Thomas Hardy, writer and poet,

who was born in the small Dorset hamlet of Higher Bockhampton in 1840.

In his novels, the fictional county of Wessex

was based on people and places around Dorchester

and his writing heavily featured the coming of the railways.

'A short walk from the town,

'I'm meeting Thomas Hardy expert, Dr Jane Thomas, at Max Gate.'

-Jane?

-Hello, Michael, welcome to Max Gate.

'One of the Victorian era's most noted authors,

'creator of Tess of the d'Urbervilles

'and the Mayor of Casterbridge, Hardy wrote with earthy realism.

'The working-class son of a servant and a stonemason,

'he criticised the Victorian constraints, which made it hard

'for people to rise through the social ranks, as he aimed to do.'

-What impelled Hardy to better himself?

-I think it was his mother.

He had a very ambitious mother

and she was very careful of his education,

um, and so she was responsible for getting him

apprenticed to an architect, so he'd become a professional

middle-class man and not a builder, like his father and his brother,

and, um, it's interesting,

when he first went to London in the 1860s to seek his fortune,

he tried very hard to lose his rural bearing and his rural accent.

'As an architect in London,

'he oversaw the excavation of the graveyard of St Pancras Old Church

'during the construction of the new railway terminus.'

But given that Max Gate became his house, evidently,

he returned from London to Dorchester?

Yes, he didn't get on very well in London.

He found the pace of life there very stressful

and he found the pollution very injurious to his health.

And he also felt that he didn't write very well in London,

that he was really inspired by the area that he grew up in

and knew well in his childhood

and so, he moved back to Dorchester fairly soon.

'Continuing as an architect in Dorchester, he wrote on the side.

'Far From The Madding Crowd was so successful that, at the age of 34,

'he committed to writing full-time.'

This house is obviously the house of a successful man.

Yes, he designed it himself and, in 1885, it really represented

the height of middle-class convenience and comfort.

He received some very important writers,

such as JM Barrie, Rudyard Kipling, George Bernard Shaw and Edward VIII,

the Prince of Wales then, also came here.

'Hardy took his place in polite society,

'but the impediments to social mobility

'were a continuing theme of the novels.'

Jude the Obscure is the great novel of social climbing,

where a young boy, a young orphaned boy,

decides he wants to go to university

and the whole of Jude the Obscure is really about his attempt

to better himself, but of course, it doesn't work for him at all.

'Hardy published 14 novels, 49 short stories

'and nearly 1,000 poems,

'much written in this study.'

How does he make use of railways in his novels?

Railways are an opportunity for dramatic speculation,

because you've got lots of strangers meeting,

transient populations, people who may or may never meet again,

lots of brief encounters we might say, um,

so they provide him with quite a lot of material for what-ifs.

I confess I only know Thomas Hardy as a novelist,

but he was also a considerable poet, wasn't he?

Yes, he was, um, he claimed to have spent more time writing poems

than writing novels and being a poet was his first calling

and, perhaps as an example of how he sees the romantic possibilities

in railways, you might want to read Faintheart In A Railway Station?

Hmm, thank you.

"At nine in the morning, there passed a church

"At ten, there passed me by the sea

"At 12, a town of smoke and smirch

"At two, a forest of oak and birch

"And then, on a platform, she

"A radiant stranger, who saw not me

"I said, 'Get out to her! Do I dare?'

"But I kept my seat in my search for a plea

"And the wheels moved on

"Oh, could it but be That I had alighted there!"

-He missed his chance.

-He did indeed.

Thomas Hardy lived at Max Gate until his death in 1928.

I'm making my way back into the town

which was Hardy's inspiration for Casterbridge.

I end my day at a hostelry, referenced in both Bradshaw's

and Hardy's Mayor or Casterbridge - The Kings Arms.

It's the morning of my second day.

Leaving Dorchester, I continue my travels westwards,

rejoining the mainline at Yeovil in Somerset and continuing into Devon.

My first stop of the new day will be Axminster,

apparently situated on the River Axe.

"Some of the best and finest description of carpets

"are made here." As I weave my way towards Devon, carpet making looms.

The route to Axminster skims along the river and past lush pasture.

The landscape suited farming sheep for wool

and the river drove the mills.

I'm keen to discover how Axminster became synonymous with carpets.

At the town's new heritage centre,

I'll find out more from local historian Laurence Hitchcock.

-Hello, Laurence.

-Good morning, Michael.

Good morning, welcome to Thomas Whitty House.

Laurence, this is an extraordinary object. Tell me about this carpet.

It is wonderful, it's recently come back to its home.

It was handmade in this location and we're very privileged to

actually have it back here after 246 years.

So handmade by whom?

Well, Thomas Whitty, who invented the Axminster weave construction,

had a very large family.

He had six daughters, three sons and they all worked in his manufactory.

They had small fingers, nimble fingers,

and he was able to produce the carpets slightly cheaper than

other manufacturers by having a vertical loom

instead of a horizontal loom and so his business grew and grew

and became really quite worldwide famous.

Apart from using his own family,

-did he use child labour more generally?

-Yes.

Generally speaking, it was children and women

who did the weaving for him.

Shocking today, child labour was the norm in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Only in 1833 did the Factory Act ban children from working

in textile factories, but even so, only if under the age of nine.

When Whitty founded the factory in the 1750s,

a big workforce was required to meet the demands of the world of fashion.

The greatest day of his life was when King George III visited

this manufactory with Queen Charlotte and three princesses,

and it was a huge thing and she bought some carpet, the Queen,

and that promoted his business.

'Thomas Whitty died in 1792 and, 43 years later, the business closed.

'Some of his carpets survive, such as this one,

'which adorned the dining room of Rockbeare Manor in Exeter from 1769.'

I call them works of art.

You go to these lovely old palaces and houses

and everybody knows about the Renoirs and the Chippendale,

but these are works of art as well and they're remarkable.

'When the Whitty factory closed in 1835,

'production of carpets switched from Axminster to Kidderminster.

At the time of my Bradshaw's Guide,

when the Victorians were carpeting their homes,

none was made in Axminster.

'But the story didn't end there.'

-Hello, Josh.

-Hello, Michael, pleasure to meet you.

'Josh Dutfield is the commercial director of today's factory.'

How was it that your ancestors came to have the Axminster business?

My family's been holidaying in Cornwall for some time

and originated in Glasgow

and moved into the carpeting industry in Kidderminster,

so whilst on holiday, they decided to stop off at Axminster,

went to see the local vicar, just for a tour around the town,

and the local vicar advised them that, actually, there hadn't been

carpet production in the town for nearly a century at that time,

so they took the decision - my great grandfather and my grandfather -

to move their factory from Kidderminster to the location

we have now, predominantly because the rail line

actually backs onto the back of the factory,

so that gave them a logistical advantage as well.

And did they just kind of pick up the old Axminster method and design?

What they use is the basis of the weave,

but added what's called in our industry an eight pitch,

which is the finest specification Axminster weave you can get.

'The luxurious weave devised by Whitty endures,

'but the scores of women and children operating looms

'have been replaced by machines.

'These durable products carpet hotels, shops and railway carriages.

'The man responsible for these bespoke pieces is

'Gary Bridge, head of design.'

So this, I guess, would be

the traditional way of designing a carpet, would it?

Yeah, this is a good example of how we used to do carpets originally,

so we used to draw them by hand and then paint them on this graph paper,

so this whole process could take about a month

to mix the colours to paint it.

Now, this design on the floor, which is a lovely looking thing,

what is that you're up to there?

This is the carpet we're making for the saloon at Brighton Pavilion.

Originally done in 1830, it was an original Thomas Whitty carpet.

Because there isn't much of the carpet left, we've had to base this

on paintings done from the 1840s, 1850s, of the original carpet.

Then, in total, this'll probably take about 15 months to design,

-cos of the intricacy and the size of the rug.

-Extraordinary!

That looks like a railway carpet.

-Yeah, one of the railway carpets we do.

-And that's nicely resistant

-to anybody who throws his tea or coffee over the carpet?

-Yes.

I mean, the beauty of what we do here is we do anything

from quite a simple design, for this rail company here,

to some historic works for beautiful locations

to, obviously, the cream of the job, which is the Brighton Pavilion.

I think I will go downstairs

and see how the boys put your designs into action.

-OK, nice.

-Thanks very much, Gary.

-Thank you.

-Bye-bye.

'Operating one of the computerised looms is Steve.'

I've been seeing some of the designs that Gary's got upstairs.

How are they sent down to you to weave them?

Well, from the design department,

Gary will send it down through the network,

which comes in through the cables into our Jacquard computer here.

The Jacquard will then turn that into motion movement,

where it will lift the carriers to

the required height at the required time for the required colour.

-It picks each thread as it's needed?

-Yes.

-And all of that is seamlessly done by computer?

-Yes.

-Yeah.

-Can we give it a whirl?

-We certainly can.

This is how you weave.

MACHINERY GRINDS

'This carpet is a special design.'

Steve, that is beautiful!

Great British Railway Journeys and a lovely picture of a locomotive.

That carpet is in the best possible taste!

Leaving Axminster behind, the final leg of my journey arrives

at the coast alongside the River Exe on a beautiful section of track.

My next stop will be Exmouth.

"Situated on the eastern side of the Exe,

"two projected sandbanks form a partial enclosure.

"The river is about a mile and a half across.

"The landscape has a rich softness."

It makes you want to dip your toes in the sea

and your paintbrush in the oils.

'Until the 18th century,

'Exmouth was a backwater fishing port compared to its neighbour Exeter.

'But in the Victorian era,

'it started to attract a fashionable summer crowd.

'The railway arrived in 1861, helping Exmouth to become a scenic resort.

'My guidebook notes that it's a popular place for artists.'

Bradshaw's says, "Probably at no place in England

"are the effects of sunrise and sunset

"more surprising or beautiful than at Exmouth.

"Here Danby, the celebrated landscape painter,

"fixed his residence and produced most of his famous pictures."

Danby? Danby?

Who on earth can that man be?!

-Excuse me, sir?

-Yeah?

-Have you ever heard of Francis Danby?

Ladies, have you ever heard of Francis Danby?

-No, afraid not.

-OK.

-No.

-Francis Danby?

-No, I'm not sure...

-I can't say I have.

-No, we can't say we have.

-Francis Danby?

-No.

-Never heard of Francis Danby?

-No.

-I can't find anyone who's heard of him.

-Aw.

-Goodness.

-That is such a shame, isn't it?

-Such a shame.

Someone will know, someone will know him.

'So how is it that a painter so well-known to Bradshaw

'is virtually unknown today?

'One man keen to revive Francis Danby's memory

'is artist Ray Balkwill.'

Ray, who then was Francis Danby and what's the connection with Exmouth?

Well, Francis Danby was one of the leading painters

of the Romantic period in the 19th century and,

in his heyday, he was more popular than Constable.

Um, his connection with Exmouth, he moved down here in 1846,

really for the quality of light and the magnificent sunsets we get here.

-You've got a couple of examples of his work here. May I see those?

-Yes.

Well, this one was The Deluge, which was painted in 1839.

As you can see, it's quite melodramatic

and, to be honest, he was very, very popular for this type of work.

-This was at the height of his fame, really.

-This doesn't really appeal

very much to the modern taste, except of course if you happen

-to want 20 naked women in your painting, I suppose.

-Absolutely.

And when he came to Exmouth, his mood changed dramatically

to one of tranquillity, peacefulness and calm

and it was more naturalistic.

These ships and masts remind me a bit of late 19th-century French painters

and, the sky and the sea,

these colours remind me rather of JMW Turner.

They are very Turner-esque.

But I think, if you see the sunsets in Exmouth,

you realise actually these colours are very, very true.

They look a little bit over the top,

but we get the most fantastic sunsets down in Exmouth and I think

this is one of the reasons that drew him here in the first place.

'So popular was he that he exhibited at London's Royal Academy 48 times

'and, reputedly, Queen Victoria bought a work of his

'to hang in Osborne House.'

Ray, why do you think that Francis Danby has been largely forgotten?

Well, I think the main reason, Michael, is that his work

more or less went out of fashion as soon as he died,

but some of his best work was lost,

so therefore, you know, I think he's forgotten for that reason.

'Ray is taking me to one of Danby's favourite locations.

'I'm intrigued to see what captivated him and attracts artists today.'

So, Ray, you've got, er, your easel here and your artist friends.

-Nice to meet you, Michael.

-This is Mark and Marcia.

-Hello, Marcia.

-Hi.

-Very good to see you.

-Two very accomplished painters.

Ray, you're an artist yourself. How are you finding the light today?

Oh, it's fantastic. The clarity of light is amazing!

This is the Halden Hills across here and you can almost see every tree.

-But I thought you might like to have a go at putting the sky in?

-Hmm.

Well, I'm no kind of artist at all.

Ray, here I am just sort of daubing a bit.

But how...how would you describe what it is to paint a good sky?

Well, I think you've got to have a love of the subject

first of all, Michael, and, um, in a way, skies are so inspiring,

which is why Danby was so good at them - he loved the subject.

You're doing a grand job, Michael.

I think, um, Danby would be proud of you.

You old flatterer. LAUGHTER

Tomas Whitty made wonderful Axminster carpets,

but his use of child labour would horrify us today.

Thomas Hardy wrote about the harsh living and working conditions of

the rural poor and the injustices and the tragedies that they might suffer.

Edward Berthon was a religious man with a highly practical streak,

as he demonstrated when he invented his collapsible lifeboat.

He set out to improve the value the Victorians placed on human life.

'Next time, I attempt to learn the difficult art of crimping...'

-I don't think much of yours(!)

-No.

'..get to marvel at one of Brunel's finest feats...'

It's lovely to see a structure that's still here

so long after it was built still in use for its original purpose.

'..discover how a small bay in Cornwall

'effectively controlled the British Empire...'

Cornwall is still the hub of communication.

They carried messages all over the world.

'..and pick up the essentials of the Cornish language.'

Yeghes da!