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For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:09 | |
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 | 0:00:15 | |
I'm using a Bradshaw's guide to understand how trains transformed Britain. | 0:00:15 | 0:00:21 | |
Its landscape, its industry, society and leisure time. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:25 | |
As I crisscross the country 150 years later, | 0:00:26 | 0:00:30 | |
it helps me to discover the Britain of today. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:33 | |
My rail journey from north-western to eastern England has brought me to Lincolnshire, | 0:00:53 | 0:01:00 | |
where I'll encounter yet another example of 19th-century industrial ingenuity, | 0:01:00 | 0:01:05 | |
and consider the contribution to English literature made by Britain's | 0:01:05 | 0:01:11 | |
longest-serving Poet Laureate. | 0:01:11 | 0:01:14 | |
In Ely in Cambridgeshire, | 0:01:14 | 0:01:16 | |
I'll be reminded that some of the era's loftiest achievements were | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
inspired by Victorian godliness. | 0:01:20 | 0:01:23 | |
My route is taking me on a diagonal across England towards East Anglia. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:34 | |
From Blackpool, I took in the mighty northern conurbations, | 0:01:34 | 0:01:37 | |
developed in the industrial age. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:39 | |
Leaving Manchester, I cross the Peak District using the route of the | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
North Country Continental Rail Service. | 0:01:43 | 0:01:46 | |
I'll soon traverse the Fens, | 0:01:46 | 0:01:48 | |
finally to arrive in Essex, gateway to Continental Europe. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:52 | |
This part of my journey starts in Gainsborough and heads to Lincoln. | 0:01:55 | 0:01:59 | |
From there, I'll travel south-east to March in Cambridgeshire | 0:01:59 | 0:02:03 | |
before finishing in the Fenland city of Ely. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
'On this leg, I have my reaction times challenged by a mechanical marvel...' | 0:02:08 | 0:02:14 | |
This would drive you mad if you did this all day. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:16 | |
'..get carried away by the cadences of conflict...' | 0:02:16 | 0:02:19 | |
"Half a league, half a league, half a league onward into the valley of death rode the 600." | 0:02:19 | 0:02:24 | |
'And I see how today's railway is regenerating its past.' | 0:02:24 | 0:02:29 | |
We recycled around 46,000 tonnes of steel last year, | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
which is actually the equivalent of six Eiffel Towers. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:35 | |
My first stop of the day will be Gainsborough. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
This is how Bradshaw's presents it - "agreeably situated on the eastern bank of the River Trent. | 0:02:49 | 0:02:55 | |
"An elegant stone bridge of three elliptical archers forms a great ornament to the town." | 0:02:56 | 0:03:02 | |
That's Gainsborough in a nutshell. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:06 | |
But should you judge a town by its packaging? | 0:03:06 | 0:03:09 | |
In the case of Gainsborough, perhaps you should. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:11 | |
-TANNOY: -Next stop is Gainsborough Lea Road. | 0:03:15 | 0:03:17 | |
Situated on the River Trent, Gainsborough is Britain's most inland port. | 0:03:19 | 0:03:23 | |
Here a pioneering company invented a process which at the time constituted a breakthrough. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:30 | |
And has since become an indispensable part of our daily lives. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:34 | |
Wrapping and packaging. | 0:03:36 | 0:03:37 | |
The company was founded by William Rose. | 0:03:39 | 0:03:41 | |
I'm meeting sales director Andrew Mann. | 0:03:44 | 0:03:46 | |
An impressive sight. | 0:03:49 | 0:03:51 | |
-Thank you. -Andrew, I can't imagine a world without packaging. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
What was it like? | 0:03:54 | 0:03:56 | |
Well, it didn't exist, it was all completely manual. | 0:03:56 | 0:04:00 | |
It was literally take the sweets out the jar and place it into a bag, and that was it. | 0:04:00 | 0:04:05 | |
And who was William Rose, who made a difference to that situation? | 0:04:07 | 0:04:10 | |
He was working in a tobacco shop. | 0:04:10 | 0:04:14 | |
It was his job to measure out, weigh and pack the tobacco. | 0:04:14 | 0:04:18 | |
So that was his inspiration to develop an automated machine. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:23 | |
What, he became fed up with having to do it? | 0:04:23 | 0:04:25 | |
He became fed up with having to do it, absolutely. | 0:04:25 | 0:04:27 | |
Did he realise fairly soon that this could be applied to other products? | 0:04:27 | 0:04:30 | |
He did. He very soon got into packaging things like chocolate bars, | 0:04:30 | 0:04:35 | |
soap tablets, anything similar. | 0:04:35 | 0:04:38 | |
Any consumer goods. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:39 | |
William Rose's invention changed the retail world forever. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
A chance visit by an American businessmen, Richard Harvey Wright, | 0:04:45 | 0:04:48 | |
to London tobacconist in 1892 gave Rose the chance to sell his machines | 0:04:48 | 0:04:54 | |
to the United States. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
His business rapidly grew to employ more than 50. | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
Did Rose's stick to doing just packaging machinery? | 0:05:00 | 0:05:04 | |
No. In fact, in wartimes, | 0:05:04 | 0:05:06 | |
they were there much involved in the military and RAF, | 0:05:06 | 0:05:09 | |
making turrets for Lancaster bombers, for example. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
That's quite a leap from packaging machinery. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:14 | |
It is. It is, but they were well ahead of the game in their engineering | 0:05:14 | 0:05:18 | |
skills in Gainsborough. | 0:05:18 | 0:05:20 | |
And they turned to William Rose for his expertise. | 0:05:20 | 0:05:23 | |
Today the company no longer wraps products, | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
but it continues to make and service the machines that do. | 0:05:28 | 0:05:31 | |
You've got a busy shop here. | 0:05:32 | 0:05:34 | |
We have, yeah. This is the machine shop, | 0:05:34 | 0:05:36 | |
where we produce all the components. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:38 | |
Those components get designed in the design office. | 0:05:38 | 0:05:41 | |
They produce the drawings. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:42 | |
And in here, we manufacture the components from the raw metal. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:45 | |
-And all of that then goes into your machines? -Some of the best packaging machines in the world. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:49 | |
Some even say that Rose's branded packaging may be how Cadbury's famous chocolates got their name. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:56 | |
A lovely-looking vintage machine. Looks a bit like a 1950s jukebox. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
It is a bit. It was built in the 1950s by Rose in Gainsborough, | 0:06:01 | 0:06:05 | |
and it was designed for wrapping sweets. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:08 | |
Don't tell me it's still in service. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:09 | |
Still in operation today in a factory in Leeds. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
Well, it looks like a bit of a challenge, but might I give it a go? | 0:06:12 | 0:06:15 | |
Just press the start button. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:17 | |
MECHANISM RATTLES | 0:06:17 | 0:06:19 | |
The machine is moving really fast. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:21 | |
Much faster than I can do, sliding them in. | 0:06:22 | 0:06:25 | |
The people who operated this machine didn't miss a one. | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
This would drive you mad if you did this all day. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:37 | |
-Definitely getting better. -Yeah, you're getting the hang of it. | 0:06:37 | 0:06:41 | |
Ah! Enough of that, end of scene, it's a wrap. | 0:06:42 | 0:06:46 | |
Brilliant! | 0:06:46 | 0:06:47 | |
From Gainsborough, I'm rejoining the Sheffield to Lincoln line, | 0:06:52 | 0:06:56 | |
and travelling 19 miles south-east to the county town. | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
I'm on my way to Lincoln, | 0:07:11 | 0:07:13 | |
which Bradshaw's tells me is a cathedral town and capital of Lincolnshire. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:18 | |
The Roman Lindum, from which the present name is derived. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:22 | |
Thinking about science and engineering, | 0:07:22 | 0:07:25 | |
it's clear to me that the Victorians applied their reason, | 0:07:25 | 0:07:29 | |
but they weren't immune to rhyme. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:31 | |
They lived their lives in prose, but they were moved by verse. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:36 | |
I'm on the trail of a melancholy poet who brought Queen Victoria | 0:07:36 | 0:07:41 | |
great comfort during her long years of widowhood. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
-TANNOY: -We will shortly be arriving at Lincoln Station. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
Lincoln's fortunes have ebbed and flowed. | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
During the 13th century, it was the third-largest city in England. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:05 | |
But by the beginning of the 18th, it was described as a one-street town. | 0:08:05 | 0:08:10 | |
"I cannot rest from travel. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:15 | |
"I would drink life to the lees." | 0:08:15 | 0:08:18 | |
I can empathise with those words from the pen of Lincolnshire's most | 0:08:18 | 0:08:22 | |
famous native, born in 1809. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:24 | |
When I was last here, I missed this fine statue of a Lincolnshire man. | 0:08:31 | 0:08:36 | |
Alfred Lord Tennyson, a great Victorian. | 0:08:36 | 0:08:39 | |
He is honoured now by standing in the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral in | 0:08:39 | 0:08:43 | |
perpetuity, although he entered the valley of death back in 1892. | 0:08:43 | 0:08:48 | |
Today the city is home to the Tennyson Research Centre. | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
Grace Timmins is the collections officer. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:57 | |
Welcome to the Tennyson Research Centre. | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
And all this is to do with Tennyson? | 0:09:02 | 0:09:04 | |
-It is. -This is really quite a collection. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:05 | |
It is. It's the most significant collection of Tennyson-related papers in the world. | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
Where was he from? | 0:09:09 | 0:09:10 | |
He was born in Somersby, which is a hamlet in the Wolds. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:13 | |
He was one of 11 children born in 13 years. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
Do we know a lot about Alfred's childhood? | 0:09:16 | 0:09:18 | |
Yes. He did have formal education between the ages of seven and 11. | 0:09:18 | 0:09:22 | |
But it didn't suit him at all, he didn't like it, | 0:09:22 | 0:09:25 | |
and his father took him out of school to home-educate him. | 0:09:25 | 0:09:27 | |
So these books over here are the books that really furnished his mind | 0:09:27 | 0:09:32 | |
and his imagination. | 0:09:32 | 0:09:34 | |
Over here, there's a book that his father set him as homework. | 0:09:34 | 0:09:39 | |
It's Virgil's Aeneid, | 0:09:39 | 0:09:42 | |
and you can see all the work that has gone into translating it. | 0:09:42 | 0:09:46 | |
But what you can also see at the front is Tennyson's own doodles. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:51 | |
And this is a picture of his beloved homeland. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:53 | |
There's little bits of music coming out of it there. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
And there's also, he's done here the address that many of us I think have | 0:09:56 | 0:10:00 | |
put into books, "Alfred Tennyson, Somersby in Lincolnshire, in England, | 0:10:00 | 0:10:05 | |
"in Europe, in the world, in the air, in space." | 0:10:05 | 0:10:09 | |
Isn't that extraordinary? Did he achieve early fame with his poems? | 0:10:09 | 0:10:12 | |
Some of the poems that he wrote at this period, | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
such as The Lady of Shalott, | 0:10:14 | 0:10:15 | |
remain some of his most popular and most well-known today. | 0:10:15 | 0:10:18 | |
In 1827, Tennyson had entered Trinity College, Cambridge, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
and became friends with fellow student Arthur Hallam, | 0:10:24 | 0:10:26 | |
who became engaged to his sister. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:29 | |
In 1833, Hallam died of a stroke at the age of only 22. | 0:10:29 | 0:10:34 | |
His big breakthrough was with In Memoriam AHH, to give it its full title, | 0:10:34 | 0:10:39 | |
which is a collection of poems dealing with the grief that he felt | 0:10:39 | 0:10:43 | |
at the death of his best friend. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:45 | |
It took him about 14 years to write. | 0:10:45 | 0:10:47 | |
And this is in his own hand. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:48 | |
This is a gem, and you can actually see where he's altered things. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:51 | |
Absolutely. It's a marvellous object of Victorian culture. | 0:10:51 | 0:10:56 | |
And with this comes fame and success. | 0:10:56 | 0:10:58 | |
Absolutely. It becomes the favourite poem of a whole range of people. | 0:10:58 | 0:11:03 | |
Prince Albert loves it. | 0:11:03 | 0:11:05 | |
We do actually have a letter from Prince Albert here, | 0:11:05 | 0:11:09 | |
where he is asking Tennyson to put his name in the front of a later volume. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:13 | |
"Will you forgive me if I intrude upon your leisure with a request | 0:11:13 | 0:11:17 | |
"which I have thought for some little time of making? | 0:11:17 | 0:11:19 | |
"That you'd be good enough to write your name in the accompanying volume of your poems." | 0:11:19 | 0:11:23 | |
A royal autograph hunter. | 0:11:23 | 0:11:25 | |
Absolutely, it's funny! | 0:11:25 | 0:11:27 | |
In 1850, Tennyson was appointed Poet Laureate, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:31 | |
and wrote In Memoriam, recalling Hallam, | 0:11:31 | 0:11:34 | |
but from which Queen Victoria would draw comfort after the death of Prince Albert. | 0:11:34 | 0:11:39 | |
After what the Times reported as a "hideous blunder" during the Crimean War, | 0:11:39 | 0:11:43 | |
Tennyson wrote the Charge of the Light Brigade. | 0:11:43 | 0:11:47 | |
What does he do while he's Poet Laureate? | 0:11:47 | 0:11:49 | |
Well, the third thing that he does is write The Charge of the Light Brigade. | 0:11:49 | 0:11:53 | |
What we've got here is evidence of how difficult he found it | 0:11:53 | 0:11:57 | |
to get to a final version. | 0:11:57 | 0:11:59 | |
He has crossed out the "half a league, half a league, half a league onward" verse, | 0:11:59 | 0:12:05 | |
and put it up to the top. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:07 | |
He moves it back down again here. | 0:12:07 | 0:12:09 | |
Isn't that remarkable? | 0:12:10 | 0:12:11 | |
And then he moves it back up there. | 0:12:11 | 0:12:13 | |
MICHAEL LAUGHS | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
This is absolutely fascinating. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:16 | |
This is very typical of Tennyson, isn't it? | 0:12:16 | 0:12:18 | |
This sense of rhythm. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:20 | |
"Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, into the valley of death rode the 600." | 0:12:20 | 0:12:25 | |
-I mean, obviously you can feel the horses galloping towards the guns. -Yes. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:28 | |
'Tennyson's life spanned every decade of the 19th century, | 0:12:28 | 0:12:32 | |
'and he bore witness to the birth of the railway.' | 0:12:32 | 0:12:35 | |
Did he write about trains? | 0:12:36 | 0:12:37 | |
He uses the train as a metaphor for progress in his poem Locksley Hall, | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
but he gets it slightly wrong. | 0:12:41 | 0:12:43 | |
Let me read it to you. | 0:12:43 | 0:12:44 | |
"Forward, forward, let us range, | 0:12:44 | 0:12:47 | |
"let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change." | 0:12:47 | 0:12:52 | |
Now, he realised he'd got this wrong, that trains don't run in grooves. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:56 | |
And his son explained it as being the result of his seeing the train, | 0:12:56 | 0:13:02 | |
the very first train that went from Liverpool to Manchester in 1830. | 0:13:02 | 0:13:07 | |
And because of the increasing twilight, | 0:13:07 | 0:13:11 | |
and because of the crowds of people, and because of his own short-sightedness, | 0:13:11 | 0:13:15 | |
he couldn't see exactly how the train was working. | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
And he thought it ran in grooves. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:21 | |
It strikes me that Tennyson has passed out of fashion a bit. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:24 | |
What was his popularity like during his lifetime? | 0:13:24 | 0:13:26 | |
He was incredibly popular in his lifetime. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
He was as popular as Charles Dickens. | 0:13:28 | 0:13:31 | |
My route now takes me up a street voted Britain's Best Place in 2011. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:40 | |
It's aptly named Steep Hill. | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
I'm skirting the walls of the Norman castle on my way to a refreshing ale | 0:13:44 | 0:13:49 | |
in the Victoria pub. | 0:13:49 | 0:13:50 | |
The pub hosts a group of enthusiasts, | 0:13:53 | 0:13:56 | |
who are keeping Tennyson's legacy alive in Lincoln. | 0:13:56 | 0:13:58 | |
Good evening. Do I have the pleasure of joining a group of Lincoln poets? | 0:14:01 | 0:14:06 | |
-Yes. -Yes. -And what you call yourself? | 0:14:06 | 0:14:08 | |
Lincoln Creative Writers. | 0:14:08 | 0:14:10 | |
Very good. And you meet here in the pub. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:12 | |
And what do you do apart from drink pints? | 0:14:12 | 0:14:14 | |
We have a workshop, we do a bit of writing together. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
Have you been inspired by Lincolnshire in the way I think Tennyson was? | 0:14:17 | 0:14:21 | |
Yeah, definitely. I think, obviously living here and writing contemporary | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
stuff, you can't help but be influenced by where you live, so... | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
Would you mind giving me a sample, please? | 0:14:27 | 0:14:29 | |
It's called Peregrines Nest. | 0:14:29 | 0:14:30 | |
"I live in a city where peregrines nest on angels' wings, | 0:14:30 | 0:14:34 | |
"where the exhaled breath of a thousand travellers up its hill hangs in the air with its history, | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
"seeping into every cobble, | 0:14:38 | 0:14:40 | |
"flowing into glasses in bars held up by our veteran souls, | 0:14:40 | 0:14:44 | |
"where men tell tales of older times, of forgotten times, | 0:14:44 | 0:14:48 | |
"where our city continues to grow, | 0:14:48 | 0:14:50 | |
"fields of rye and rape make way for houses, | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
"where new stories are born and raised and schooled, | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
"because this is a city that for a thousand years has never slept, | 0:14:56 | 0:14:59 | |
"although at times is sleepy, | 0:14:59 | 0:15:01 | |
"a city that bends a king's knee, a city that changed the world. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:05 | |
"This is my city. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:06 | |
"This is our city. | 0:15:06 | 0:15:08 | |
"This is a city where peregrines nest on angels' wings." | 0:15:08 | 0:15:11 | |
I found that very beautiful. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:14 | |
I particularly sympathise with the exhaled breath of the people struggling | 0:15:14 | 0:15:18 | |
their way up the hill, which is something that I did this afternoon! | 0:15:18 | 0:15:21 | |
I'm rejoining the root of the North Country Continental Rail service and | 0:15:37 | 0:15:41 | |
travelling 60 miles south-east into Cambridgeshire. | 0:15:41 | 0:15:45 | |
My first stop on this new day will be March. | 0:15:58 | 0:16:02 | |
Bradshaw's tells me it's a village in the parish of Dodington. | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
"Numerous Roman coins and other antiquities have been discovered." | 0:16:05 | 0:16:10 | |
But my currency is different - industrial archaeology. | 0:16:10 | 0:16:15 | |
Set amongst Fenland, March boasts the 11th-century St Wendreda's Church, | 0:16:22 | 0:16:27 | |
about which John Betjeman enthused that it was worth cycling 40 miles | 0:16:27 | 0:16:31 | |
in a headwind to see. | 0:16:31 | 0:16:33 | |
In the 1920s and '30s, | 0:16:34 | 0:16:36 | |
the London and North Eastern Railway built the Whitemoor freight | 0:16:36 | 0:16:39 | |
marshalling yards. | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
They became the largest in Britain, and second largest in Europe. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:45 | |
I'm meeting Joanna Clarke from Network Rail. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
Well, Joanna, an impressive sight. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:51 | |
Tell me about it in its heyday. | 0:16:51 | 0:16:53 | |
Back in the 1920s, | 0:16:53 | 0:16:55 | |
London and North Eastern Railways created a huge marshalling yard. | 0:16:55 | 0:17:00 | |
This is where all the trains would have been marshalled, | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
a strategic point for the whole of the supply chain out to Anglia and | 0:17:03 | 0:17:07 | |
the rest of the country. It would have had around 3,000 wagons here. | 0:17:07 | 0:17:12 | |
Around 25% of the inhabitants from March and the local area would have | 0:17:12 | 0:17:17 | |
been employed here. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:19 | |
So it was huge. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:20 | |
Nowadays with motorways and lorries and so on, | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
it's quite hard to understand how strategically important the railways were. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:25 | |
But I suppose every sort of good and freight went from here. | 0:17:25 | 0:17:29 | |
It did indeed, yes. | 0:17:29 | 0:17:30 | |
We would have seen coal, steel, | 0:17:30 | 0:17:32 | |
all types of materials being taken by rail from March. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:38 | |
During the war, of course, strategically it was very important, | 0:17:38 | 0:17:42 | |
and they actually built a decoy site to the south of this site so that | 0:17:42 | 0:17:48 | |
the German bombers were diverted, so that this place stayed intact | 0:17:48 | 0:17:52 | |
because of its strategic importance. | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
'As increasingly freight switched to the road network in the 1960s, | 0:17:55 | 0:17:59 | |
'the yards fell into decline. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:01 | |
'And closed in the 1990s.' | 0:18:01 | 0:18:03 | |
Part of the old site did get sold off, | 0:18:04 | 0:18:06 | |
so this is only a small part of what would have been here back in the '20s in the heyday. | 0:18:06 | 0:18:11 | |
'In 2004, a renaissance began at Whitemoor, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:15 | |
'as Network Rail reopened part of the old yards as a distribution centre | 0:18:15 | 0:18:20 | |
'from which to transport maintenance materials across the network.' | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
Today, in terms of everything that the railway needs, | 0:18:24 | 0:18:27 | |
this is the core of its supply chain. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:29 | |
Whitemoor here is the biggest of three of our depots. | 0:18:29 | 0:18:32 | |
From here, we will ship everything that we need for the railway, and | 0:18:32 | 0:18:36 | |
that could be sleepers, concrete sleepers, timber sleepers, rail. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:41 | |
Any material that we need to upgrade the railway. | 0:18:41 | 0:18:45 | |
'Seven years later, the once-abandoned Whitemoor yards expanded again.' | 0:18:45 | 0:18:50 | |
The other part of the site, | 0:18:51 | 0:18:52 | |
which is the really interesting and exciting part, | 0:18:52 | 0:18:54 | |
is the major recycling that we do here. | 0:18:54 | 0:18:57 | |
Since 2011, this has been the National Track Materials Recycling Centre. | 0:18:57 | 0:19:02 | |
So all of the materials that come back from work sites come back to | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
Whitemoor to be sorted, graded and recycled. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:09 | |
-Well, that's what we need to look at. -Absolutely. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:12 | |
'Each year, over 500 miles of used rail, | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
'800 switches and crossings and 50,000 tonnes of contaminated ballast | 0:19:15 | 0:19:20 | |
'are processed at Whitemoor.' | 0:19:20 | 0:19:21 | |
A remarkable view from here. | 0:19:23 | 0:19:24 | |
It is, it's fantastic. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:26 | |
What actually is this tower about? | 0:19:26 | 0:19:29 | |
So, this is a ballast washer. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:32 | |
'Ballast is the stone and gravel bed on which the track sits. | 0:19:32 | 0:19:36 | |
'It helps to drain water and hinder weeds, but becomes soiled.' | 0:19:36 | 0:19:40 | |
We bring in our hazardous ballast, | 0:19:40 | 0:19:43 | |
the ballast that is covered in contaminants, oil, | 0:19:43 | 0:19:46 | |
all of the nasty stuff. | 0:19:46 | 0:19:47 | |
It comes up on the conveyor belt. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:49 | |
This acts as a washing machine for the ballast. | 0:19:49 | 0:19:51 | |
It comes out that side into different-sized aggregate, | 0:19:51 | 0:19:56 | |
which we can then sell into the construction industry. | 0:19:56 | 0:19:59 | |
You've got a tremendous site here. | 0:19:59 | 0:20:01 | |
What else are you able to recycle? | 0:20:01 | 0:20:02 | |
We recycle all of our sleepers. | 0:20:02 | 0:20:04 | |
So timber sleepers, we will grade them. | 0:20:04 | 0:20:07 | |
If we can use them back in the rail network, we will. | 0:20:07 | 0:20:10 | |
-What about the rails? -Where possible, if we can re-use the rail, | 0:20:10 | 0:20:13 | |
we'll re-use it again in the rail network. | 0:20:13 | 0:20:16 | |
Otherwise, it gets chopped up and it gets sent to the furnace as scrap. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:22 | |
We recycled around 46,000 tonnes of steel last year, | 0:20:22 | 0:20:26 | |
which is actually the equivalent of six Eiffel Towers. | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
May we see your ballast washing machine in action? | 0:20:29 | 0:20:31 | |
Yes, follow me! | 0:20:31 | 0:20:33 | |
'The controls to turn the washer on are below the ballast tower.' | 0:20:33 | 0:20:36 | |
Here we are. And if you want to just press the start button on the screen. | 0:20:36 | 0:20:40 | |
Press the green start button. | 0:20:40 | 0:20:42 | |
Vast quantities of contaminated ballast are cleaned every year with this machine. | 0:20:46 | 0:20:52 | |
It would otherwise be sent to landfill, | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
so thousands of lorry journeys are saved. | 0:20:55 | 0:20:57 | |
And here we are at the end of the process now, with lovely. clean ballast. | 0:21:00 | 0:21:03 | |
-I must say, you scrub it up really nicely. -Thank you! | 0:21:03 | 0:21:06 | |
The final leg of my journey takes me 13 miles south-east, | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
into the heart of the Fens. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:16 | |
I'm on my way to Ely. | 0:21:22 | 0:21:24 | |
My guidebook tells me that, "the principal object of interest is its | 0:21:24 | 0:21:27 | |
"venerable cathedral, founded in 1070. | 0:21:27 | 0:21:31 | |
"510ft-long, and the Norman nave 270ft-high. | 0:21:31 | 0:21:37 | |
"Bishop Allcock's perpendicular Chapel, Northwold's tomb, the Lady Chapel, | 0:21:37 | 0:21:42 | |
"Lantern Tower and Scott's screen should be noticed. " | 0:21:42 | 0:21:46 | |
Ely is built on a 23-square-mile clay island, | 0:21:55 | 0:22:00 | |
the highest land in the Fens. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:02 | |
The Fens were drained in the 17th century, | 0:22:02 | 0:22:05 | |
but the city had already been named after the area's most popular catch - eels. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:10 | |
Ely grew up around the magnificent 11th-century cathedral. | 0:22:10 | 0:22:14 | |
The enormous structure known as the ship of the Fens towers above the | 0:22:14 | 0:22:18 | |
city, its marshy surrounds and the river, the Great Ouse. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:23 | |
Will Schenk is a guide at the cathedral. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:26 | |
-Good to see you, how do you do? -Welcome to Ely. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:29 | |
A fantastic prospect. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:31 | |
Bradshaw's tells me that the foundation of the cathedral is 1070 AD. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:35 | |
When would you date it to? | 0:22:35 | 0:22:36 | |
I date it much further back. | 0:22:36 | 0:22:38 | |
It does go back a lot further. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
The original foundation is from the seventh century, to 673, | 0:22:40 | 0:22:43 | |
but he's probably referring to the Norman structure, | 0:22:43 | 0:22:45 | |
which is maybe 20 years after the Conquest. | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
So about 1085, 1087. | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
What happened to it after that? | 0:22:50 | 0:22:51 | |
Well, during the Vikings, it would have been destroyed. | 0:22:51 | 0:22:53 | |
It would have been refounded in the tenth century. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:57 | |
And when you have the Normans coming in 1066, about 20 years later, | 0:22:57 | 0:23:01 | |
they pulled down whatever Anglo-Saxon church would have existed and they | 0:23:01 | 0:23:04 | |
rebuilt this great Norman church. | 0:23:04 | 0:23:05 | |
What we look at now, is that substantially a Norman cathedral? | 0:23:05 | 0:23:10 | |
The nave, the two transepts, the entire west end, this extraordinary tower. | 0:23:10 | 0:23:13 | |
So yes, the bulk of the cathedral is still Norman, | 0:23:13 | 0:23:15 | |
which takes people by surprise. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
Bradshaw's lists a whole number of things that I need to see in the cathedral. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:20 | |
-Yes. -I was intrigued by Scott's screen. | 0:23:20 | 0:23:23 | |
Can that be a reference to George Gilbert Scott? | 0:23:23 | 0:23:25 | |
Almost definitely. George Gilbert Scott was the architect in charge of | 0:23:25 | 0:23:29 | |
essentially the Victorian restoration. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:31 | |
'In 1322, the central cathedral tower had collapsed and been rebuilt by medieval craftsmen. | 0:23:31 | 0:23:37 | |
'By Victorian times, further work was needed. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:41 | |
'George Gilbert Scott was chosen to oversee the process.' | 0:23:41 | 0:23:45 | |
He was first employed by the Dean, George Peacock, | 0:23:45 | 0:23:48 | |
in 1847 to move the choir, | 0:23:48 | 0:23:49 | |
and subsequently went on to restore the entire octagon tower. | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
So he constructed a new choir space for the chapter. | 0:23:53 | 0:23:56 | |
And the screen is part of that, very integral to that space. | 0:23:56 | 0:24:00 | |
Scott was born in 1811, | 0:24:01 | 0:24:04 | |
and became one of Britain's most prolific architects, | 0:24:04 | 0:24:07 | |
designing or restoring over 800 buildings. | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
Fascinated by medieval structures, | 0:24:11 | 0:24:13 | |
he was known for his work in the Gothic Revival style, | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
and designed the Albert Memorial in London. | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
What astonishes me, Will, | 0:24:21 | 0:24:22 | |
is that such a perfect and massive building was constructed in the 11th and 12th centuries. | 0:24:22 | 0:24:28 | |
Yes, and you have to imagine it also looked quite different. | 0:24:29 | 0:24:31 | |
It was painted, plastered and painted, even gilded. | 0:24:31 | 0:24:34 | |
So as you would have come in from the west, | 0:24:34 | 0:24:35 | |
-it would have been as if you are seeing an image of paradise. -Wow. | 0:24:35 | 0:24:38 | |
Now, the floor that we've been walking over, | 0:24:42 | 0:24:44 | |
that's George Gilbert Scott as well. | 0:24:44 | 0:24:46 | |
And if you look up, you have this marvellous ceiling from the 1850s. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:50 | |
And then above us, a most unusual and remarkable thing. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:53 | |
That's the octagon lantern. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:55 | |
That is what is unique, extraordinary, the masterpiece, really, of Ely. | 0:24:55 | 0:24:58 | |
It is dating to the mid-14th century and is a wooden construction built | 0:24:58 | 0:25:02 | |
out over this space. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:03 | |
And that also has some Victorian influence? | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
Oh, it has a great deal of Victorian paintwork. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:08 | |
So Scott, one of the responsibilities he had was to restore the octagon. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:12 | |
Originally, the actual lantern would have been much plainer. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:14 | |
So now you're looking at something that is really a work of the high Victorian style. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:18 | |
-And the screen? -Oh, yes. | 0:25:18 | 0:25:20 | |
The screen is just here behind you. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:21 | |
He's working in the Gothic style, | 0:25:21 | 0:25:23 | |
but he's not imitating any known actual screen. | 0:25:23 | 0:25:25 | |
It is a work of genius, | 0:25:25 | 0:25:27 | |
because you see through it all the way to the reredos at the very back, | 0:25:27 | 0:25:30 | |
which was the focal point that he created. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:32 | |
Was George Gilbert Scott, who designed so many churches, actually religious? | 0:25:32 | 0:25:35 | |
Very much so. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:36 | |
Church of England, his father was a rector. | 0:25:36 | 0:25:38 | |
So were many of his brothers. | 0:25:38 | 0:25:40 | |
They'd studied for divine orders at Cambridge. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:42 | |
In fact, he was the black sheep of the family. He went into architecture. | 0:25:42 | 0:25:45 | |
So George Gilbert Scott is mostly associated with religious architecture, | 0:25:45 | 0:25:48 | |
but in point of fact, he also designed St Pancras Station, | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
which might interest you, the Midland Hotel. | 0:25:51 | 0:25:53 | |
And there is something here that I think I'd like to show you that relates | 0:25:53 | 0:25:56 | |
to your interest in railways. | 0:25:56 | 0:25:57 | |
-I'm in suspense. -Thank you. | 0:25:57 | 0:25:59 | |
Now, this is a memorial to two individuals who died in a tragic railway accident in 1845. | 0:26:03 | 0:26:09 | |
They were first the driver, Pickering, and there was the stoker Edger. | 0:26:09 | 0:26:13 | |
What's particularly tragic is that their names are misrepresented. | 0:26:13 | 0:26:16 | |
It was not William Pickering, it was Thomas Pickering. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:19 | |
And it was not Richard Edger, it was Richard Hedger. | 0:26:19 | 0:26:22 | |
They died in a tragic accident on the Thetford to Norwich line. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:26 | |
The engine exploded, it came off the line. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
The driver and the stoker were | 0:26:29 | 0:26:31 | |
crushed to death underneath the engine. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:33 | |
-Ghastly. -Yes. | 0:26:33 | 0:26:34 | |
They had this poem, The Spiritual Railway. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:38 | |
"The line to heaven by Christ was made. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:41 | |
"With heavenly truths, the rails are laid. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:43 | |
"From Earth to heaven, the line extends to life eternal, | 0:26:43 | 0:26:48 | |
"where it ends." | 0:26:48 | 0:26:49 | |
Gosh, a bit dated, isn't it? | 0:26:49 | 0:26:50 | |
Well, not really. At the time, it would have been very contemporary. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:53 | |
The railways would just have arrived in Ely in 1845. | 0:26:53 | 0:26:56 | |
So something like this would have seemed very modern. | 0:26:56 | 0:26:58 | |
Nothing more modern than the railways. | 0:26:58 | 0:27:00 | |
A statue of Alfred Lord Tennyson stands in the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:14 | |
And here at Ely Cathedral, | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
the work and influence of | 0:27:17 | 0:27:19 | |
Sir George Gilbert Scott are writ large. | 0:27:19 | 0:27:22 | |
Each was the son of a rector, | 0:27:22 | 0:27:24 | |
at a time when God loomed large in the affairs of men. | 0:27:24 | 0:27:28 | |
The railway age was also an era of assertive Christianity, | 0:27:28 | 0:27:34 | |
when poets permitted themselves to see life as a train journey, | 0:27:34 | 0:27:38 | |
away from sin and towards heaven. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
All aboard! | 0:27:42 | 0:27:43 | |
'Next time, I uncover an industrial pioneer in Suffolk...' | 0:27:48 | 0:27:53 | |
I've never been in a building like this. | 0:27:53 | 0:27:55 | |
It is absolutely extraordinary. | 0:27:55 | 0:27:58 | |
'..discover that train companies didn't always win their battles...' | 0:27:58 | 0:28:01 | |
The plans of the Great Eastern were so huge that the town council objected to the | 0:28:01 | 0:28:06 | |
idea of having half their town demolished. | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
'..and witness a railway renaissance.' | 0:28:09 | 0:28:12 | |
The Middy closed before I was born, and yet the Middy rides again! | 0:28:12 | 0:28:16 |