Letchworth Garden City to Herne Hill Great British Railway Journeys

For Edwardian Britons, a Bradshaw's was an indispensable guide

to a railway network at its peak.

I'm using an early 20th-century edition to navigate

a vibrant and optimistic Britain at the height of its power

and influence in the world.

But a nation wrestling with

political, social and industrial unrest at home.

Trains have brought me from the northern coast of Norfolk

to the Home Counties that border London.

Here, idealists planned modern towns far from the urban sprawl.

Meanwhile, in the metropolis, engineers tunnelled

while, in the streets above,

the proletariat sped along on their bicycles.

The King pursued his fast life at the Ritz Hotel,

and there I will hurry after him.

My journey began in the coastal resort of Cromer,

pointed south via Norwich to the university city of Cambridge.

And now I'm heading for the capital.

I'll wend my way along the South Coast

and cross the Solent to explore Edward VII's childhood

on the Isle of Wight.

Returning to the mainland,

I'll experience a turn-of-the-century seaside resort

and end on Brownsea Island near Poole.

This leg of my trip starts around 30 miles outside London,

in Letchworth Garden City.

I'll be exploring Edwardian London on the Underground,

beginning at Green Park,

stopping at a ground-breaking transport project

and finishing at the home of British track cycling near Brixton.

Along the way, I'll dig deep into the future of the Tube...

Every 45 minutes, we can get another 1.5 metres completed.

..tip the scales at an historic wine merchant...

I've obviously misjudged you, Michael, because I can see that,

actually, you're a lot lighter than I thought you were, and I apologise.

..and follow the old political advice to get on my bike,

clad in Lycra.

That was great.

Whoa!

I have here the programme for the official opening

of the Cheap Cottages Exhibition at the Garden City, Letchworth,

opened by the Duke of Devonshire in July 1905,

and sooty city-dwellers could travel from King's Cross,

have their third-class rail fare, their lunch and their conveyance,

their tea and their admission to the exhibition

for seven shillings and sixpence.

All aboard for rural - or at least suburban - utopia.

Arriving in Letchworth, I find an Arts and Crafts-inspired station,

fully in keeping with the ideals of the world's first garden city.

These tranquil streets were part of a radical vision for the future.

I'm meeting town historian, Josh Tidy.

-Hello, Josh. I'm Michael.

-Pleasure to meet you.

I'm very happy to be in Letchworth.

Josh, how does the idea of Letchworth start?

So, Letchworth started with one man, Ebenezer Howard,

and he was a social reformer who sought to solve the problems of the

late Victorian era, chiefly that people were living in

overcrowded towns and squalid conditions,

paying extortionate rents.

How did he sell his idea?

So, he puts all his ideas together in a book,

which was published in 1898, and in it he sets out what

a garden city should be, so it's a combination of the best parts

of town and country, so fresh air and the beauty of nature,

jobs and social opportunities, but without any smoke and smog.

Construction began in Letchworth just five years after

the book's publication.

The new town was to be self-sufficient,

a community within which inhabitants would both live and work.

Two architects were responsible for the look of this utopia -

Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker.

This museum was once the architect's drawing office.

Josh, I'm very struck by the furnishings.

This would be Arts and Crafts, would it?

That's right, so this is Barry Parker's private office

and it's done up, really, to give a prospective client an idea

of the sort of house they might expect if they commissioned him.

And this, then, is the town plan.

That's right, this is one of the development plans that were

published sporadically as the town grew.

This is from 1912.

And what it shows is the current level of development at that point,

set against the original masterplan,

so you can see what's been developed so far is here in orange

and then in white, not built, but still very much part of the plan.

At the heart of the town was the railway station

and, next to that, the town's hub.

Zones for housing and for industry radiated from the centre

and green space was planned throughout.

-Does any of this have lessons for us a century later?

-I think so.

Lots of things that were radical and revolutionary here

have been adopted as standard practice since.

So, this Ebenezer Howard perhaps should be

-better remembered than he is?

-Absolutely.

Howard's garden city ideas have spread around the world

and are still cherished in Letchworth,

especially his belief in the benefits of shared outdoor space,

which is apparently wholeheartedly embraced.

-Hello, gardeners.

-Hello!

-Good morning, Michael!

-Do not despair, help is at hand.

-Please come and join us.

-What are we planting?

-Red cabbage.

-Red cabbage?

We have quite a mixture of crops which are rotated around the beds.

We have quite a big group of volunteers that

come on a rota basis and do watering and weeding.

So, I expect Letchworth to be quite a community-minded place.

Is it, in fact?

Very much so, yes.

For me, it encompasses the best of the town and country.

Denise, does your family go back a long way in Letchworth?

Indeed, in fact, my great-grandfather came down

from Hull and he was a great friend of Ebenezer Howard

and Ebenezer Howard would go and stay,

so they used to have great discussions about the garden city.

Now, Jani, you're of a different generation.

30 minutes away by train are the bright lights

of the West End of London.

Are you not tempted to go and live there?

Hmm... It may seem nice, but it's a lot different to Letchworth,

a lot busier, more pollution, and I prefer it here, actually.

You all seem very keen and loyal citizens, would that be right?

Absolutely.

We do actually have the feeling as though we all own Letchworth,

that was really Ebenezer Howard's idea, was that the people

-should feel that it was their city.

-And you do feel that?

And I do feel that, definitely, yes.

My dear Letchworthians, my job is done here. Thank you so much.

-Bye-bye now.

-Thank you.

-Bye-bye.

-Safe journey.

Welcome aboard this service to London King's Cross.

In Irving Berlin's song,

"putting on the ritz" meant getting on your gladrags,

getting all togged up.

A gossip column from 1907 tells me that

"a married women's ball is the latest to social sensation.

"Lady Colebrooke and Mrs George Keppel, the twin hostesses,

"chose the Ritz Hotel as their scene of operations.

"It would be interesting to know whether bachelors were excluded."

Or, indeed, a married monarch.

The next station is London King's Cross.

I'm heading underground.

Originally known as Dover Street, Green Park station

opened in 1906, in the same year as one of London's best-known hotels.

Very good to see you. Thank you very much.

-Hello.

-A very warm welcome back to The Ritz London, Mr Portillo.

That's so kind of you. Michael, how long have you been here?

Almost 44 years. Started here as a pageboy on the 30th of July 1973.

What celebrities that you're allowed to mention can you

-tell me about?

-I've met you many, many times, Mr Portillo.

You know, in the Ritz, we are very discreet. We have to be.

With the lips of the concierge firmly sealed...

-David.

-Hello, Michael, how great to see you.

..I'm hoping to find out more

from architectural historian David Watkin.

David, here we are, meeting in the splendour of the Ritz.

Why is it that we feel it to be so grand and so welcoming?

Well, it is grand, partly because of the height of it, which is

quite imposing and unusual.

And then it's full of the most beautiful details

of French 17th and 18th-century grandeur.

The whole thing is so exciting architecturally,

to have a promenade like this, so long and so high,

and going from one end to the other of an enormous building.

Swiss hotelier Cesar Ritz is credited with creating

the concept of the modern luxury hotel.

He pioneered ensuite bathrooms throughout and the kind

of perfectionism that we now associate with top establishments.

So what is it that makes this room so French, David?

We have these great mirrored walls,

which come from the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles

and the sculpture behind us, again, could be found

anywhere in the grounds of Versailles cos of Louis XIV.

Had London had hotels like this before?

It had nothing on this scale or quality.

They were beginning to come in in the 1890s,

but it was pretty rare to have anything like this.

When the hotel opened in 1906,

it became an instant favourite of the King.

He came here to pursue his passions for food and wine,

and to enjoy the company of women,

in particular of his mistress, Alice Keppel.

Do you think that part of Edward VII's relationship with

Mrs Keppel was played out here in public, lunch, dinner?

I think they did, yes, which was pretty unusual.

That's one of the reasons why hotels hadn't, I think,

been very successful before in England, because it was

thought very bad to see women, certainly alone, in a restaurant.

Was The Ritz, then,

a bit of a pioneer in allowing women to come on their own?

-Yes, I think because it was a pioneering hotel.

-Splendid.

Sadly, I won't be staying at The Ritz tonight, but will take

advantage of being in my home city and sleep in my own bed.

But before I leave the St James's area,

I'm curious to visit another historic establishment.

-Welcome to Berry Bros & Rudd.

-Ronnie.

with the sloping floor and the wood panelling,

it's a wonderful old institution.

How far back does it go?

It started in 1698 by somebody called the Widow Bourne,

and it became a retail store for coffee and spices.

It's still a retail store, but instead of coffee,

we now sell wines. And spirits, of course.

And, Ronnie, I notice you've got a contraption here

for weighing people. Is that because you're afraid that

they'll go through your old floorboards?

LAUGHTER

This originated as the coffee scales.

Up until about 1760, that was, because in about 1760,

people became much more health-conscious and they

wanted to be weighed, so we started weighing our customers as part of

the service that we would offer when they purchased a bottle of wine.

So, if you like, you can actually experience this,

and be very careful because it does move and swing as any balance would.

Now, I've obviously misjudged you, Michael, because I can see

that, actually, you're a lot lighter than I thought you were

and I apologise.

So I'm going to remove one of these weights in the hopes that

that balances you out, which I think it does.

Yes!

In its 300-year history, this company has served many a VIP.

It gained its first Royal Warrant in 1903

when it created a unique tipple for King Edward.

Ronnie, I think the clue must be in the name - The King's Ginger.

This product was invented for King Edward VII.

He had a passion for cars.

He was the first European monarch

ever to drive the horseless carriage.

Usually the early motor cars,

they had no canopy on the top and the wind-chill factor was

affecting him to such a degree that his physician came to us

and said, "We need something to revivify His Royal Highness.

"Have you got something?"

So this is the result - The King's Ginger liqueur.

It's a very edifying drink.

Soft on the palate, uplifting at the same time and very warming.

So, your health.

Ooh!

I don't know about revivified,

I think I shall sleep pretty well after that!

LAUGHTER

I'm sure you will, Michael. I hope you will.

This morning, I'm returning to the Underground.

My next stop is Vauxhall station, south of the River Thames.

To my surprise, my Bradshaw's 1907

lists the City and South London Railway

running from Angel through Bank to Clapham.

Londoners will recognise that as the Northern Line,

so, since Edwardian times,

there have been electrified railways running deep underground in

round tunnels, and since then

they've been threaded throughout the capital

and I don't think the process of construction has finished yet.

1.37 billion journeys are made on London's Underground every year.

Today, it has 250 miles of track and 270 stations.

And as the rapid development of London continues above ground,

the network below is responding.

The Northern Line is London's oldest deep-level tube line, which today

is being extended and I'm meeting Sam Mullins of Transport For London.

Sam. What a sight.

We're standing in front of the hive of activity that's creating

a new station box for the Northern Line extension to

Battersea Power Station.

With 20,000 homes in this area, the new American Embassy

and everything else that goes with it,

a new quarter for London enabled and shaped by the railway.

In the 1860s, London built cut and cover railways

quite close to the surface - the Metropolitan Line for example.

When do we first get the deep-bored ones in the little round tunnels?

Well, the building of the cut and cover railways

in the 1860s was incredibly disruptive,

but by later in the 19th century, there are new technologies

available, which enable tube railways to happen.

You've got lifts, you've got electric traction

and safe tunnelling technology, which enabled you to take

the railway deep beneath the streets.

A massive expansion of the railway capacity of London

in quite a short period of time.

What impact does it have on Edwardian Britain?

I think it's remarkable that Edwardian London

kind of acquires all the characteristics of what

we would think of as a modern metro, a network of tube lines,

all common ownership, common ticketing,

there's a map that helps you get around it,

predictable timetables, before the First World War,

which always strikes me as a generation

earlier than you would expect.

And that, really, is the making of our metropolis,

and the metropolis is so influential in the making of Britain.

Well, it shapes London. We go on, of course,

in the '20s and the '30s to see the extension of the Northern Line,

extension of the Piccadilly Line,

to create huge suburbs well outside the old bounds of London.

The ambition to connect new areas for Londoners is the same

today as it was a century ago and modern technology offers

engineers some powerful tools for the job.

I'm meeting Jonathan Cooper,

project manager for this multi-million pound undertaking.

Jonathan, with all the noise just shortly ahead of us here,

it looks like we've reached the business end of your tunnel.

-What's going on ahead of us?

-So, what you can see here is the

back end of the tunnel-boring machine, so the total length

is 100 metres in all, so 100 metres from what you see here is

where you have the cutterhead pushing into the London clay.

Now, as your machine goes along, it's placing these

pieces of concrete against the tunnel wall, is that right?

Yeah, that's correct, so we excavate a 6m diameter hole

and then we build a slightly smaller tunnel within that

and the ground is immediately supported by a shield

and that prevents the ground above settling, so we've obviously got a

lot of buildings above us

and we want to make sure they don't get damaged.

How fast will you progress when you're running at your fastest?

It takes about 20 to 25 minutes to actually excavate the ground

and then 10 to 15 minutes to actually build the ring,

and then we can start up again, so every 45 minutes,

we can get another 1.5 metres completed.

Tremendous rate of progress.

You seem very enthusiastic

and rather young to be a project manager.

What made you interested in tunnelling?

My parents took me to the Channel Tunnel Rail Exhibition

when I was a small boy and it was there which I first saw

a tunnel-boring machine and that really got me inspired to

go into engineering and I'm really fortunate today to be involved

in a sort of once-in-a-generation project to benefit Londoners.

Hear, hear!

For the final leg of today's journey,

I'm taking the Victoria Line further south to Brixton.

I'm hoping to get the wind in my hair on a hugely popular mode

of transport that took hold at the turn of the 20th century.

The Standard newspaper, dated April the 22nd 1905,

tells me that the Southern Counties Cycling Union

held its annual race meeting yesterday,

which was Good Friday, in the presence of 7,000 spectators

at the London County Grounds, Herne Hill.

7,000 is a very large crowd,

particularly given that the bike was quite a recent invention.

I had no idea that the sport was that popular century ago.

But then again, these things are cyclical.

The Herne Hill Velodrome is considered the honorary home

of track cycling in the United Kingdom.

It's one of the oldest and arguably the best hidden,

reached from a quiet, leafy street in South London.

I'm meeting expert cyclist Peter Cattermole.

Peter, I had no idea about Herne Hill Velodrome and here it is,

hidden amongst suburban housing.

How long has it been here?

It's been here since 1891, so 125 years or so,

but it was here before the housing so it was basically farmland.

Did it have this impressive - and I must say, rather intimidating -

banking from the beginning?

The banking was a bit shallower, maybe half of what it is now,

but then the surface was made of wood back then.

I was reading a press cutting from 1905.

It talks about 7,000 spectators.

Where would you have put them?

It's 500 metres round, so if you imagine the crowd

two, three, four deep, that would be about right.

I think the highest crowd they've had in here is 15,000 in the 1950s.

The cutting from 1905 talks about a meeting on Good Friday.

-Was that a custom?

-Yes, and it still runs today.

Why do you think there was such passion in the Edwardian era,

both amongst cyclists and spectators?

I think it was human endeavour, so someone under their own power,

under human power, being able to go fast.

As the 19th turned into the 20th century,

a boom in cycling saw velodromes opening across the city.

By the First World War, most of them had shut

and today there are just two.

The 2012 Olympic Velodrome and this one at Herne Hill.

How can people who train here on this old-fashioned track

hope to compete with others who are training

on more modern, high-performance tracks?

One of the methods is, in fact, we've almost gone back to the past.

Where they used to be paced by tandems,

we now use a small motorbike called a derny to paste them.

And what do the cyclists do?

They sit behind in the slipstream and so it enables them

to ride faster than they would if they were pushing the wind

themselves and they can do 40, 50, 60mph

behind one of these bikes.

Cycling superstars such as Bradley Wiggins, Chris Hoy

and Laura Trott have all cycled here.

Now to add my name to that illustrious list.

I'm getting some tips from coach Joseph Alberti.

-Hello, Joseph.

-Welcome to Herne Hill.

-It's a great privilege.

-This is your bike.

-Uh-huh.

The best way to climb on the bike would be to hold it

with your left and have your right hand over here so you can climb

-easily over the saddle, then I'll help you strap in.

-Thank you.

-You have probably noticed there are no brakes.

-Ah!

Fixed-gear bicycle, so no brakes, no gears.

All we're doing is controlling our bike with our legs,

that's why we need to be strapped in.

You need to use your legs to go fast and you use your legs to go slow,

so to start, you will need the right hand

to give yourself a little momentum.

You need your gaze to go and look forward

so the bike will ride in a straight line.

When you want to stop, using your legs to slow down,

you've got a whole fence here

and when you're walking, basically just grab it with your right hand.

That is your first stage of the Olympic dream.

OK, no gears, no brakes, no experience. What could go wrong?

Well, we'll soon find out!

-Very good.

-Ahh...

-Well, I enjoyed that.

-Very good. Congratulations. Well done.

That was great.

Whoa!

LAUGHTER

The social reformer Ebenezer Howard conceived garden cities outside the

metropolis where people could escape from overcrowding and foul air.

But improvements during the Edwardian era gave us

some of the distinctive features of London today -

a network of underground electric railways

and hotels so stylish that they were fit for a king.

Pollution is still a problem today,

but I'm more likely to do my bit by riding the new Northern Line

than by jumping on my bike.

Next time, I spruce up some rolling stock...

-We're going to clean this Class 700, are we?

-We are indeed.

-Very good.

-What are your tips?

-Try and stay dry.

..encounter a progressive group whose private lives would have

scandalised Edwardians...

They were living in still very restrictive times and they couldn't

be publicly open about their sexuality or their relationships.

..and go up-tiddly-up in my flying machine.

We are away!