Food and Shopping Railways: The Making of a Nation

Fresh fish, one of our great natural healthy food sources.

Living on an island, we Brits have had it easy,

surrounded by stocks out at sea.

We enjoy fish but, perhaps, sometimes, we take it for granted,

having it on sale in shops, restaurants and cafes,

including those that specialise in a national favourite - fish and chips.

But getting a good piece of fish on your plate wasn't always so easy...

TRAIN HORN BLARES

..until the railways arrived.

Even in the early days of rail,

thousands of tons of fresh fish were barrelling along newly-laid tracks,

from coastal towns to the nation's dining tables.

The expanding network was at the heart

of modern, powerful Victorian Britain -

a Britain bursting with energy and confidence.

Railways were transforming virtually everything -

from where we live to how we do business,

from what we eat to how we spend our leisure time.

They gave us a new shared identity and culture.

The railways would revolutionise not only what we ate,

but also how we shopped up and down the country.

And nowhere was this change more dramatic

than in the nation's capital.

In the early 19th century, London was the largest city in Europe,

home to a million people and poised to expand at a phenomenal rate.

During Victoria's reign,

it mushroomed into a metropolis of over six million.

But this rapid expansion came at a cost and many of the new arrivals

in the early 1800s found themselves in overcrowded slums,

surrounded with thousands of animals that, today,

we would only see in farms.

In his 1830s novel Oliver Twist,

Charles Dickens describes in vivid detail what a stroll

around one of the city's markets might have been like at the time.

"The ground was covered nearly ankle-deep with filth and mire.

"A thick steam, perpetually rising

"from the reeking bodies of the cattle and mingling with the fog,

"which seemed to rest upon the chimney tops, hung heavily above."

And animals weren't confined to market places.

They were kept in alleys, backyards and cellars.

The noise and the stench must have been tremendous

but, of course, these were critical sources of food and drink

for much of the city's less well-off.

Before the railways, people had a very limited diet,

because they had to eat it that day.

There was no refrigeration.

There was very little ability to bring food in from the countryside.

Staple foods are very simple and basic for the poor - bread,

potatoes, milk, dried fish,

maybe some bacon. The important thing to remember

is it's not just that there wasn't very much food available,

distributing food into cities was difficult

and it meant that the quality of food was often very bad.

An example of where quality was often poor was with milk.

Milk was difficult to supply because, of course,

it goes off very quickly, and it was often watered down.

It wasn't watered down from water like we're used to - clean water -

this would have been dirty water, water from the Thames.

But for London's urban poor, a transport revolution,

driven by fire and steam,

was about to permanently alter their limited diets.

In 1838, the first intercity train line to London came from Birmingham.

By 1840, it had been joined by half a dozen other major rail lines.

By the end of the century, London would be firmly established

as the principle hub in a national distribution network.

Lines like the Great Central, now run as a heritage railway,

would be used for getting a whole range of goods

up and down the country.

Very rapidly, London developed fast and efficient access

to faraway places.

Coastal towns were now only hours away, rather than days.

And farmers who wanted to transport their produce to London

no longer had to endure long journeys

over difficult and dangerous roads.

Railways transformed people's whole notions

of speed, time and distance, and this, in turn,

had a dramatic effect on the way we consumed goods as well as food.

Some of the first produce on the railways

was also the most perishable.

Milk started to flow into London as early as the mid-1840s,

on newly-laid tracks from places like Romford and Brentwood in Essex.

But this was no overnight revolution.

There was no shortage of resistance to change.

Country farmers were sceptical about sending their milk

into new markets, where they had little experience,

while city dwellers were suspicious of what was termed "country milk",

often curdled and sour after long and bumpy train journeys.

And rail companies themselves were slow to jump on board.

They saw milk as difficult and expensive to move

and they were reluctant to invest in new technologies

and purpose-built infrastructure.

In the early days, railways were popular for transporting coal,

a vital fuel, not only for locomotives, but also for industry.

Rail companies developed and diversified.

They realised money could be made

not only from transporting passengers,

but a wide range of freight, including dairy products.

Throughout the 19th century, demand for milk grew rapidly.

The trade was not only helping to feed Londoners

and other city dwellers, it was also making some people rich.

The industry developed from the 1860s

very rapidly

and one entrepreneur responsible for that was George Barham,

who established Express Country Milk Co,

later Express Dairies, in 1864.

I suppose he was fortunate, the following year,

that the cattle plague struck the cow keepers in London

and there was a fall-off in milk production as a result on that.

Barham spotted this as an opportunity.

And being the kind of guy he was,

he immediately got out into the countryside,

talked to farmers and encouraged people to send milk into London.

To them it seemed a bizarre kind of concept,

but the money they made from this short episode,

in just over two years,

convinced many of them to continue with that trade.

As more milk was produced outside London,

the impact was felt by those living in the capital.

One of the biggest changes for people

was that they no longer had to put up with cows

living in the basement in London

because that had been the only source of milk.

Now, with the railways,

they were able to transport the milk from quite far.

Refrigerated cars soon came into use and, therefore,

they could get fresh milk every day at a much cheaper rate than before.

As the technology of milk transportation developed,

trains came to London from further and further afield.

By the 1890s, trains dedicated to moving milk

were coming to London from as far as 150 miles away.

Stations like Millers Dale in Derbyshire's Peak District

were bustling hubs of activity,

with local farmers sending their produce all over the country.

Farmers from the local area would hurry down tracks like these

in the early mornings, eager to be the first to unload their milk

onto the waiting wagons at Millers Dale.

It's said that at least one farmer was killed

when he lost control of his horses

and plunged off the bank into the ravine.

Scenes of chaos also unfolded in London where milk was offloaded.

Wholesalers clambered over the early morning trains, searching,

often in vain, to identify the right churns from their chosen suppliers.

One consequence of the expansion of the milk trade

that was unforeseen was the exposure of the whole country

to a disease called bovine tuberculosis.

What might originally have been

only one cow in a herd that was infected,

this became a risk to the whole population,

because milk was mixed in the churns

by the traders in the rural areas and the urban areas

and, as a consequence of this increased risk,

my estimate is that between 650,000 and 820,000 people died

of bovine tuberculosis between 1850 and 1960.

But, despite the risks, by 1900,

milk had become the most profitable product from British farms.

In London, over 80% of the milk now being consumed

was delivered via the railways.

By the mid-1800s,

customers at London's markets were able to buy a wider range

of fresh food - from butter and bacon to fruit and vegetables.

Fresh fish!

And quality was key, particularly when it came to fish,

now readily and widely available.

But in the towns where the fish was landed,

change would be about much more than just improved diets in London.

The railways were turning Grimsby and other coastal communities

into thriving commercial centres.

So, how much of an impact did the railways have on Grimsby,

on how it developed?

I think it went from being quite an isolated

sort of, like, corner of Lincolnshire

into being a national supplier of fish to the masses.

The railways became the catalyst for Grimsby

to grow into the largest fishing port in the world,

the ability to sell fish and transport fish throughout the UK.

So, there were direct links

into Manchester, into Liverpool, into Birmingham

and, particularly, into Billingsgate Fish Market in London.

With more fish being moved by train,

the rail companies were encouraged to develop new supply chains,

building storage facilities at stations and docks

and attaching fish wagons

to services running up and down the country.

-TV REPORT:

-'In the meantime, the railway tracks alongside the wharfs,

'disused for years, are again in operation.

'Yarmouth serves the nation's bread basket.'

This supply of fresh fish was responsible

for one of the most enduring legacies of the railways.

It's hard to imagine life without our much-loved fish and chips.

In London, Joseph Malin, a Jewish immigrant living in Bow,

claimed to have opened the world's first fish and chip shop in 1860,

adapting the Jewish community's tradition of frying fish

and pairing them with potato latkes.

Malin's shop has gone but Rock & Sole Plaice in Covent Garden

has now taken up the mantle

of being London's oldest surviving fish and chip shop.

When it opened in 1871,

it served workers from the markets and factories around it.

Workers who'd long been accustomed to dull cuisine

and had grown tired of jellied eels and dried fish,

were soon queuing round the block for deep-fried fresh fish.

It truly became a national institution

and it was all made possible because of the railways.

The rail network gave London access

to specialist suppliers from far afield.

In Cornwall, new tracks meant new opportunities.

One of the early pioneers of the Cornish vegetable trade

was William Laity, a broccoli farmer,

who lived here, in Perranuthnoe, from the mid-19th century.

By the time the area was connected to London via Bristol in 1853,

Laity started to send small boxes of broccoli to Covent Garden Market.

William Laity's family still farms the same land today.

Virginia Laity has kept two of William's account books

from the 19th century,

one prior to the arrival of the railways and the other after.

It's so interesting to see that here, before the railways,

there are individual buyers listed by name.

-So, J Williams, church rate, three shillings.

-Yes.

There's no volumes given. And, in the later years,

you're talking about eight, nine, ten crates,

17 crates, and that just shows you the quantity.

Local suppliers are only going to buy maybe a few boxes,

-whereas London, they're taking all of this produce.

-Yes.

And did everybody want to get a piece of this action?

Yes, the farming community did, yes. They went for it in a big way.

Other markets all opened up,

so there was really a great competition.

Much of the broccoli farmed by William Laity

would have first come here, to the old Marazion station,

just down the road from his farm.

By the turn of the century,

the Great Western Railway was transporting

tens of thousands of tons of broccoli from West Cornwall alone,

to London and the rest of the country.

Other areas took advantage of the network

and more people could now enjoy regional produce.

Norfolk was sending turkeys into the capital,

a journey which had once taken weeks on foot,

and now only took a few hours.

The Cheddar Valley in Somerset had the Strawberry Line

and Hampshire the Watercress Line.

While many farmers were reaping the rewards

of an expanding national market, some farms were left struggling,

as increased supply drove prices down.

The railways operate in two ways.

They do give advantages to cities,

because people have greater access to the countryside,

but they also mean that places in the countryside

are more in competition with one another,

so the railways actually drive down prices for the farmers

and make it better for city dwellers,

but sometimes make it worse for farmers,

who find that their produce is selling

at a lower rate because there's more competition.

The railways also meant that livestock could be rapidly brought

into London on trains from all over the country,

either to be slaughtered at markets like Smithfield,

or as pre-butchered fresh meat.

Meat, obviously, became fresher

and the animals no longer had to walk vast distances

so, therefore, the meat was actually cheaper,

since when the animals were killed,

they were fatter and the price was less.

But this new ability to transport more fresh meat

was not without controversy,

especially when food was taken away

from places where it was needed most urgently.

By the mid-19th century,

Irish cattle were being shipped to Birkenhead for slaughter

before being sent by rail to London and other English cities -

a trade that continued even during the Irish famine

of the 1840s and '50s.

Cecil Woodham-Smith wrote in The Great Hunger that,

"No issue had provoked so much anger

"or so embittered relations between the two countries

"as the indisputable fact that huge quantities of food were exported

"from Ireland to England through the period

"when the people of Ireland were dying of starvation."

There was nothing, seemingly,

that could stop the advance of the railways

or, indeed, the impact this was having on cities around the country.

With more animals coming in, both dead and alive,

to mainline stations, the infrastructure of old was evolving.

Cattle docks became an important feature of stations,

as well as special cattle wagons and horse boxes

routinely included in market day trains.

By as early as the 1860s,

meat traffic had increased to such an extent

that a vast underground depot was constructed

to connect Smithfield Market with the rest of the railway network.

You can still see the holes in the roof

where the hooks would have descended from the meat market above

to pick up the animal carcasses from the train wagons below.

These were huge tunnels and remain testament

to the importance of food produce to the railway companies

and the lengths to which they would go

to ensure that they could transport more and more of it.

Tunnels like those under Smithfield's

and specialist platforms and depots

were the start of a whole new distribution system

to get produce and livestock to retailers

and, ultimately, to Londoners' dining tables.

One of the largest depots to be built was Somers Town in 1887,

which spanned an area the size of almost 12 football pitches.

The site would go on to serve London as late as the 1950s.

It was so essential that this goods yard was built

that Midland Railway actually obtained an Act of Parliament

which allowed them to compulsory purchase this site

which, unfortunately, meant

about 10,000 people had to leave their homes.

So, what sorts of goods were coming into Somers Town?

We know that there was a large potato market,

which would have fed the general population of the city.

There was a milk and fish shed.

There was also a banana ripening station.

So, how was food moved out of the depot around the city?

Well, it was an enormous, complex operation.

We know the Midland Railway company had

over 1,000 horses at their disposal.

Food was taken from the trains at the upper level,

down to the lower level and loaded onto the carts.

There is no doubt that, during the 19th century,

the diets of many people changed and improved dramatically,

thanks, in part, to the railways.

There was certainly an increase in the range of food available,

but to what extent did this benefit all Londoners?

Where you had a very restricted diet before the railways came,

you start to see, over this period,

that diet expanding at certain times,

particularly when foods are available that are not so expensive.

So, increased vegetables, increased fruits,

also increased, sort of, prepared foods.

A big explosion in fish and chips, in pies, in saveloys.

These sorts of foods start to be much more abundant in cities.

So, it's this mixture of the variety and the quantity which explodes,

but also the quality.

And had that narrowed the gap at all between the classes,

when it came to food?

For the poor, what you see is malnutrition continues

to be a problem, right up, in fact, to the 1930s.

But for people with means, for lower middle class people,

for working people with money, their diet does expand.

And what you also see is the rise of brands.

This is really when brands, as we know it, begin,

Because when you've got consumers and producers

a long way away from one another,

you need some way to communicate trust between the two,

and brands perform this function.

Oxo, Bovril, Hartley's jam, Bass beer - well-known brands of today -

started in this period, in part because of the railways.

TRAIN HORN BLARES

Now, thanks to the railways,

local family-run businesses could become national

and even international household names.

Huntley & Palmers, the legendary biscuit manufacturer from Reading,

was one of the first to take full advantage

of this new era of steam and would go on to reap the rewards.

When the Great Western Railway arrived,

it immediately transformed opportunities

for travel and distribution.

By the 1860s, demand had increased so much

that the directors hit upon the idea

of actually introducing their own railway system.

The company bought two black Hawthorn locomotives,

which are basically shunters,

so that they could rapidly export large amounts of goods,

more than ever before, from the factory floor

onto the sidings of the Southern and Eastern Railways

and the Great Western Railway,

out to the ports, into London and beyond that, into the empire.

It became a global brand within no time at all,

just from this little hub here, and it was something that just exploded.

Huntley & Palmers would become

the world's largest biscuit manufacturer,

but the company didn't just use railways for distribution.

It saw the network as a way to expand

the public's recognition of its brand.

Huntley & Palmers understood

how the railways could raise their product profile.

The stations were adorned with Huntley & Palmer enamel signs.

There's even a well-known story about how first-class passengers,

travelling from Paddington to the West,

would be handed a packet of Huntley & Palmers biscuits,

just a small packet,

and told to look out for the biscuit factory

as they arrive through Reading - this great, big, red-brick edifice

that they would see as they passed through the town.

So, yeah, Huntley & Palmers very much understood the new connectivity

and means of communication that the railways provided.

In a new age of national and global markets,

the idea of the brand became increasingly important.

And with goods coming from far and wide, there was a question of trust.

So, we'd sort of begun to be a bit wary about these products

that were still being sold loose

and the grocer was having to weigh for us,

was having to package for us,

and this was the moment when the manufacturer came in and said,

"I'm going to produce these, produce them wrapped up, pre-weighed,

"and put my name upon it,"

with all the credibility that they could.

And that's what gained the trust of the consumer

and we grew this extraordinary bond with our favourite brands.

Wherever you were, not only did you have the product

but you recognised the brand names,

as they were on the hoarding posters in the railway stations,

along the routes, even, that people were travelling.

The strength was in a national product, nationally advertised,

nationally distributed,

and it was the railway system which was able to provide that.

Stations were also becoming retail hubs.

The first branch of WH Smith opened at Euston in 1848.

The bookseller spread to other stations across the country,

becoming the first chain store company in the world.

Beyond the stations, a new type of shop was emerging.

As the railways were so good at transporting both goods and people,

they enabled the development of department stores,

because the stores could get a vast array of goods

from around the country but also,

the railways brought people in from a wide range of places.

Many of these early department stores are still with us today,

such as Debenhams, Fortnum & Mason and Harvey Nichols.

People from outside the city were jumping onto trains,

heading into London to shop at these new attractions.

Good news for emerging high streets, perhaps,

but not quite so good for traditional markets

and street sellers,

who were seeing their customers disappear down the tracks.

Shops started to cater not only for the rich and the middle classes,

but also for the working poor, by stocking cheaper, branded products

that the masses could afford.

Grocery shop owners, including the Sainsbury family,

were also aware of the impact that railways were having on communities.

Sainsbury's established depots and shops near stations,

including their first store out of London

in rapidly expanding Croydon, an area boasting several stations.

And for those unwilling to travel,

the railways meant goods could now come to YOU.

Shops started to produce illustrated mail order catalogues,

advertising a wide range of luxuries.

Specialist goods from all over the country were being advertised

and distributed nationally,

from hats from Luton to gloves from Worcester.

Railways changed the very essence of the nation's capital,

from a semi-agricultural slum

to a bustling metropolis with fine dining and shopping.

Through fast connections the length and breadth of the country,

the railways had given Britain a new national diet.

People's diet tended to become more standardised

and, you know, they might end up eating similar things,

say, in Liverpool or Hull as they did in London,

whereas, previously, they might have had quite different diets

because of the limited range of food to which they had access.

In London and in other cities and towns across the country,

the railways also helped usher in

an era of modern choice-driven consumer culture -

a culture that still surrounds us today.