Chesterfield to Eyam Britain's First Photo Album

In the Victorian era, Britain changed as never before.

It was the time of great inventors, great engineers,

but above all great businessmen, entrepreneurs.

One of the best examples was the pioneer photographer, Francis Frith.

In the 1860s Francis Frith embarked on a monumental mission,

using the newly invented photographic camera.

He wanted to document every city, every town,

and every village in the land.

I'm tracing the footsteps of this remarkable man

and his team of photographers.

Using their pictures as my guide,

I'll be travelling the length and breadth of the country,

finding out what has altered and what has stayed the same.

Along the way, I'll be taking my own photos

to try and capture the mood of the place as it is now.

That's great.

Welcome to Britain's First Photo Album.

The more I tour the country looking at Frith photographs,

the more I'm impressed by the man.

Any role call of the great artists of the 19th century

is unlikely to include Francis Frith, but perhaps it should.

Many of those old heroes have long since faded away,

but the Frith photographs remain sharp and clear.

And I think it's time we celebrated him as a great artist of his time.

Today, my travels take me through the towns

and villages of the beautiful Derbyshire Peak District.

I'll be heading across the county and into Nottinghamshire,

using a few of my favourite Frith photographs to guide the way.

I'll be heading up the crooked church spire

which put Chesterfield on the map...

You can't tell from here, can you? If you look up, it's just a jumble.

..having a flutter on the horses at the Nottingham races...

-Are you a bit worried?

-Not really.

THEY LAUGH

And of course creating a record of my travels along the way,

just as Frith did over 100 years ago.

That's it. There won't be a dry eye in the house.

My first port of call is to a town Frith would have found familiar.

Frith was born into a prosperous Quaker family in 1822,

in the Derbyshire market town of Chesterfield.

From his father, who was a cooper making barrels,

he inherited a skill in business and a love of the arts.

Chesterfield first became a market town in 1204

and still has one of the largest open-air markets in the country.

Frith would have seen the place flourish in the 19th century

as the coming of the railways transformed the town

into a busy industrial centre with a thriving mining community.

These streets and the market square are the streets of Frith's boyhood.

Today's first Frith photo has quite a childlike appeal.

This is a story with a twist.

The great twisted spire of the Church of Chesterfield.

And it is a magnificent church.

Started in the 14th century but then several hundred years later,

the spire began to twist.

Is it still as bad as this? No, it's worse. Look at that.

It was this strange steeple

that particularly captured Frith's imagination.

St Mary's verger, Paul Wilson, knows where the picture was taken

and how the twisted spire came into being.

Where do you think this was taken from?

From a higher point somewhere in this area, straight across to the church.

But of course, if you want to show how twisted the spire is,

this doesn't show it so that much.

It's probably not the best angle.

No, but if you look at it now, it looks as if it is much more twisted.

Has that happened in the last hundred or so years?

It looks like that and there's strong evidence

to say that it has moved considerably since that photograph was taken.

And is it still moving? Is it still, is it still twisting more?

They gave it a new backbone in 1898, but it's still twisting,

very, very small measurements each time.

-But it is the most famous twisted spire in Britain.

-Absolutely.

St Mary's is the largest church in Derbyshire.

It underwent a major restoration in 1843,

when the state of the tower was fully debated.

So at the time of the restoration,

that was the moment when they had to decide

whether to keep the crooked spire?

That's right. That was the final time.

Mercifully, they decided to live with the mistake

and Chesterfield benefited from that ever since, I suppose.

It's what put Chesterfield on the map, that mistake.

The quirky steeple was loved back then and it's still loved today.

But what could possibly have gone so wrong?

We're climbing up the 144 exhausting steps to find out.

Right. So we're... Well, we're inside the spire, aren't we?

-And how much does it weigh?

-About 200 tons, altogether.

So it starts to twist and why is that?

Well, a lot of people talk about the unseasoned timber.

A lot of people think it was common practice to use green wood.

You needed a certain amount of movement and flexibility there,

to shape it and fashion it.

But it's thought the original workmen

possibly weren't as clued-up as they might have been

as to what extent that wood was going to start warping.

So these top beams that we can just see right up there,

-they are very, very slowly doing that?

-That's right.

-That's what's going on?

-That's it.

You can't tell from here, can you? If you look up, it's just a jumble.

'While the spire looks incredible from inside,

'Paul has insisted we need to go outside to get the full picture.

'Outside, onto the small and very windy parapet.

'Now, I don't have a good head for heights.

'There might well be a lovely view but I'd prefer not to look at it!'

-All this is lead, that we are seeing.

-All lead.

It's been patched over the years but the original lead

was far too thick and heavy for that wooden frame to cope with.

So the lead, really, is one of the major causes of the twist?

Certainly. You've also got problems with the lead when the sun comes out.

The sun warms the lead up and of course expands that little bit

and contracts, and of course, when the lead moves,

the wood underneath, to some extent, moves it with it.

-That is a terrific twist, isn't it?

-That's it.

If you look up there, you can see it coming right over the top of you.

-That's amazing.

-Nothing prepares you for looking up and seeing that.

Interesting to see the spire from up there but for me,

it's much nicer from down here, on terra firma.

Francis Frith knew this church as a boy.

His parents were married here and it's possible to trace

back his family roots to this area, at least to the 17th century.

He remembered his mother telling him as a child

to run over to the church and find out if the spire had fallen in.

Well, Francis, is still there, isn't it?

Chesterfield's church spire

has been part of the town's skyline for centuries,

an inspiration for Frith and countless other photographers.

St Mary's, with her unusual crowning glory,

is what I, too, want to capture in my photograph.

On this occasion, I want to be more the photojournalist.

I'm going to tell the story of the crooked spire in my photograph,

and that means I've got to be here,

because that's where the spire is at its most crooked.

St Mary's, a rich church with a not-so-fatal flaw,

set against a perfect blue sky.

But we do get the sense of a terrific church,

a magnificent church,

with the quirkiest little spire that you could even think of.

It is a sort of dream, really.

Francis Frith grew up in Chesterfield.

His father was born in a village nearby and that's my next stop,

because the second Frith photo we're looking at is this one.

Taken in the picturesque village of Eyam,

the photo's title reveals the extraordinary tale it tells.

The Plague Cottages have become legend here in Derbyshire.

In 1665, these cottages bore witness of a terrible event.

Eyam was struck by the infamous bubonic plague and the villagers,

with great courage, put themselves into voluntary quarantine.

A large number of them were killed by the Black Death

but as a result of their action,

many others in the area were able to live.

And that's why this photograph was taken,

because these are the Plague Cottages of Eyam.

The bubonic plague came to Eyam through infected fleas

that were in cloth delivered from London

to the village tailor, George Vickers.

Very soon, he and six other villagers had died.

It was at this point, in the village church,

that the brave decision was made.

Joan Plant is a descendant of one of the few families to survive.

The minister and the previous minister, Stanley,

thought there was something dreadful happening and they made a plan

to close the Church, to close the churchyard and to close the village.

And they went to the villagers to ask that question.

Why did they accept the plan?

I think at that time, those people had a great faith in God.

They believed that that's what God wanted them to do.

So, they agreed to do that to stop it spreading

to the rest of Derbyshire and the rest of the country.

-This is the roll call.

-This is the roll call.

George Vickers, he is the first person to die on 7th September 1665

right the way through to the last person.

1 November, 1666.

So, that's 14 months that it raged through the village

and 260 people died.

83 survivors.

It is a terrible story, isn't it?

Absolutely devastating.

It's a shocking account

and impossible to imagine how the villagers coped

as they isolated themselves from the outside world.

Here is Mompesson's Well.

This is the north boundary.

When they closed the village off, the villagers would have come up here

to collect the food that the Duke of Devonshire would have left.

The money to pay for the food

would have been put in the water here in vinegar as a disinfectant.

-They would pay for the food?

-Absolutely, isn't it incredible?

Even at a time like that,

they wanted to carry on as normal and pay for what they were given.

'Villagers who did not contract the plague,

'including Joan's ancestors,

'were buried here in the village graveyard.

'To avoid further infection,

'plague victims were buried in their own back gardens.

'But why did some of the villagers get off lightly?

'Recent medical advances have shed new light on this.

'It's all down to genetics.'

We found, only a few years ago, about Delta 32,

this gene that they've identified that plague survivors had.

If you have two lines of family that have survived the plague,

then the chances are you have Delta 32.

It's extraordinary to think

that we now know why it is that members of Joan's family survived.

It's a marvellous tale.

What we're trying to do is have a nice, happy picture of Joan.

She's a survivor so she's got to look happy, that's good,

but she's next to the grave of some of her ancestors

and they share one thing in common, which is the gene

which allowed her ancestors to survive the plague.

That is a remarkable picture

when you're told the story and that's what I want to.

So that's my photo, with Joan proudly standing in the centre.

It's the portrait of a great survivor.

My picture is in sharp contrast to the Frith picture.

His turns out to be a story of death and horror.

Mine looks as if it is going to be a sad story,

set in a graveyard, but it's not -

it's actually a picture of hope and cheerfulness.

I'm very proud of this picture.

I'm travelling around the country,

tracing the footsteps of pioneer photographer, Francis Frith.

I'm now setting south from Eyam to the countryside near Bakewell.

And the photo is this one-

A romantic scene

with a winding stream and a mysterious stately home.

The house is the idyllic Haddon Hall,

a fortified manor house dating from the 12th century.

Frith and his team took a series of photos here

and I can see why they were drawn to this house.

As in Frith's time,

it's the home of Lord Manners whose family have owned it for 500 years.

Haddon Hall is one of the most romantic stately homes in Britain.

I think that it's a good idea

that when you see a stately home for the first time,

you should arrive at the speed of a horse-drawn carriage.

You should then get the impact of the house being slowly revealed

in just the way that the original designers intended.

That's why we are going very slowly

and here is the grounds, and here you see the house.

It is very impressive. Haddon Hall does not disappoint.

'Jo Walker has been the steward here for nearly 30 years.

'She knows the Frith pictures of Haddon Hall very well.'

-It is a perfect romantic picture, isn't it?

-It is, isn't it?

There's a cart there.

I wonder if that was posed. It would've been, I would imagine.

I think they worked very hard on this to get it right.

I like the fact the light is coming across in such a beautiful way.

We're going to try and find the spot where it was taken from, aren't we?

-I've got a fairly good idea.

-I'm sure you have.

We can't be precise because we don't want to uproot a hedge.

-But we can have a look.

-Oh, we mustn't uproot a hedge.

'Well, Jo is entering into the spirit of our little adventure.'

I don't think it's much further, if we turn and have a look now and see.

Right, well... Wait a minute. This water isn't there, is it?

I think the river has moved its course quite a little bit.

But if we look at the chimneys,

we don't want a gap between those chimneys there

but we do want a gap between those.

So I think that's not far off.

Yeah. But it's these trees.

In the 100 years or so since then, they've grown much bigger.

-So that's kind of... The effect isn't the same.

-It is, yes.

'If the outside of Haddon Hall is striking,

'the interiors really do take your breath away.

'It's incredibly rare to find an almost intact medieval home

'that has somehow survived the centuries.'

What's so amazing about Haddon

is that for 200 years, no-one lived here.

It was all properly maintained,

but there would've been no fires as there are today.

-It would've been very cold.

-That looks like one of the best features.

So it would have been fearfully cold.

Fearfully cold. No light, as dull as anything.

But people would've been maintaining it

to make sure it didn't fall into major disrepair

but no-one spent any money on modernising it.

But the family knew it was valuable, they wanted to keep it.

That was one of the points that they would always have thought,

that, "It's a treasure we can save

"and we'll do something with it in the future."

From our point of view as visitors, this was a time capsule.

Absolutely. It was the 200 years

when the Georgians were rebuilding everything

and the Victorians were putting central heating in everywhere.

So when you're thinking of medieval banquets and things,

we can imagine them taking place here.

This is the sort of place.

We still have one table from that period

but there would have been others down the length of the room.

They were trestle tables so, at night,

they could be moved and the household would sleep on the floor.

This house exist in its present form because of its family history.

The current owner is Lord Edward Manners,

who's proud of what his ancestors did.

Haddon was built as a Norman fort in the early 12th century

and has been in my family by blood for the last 800 or 900 years since.

-Gosh!

-The Vernons were here from the 12th century

and then my family married into the Vernons the mid-16th century.

But that was a tricky marriage wasn't it? It wasn't simple.

It wasn't no, because the heiress, Dorothy Vernon,

actually eloped with my ancestor, John Manners,

who was the second son of the Earl of Rutland.

The story goes that my ancestor was rather a dashing young man

and would ride over from Belvoir, which is our other main family seat

and they would have secret trysts in the woods and around the estate

whilst Dorothy could slip out from her father's eyes.

Eventually, she managed to escape, there was a big banquet going on

and she ran down the garden and over the bridge over the river

and John Manners was waiting for her.

And she hopped on the back of the horse

and off they rode and got married.

-But then her father died.

-Then her father died, she inherited,

and that's how the house came into my family in the 1550s.

When Frith took his photograph, Haddon Hall still lay dormant.

It was empty.

But visitors were impressed by the way it cast a spell.

At the beginning of the 20th century, change was underway.

One of the most remarkable bits of this house's history

is the restoration of the house, which started in 1912.

The bulk of the restoration work was done during the 1920s.

If my grandfather hadn't restored the house then,

it definitely would have become a ruin by now.

And in that restoration, you had all sorts of discoveries.

Well, these murals in particular - they're actually seccos -

and they were painted in the 1420s.

My grandfather discovered these paintings

under white plaster work and he unpicked them using dental tools.

Why were they covered?

During the Reformation, these sorts of paintings

were either destroyed or painted over or plastered over.

We are lucky here because plastering over them

was what saved them in the end.

When they uncovered, these amazing murals were discovered.

Haddon Hall's history and the lyrical mood it created

inspired Frith and his team.

I, too, have fallen under its spell.

I'm trying to capture the romance of the Frith photograph,

I can't really do it with the house,

because there are trees in all the wrong places and I can't move them,

but what I can do is take a romantic picture of this bridge.

This bridge has got a good story, so we're told.

Dorothy Vernon decides to elope

and she rushes across this bridge to see her lover, John Manners.

So this bridge was obviously a high point for the Victorians.

This is the most romantic bridge in Derbyshire and I'm going to take it.

So, there it is,

my attempt to capture a bridge into a different world.

I think those Victorian writers, artists

and of course, photographers would have approved.

They came to be inspired, and so I have been.

My picture isn't of the front of the hall,

that you see in the Frith photograph,

it's in the grounds,

but I think that is equally romantic.

There are modern bits in it, too, that's an aeroplane vapour trail

and I wanted to get a grey signet that was gliding down the river

and I could have done with her. But what can you do with swans?

When you want them, they're just not there.

My final leg across the Midlands

takes me over the border into Nottinghamshire

and to its county town.

The Frith picture is of the old Forest Racecourse in Nottingham

and was taken in 1893.

The ground is still used for sport and recreation

and the famous Nottingham Goose Fair is on at the moment.

It's held here for a few days every year and has been since the 1920s.

Professor John Beckett,

a social historian from Nottingham University,

is meeting me at the spot where Frith's photo was taken.

It was famous for horse races as well as football and cricket

and other sporting activities.

And why were the horse races held here and how eminent were they?

Because it was a very large open space.

In the early days of organised horse racing,

the courses were much longer than they are now,

so you needed a lot of space in order to set it out and plan it.

We know there was racing here in the 1680s

and almost certainly it's a major course quite early on,

because it has a King's Plate.

When you're running for the King's Plate, you've got royal approval.

But the horse racing was a bit rough, wasn't it?

It was usually associated with rough people

who you didn't want your daughter to get too close to.

But it also, bizarrely, brought together the social classes,

because the better-off people also came here

and they would sit on the pavilion, part of which you can see here.

Just over there?

And then lots of football teams

would play here on a Saturday or Sunday

most famous, of course, was Nottingham Forest.

They were associated with the church that's still there.

It's just off our picture to the right.

We've still got some football here.

Thousands of people could have assembled here

-and they wouldn't be charged.

-No.

Is that one of the reasons

why the racing was moved to the other side of town?

Certainly it was.

In the late 19th century, almost all open courses are closed

in the sense that they moved to enclosed premises

where they can be charged.

You get the odd one surviving, Epsom is a good example.

But generally speaking,

they are put into closed areas where a charge can be made

and order can be kept and betting can be regulated.

So maybe the Frith photographer came here

to capture the end of an era of racing at the Forest ground.

At around the same time the picture was taken,

horse racing in Nottingham was moved out of town

to the Colwick Park Course, which is still very much in business.

And as it happens, there's a race on today.

So, purely for... "educational" reasons,

I thought I might soak up a bit of the atmosphere

and maybe have a little flutter.

Pip Kirkby, the managing director, is here to offer some advice.

There's been racing here since 1892.

So the racecourse is steeped in history.

Obviously, Nottingham has a longer history than that.

Lots of character, lots of colour.

I've got my race card here.

I don't know anything about them,

so, quick, I've got £10 to win for two horses, so £20 in all.

I think we should go for Monopolize and Sunday Bess.

Sunday Bess. OK. Am I going to win?

Best of luck, but I'm a rotten tipster.

Now you tell me! All right, thanks very much. Thank you.

I've got my tips ready,

now I just need to find a bookie to take the bets.

Hi! I'm going to put £10 to win for Monopolize.

Spelt funny. And £10 to win for Sunday Bess.

-Number 5.

-OK, now that I've placed my bets, what are my chances?

-What do you think?

-Your chances are good, very good.

-Very good?

-Very good.

-Right, are you a bit worried?

-Not really.

But you're still favourite to win with your two selections.

When it came to gambling in the old days,

the Forest Racecourse charged its well-to-do official members

a yearly subscription in return for valuable silver betting tickets.

But it was the unofficial and unregulated wagers on the side

in which gentlemen lost their shirts.

That sort of betting ceased

when the races started here at Colwick Park.

Licensed gambling on horses remains as popular as ever

with an estimated £300 million

staked on the Grand National alone each year.

I'm heading into the stands with the other spectators

because the race is about to start.

Come on, Sunday Bess. Come on, Monopolize.

-COMMENTATOR:

-Monopolize is trying to get by.

Monopolize didn't get second place, nor did Sunday Bess -

a really dismal third.

And last was...

Hopeless, absolutely hopeless.

I've learned my lesson.

Perhaps.

Could you just move into the middle, do you mind?

That's it. You move into the middle. Everybody look here.

All right.

Here's my picture of the bookies and a punter at the Nottingham races.

A triumph of hope over experience.

The thing about horse racing -

and I'm sure it was true when Frith took his picture

in the 19th century -

is that there were characters then and characters now.

Poor old Frith. That's a bit short on character and I've added to it.

I've gone for character in a big way.

Here we've got two marvellous bookies and a punter.

But the great thing about this is they're all smiling.

I happen to know each one of the people in the picture

have all lost money today.

It's good, shows they enjoy the racing, whatever happens.

My trip around Frith's Britain has drawn to a close.

What a fascinating experience it's been.

Much has changed over the intervening years,

but I'm pleased to see much is exactly the same.

Yes, big smile now.

My admiration for Mr Frith knows no bounds.

What for me has come out of this series is that Francis Frith

was not only a brilliant businessman, he was a great artist.

He seized the chance to make a lot of money from this photographs

but he also helped to give us an entirely new art form.

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