Lyme Regis to Barnstable 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,

and one of the best examples was the pioneer photographer Francis Frith.

It was in the 1860s that Francis Frith embarked upon 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 will 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 subject matter of Frith's photos were the British Isles,

the towns, the resorts, the industrial landscape and,

of course, the people.

Frith realised there was a big demand for pictures of places

that people were visiting,

perhaps for the first time.

These early tourists wanted mementos

and he was happy to oblige.

Inspired by Frith, I'm travelling around the country.

Today, I'm continuing along the south coast, from Lyme Regis

heading up through the West Country to Exeter and Barnstaple.

I'll be trying my hand at a spot of heavy horse farming.

I am a natural.

Visiting the mysterious dungeons of Exeter's Guildhall.

What a grim place.

And, of course, in true Frith style,

making my own record of life in the UK.

I think a smile, a smile of satisfaction.

We begin in the beautiful county of Dorset.

Frith and his team extensively photographed the towns and villages,

producing a vivid snapshot of Victorian life.

Our first photo was taken in Lyme Regis,

an ancient seaport whose origins can be traced back hundreds of years.

Ah, Lyme Regis, one of the prettiest towns in Britain.

It's the capital of what's called the Jurassic Coast

and there's The Cobb, that's the breakwater,

with its heavy stones, which enabled the town to become a great port.

Now, it attracts visitors from all over the world.

What makes this area so special

are the millions of fossils preserved in the layers of limestone

that make up this extraordinary coastline.

Frith took lots of pictures of Lyme Regis,

but they were particularly concerned about capturing

the most exciting thing about Lyme Regis, for the Victorians,

which was the fact that this is where the fossils came from.

So these amateur palaeontologists

came from all over the country,

desperate have a look at these fossils,

and they hoped to discover a new dinosaur.

So the picture we've chosen is of the Fossil Depot

and here we see the proprietor,

we see lots of bric-a-brac in the windows,

we don't know what that is.

This Fossil Depot wasn't just any old depot, oh, no,

it had a royal patron,

HRH Prince Alfred,

the son of Queen Victoria.

Well, my first job is to find out exactly where the picture was taken

and that's not easy.

Oh, this looks promising.

-Hello.

-Hello, there.

-I wonder if you could help me?

-Maybe.

-Where is that?

That, unfortunately, is no longer there.

That was out of the door and turn right,

just on the end where the Rock Point pub used to be.

Blast, wrong fossil shop! There are so many round here.

But it seems the one in our photo disappeared in 1913,

as part of a road-widening scheme.

This is where the old fossil depot was,

but it was demolished, and what we've now got is a pub.

I can't find the building, but what I can do is to do what lots of people do

who come to Lyme Regis, I can go and look for a fossil.

Fossil hunting has been popular in Lyme Regis

since the early 19th century.

Chris Andrew is an expert on finding fossils

and he shows others how to do it.

Right, tell me what I'm looking for.

Basically, all the sort of grey coloured rocks you can see,

they are all parts of the Blue Lias,

the same rocks you can see in the cliffs over there.

The most common fossil we see is ammonites,

you can find loose belemnites in amongst the rocks.

You will find all kinds of things as we go along.

OK, what about this?

What we've got here,

we've got a small ammonite.

I've found a fossil.

-Oh, yeah.

-What about anywhere else?

-Oh, look, one over there, yes?

-Yeah.

People always want to know if you can find fossils at Lyme.

You can always find fossils, there's always things to be found here.

This is the ammonite graveyard, or the ammonite pavement,

a sort of famous tourist attraction around Lyme, and you can see

the whole surface of the limestone absolutely covered in ammonites.

-There's a lovely ammonite.

-How old is that?

-About 200 million years old.

-Right.

-Geologically not that old, but it's still fairly impressive.

-Right.

You've brought something to show.

I've brought a few bits and pieces to show you, yeah.

If we go back to the ammonites...

I said to you originally, ammonite people always see the coily shells

and they always think they're some sort of snail.

They are not snails, much more interesting than snails,

they're related squids and octopuses and,

if you know about it, the modern-day nautilus.

On the front of the animal - tentacles, for catching its prey,

and we think ammonites had well-developed eyes.

Their body was only in about the outer half coil,

and all the middle part of the shell

was divided up into little gas-filled chambers.

The animal controls the amount of gas and water in each chamber

and he can move up and down in the sea.

But it means when he dies, sinks to the seafloor,

all his soft parts rot away,

mud washes into the outer part of the shell,

but all these chamber walls stop it going into the middle.

So the outer part fills with mud and is well preserved,

as more mud piles up, the centre collapses.

What we end up with is what we have here,

a semicircle full of mud and very little in the middle.

Now, what else have you got?

That's part of an ichthyosaur jawbone and what you've got here,

that's the nostril,

the bones of the skull, the jaw coming along here,

lower jaw here, teeth all the way along.

Wait a minute, it's sort of like that.

Like that, and that's your nostril here,

the eye would've been much bigger on this side.

Particularly good specimen, isn't it?

-A nice specimen, a lovely piece.

-It's heavy.

Yeah, that's the fool's gold in it.

The nice thing about it is that it hasn't been cleaned,

that's how it was picked up on the beach.

I'm really chuffed to have found those fossils,

but there's still one mystery from the Frith picture

that I've not solved.

Is this strange object proudly displayed

in front of the Fossil Depot.

Up at the museum, I'm hoping local historian Ken

will be able to shed some light.

This museum has been here for nearly 100 years.

And is it all about fossils?

No, we're very strong on fossils,

but we've got quite a lot of other history in Lyme Regis as well.

You're going to tell me, I hope, about this particular photograph,

and what's this thing in front of the shop?

That's the shoulder bone of a whale.

If you look down there, we've still got it.

Hey, presto, there we are, revealed!

It was found amongst the rocks by one of the Curtis family,

who were fishermen.

One of the Curtis family had that shop

and he displayed the whalebone outside of it.

When the shop was pulled down in 1913,

they kept the whalebone in the family.

It was inherited by a distant relative of mine about 12 to 14 years ago

and he has actually loaned it to the museum.

-You must be proud of this.

-Oh, yes.

-Family heirloom.

So that's the final piece of the jigsaw.

Frith and his team were anxious to capture

some of the mystery and magic of Lyme Regis.

I'm now going back to the beach to do the same in our modern times.

OK, when I say go, you remove yourself.

-I will very gently move back, yeah.

-I hope that stays there.

I hope that stays there as well, or my colleague will kill me.

OK, an expensive fossil ruined.

-Yeah.

-OK, take your hand off.

There we go.

Here is my picture of the ichthyosaurus fossil,

perched precariously on top of some stones.

It is extraordinary to think that 200 million years ago,

this little dinosaur would've been happily

swimming around, right here.

The Frith picture I'm interested in next

is also taken in Lyme Regis,

on the banks of the River Lym.

This is the industrial part of Lyme.

When this was taken, there were about 13 mills in this area.

So you can see the interest of this picture is that the River Lym,

which Lyme Regis gets its name from, is going down here,

but this is the water that comes down here

to turn the mill wheel.

So it is a very interesting old picture of how,

for hundreds of years, Lyme was a centre for milling.

Local historian Martin Roundell Greene

will show me where the picture was taken.

Well, I think that building there,

on the left, with three windows,

is that building there.

Next building is the same, and then at the end is a thatched building

which was the Angel Inn.

That red-tiled building is the Angel,

well, it was the Angel pub

until it closed a few months ago.

And the building on the right, you can see there.

So, actually, an enormous amount of this is still here,

although it looks completely different, doesn't it?

-Yes.

-Now, what went wrong, why did the whole industry collapse?

It was about the end of the 19th century,

grain came in from Canada, there were roller mills built at the ports,

and little town mills were struggling by that time.

But there is one mill left, the Town Mill,

which is the only working

watermill in Lyme.

It ground to a halt in 1927, but...

Only in 1927?

-Yes.

-So not that long ago, there was a mill here.

The Town Mill dates back to 1340.

Recently, it was saved and restored by local volunteers.

It was, and still is, a flour mill.

Steve White, one of the current millers,

is going to teach me the ancient art of producing stone-ground flour.

OK, John, what we're now going to do is take some wheat

and put it into this wooden hopper, this wooden box here.

-Right, OK. It's heavy, isn't it?

-Yeah.

OK, that goes in there.

The mill is still powered in exactly the same way as it always was,

by a big waterwheel, turned by the mill stream.

As you can see, there's lots of water in the wheel, but it isn't turning.

What we need to do is walk the wheel.

Put your foot in there for me, please, onto the stone.

-Put my foot in it. OK.

-Yeah.

And push your foot forward, time and time again.

OK, it's going.

And that will be starting to turn the waterwheel.

-OK, I think that's enough now.

-Oh, right. Oh, it's starting, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-OK.

What's happening now is, the wheat is being knocked into the middle of the stone.

The stones are milling it finer and finer,

and eventually, the flour will be coming out around the edge.

Those two stones in there don't actually touch one another.

The entire weight of the top stone is supported on a shaft and a bearing

that goes down to the floor below.

There's an adjustment, which gives you your quality of flour.

-How fine the flour is?

-Absolutely.

If you adjust it so that the quality is too fine

and the two stones touch together,

they bind together and you grind to a halt.

That's where the phrase comes from?

Yes, it's an old milling term we all use.

So there's my flour coming down the spout.

All I've got to do now is to weigh it and bag it.

Wait a minute, that's right, isn't it? There is...

One bag of stone-ground, wholemeal, organic, brown, plain,

traditionally-ground flour.

-Which I have ground.

-Indeed, you did.

It's time for my photo.

I want to concentrate on the man behind the mill.

Steve White keeps the wheels turning and he's my hero.

I think a smile, a smile of satisfaction.

OK. Are you ready? Great.

Pride in the past, that's what really matters at the new

and old mill here in Lyme Regis.

This is the Frith picture of the old industrial part of Lyme Regis,

which the tourists wouldn't normally have seen,

and this is my picture

of what the tourists now do see in Lyme,

which is, of course, the old mill

and the miller Steve.

It's interesting, when he started his career,

it was as an engineer and he just likes being near old machines.

I'm travelling across the country to tell the story

of Britain's First Photo Album, tracing the footsteps of pioneer photographer

Francis Frith and his team.

I'm moving on to Exeter,

the county town of Devon.

The picture which interests me

is of Exeter High Street,

taken in 1896.

What makes the photo more poignant is that this city was

badly damaged by German air raids in the Second World War.

A quarter of Exeter was destroyed by the bombing,

but some very good buildings still remain in Exeter, and particularly

the one that I'm interested in, which is the Guildhall

and that's where I'm going.

Even 120 years ago, when this photo was taken,

the Guildhall stood out as a reminder of an earlier age.

Historian Todd Gray gives me a glimpse of its fascinating history.

-Hello.

-Very nice to meet you.

Tell me about this wonderful building.

Well, it's the oldest serving Guildhall in the country.

It's an extraordinarily rich building

and it is one which the city loves.

So how old is the building that we can see in front of us?

Well, the front bit is 1590s.

There's been a little bit of repair, but not much,

because Exeter didn't have much money in the 19th century.

So we kept, basically, what we had and this is why it's so important.

We can see what it's always been like.

-It is how it's been for hundreds of years.

-Yes.

-It's always looked like this.

-It looks very grand at the moment.

A Guildhall was the meeting place of the trade associations known as guilds.

The Exeter Guildhall has been a town hall, a police station

and a prison, but perhaps its most interesting role

was that of a court, where harsh punishments were meted out in the 17th century.

One of the judges became a byword for cruelty.

Well, Judge Jeffreys comes down to, basically, stop a great insurrection.

-So he's the notorious horrible judge?

-He's still a hate figure.

He's the worst, most frightening judge that's ever worked in Britain.

Well, supposedly, he had medical issues which made him

a bit grumpier than normal.

But he'd be up here, and this would be the court.

It was the court, the prisoners come in from behind us,

they're arraigned on the left.

The judge sits down and then he pronounces

some sort of awful punishment for crime.

So he would say, "You will be hanged by the neck until you're dead."

Grim.

What would be the most trivial offence that you might be hung for?

Stealing a sheep would instantly be a death sentence,

unless they were transported.

What were the public thinking at the time,

what were the town leaders thinking?

You have to remember, there's very loose political control,

there's hardly any police anywhere.

So the state is very supportive of a structure which intimidates people into behaving.

Exeter Guildhall has a comprehensive archive dating back 800 years.

It contains some fascinating descriptions of cases tried here.

This particular one, I think, you're going to love.

"This year, the Mayor was much troubled after the punishment

"of one Joan Luter,"

who we go on to read is "a very strumpet and harlot."

-And what year is this?

-This is 1524.

-Right, now, what happens to her?

Her followers do not agree that she should go to jail,

so they attack the Mayor.

-And why don't they think she should go to jail?

-She's too beautiful.

Perfectly good reason. And where do they take her?

Well, at this time, there's one place,

which was then called The Pit, and we would say it's a dungeon.

Prisoners such as Joan Luter

would have had a hard time at the Guildhall.

The dreadful dungeon, or pit as it was known,

was used to incarcerate the prisoners.

I'm only visiting, but you can quickly get the idea.

-Charming, isn't it?

-What a grim place.

It hasn't been used for some time.

It hasn't been used for a few hundred years for this purpose.

-Hardly anyone goes down here, you can see why.

-Yeah.

But at the time, we know people were down here for, well,

40 days, 40 nights.

These would be cells, would they?

Well, if you were a violent prisoner, you were manacled down here

and if you weren't, you were just allowed to, well,

walk around as much as you can.

It's just so powerful, isn't it?

You come here and you think, "I can imagine it."

I can't believe I would do very well in these conditions.

And this would be another cell.

It's the mustiness, the damp that's so grim, isn't it?

Well, if you can imagine the sewage from the streets,

just sort of seeping down in and coming up from the earthen floor as well.

And a lot of the time,

the prisoners here would be in complete darkness, wouldn't they?

Yes, there's a tiny little grate above,

to let in a bit of light, but that's it.

So let's switch off our torches.

-You get some feeling for it here, don't you?

-Nightmarish.

This is nightmarish.

Oh, horrible, isn't it?

Just the idea that you'd be stuck here for so long.

-And you think, night after night after night... Terrifying.

-A nightmare.

Well, I think I've seen enough.

I want to escape, I want to go, back to the light.

Well, that's a relief to be out of there

and taking my picture of Exeter High Street.

I'm trying to do something along the lines of the Frith photograph

and that's the theory of photography, really.

You draw the eye in along the road,

you start on this building, which is interesting,

and where does it go to?

So there's a bit of moving from left to right.

Anyway, that's my excuse.

This is the moment.

And there it is.

The old Guildhall, still standing, moody and magnificent.

Exeter's modern prosperity is based on the coming of the railways.

When the railway came, built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel,

an MP stood up in the House of Commons and said,

"This morning, I was in Exeter."

And a thrill went through the chamber,

to think that someone could travel so quickly between Exeter and London.

So what's my take on Exeter?

We've got the Frith photograph,

which we've talked about.

Very nice photograph.

I'm trying to better it.

Mine isn't, I don't think, as good,

but you can see all the detail,

and what is astonishing, once again in one of these photographs,

really how much remains.

The key point - the Guildhall, the lovely Guildhall is there,

given lots of prominence by me.

And as in the Frith picture, we're talking about a real scene.

These people are walking about, doing their business,

as they were in the old photograph.

But it's a rather handsome picture, why?

Because it's got a very handsome building in the middle of it.

I'm now leaving the busy streets of Exeter

and heading just a few miles away

into the Devon countryside.

My final Frith photo was taken

in the farmland just outside Barnstaple.

This is a very typical Devon road, with the sunken roads

and great big bushes on both sides.

My mother used to live near here for about 20 years.

I was brought up in the countryside, so it always gives me

just a bit of a thrill to say we're going to the real country

and we're going to a real farm.

Jonathan Waterer runs a heritage farm

that uses heavy horses and traditional machines to work the land,

just as they did in Victorian times.

-This is a photograph by the Victorian photographer Frith.

-Yes.

-Now, this is agricultural life in the late-19th century.

-Sure.

-Now, a lot of this, you're familiar with, aren't you?

-Yes.

Until two or three years ago, we used hay tethers just a little bit more modern than that,

but exactly the same idea,

exactly the same machine, and we used them for years and years.

What do you think about the horse though?

To be honest, he's nothing like as healthy as yours to look at.

Well, what we've got to remember is years ago,

when people were really working horses, they were a machine to them.

Times were hard, they had to make money

and horses probably didn't get quite the feed,

or if they did, they certainly worked very hard.

But you get the impression from this photograph

that the person taking the photograph wants to say, "Isn't the country wonderful?"

Now, there's an element of that, isn't there?

-When we're here, thick townies, like I am now...

-Sure.

..we sort if think, "Oh, isn't it wonderful?"

When I'm on my own and it's pouring with rain and I've got to get dung out,

or whatever, there's quite an element of worry...

-So it's tough in paradise?

-It is.

-Look, we've got to get on with muck spreading.

-That's it.

-Right, OK.

-Right.

That's pretty tough. It's not exactly romantic, is it?

Well, I suppose it isn't, really.

-No. It's just got to be done, hasn't it?

-Well, let's get on.

-I've got a very antique tractor here.

-Right.

You'll have to excuse the look of it, but it does operate.

-OK.

-We'll load this up.

Jonathan isn't averse to using some more modern equipment

to help him manage his 90-acre farm.

By the end of the 18th century,

the agricultural revolution in Britain was well under way.

It was spurred on by the increase in the population,

by mechanisation and by crop rotation.

The sun shone and the farmers made hay.

Whoa...

Right, well done.

In the photograph, the Frith photograph,

what are they doing there?

What time of year is it?

OK, it's probably June and they would be haymaking.

All right, now, what are we going to do this afternoon?

OK, well, we're going to spread some manure dung

onto the field here to help make the grass grow.

OK. But in Victorian times, as it were,

some months after that photograph, they would've been doing the same thing?

-That's right.

-This is exactly the same process...

-There is nothing different at all.

-..as they would've done?

-Absolutely the same.

We might have all big tractors and so on today,

but it's all the same process, just in a modern way.

And this is an in-between modern way.

Bob, Sam, go on, get on.

Good boys, go on.

By the time of the Frith photograph, Victorian manufacturers

had designed an enormous range of horse-drawn agricultural machinery,

from ploughs and cultivators to rakes and manure spreaders.

All these were used

until tractors largely replaced horses in the 1930s.

Now, all that would be understandable for a Victorian farmer,

but what would he find surprising?

Well, of course, if he came back today, the countryside is empty, isn't it?

There are so few people working in the countryside on farms.

This farm is what, 90 acres,

there would probably have been three or four people working on this farm in Victorian times.

-People have gone to the towns.

-They have.

-The country is sort of empty, in a way.

-It is. It is, sadly.

-Yeah, sadly.

-'Well, I think it's time for me to take the reins.

'After all, I was brought up in the country.'

I think I'm a natural.

Come on, boys.

-How do we stop them?

-Do you want to stop yet?

No, no, you carry on, but when we have to stop them, how are we going to stop them?

-I'll tell them to whoa, eventually.

-Tell them to whoa. 0K.

'There is something very special about life on a farm

'and I can see exactly what drew the Frith photographer

'to take his picture of a similar scene all those years ago.'

The happy farmer. That's very good, with some lovely, happy horses.

My picture is, in a way, like the old Frith picture.

It's a townie's version of life in the country.

In the Victorian picture, you can see that most people here

are in the town, but there are still the people in the countryside,

and it's bathed in sunlight.

But we know that life was hard on the farm

and I'm trying to get across the same idea in my picture.

Yes, we've got some lovely sunshine here,

we could have taken it right there in the sunshine, but I didn't.

I wanted to show there was a darker side to life in the country,

that it can also be very hard.

So that's my picture.

Good old Jonathan, lovely horses,

but it's not a simple view of paradise.

For more details on Britain's First Photo Album

and to find out about exciting events related to the series

that are happening at museums near you this weekend, visit...

Next time, my journey continues into Wales and canal country.

I venture deep underneath the Forest of Dean.

This is something, isn't it? This is a magnificent cave.

And I find out how Sunday school began

and what the kids of Gloucester think about it today.

-Would you like to go to Sunday school?

-No, not really.

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