Newport to Gloucester 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.

And 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.

Francis Frith and his team of Victorian photographers

roamed the country looking for interesting sights

and taking photos they hoped would sell.

Choose any region, the chances are Frith has been there before.

On this part of my tour,

I'm going to Gloucestershire and parts of Wales.

Am I trying to outdo Frith?

No. I'm trying to keep up!

Using Frith's photos as my guide,

I travel today to the picturesque waterways of South Wales,

and across the border, to Gloucestershire.

I'll be heading into the depths of the magical Forest of Dean

to have a go at the strange business of ochre mining.

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

I'll be finding out about the founder of

the Sunday School movement,

and learning what the children of Gloucester think about it.

-Would you like to go to Sunday School?

-No, not really.

And as usual, I'll be creating my own

photographic record along the way, in the spirit of Francis Frith.

And hold that, that's great. Yeah, there we go.

I'm beginning my travels just outside Newport.

It's an area steeped in a rich industrial history,

and up until the early 20th century,

was a vital transport hub for the South Wales mining industry.

Coal was shipped from here by canal, and by river

to the rest of Britain.

In the 18th century, most of the roads were no more than tracks.

It was difficult to move goods, particularly heavy goods.

And the practical answer remains one of the glories of our country -

the canal system.

The builders were so ambitious and ingenious,

they managed to make water go up hills.

Britain's canals and their ingenious locks

were a miraculous feat of engineering,

and my first Frith photo is of a place known as Fourteen Locks,

part of what was once the Monmouthshire Canal.

In the 18th century, canals in Britain became the transport network

that allowed the Industrial Revolution to flourish,

shifting heavy goods over long distances.

At their peak,

nearly 4,500 miles of canals crisscrossed the country,

but with the advent of the railways, canals fell into disrepair.

They collapsed, silted up and were forgotten.

But in the last decade, the fortunes of Fourteen Locks has changed,

thanks to the determination of the Canal Trust

and Newport Council, spurred on by local historian, Phil Hughes.

Well, here we are.

This is the exact spot this photograph was taken in about 1895.

-What are we looking at?

-The bottom of the Fourteen Lock flights.

A unique structure,

it rose 169 feet in half a mile to take boats uphill.

Now, we can see one, two, three locks

-but it goes on and on.

-Yes, to the top of the hill.

-What are we looking at here? There are some people.

-Yes.

This is Lock Seven.

As you can see, it was fully operational in those days.

Lock gates are on, boats were still working,

and boats were working here until probably 1933, 1935.

It was all flourishing, it wasn't a mess like this?

Oh, no, no, totally clear.

So what's unique about this design?

Well, it was designed in this way to save water. Water was paramount.

Every time you opened a lock,

theoretically you lost 50,000 52,000 gallons of water.

So, it's designed to make sure that when the boats come through,

you're losing hardly any water?

Yes, because the water would spill into ponds each side of the locks.

The theory is that when you opened the top lock

at Fourteen Locks, you only lost

one lock full of water by the time you got to the bottom.

But people think it always rains in Wales.

We're always short of water.

They were short in summer because of droughts,

and they froze in winter.

When the railways came, they shut the canals down.

When the Frith photographers took these shots in the 1890s,

canals in Britain were already in rapid decline.

Even back then, they were a record of a passing way of life.

By the start of the 20th century, only a few working canals remained.

But in more recent years, groups of enthusiasts

have gradually started to return many of Britain's canals

to their former glory.

They're part of the leisure industry.

The monumental task of restoring Newport's Fourteen Locks

began a decade ago.

So what's the significance of this bit?

-This is the bit that's yet to be restored.

-Yes.

This is our next project, and when you look this side,

this is the first of the five locks we've actually restored.

That looks terrific.

-How much have you spent?

-Not far short of £1 million.

-£1 million?

Near enough, yes.

You've got to say it very quickly.

You've got to say it quickly, exactly.

I wonder what the canal folk in the Frith photo

might have thought of Phil and the Canal Trust's efforts

to restore these old waterways.

We don't know who they were, but we do know that the lock keeper

when this picture was taken was called Henry Bailey.

He worked here nearly all of his life, before retiring in 1922.

His granddaughter, Mary, still lives locally,

and she's made a study of how their lives were lived.

So when we look at this picture, we can't see your grandfather.

No, no, no. I have a picture of him.

Oh, that's nice.

Taken just after that time.

-So just after this photograph was taken?

-That's right.

-We can't see him in the picture.

-No.

He would have known those people because it was his job

to be walking up and down the canal bank here, yes.

Checking everything was in order.

-So that's a direct link between you and this...

-It is, certainly.

What impression do you get of what life was like on the canal?

It was a very close community,

-rural community.

-And nice, from that point of view?

-Very good, yes.

-We've lost that, haven't we?

-Certainly.

After 100 years of neglect,

the canal as at last starting to come back to life.

So I've decided to take a picture of Mary,

the granddaughter of one of the last lock keepers.

She's a direct link between the past and the present.

That's great, and hold that. That's great, there we go.

And there's Mary,

by the locks that could so easily have been buried and ignored.

I couldn't take the picture in the same way a Frith photographer did,

because that of course is now all overgrown, but I did think

that Mary was, well, she was so good, and what a direct connection.

Her grandfather, in charge of the lock system

when the photograph was taken.

And just think how exciting it is

for her to have these locks being restored.

She never thought that would happen.

And, it's just a sort of, I don't know

it's a picture of the future, isn't it?

For canals to live again, they need barges.

And the Canal Trust has rescued an old one,

with the intention of returning it to the waterway.

It's a project which has inspired the local community.

Tom Maloney is one of the key figures.

-Hello, Tom.

-Hello, John.

This is a great project.

What are you hoping this will look like when you finish?

-Well, what you see now should have a nice floor on it.

-Yes, quite.

And we'll have benches each side,

so that when we have children on board,

when they look out, they're seeing a real magical experience.

Any child who comes on board

is going to be having a dream ride.

It's going to be fantastic.

What is it about canal boats and canals that get people, what is it?

I think it's just something inside you, John.

You have a love of water,

and I think that goes back a very long time.

They are fabulous, and they are part of our wonderful landscape.

And we don't want them to go.

For my next Frith picture, I'm staying in Monmouthshire,

heading into the centre of Newport.

These parts of Wales are now so modern, some of them.

But we're of course driving into the past, as we usually are,

and there's a very interesting story here in Newport.

The Frith photograph tells the story

of another mode of transport popular in the Victorian era.

Horse-drawn trams came to Newport at the end of the 19th century.

They proved a great success and were soon updated.

An electric tram network continued right up until 1937.

Their day passed when they became too expensive to operate,

and less versatile than the new double-decker buses.

Our Frith picture was taken on Commercial Street,

which runs through the centre of Newport.

And you can see the horse-drawn tram en route,

with its very proper Victorian passengers perched on the top.

Local tram enthusiast Dave Thomas

has a collection of other tram photographs,

and he has brought along a few of them to show me.

Now, this marks the end of an era.

It shows the last tram to operate in Newport,

leaving Westgate Centre, at 11 o'clock at night.

It was packed with passengers

and proceeded along Corporation Road to the depot.

-And what date was that?

-September 6, 1937.

So this is just before the war.

I mean, that also gives it a rather sad tinge to it, doesn't it?

That's true.

Because people are jolly, but in two years we will be at war.

That's right. There was a lot of affection in Newport for the trams,

as you can see by the crowd who gathered to say goodbye.

They all ended up at a breaker's yard on the riverbank

in Newport, and were very quickly scrapped.

-So this is the graveyard of the trams?

-Yes.

And all that remains is an inside door from one of them,

which I have in my garage at home.

Something good has come out of the tram graveyard.

Electric trams came to many British cities

in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A track was laid on the seafront in Brighton, creating a sensation

at the time and attracting hordes of visitors to the town.

That was an 1883, and it's still running today,

the oldest in the world.

But the age of the tram in Newport was quickly over.

The trams have gone, but the love affair is still

lingering on in, of all places, the City Museum, suitably modern.

There are, in here, echoes of the past.

We've got models of trams, at least,

and I must wear special gloves, because these are valuable.

Isn't it nice? Built by a local enthusiast,

and these are the regulations for the conductors.

Now, some of them were lady conductors,

some of them were men, but they had all sorts of tasks,

and this is the one I like.

This is very strict instruction about "Keep cars tidy.

"Conductors must keep cars clear of paper and used tickets."

Then there's a very valuable warning.

"This should be done when cars are stationary at the terminus."

Quite right.

The noisy bustle of Victorian streets is long gone,

with all the horses that went with it.

Our modern version doesn't seem quite so exciting.

Now, in the original picture, we've got this tower.

In my picture, it looks like a tower, but it's actually

the back of a street sign.

It has the same effect in the picture, though.

And there we have it, my view of Newport.

The road is much more cluttered.

I would say too cluttered, with street signs and hoardings.

And it's sad to see premises To Let.

I've taken my picture in the same place that

the Frith photographer was, so it's looking down the main street.

We don't see here the Old Town Hall.

Pity, but there we are.

We certainly don't see the horse-drawn tram,

but we do see a sort of version, well, of modern Newport.

I'm travelling around the country

to tell the story of Britain's First Photo Album,

tracing the footsteps

of the pioneer photographer, Francis Frith and his team.

My next stop is in the heart of the magnificent Forest of Dean,

often described as the Queen Of Forests.

It's one of the most ancient woodlands in Britain,

once a royal hunting ground.

It's still a Crown forest, known for its quality oak,

its charcoal production and its iron and ochre mines.

This is the Frith photograph.

Almost exactly the same, and you can see the coach here,

turning up to what was a hotel and is still a hotel.

But it's not just any hotel, no, it's called,

and you can see above there, The Speech House.

Inside the hotel is one of oldest and strangest courts in the country.

The Speech House is home to the court, which still to this day

regulates the use of livestock, the forest and the mining industry.

It does so on behalf of the inhabitants of the Forest of Dean.

The court is held at The Speech House at least four times a year.

Bob and Morris are two

of the elected judges of the Forest Court,

or "verderers", as they're known.

They govern the business of the forest,

but don't have the awesome power of verderers in the past.

If someone stole a sheep from the Forest of Dean, what would happen?

Oh, yes, they could be hung.

-Hung?

-For sheep stealing, yes.

-And the court could decide that?

-Yes, yes.

-Well, that's tough, isn't it?

-I should say so.

I'm glad we don't have that any more. I've got to be careful.

-It's a lovely forest, isn't it?

-Oh, smashing.

I mean, it just couldn't be nicer.

So what are you doing now?

You're helping the forest all the time?

In every way possible.

-That's your duty.

-Of course.

And one other man who became a byword for duty

was the great Admiral Nelson,

who took a particular interest in the Forest of Dean.

The oaks here were reputed to be the best in the world for shipbuilding.

Nelson was shocked to see how much of the forest had been

cut down, and he ordered thousands of oak saplings to be planted.

This could be just the sort of tree that Nelson wanted

planted in the Forest of Dean?

Perfect for that, yes.

Why did he want to do that, why did he care so much?

Well, he couldn't get the quality of oak

anywhere else in the United Kingdom,

that you can get here in the Forest of Dean.

And he was extremely upset when he came here in

the very, very late 1700s,

to find that almost all the timber had gone,

mainly for smelting the iron ore.

So he got an Act of Parliament passed to replant the forest,

-hence the reason we have these nice oaks.

-That's amazing.

-We're looking at a bit of living history.

-Oh, yes.

Well, it's a wonderful place to keep, preserve

and make sure that it's all right.

The Speech House settles cases involving all sorts of local people.

One important group are the freeminers.

Jonathan Wright is proud to be among them.

His family have for generations been granted permission to remove ochre

from the caves that lie deep beneath the forest.

-Hello, Jonathan.

-Hi.

You're going to teach me all about ochre mining.

Yeah, I'll show you what we produce.

We get lots of different colours, red, yellow,

purple and brown powders that are used for making paints.

And so how far does this go back in history?

Well, I'm the sort of tail end of 4,500 years, at least,

of mining here.

-Really?

-Yes. So it's a good tradition to continue doing.

So, if you see cave paintings, ancient cave paintings,

-the chances are, if there are any colours, they will be this.

-Yes.

Right. And you're going to show me the mine, yes?

I'll be pleased to show you.

You're a freeminer, aren't you?

I am, yeah. I've been a freeminer since I was 21,

-and it's just a family tradition, really.

-What are the qualifications?

You have to be a male, you have to be over 21,

and you have to work a year and a day in a mine in the Forest of Dean,

and you have to be born here.

Right. But once you become a freeminer,

you are allowed to mine here? That's it?

You're allowed to mine anywhere in the Forest of Dean,

except under churchyards and graveyards.

-And do you meet, do you gather?

-Yeah.

Every year we meet at The Speech House,

-as we have done for over 300 years.

-Oh, right.

-Well, this is something, isn't it?

-It's a natural cave made by water.

There was an underground river running through here.

You can imagine it just full of water, rushing through.

It must have been spectacular.

This is a magnificent cave.

There's hundreds like this, they're massive.

-Covering what, a large area?

-600 acres.

As we go deeper into the mine,

I wonder what the reality of life would have been like

for miners in the past.

If you look here, we've got what they would have used.

This is known as a "nelly",

and it's a ball of clay with a stick in the side,

and a candle stuck in, and they held it in their mouth, just like that.

-Like a pipe.

-And can we light that?

-Yeah, sure. I've got a lighter.

-You can see the difference, really.

-Shall I hold that?

Right, let's get it going.

-Right.

-So that's your light.

OK, can you put it in your mouth, do you mind?

Well, you're a miner,

but I can't talk to you, because you've got your light.

So you wouldn't have this lighter, just that?

You've got to teach me how to mine ochre, right?

-Yep.

-What do I have to do?

We've got a good seam of iron ore and ochre, there.

Just collect in the ochre.

So there's... I've got some.

Sorry, just what, just scrape it off like that?

-Yes.

-Onto the tray?

-Yes, just collect it.

It's very satisfying, because you often work

-next to pickaxe marks that are hundreds of years old.

-Like these?

Yeah. Some of these are Victorian.

When would the miner know when to pack it in?

-By the number of candles they burnt.

-Really?

Each candle would last about an hour,

so they would bring down ten candles.

Halfway through was lunchtime,

and the last one was time to go home.

-I think we've done our ten.

-Probably.

I think we've done our ten candles.

Jonathan's solitary working life underground

wouldn't suit most of us, but he clearly enjoys it.

And I hope my photo, like Frith's of The Speech House, will celebrate

an ancient tradition, which still goes on deep in the Forest of Dean.

So, if you could be just a bit further over.

Right. I think that's OK. That's fine.

My photograph is of a freeminer.

Now, they don't appear in the Frith photograph,

but they do meet at The Speech House.

So, there's the Frith photograph.

Quite different, but relevant,

is my picture of a freeminer,

Jonathan, who I must say, I did like rather a lot.

And this is him proudly mining in a family tradition

that goes back hundreds of years.

A strange sensation going to that mine, and I think we've got

some of that strangeness and some of the excitement in that picture.

For my final stop

on the Frith trail today,

I'm leaving the Forest of Dean and heading to Gloucester.

This would have been a busy, bustling place in Frith's time.

It was Britain's most inland port,

and like many towns in the 19th century, benefited hugely

from the arrival of the railway.

I'm looking forward to Gloucester. I first went there ages ago.

I was in a school choir, I was a treble,

and we sang in Gloucester Cathedral.

I can't remember the date.

It must have been soon after that Frith photograph.

Looking at this Frith picture, it's not obvious why it was taken.

There's a group of old cottages and what appears to be a pub,

but they don't seem very special.

Local journalist Hugh Worsnip clears up the mystery.

-Hello, Hugh.

-Hello.

-You're going to tell me that this is here, isn't it?

Because it's got to be here.

Yes, this is the place.

-This is the Coach And Horses?

-It still is.

-But this is clearly not this building here.

-Indeed.

This is one of four original Sunday schools, which eventually

evolved into both a national and an international movement.

By 1880, seven and a half million children in Britain received

their only education in Sunday School.

The movement was inspired by Robert Raikes, editor of the local paper,

who famously was appalled at the behaviour of the children

on a Sunday, which was their only day off

from working in the pin factories,

and he and Thomas Stock, the vicar of the parish,

drew up a list of the 90 poorest and most neglected children,

specifically to go to the four Sunday Schools he set up.

Right, so they worked all week, they worked in the pin factories?

Six days a week they worked in the factories,

from seven o'clock in the morning until six o'clock at night,

-and Sunday was when they let off steam.

-How old were the children?

The children ranged from 7 to 14, boys and girls.

Right, so we are going to go...

The Sunday School movement went from strength to strength,

as word of Raikes' work spread.

This Gloucestershire newspaperman

became one of the world's great educational pioneers.

His Sunday School movement was a catalyst for the creation

of the state school system we know today.

This was the start of something big.

Across the road is the house Raikes lived in for 37 years

and was his printing office.

-How many houses did he have?

-He had five.

And three of them are still with us.

So he was sort of a media magnate of Gloucester?

Now that's a nice picture of him,

he looks sort of, he looks benign.

He looks benign,

but he wasn't above wielding the stick

when he was doing a school inspection.

On one occasion, he put a child's hand on a hot stove

because he said that liars were worse than thieves.

That's true today. As journalists, we know that.

-We do.

-Yes, we do.

Outside Raikes' House, I found the head teacher of a local school,

the Robert Raikes Centre, who was here to tell

a few of her pupils about the school's founding father.

Raikes once famously tied down a child to stop him

from running away, and I can see this method could come in handy.

OK, right. How old are you?

-Eight.

-How old are you?

-Six.

-You don't know how old you are?

-Six.

-You're six?

If you were eight, he would be about the right age for Raikes' school,

-from seven upwards...

-Yes, for Sunday School.

Are they hard to discipline?

I'm six and he's six and he's...

-Are they easy to discipline or are they difficult?

-Sometimes easy...

But a lot of the time difficult!

-What was he famous for?

-What did he do, what was it that he did?

-I don't know.

-What? You don't know?

-What did he make?

-Did he know a lot about children?

-He made Sunday school!

That's right, Casey!

-Would you like to go to Sunday School?

-No, not really.

When you look back at what he did, getting his children organised,

it was a strict discipline, wasn't it?

Very, a lot different to what it is today.

And are we better today, or are we too soft?

No, I think we're better today,

more positive about behaviours than negative. Focus on the positive.

But you think of him

-as a great man?

-Yes, I do,

because he did great things

for children who weren't able to access education.

-So, Raikes - hero?

-Absolutely.

Raikes realised that to get on in life, we need to learn.

And in my case, that's what I'm still doing, with photography.

I like the way that the lines of the picture are all going that way,

so it sort of gives it a bit of depth,

a bit of perspective, that's what we're told to do,

and makes it look a bit classier than the ordinary snap.

Raikes' House looks pretty striking against the blue sky,

and although it's now a pub,

the outside at least hasn't changed much since Frith's time.

This is Robert Raikes' home, and you might think it's odd

that his home should have been turned into a pub,

but just think of the journalists

who would like to see that happen to their home.

Because he wasn't a killjoy, he was very much...

I suppose you would call him a modern, campaigning journalist.

He not only took the views of his readers very carefully,

but he also wanted to improve their lot.

If you want to find out more about Britain's First Photo Album,

go to...

Next time, I'll be following in Frith's footsteps,

visiting Liverpool to find out about a photographic club

that the great man himself founded over a century ago.

THEY CHEER

I'll head to Blackpool to climb the tower,

and I'll find out how the Victorians gave life to the seaside holiday.

Are you certain though, David, this is not frightening?

SCREAMING

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