Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 2 - Manchester to Bury - full transcript
In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired the Victorians
to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making four long journeys
across the length and breadth of the country
to see what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.
From the early days of Britain's railways,
you couldn't contemplate a journey
without first consulting Bradshaw's -
the comprehensive guide to train timetables.
Over the coming weeks, using an ancient
Bradshaw's guide, I will cries-cross Britain,
on four fascinating routes to view the places
and achievements that delighted the Victorians,
to see how the railways
changed the British people
and to understand
how much we've changed since.
Along today's route,
PH be discovering how Manchester
came to be known as Cottonopolis.
By the end of the century,
the Indians were getting Indian designs
sent back from Manchester to India
that maybe came from cotton
that they had grown originally. It was crazy.
Finding out how Bradshaw helped unify time
across the UK.
Each provincial city, like Birmingham,
Manchester and so on, had their own time,
and, of course, this was liable to create
great confusion with railway timetables.
And how the railways brought fish and chips
to British plates.
- Thank you very much indeed.
- Thanks.
It was the onset of the railways that allowed
all this population, this inland population,
for the first time, to experience sea fish.
On this journey, I'm travelling from Liverpool
along the world's first passenger railway
to Manchester.
Then PH continue on across the country,
from west to east through Yorkshire,
along the Humber estuary to Hull,
and eventually, up the coast
to my final destination at Scarborough.
My first train is from Eccles
to the centre of Manchester.
Then PH head to Danton
and travel north to Bury.
Manchester has a rich railway history,
so I'm going to spend sometime exploring it
and its suburbs.
The city helped to build the first modem
train line from Liverpool in 1830.
In turn, the railway transformed Manchester
into a powerful global hub.
And it was here that the first railway timetables
were published and sold.
So, to start off, I'm heading right for the centre,
where it all began.
Manchester Victoria.
Manchester - one of the hugely important cities
in the development of our railways,
and also the birthplace
of one George Bradshaw.
Thank you.
Bradshaw, being from Manchester, must have
written about this city with particular pride,
and his guide book contains this page
of illustrations of the buildings
that the Victorians were so proud of-
the Free Trade Hall, the Exchange building.
Fantastic achievements
that I'm really looking forward to seeing again.
Many of these grand buildings
so familiar to Bradshaw
were built with the wealth generated by
the cotton trade in the early 19th century.
And it was around that time
that Manchester was nicknamed Cottonopolis.
I'm hoping to get a tour of Cottonopolis
from local guide Jonathan Schofield,
starting at the Royal Exchange building.
Hi, I'm Michael. Great to see you.
Nice to meet you, Michael.
Welcome to Manchester.
It's lovely to be here. Why have you brought me
to the Exchange building first?
Well, I suppose the Royal Exchange
is the spiritual heart of Manchester.
What really gave Manchester its dynamism
was trade, was business,
and the Royal Exchange
is the heart of that business.
I'm carrying this 150-year-old guide book,
Bradshaw's,
and Bradshaw describes this building...
He was very impressed
by this rounded Doric front,
and he describes the "cotton lords“
meeting here on a Tuesday.
Yes, well, they were cotton lords.
Manchester was Cottonopolis
and these were the cotton barons,
or the Cottontots they were often called,
as well,
and they would come here
and they would do business.
And by the way, it was so crowded in there
that you had a grid reference.
On the columns on the inside,
you had letters and numbers,
so I'll meet you at J2,
because you would not find the trader otherwise.
Describe the trade to me.
Where does the cotton come from
before it comes here?
Where is it going to afterwards?
It's coming from the hotter pans of the world.
It's coming from southern USA or Egypt -
places where they can grow raw cotton.
We cannot grow raw cotton around here,
and so, therefore, it would have come
at least a thousand miles.
The new railway gave Manchester
a competitive edge over the rest of the world
and sent the cotton industry into overdrive.
Textiles, spinning, weaving and dyeing
dominated Victorian Manchester
and the small mill towns that surrounded it
By 1913, 65 per cent of the world's cotton
was processed in the area.
By the end of the century,
we were selling printed fabric
back to tribes people in Africa.
The Indians were getting Indian designs
sent back from Manchester to India,
that maybe came from cotton
that they had grown originally.
It was crazy, but it just builds up
that classic competitive advantage.
So, what's going to be the next stop
on Jonathan's tour of Cottonopolis?
Now we're here at the cotton cathedral,
I suppose, with the Royal Exchange.
Let's go to the civic cathedral,
which is Manchestertown hall.
OK.
All around the city, you get these little gems
that tell a story about Manchester
and its cotton heyday.
Sometimes they're on the buildings.
Sometimes they're literally on city streets,
and just here, you can see iron kerbs,
which are very distinctive.
I've come across them in other cities,
but not with the regularity you see them
in Manchester,
and that's because these vast cotton trucks,
covered in cotton bales,
over-laden with cotton bales,
would crack and smash stone kerbs.
What they thought to do:
we'll put iron kerbs -
they just got pushed into the ground
but they didn't crack at least -
and you can see these
in the warehouse districts,
but also in other areas of the city,
and it's just a little reminder.
We still rattle around in
the bones of the cotton industry in Manchester.
A vein of history written into the streets.
Exactly.
This is a wonderful
way to approach the town hall, isn't it?
It is. It's the best way -
face on to Manchester's civic cathedral
that tried to embody all those virtues
of independence of spirit and mind.
This grand Nee-Gothic pile
cost a million pounds to complete in 1887.
That's about £48 million in today's money,
which shows just how wealthy
Manchester had become.
I suppose it's a complete encapsulation
of that high Victorian utter confidence,
and I think the golden ball
with spikes on the top there is a classic one.
Most town halls might have had a crown
or a cross or something like that.
We've got a symbol of the cotton industry,
the cotton bud about to burst
and give us the raw material itself.
But also - and I love this particular one -
is the sun,
and it's saying, "Wherever the sun shines,
Manchester has business.“
We are international. We don't look local,
we don't even look national.
We look across the world to our trade,
and we feel we have influence on
the world as well.
George Bradshaw was extremely proud of
his home city
and its monopoly of the cotton industry
He wrote, "Watt's steam engine,
Arkwright's power loom
and the factory system
and inexhaustible supplies of coal
have given superiority to Manchester. "
But when India gained independence, it began
to process its own cotton much more cheaply.
Manchester's cotton scene slowed,
and, by the 19503, the mills began to close.
Today, the mill buildings are surrounded by
a different Manchester -
a city of glass and steel.
And that's partly due to one recent event
that profoundly changed the skyline.
In the 1990s, a massive bomb destroyed
the Arndale Centre,
during that dark period for Ireland
and the United Kingdom
of which I have many poignant memories
myself.
But in Manchester today, you sense that
it wasn't just the unhappy chance of a bomb
that's led to the city's transformation.
There is today an appetite for architecture
as provocative and outstanding as that that
Bradshaw admired a century and a half ago.
Mancunians, it seems,
have always been looking ahead,
ready to embrace the future.
- Good morning.
- Good morning.
- How are you?
- Fine, how are you?
So, Manchester now is full of modern buildings,
skyscrapers. What do you think of those?
I like it, cos it's a diverse mix of old buildings
and new buildings,
and some of them, you can see how
Manchester's changed over the years.
You've got cobbled streets in Market Street
and then next to it,
you've got the Hilton Hotel and everything,
so it's really different.
You can see the timeline
of how everything's changed.
- What do you think of Manchester now?
- Oh, I always liked Manchester.
- It's a changing city, isn't it?
- Yeah, but I still like it.
So what's better, the old Manchester
or the new Manchester?
Well, you've got to go with the times,
haven't you?
Manchester's busiest station, Piccadilly,
certainly did move with the times.
Manchester Piccadilly has none of the Victorian
old-world charm of Manchester Victoria.
This has been made to look like
an airline terminal.
This says, "I'm classy, I'm glassy
and brand-new."
I'm heading south,
to find out about another textile success story
for Manchester driven by the railways.
Bradshaw's guide tells me that Demon,
towards which I'm headed now,
has several "hat manufacturies“ as he puts it.
Denton then was a village
of about 3,500 people.
I think now, I'm going to discover it's pretty much
been absorbed into Greater Manchester.
Thank you.
In the 18003,
there were 90 hat factories around here,
employing almost 40 per cent of the population.
It's claimed the trilby hat was born here,
but the hat industry was at! but kitted off
with the arrival of the motor car.
It provided shelter from the elements,
so hats were no longer needed.
Failsworth Hats is one of
the few hat factories left,
and manager Karen Turner
is going to make me my very own Demon trilby.
Are you Karen?
Oh, I am, yes. Hi!
Nice to meet you, Michael.
I keep hearing about the history of hats.
We'll just measure round your head,
just above the ears at the widest point,
which is 58cm, which is
a seven and one-eighth in imperial.
Seven and one-eighth. Useful to know.
I'm often being asked that.
This is what we start off with.
This is what we call a hood,
and it's made from rabbit hair, felted rabbit hair.
- Nothing else, just felt and...
- It's nice and soft.
Ancient-looking machinery.
I suppose this hasn't changed very much
in many decades.
No, not at all.
This machinery's probably, what...?
How old do you think?
80 years old perhaps.
Some of it's even older, yeah.
You seem to have put that
into a steam chamber. Is that right?
Yeah, steam is really important.
The steam is softening it now.
Abracadabra.
I've been following a guide book 150 years old
that talks about the hatters around Manchester.
Would the process be very different
150 years ago?
Probably not, no.
The only difference might have been that,
whereas we start off now with a hood,
they will have actually bought in rabbit hair
and made the hoods themselves,
which was even more labour-intensive.
Tn Bradshaw's time, mercury was used to
separate the rabbit hair from the hide
to make the felted hoods.
Many hat workers suffered from
mercury poisoning,
with symptoms like erratic behaviour
and dementia.
It's said that the expression "mad as a hatter"
came from that.
Back to my hat.
After much more steaming, stretching
and setting of its shape and size,
it's almost complete.
So, now we're going to line the hat in,
and perhaps you'd like to have a go at this
to finish the hat off?
I'd be worried to have a go,
because when I make construction kits,
I always manage to get the glue everywhere.
Er, not bad, Michael!
But this is very nearly a completed hat.
It is very nearly, yeah, yeah.
Pull the brim down your nose.
And at a jaunty angle.
That's it, yeah, yeah. Very good.
- Is that it?
- Yeah, very nice.
Thank you very much.
Over many decades, thousands of workers
making headwear for the world
helped put Manchester on the map
and I lift my hat to them.
- Do you ever wear a hat?
- No, not any more. I used to.
Did you? And what made you give up
wearing hats?
Er, well, none of them fit me now.
They're all too big!
Do you think it's a pity
that people don't wear hats any more?
The young ones do, don't they?
They wear these trilby things
that are in fashion.
- Oh, do you think so?
- Yeah.
So, maybe there's stiff hope for the hat industry.
Now, it's back into Manchester
for my bed for the night.
And my trusty edition of Bradshaw
has brought me to one of the most impressive
buildings in Manchester.
In Victorian times,
even the most utilitarian of buildings
were magnificent.
As Bradshaw's guide says,
"For style of architecture and beauty,
perhaps Watt's new warehouses
in Portland Street excel all others
and ought by all means to be seen.“
When it opened in 1858,
it was the world's first cash and carry.
Now it's a listed building
and, luckily for me, my hotel for the night.
This building was designed to look like
a highly decorated Venetian palazzo
from the 15th century.
It was a way of saying, "The cotton barons of
Manchester are as powerful and wealthy
as the merchants of Venice were
when they dominated trade in Europe. "
Bright new morning in Manchester,
and the interior of the warehouse
that is now my hotel
is just as magnificent as the exterior.
It's incredible that the Victorians built
warehouses to this quality,
but even so, I can't believe that
the original warehouse had that chandelier.
These days, there's not much sign
of the cotton industry left,
but I'm told that the sweeping, cantilevered
iron staircase and balconied stairwell
are part of the original warehouse.
Bradshaw's home city has changed dramatically
since he set up his company here in the 1830s,
publishing railway timetables.
In this short street,
George Bradshaw had his office once,
but it's perfectly clear
there's no trace of it left now.
But I'm interested to find out more
about this son of Manchester
and how it was that he came to bring order
to that chaotic world
in which the many railway companies
had uncoordinated
and largely unknowable timetables.
I know that he was born in Salford,
just outside Manchester, in 1801.
As a Quaker, he was involved in charity work
and would have been a well-known figure
amongst the Manchester radicals.
A political animal perhaps,
which makes him even more interesting to me.
Historian Trevor Thomas is an expert
on Bradshaw and his railway guides,
many of which have ended up here,
at the John Rylands Library.
- I'm Michael Portillo.
- Nice to meet you.
I feel as if I've come to
Bradshaw's shrine here.
Yes, I think you're right. This is the city
he was born in and lived in all his life.
Bradshaw's big idea
was to gather all the railway timetables
for the whole country into one handy guide.
And here is the Bradshaw collection.
Wow. It's all Bradshaw.
Bradshaw, Bradshaw, Bradshaw...
Bradshaw, Bradshaw, Bradshaw...
And Bradshaw is up here. It's huge.
Yes, it's probably the best collection of
Bradshaw material that there is in the country.
Yes.
Trevor's picked out one of the earliest editions
so that we can take a closer look.
So, this is very small,
clearly intended to go in a pocket.
I think it's a waistcoat guide,
which you could stick easily in your coat pocket,
and this is actually the first edition of 1839.
And this was the first time these timetables had
been brought together in one place, is that right?
It's... A number of people were trying to
produce timetables in 1839
and Bradshaw was the one that won the race
to produce the first unified national timetable.
The interesting thing
about this particular copy
is that it's an association copy which a previous
owner had bought from Mrs Bradshaw.
And the note says
that the coloured lines of the railways
were done by George Bradshaw's
son and granddaughter,
so it's a historical connection with
George Bradshaw, this particular map.
This tells us about Bradshaw's origin, doesn't it?
Because he started as a map-maker.
He was an engraver, and he set up an
engraving shop in Manchester
that first produced canal maps.
And he was very quick to spot the commercial
potential of the new railways
and the need for a unified timetable
to make sense of them for the user.
So, by the time that he's producing timetables,
has time been standardised across Britain?
Not at this stage, no.
Each provincial city, like Birmingham,
Manchester and so on,
had their own time,
and, of course, this was liable to create
great confusion with railway timetables.
So each city is setting its own time, according to
when the sun sets in that particular place.
That's right. There's no GMT, no pips,
nothing of that kind.
On the early trains,
the guard used to carry a fob watch,
which was London time with him
on the train,
so that there was at least
one established sort of rule of time.
And the railway manufacturers,
or the railway companies,
did start political pressure to standardise time,
so they were responsible for pressure to actually
produce what we now know as GMT, I suppose.
The first time I ever heard of Bradshaw
I think was in Sherlock Holmes.
Whenever there's a new case
and they have to travel somewhere,
Holmes says to Watson,
"Get the Bradshaw!“
There are many literary references,
including Jules Verne's
Around The World In Eighty Days,
where the first thing they do is to consult
Bradshaw, so it was universally known.
Bradshaw got as far as India and China.
One of the most interesting ones
is an overland guide,
in which he describes the railway journey
from London to India in some detail,
so they did extend very, very widely.
You're giving me a very good idea
for the next series.
I did wonder about that.
Despite the enormous changes in Manchester
since Bradshaw's time,
with its iron kerbs and grand public buildings,
the city's history is still evident for all to admire.
Hello. Castleton, single, please.
- Single to Castleton - £2.90, please.
- Thank you very much.
There you go.
- Thanks a lot.
- Thank you.
Easy enough to buy a ticket, and just as well,
because nothing drives me mad
like bureaucracy.
When Bradshaw first travelled by rail,
you had to buy your ticket a day ahead,
you had to give your purpose for travel,
your place of birth, your age,
your name, your address...
A bit like buying an airline ticket today, really.
For the last leg of my journey, I'm heading north,
to the hills and valleys around Bury.
I don't know what I did with my ticket...
In Bradshaw's day,
this area was alive with industry.
Thank you.
He writes, “Stone, coal, state are quarried in
great plenty in the neighbouring moorlands,
and cotton, woollen and flannel
are the staple articles of manufacture. "
There's little evidence of any of this today.
But one thing that the railways brought here
is stilt going strong...
...fish and chips.
Hello, I've come to see Tony.
- Tony Rogers?
- That's the one.
Tony Rogers and his family
have been supplying fish
to fish and chip shops in the area
for over 100 years.
I'm following a 19th-century guidebook
to Britain's railways,
and I assume the railways made a big difference
to the availability of fish.
They made a tremendous difference.
Prior to the rail,
people living in inland towns and cities
could only eat fresh-water fish caught
in the local ponds and rivers and streams.
It was the onset of the railways
that allowed all this population,
this inland population,
to, for the first time, to experience sea fish.
The railway was a revolution.
For the first time,
it meant that fish could be caught, transported
and sold in a city like Manchester,
an in the space of a few hours.
Soon, the popular dish - fish and chips -
was born,
although it's not clear where.
It's a source of great rivalry
between where the origins were -
in the East End of London,
or Ashton-under-Lyne, Mossley.
Mr Lees, in Mossley,
claims to be the originator
of bringing over French fries
and the chip potatoes.
Now, as a Northerner, I stake my claim.
Well, all this talk of food is making me hungry.
Rock salmon was a favourite in the 19th century,
but at Caroline Thompson's chip shop,
the menu is always changing.
- Hello.
- Hiya. How are you?
Hello.
Hi, Caroline. Fine, thanks.
- Thank you very much. Lovely.
- Smashing. Thanks, Caroline.
- You're Caroline, aren't you?
- I am.
Tony's been telling me all about you.
Come and join us.
I will.
I'm eating traditional cod.
Are tastes changing very much?
I think cod is our best seller,
although we do such a variety of fish.
- Any new developments?
- Yes, there are, actually. We've got these.
They're called ocean pearls,
which is a mussel deep-fried.
- In batter?
- In batter, yes, yes.
And then this is scampi,
but you know what scampi is.
Very hot.
Everything has to be hot.
If it's dipped in the chilli, it's nice.
It's nice, very nice.
And should I be worried about calories?
You just have to say no to the cream cake
afterwards.
In Bradshaw's time, the railways
reached into every corner of people's lives,
in ways that no-one could have predicted.
You can scarcely overstate
how much change
the railways brought to Britain.
They made Manchester not only big,
they put it at the heart of
a global trading empire,
and they altered ordinary people's lives too,
including the food that they could eat.
Few people understood,
and certainly no-one recorded,
the transformation better
than George Bradshaw.
On my next journey, I'll be travelling back in time
in a Victorian railway carriage.
In the age before health and safety, it doesn't
say, “Do not lean out of the window“.
50, may I have a lean out of the window,
please?
- Yes, of course.
- Thank you.
(Whistle)
I'll be finding out about the latest
Roman discoveries in York.
This is a part of the city wall
that was only exposed about 30 years ago.
And I'll be taking to the air
in the Network Rail helicopter.
The Victorians built it right along the cliff edge.
It is one of the most spectacular bits of track
I have ever seen.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired the Victorians
to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making four long journeys
across the length and breadth of the country
to see what remains of Bradshaw's Britain.
From the early days of Britain's railways,
you couldn't contemplate a journey
without first consulting Bradshaw's -
the comprehensive guide to train timetables.
Over the coming weeks, using an ancient
Bradshaw's guide, I will cries-cross Britain,
on four fascinating routes to view the places
and achievements that delighted the Victorians,
to see how the railways
changed the British people
and to understand
how much we've changed since.
Along today's route,
PH be discovering how Manchester
came to be known as Cottonopolis.
By the end of the century,
the Indians were getting Indian designs
sent back from Manchester to India
that maybe came from cotton
that they had grown originally. It was crazy.
Finding out how Bradshaw helped unify time
across the UK.
Each provincial city, like Birmingham,
Manchester and so on, had their own time,
and, of course, this was liable to create
great confusion with railway timetables.
And how the railways brought fish and chips
to British plates.
- Thank you very much indeed.
- Thanks.
It was the onset of the railways that allowed
all this population, this inland population,
for the first time, to experience sea fish.
On this journey, I'm travelling from Liverpool
along the world's first passenger railway
to Manchester.
Then PH continue on across the country,
from west to east through Yorkshire,
along the Humber estuary to Hull,
and eventually, up the coast
to my final destination at Scarborough.
My first train is from Eccles
to the centre of Manchester.
Then PH head to Danton
and travel north to Bury.
Manchester has a rich railway history,
so I'm going to spend sometime exploring it
and its suburbs.
The city helped to build the first modem
train line from Liverpool in 1830.
In turn, the railway transformed Manchester
into a powerful global hub.
And it was here that the first railway timetables
were published and sold.
So, to start off, I'm heading right for the centre,
where it all began.
Manchester Victoria.
Manchester - one of the hugely important cities
in the development of our railways,
and also the birthplace
of one George Bradshaw.
Thank you.
Bradshaw, being from Manchester, must have
written about this city with particular pride,
and his guide book contains this page
of illustrations of the buildings
that the Victorians were so proud of-
the Free Trade Hall, the Exchange building.
Fantastic achievements
that I'm really looking forward to seeing again.
Many of these grand buildings
so familiar to Bradshaw
were built with the wealth generated by
the cotton trade in the early 19th century.
And it was around that time
that Manchester was nicknamed Cottonopolis.
I'm hoping to get a tour of Cottonopolis
from local guide Jonathan Schofield,
starting at the Royal Exchange building.
Hi, I'm Michael. Great to see you.
Nice to meet you, Michael.
Welcome to Manchester.
It's lovely to be here. Why have you brought me
to the Exchange building first?
Well, I suppose the Royal Exchange
is the spiritual heart of Manchester.
What really gave Manchester its dynamism
was trade, was business,
and the Royal Exchange
is the heart of that business.
I'm carrying this 150-year-old guide book,
Bradshaw's,
and Bradshaw describes this building...
He was very impressed
by this rounded Doric front,
and he describes the "cotton lords“
meeting here on a Tuesday.
Yes, well, they were cotton lords.
Manchester was Cottonopolis
and these were the cotton barons,
or the Cottontots they were often called,
as well,
and they would come here
and they would do business.
And by the way, it was so crowded in there
that you had a grid reference.
On the columns on the inside,
you had letters and numbers,
so I'll meet you at J2,
because you would not find the trader otherwise.
Describe the trade to me.
Where does the cotton come from
before it comes here?
Where is it going to afterwards?
It's coming from the hotter pans of the world.
It's coming from southern USA or Egypt -
places where they can grow raw cotton.
We cannot grow raw cotton around here,
and so, therefore, it would have come
at least a thousand miles.
The new railway gave Manchester
a competitive edge over the rest of the world
and sent the cotton industry into overdrive.
Textiles, spinning, weaving and dyeing
dominated Victorian Manchester
and the small mill towns that surrounded it
By 1913, 65 per cent of the world's cotton
was processed in the area.
By the end of the century,
we were selling printed fabric
back to tribes people in Africa.
The Indians were getting Indian designs
sent back from Manchester to India,
that maybe came from cotton
that they had grown originally.
It was crazy, but it just builds up
that classic competitive advantage.
So, what's going to be the next stop
on Jonathan's tour of Cottonopolis?
Now we're here at the cotton cathedral,
I suppose, with the Royal Exchange.
Let's go to the civic cathedral,
which is Manchestertown hall.
OK.
All around the city, you get these little gems
that tell a story about Manchester
and its cotton heyday.
Sometimes they're on the buildings.
Sometimes they're literally on city streets,
and just here, you can see iron kerbs,
which are very distinctive.
I've come across them in other cities,
but not with the regularity you see them
in Manchester,
and that's because these vast cotton trucks,
covered in cotton bales,
over-laden with cotton bales,
would crack and smash stone kerbs.
What they thought to do:
we'll put iron kerbs -
they just got pushed into the ground
but they didn't crack at least -
and you can see these
in the warehouse districts,
but also in other areas of the city,
and it's just a little reminder.
We still rattle around in
the bones of the cotton industry in Manchester.
A vein of history written into the streets.
Exactly.
This is a wonderful
way to approach the town hall, isn't it?
It is. It's the best way -
face on to Manchester's civic cathedral
that tried to embody all those virtues
of independence of spirit and mind.
This grand Nee-Gothic pile
cost a million pounds to complete in 1887.
That's about £48 million in today's money,
which shows just how wealthy
Manchester had become.
I suppose it's a complete encapsulation
of that high Victorian utter confidence,
and I think the golden ball
with spikes on the top there is a classic one.
Most town halls might have had a crown
or a cross or something like that.
We've got a symbol of the cotton industry,
the cotton bud about to burst
and give us the raw material itself.
But also - and I love this particular one -
is the sun,
and it's saying, "Wherever the sun shines,
Manchester has business.“
We are international. We don't look local,
we don't even look national.
We look across the world to our trade,
and we feel we have influence on
the world as well.
George Bradshaw was extremely proud of
his home city
and its monopoly of the cotton industry
He wrote, "Watt's steam engine,
Arkwright's power loom
and the factory system
and inexhaustible supplies of coal
have given superiority to Manchester. "
But when India gained independence, it began
to process its own cotton much more cheaply.
Manchester's cotton scene slowed,
and, by the 19503, the mills began to close.
Today, the mill buildings are surrounded by
a different Manchester -
a city of glass and steel.
And that's partly due to one recent event
that profoundly changed the skyline.
In the 1990s, a massive bomb destroyed
the Arndale Centre,
during that dark period for Ireland
and the United Kingdom
of which I have many poignant memories
myself.
But in Manchester today, you sense that
it wasn't just the unhappy chance of a bomb
that's led to the city's transformation.
There is today an appetite for architecture
as provocative and outstanding as that that
Bradshaw admired a century and a half ago.
Mancunians, it seems,
have always been looking ahead,
ready to embrace the future.
- Good morning.
- Good morning.
- How are you?
- Fine, how are you?
So, Manchester now is full of modern buildings,
skyscrapers. What do you think of those?
I like it, cos it's a diverse mix of old buildings
and new buildings,
and some of them, you can see how
Manchester's changed over the years.
You've got cobbled streets in Market Street
and then next to it,
you've got the Hilton Hotel and everything,
so it's really different.
You can see the timeline
of how everything's changed.
- What do you think of Manchester now?
- Oh, I always liked Manchester.
- It's a changing city, isn't it?
- Yeah, but I still like it.
So what's better, the old Manchester
or the new Manchester?
Well, you've got to go with the times,
haven't you?
Manchester's busiest station, Piccadilly,
certainly did move with the times.
Manchester Piccadilly has none of the Victorian
old-world charm of Manchester Victoria.
This has been made to look like
an airline terminal.
This says, "I'm classy, I'm glassy
and brand-new."
I'm heading south,
to find out about another textile success story
for Manchester driven by the railways.
Bradshaw's guide tells me that Demon,
towards which I'm headed now,
has several "hat manufacturies“ as he puts it.
Denton then was a village
of about 3,500 people.
I think now, I'm going to discover it's pretty much
been absorbed into Greater Manchester.
Thank you.
In the 18003,
there were 90 hat factories around here,
employing almost 40 per cent of the population.
It's claimed the trilby hat was born here,
but the hat industry was at! but kitted off
with the arrival of the motor car.
It provided shelter from the elements,
so hats were no longer needed.
Failsworth Hats is one of
the few hat factories left,
and manager Karen Turner
is going to make me my very own Demon trilby.
Are you Karen?
Oh, I am, yes. Hi!
Nice to meet you, Michael.
I keep hearing about the history of hats.
We'll just measure round your head,
just above the ears at the widest point,
which is 58cm, which is
a seven and one-eighth in imperial.
Seven and one-eighth. Useful to know.
I'm often being asked that.
This is what we start off with.
This is what we call a hood,
and it's made from rabbit hair, felted rabbit hair.
- Nothing else, just felt and...
- It's nice and soft.
Ancient-looking machinery.
I suppose this hasn't changed very much
in many decades.
No, not at all.
This machinery's probably, what...?
How old do you think?
80 years old perhaps.
Some of it's even older, yeah.
You seem to have put that
into a steam chamber. Is that right?
Yeah, steam is really important.
The steam is softening it now.
Abracadabra.
I've been following a guide book 150 years old
that talks about the hatters around Manchester.
Would the process be very different
150 years ago?
Probably not, no.
The only difference might have been that,
whereas we start off now with a hood,
they will have actually bought in rabbit hair
and made the hoods themselves,
which was even more labour-intensive.
Tn Bradshaw's time, mercury was used to
separate the rabbit hair from the hide
to make the felted hoods.
Many hat workers suffered from
mercury poisoning,
with symptoms like erratic behaviour
and dementia.
It's said that the expression "mad as a hatter"
came from that.
Back to my hat.
After much more steaming, stretching
and setting of its shape and size,
it's almost complete.
So, now we're going to line the hat in,
and perhaps you'd like to have a go at this
to finish the hat off?
I'd be worried to have a go,
because when I make construction kits,
I always manage to get the glue everywhere.
Er, not bad, Michael!
But this is very nearly a completed hat.
It is very nearly, yeah, yeah.
Pull the brim down your nose.
And at a jaunty angle.
That's it, yeah, yeah. Very good.
- Is that it?
- Yeah, very nice.
Thank you very much.
Over many decades, thousands of workers
making headwear for the world
helped put Manchester on the map
and I lift my hat to them.
- Do you ever wear a hat?
- No, not any more. I used to.
Did you? And what made you give up
wearing hats?
Er, well, none of them fit me now.
They're all too big!
Do you think it's a pity
that people don't wear hats any more?
The young ones do, don't they?
They wear these trilby things
that are in fashion.
- Oh, do you think so?
- Yeah.
So, maybe there's stiff hope for the hat industry.
Now, it's back into Manchester
for my bed for the night.
And my trusty edition of Bradshaw
has brought me to one of the most impressive
buildings in Manchester.
In Victorian times,
even the most utilitarian of buildings
were magnificent.
As Bradshaw's guide says,
"For style of architecture and beauty,
perhaps Watt's new warehouses
in Portland Street excel all others
and ought by all means to be seen.“
When it opened in 1858,
it was the world's first cash and carry.
Now it's a listed building
and, luckily for me, my hotel for the night.
This building was designed to look like
a highly decorated Venetian palazzo
from the 15th century.
It was a way of saying, "The cotton barons of
Manchester are as powerful and wealthy
as the merchants of Venice were
when they dominated trade in Europe. "
Bright new morning in Manchester,
and the interior of the warehouse
that is now my hotel
is just as magnificent as the exterior.
It's incredible that the Victorians built
warehouses to this quality,
but even so, I can't believe that
the original warehouse had that chandelier.
These days, there's not much sign
of the cotton industry left,
but I'm told that the sweeping, cantilevered
iron staircase and balconied stairwell
are part of the original warehouse.
Bradshaw's home city has changed dramatically
since he set up his company here in the 1830s,
publishing railway timetables.
In this short street,
George Bradshaw had his office once,
but it's perfectly clear
there's no trace of it left now.
But I'm interested to find out more
about this son of Manchester
and how it was that he came to bring order
to that chaotic world
in which the many railway companies
had uncoordinated
and largely unknowable timetables.
I know that he was born in Salford,
just outside Manchester, in 1801.
As a Quaker, he was involved in charity work
and would have been a well-known figure
amongst the Manchester radicals.
A political animal perhaps,
which makes him even more interesting to me.
Historian Trevor Thomas is an expert
on Bradshaw and his railway guides,
many of which have ended up here,
at the John Rylands Library.
- I'm Michael Portillo.
- Nice to meet you.
I feel as if I've come to
Bradshaw's shrine here.
Yes, I think you're right. This is the city
he was born in and lived in all his life.
Bradshaw's big idea
was to gather all the railway timetables
for the whole country into one handy guide.
And here is the Bradshaw collection.
Wow. It's all Bradshaw.
Bradshaw, Bradshaw, Bradshaw...
Bradshaw, Bradshaw, Bradshaw...
And Bradshaw is up here. It's huge.
Yes, it's probably the best collection of
Bradshaw material that there is in the country.
Yes.
Trevor's picked out one of the earliest editions
so that we can take a closer look.
So, this is very small,
clearly intended to go in a pocket.
I think it's a waistcoat guide,
which you could stick easily in your coat pocket,
and this is actually the first edition of 1839.
And this was the first time these timetables had
been brought together in one place, is that right?
It's... A number of people were trying to
produce timetables in 1839
and Bradshaw was the one that won the race
to produce the first unified national timetable.
The interesting thing
about this particular copy
is that it's an association copy which a previous
owner had bought from Mrs Bradshaw.
And the note says
that the coloured lines of the railways
were done by George Bradshaw's
son and granddaughter,
so it's a historical connection with
George Bradshaw, this particular map.
This tells us about Bradshaw's origin, doesn't it?
Because he started as a map-maker.
He was an engraver, and he set up an
engraving shop in Manchester
that first produced canal maps.
And he was very quick to spot the commercial
potential of the new railways
and the need for a unified timetable
to make sense of them for the user.
So, by the time that he's producing timetables,
has time been standardised across Britain?
Not at this stage, no.
Each provincial city, like Birmingham,
Manchester and so on,
had their own time,
and, of course, this was liable to create
great confusion with railway timetables.
So each city is setting its own time, according to
when the sun sets in that particular place.
That's right. There's no GMT, no pips,
nothing of that kind.
On the early trains,
the guard used to carry a fob watch,
which was London time with him
on the train,
so that there was at least
one established sort of rule of time.
And the railway manufacturers,
or the railway companies,
did start political pressure to standardise time,
so they were responsible for pressure to actually
produce what we now know as GMT, I suppose.
The first time I ever heard of Bradshaw
I think was in Sherlock Holmes.
Whenever there's a new case
and they have to travel somewhere,
Holmes says to Watson,
"Get the Bradshaw!“
There are many literary references,
including Jules Verne's
Around The World In Eighty Days,
where the first thing they do is to consult
Bradshaw, so it was universally known.
Bradshaw got as far as India and China.
One of the most interesting ones
is an overland guide,
in which he describes the railway journey
from London to India in some detail,
so they did extend very, very widely.
You're giving me a very good idea
for the next series.
I did wonder about that.
Despite the enormous changes in Manchester
since Bradshaw's time,
with its iron kerbs and grand public buildings,
the city's history is still evident for all to admire.
Hello. Castleton, single, please.
- Single to Castleton - £2.90, please.
- Thank you very much.
There you go.
- Thanks a lot.
- Thank you.
Easy enough to buy a ticket, and just as well,
because nothing drives me mad
like bureaucracy.
When Bradshaw first travelled by rail,
you had to buy your ticket a day ahead,
you had to give your purpose for travel,
your place of birth, your age,
your name, your address...
A bit like buying an airline ticket today, really.
For the last leg of my journey, I'm heading north,
to the hills and valleys around Bury.
I don't know what I did with my ticket...
In Bradshaw's day,
this area was alive with industry.
Thank you.
He writes, “Stone, coal, state are quarried in
great plenty in the neighbouring moorlands,
and cotton, woollen and flannel
are the staple articles of manufacture. "
There's little evidence of any of this today.
But one thing that the railways brought here
is stilt going strong...
...fish and chips.
Hello, I've come to see Tony.
- Tony Rogers?
- That's the one.
Tony Rogers and his family
have been supplying fish
to fish and chip shops in the area
for over 100 years.
I'm following a 19th-century guidebook
to Britain's railways,
and I assume the railways made a big difference
to the availability of fish.
They made a tremendous difference.
Prior to the rail,
people living in inland towns and cities
could only eat fresh-water fish caught
in the local ponds and rivers and streams.
It was the onset of the railways
that allowed all this population,
this inland population,
to, for the first time, to experience sea fish.
The railway was a revolution.
For the first time,
it meant that fish could be caught, transported
and sold in a city like Manchester,
an in the space of a few hours.
Soon, the popular dish - fish and chips -
was born,
although it's not clear where.
It's a source of great rivalry
between where the origins were -
in the East End of London,
or Ashton-under-Lyne, Mossley.
Mr Lees, in Mossley,
claims to be the originator
of bringing over French fries
and the chip potatoes.
Now, as a Northerner, I stake my claim.
Well, all this talk of food is making me hungry.
Rock salmon was a favourite in the 19th century,
but at Caroline Thompson's chip shop,
the menu is always changing.
- Hello.
- Hiya. How are you?
Hello.
Hi, Caroline. Fine, thanks.
- Thank you very much. Lovely.
- Smashing. Thanks, Caroline.
- You're Caroline, aren't you?
- I am.
Tony's been telling me all about you.
Come and join us.
I will.
I'm eating traditional cod.
Are tastes changing very much?
I think cod is our best seller,
although we do such a variety of fish.
- Any new developments?
- Yes, there are, actually. We've got these.
They're called ocean pearls,
which is a mussel deep-fried.
- In batter?
- In batter, yes, yes.
And then this is scampi,
but you know what scampi is.
Very hot.
Everything has to be hot.
If it's dipped in the chilli, it's nice.
It's nice, very nice.
And should I be worried about calories?
You just have to say no to the cream cake
afterwards.
In Bradshaw's time, the railways
reached into every corner of people's lives,
in ways that no-one could have predicted.
You can scarcely overstate
how much change
the railways brought to Britain.
They made Manchester not only big,
they put it at the heart of
a global trading empire,
and they altered ordinary people's lives too,
including the food that they could eat.
Few people understood,
and certainly no-one recorded,
the transformation better
than George Bradshaw.
On my next journey, I'll be travelling back in time
in a Victorian railway carriage.
In the age before health and safety, it doesn't
say, “Do not lean out of the window“.
50, may I have a lean out of the window,
please?
- Yes, of course.
- Thank you.
(Whistle)
I'll be finding out about the latest
Roman discoveries in York.
This is a part of the city wall
that was only exposed about 30 years ago.
And I'll be taking to the air
in the Network Rail helicopter.
The Victorians built it right along the cliff edge.
It is one of the most spectacular bits of track
I have ever seen.