Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 4 - Pontefract to Bridlington - 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.
I'm now more than halfway through my journey
from Liverpool to Scarborough,
and today I'm moving from West to East
across the mighty county of Yorkshire.
I'm hoping that my battered 150-year-old
copy of Bradshaw's handbook
will again prove a useful guide,
not only to the areas of Victorian history
but even to its present day.
Today I'll be discovering
how the railways made Hull
one of the biggest white fish ports in the world.
The railways make fish
an article of cheap mass consumption.
They create the trawling industry
and it grows phenomenally.
I'll be searching for liquorice in Pontefract.
- I'm guessing that is a liquorice plant.
- This is a liquorice plant.
It's a Mediterranean plant.
It came from Spain originally.
That's why in Pontefract we gave it
the nickname, "a stick of Spanish“.
And I'll be finding out why cod
might soon be off the menu.
We're starting to see
a lot more warm-water species
we normally associate with the Mediterranean.
All this week, I'm travelling across the country.
Having started in Liverpool,
I passed through Manchester
and the West Yorkshire moors.
Now I'll turn south along the Humber estuary
and finally up the coast to Scarborough.
Today I'm leaving York for Pontefract.
I'll visit Hull,
and the coastal resort of Bridlington.
And this is my first stop.
Bradshaw's Guide describes mid-19th Century
Pontefract as a large town of 11,000 people.
At the castle, it tells me,
Richard II was put to death,
and it was the scene of
several notable beheadings.
But there's another thing that Pontefract
was famous for in Bradshaw's day.
My reason for coming to Pontefract is an
intriguing reference in my Bradshaw's Guide
to liquorice cakes being made here and the root
being grown in the fields around Ackworth.
Some say it was monks who first grew liquorice
in Pontefract, over 600 years ago.
The soft, loamy soil around here
was perfect for liquorice's long roots.
But I'm struggling to find any Sign of liquorice
growing in these fields now.
- Hello.
- Hello.
You're got lots of liquorice here.
Do they grow liquorice round here?
They used to do years ago,
but I don't know if they still do it.
There used to be a farm, but I think they built
some houses on them. I don't know for certain.
Hello, ladies. What do you think
Pontefract is famous for now?
Pontefract liquorice.
Yeah, but it's not as much now
because all the fields have gone, you know.
They don't grow it any more.
When I was a child, there were
sticks of liquorice we used to chew.
Close by? Yeah.
The liquorice fields of Bradshaw's day
seem to be long gone,
but one man, I'm told,
has the last liquorice bush in Pontefract.
Tom Dixon,
who's from a family of liquorice growers.
- Hello, Michael, how are you?
- Very well, indeed. What a lovely house.
My great-grandfather built it in 1810.
He built it specially here because this
was all the best liquorice land in Pontefract.
In fact, in the country.
It's a Mediterranean plant.
It came from Spain originally.
That's why in Pontefract we gave it
the nickname, "a stick of Spanish“.
A stick of Spanish.
It's known all through Yorkshire
and Pontefract as a stick of Spanish.
- Like to come in?
- Thank you.
- Memorabilia galore.
- Memorabilia.
These are sticks of liquorice, Michael.
They've just been dug up the other day.
My great-grandfather used to
send Queen Victoria
a bunch of this once a month to Osborne House
on the Isle of Wight.
She used to chew it all the time.
We had a doctor here from Manchester, one of
the eminent transplant surgeons in this country,
and he said, "Your family killed Queen Victoria."
I said, "Why?" He said, “She ate that much
liquorice that she lost all her teeth."
It causes very high blood pressure,
which she died of.
So, he says, "Your claim to fame
is your family killed Queen Victoria."
That's a terrible burden to carry through life.
I suppose considering that it causes diarrhea,
it would explain why she spent
so long on the throne.
Very good! Never thought of that!
Tell me about this thing.
Well, there's a firm in Pontefract called Hillaby's.
They got a phone call,
I think it was in the late '303 -
could they make a pair of boots
for Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush?
- I remember it.
- Do you remember it?
Yeah, yeah, it's a very sad film
and a very pathetic scene, isn't it?
He's absolutely down and out,
he's nothing to eat
and so he takes his boots off
and starts to eat his boots.
That's one of the remaining boots.
It's unbelievably realistic as a boot, isn't it?
It's unbelievable. I've been offered money for it
by Charlie Chaplin collectors, but it's not for sale.
In Bradshaw's time, the Pontefract fields grew
enough liquorice to supply many local factories.
When the railways arrived, it was transported
all over the country and even overseas,
but by the 19603, all that had stopped.
That, Michael,
is the last commercial crop growing,
just up the road from where we're stood now.
- As you can see, the fields were full of it.
- Absolutely full of it.
Right.
It became cheaper to import liquorice
from Spain, Italy and Turkey
but, thankfully, Tom has his own local supply
which he's been nurturing for the last 10 years.
I'm guessing that is a liquorice plant.
This is a liquorice plant, Michael.
- Some smell.
- Slight.
- But what you're really interested in is the root.
- It's that root, Michael.
And those roots now,
because this plant's
been in about 10 to 12 years,
those roots will go down at least eight feet.
- Wow! Massive big root ball.
- Right.
So when this crop was harvested,
the whole plant, including its root, was dug up.
The whole lot was dug up.
There was men in the trenches
and they used to dig it out.
There was no machinery,
there was nothing, it was all hand dug.
And so then, what would you do with it?
It would be brought here,
to this house where you've had a look,
and it would be stored in the cellars
till the market price was right.
Quite a lot of it was shipped by rail
down to Boots the Chemist in Nottingham.
And Boots used it in what?
They used it in stomach medicines,
cough medicines, chest medicines...
Any medicine that you can think of,
liquorice was used in it.
And that was just to give medicine a sweet taste,
or was it medicinal as well?
No, it's medicinal.
It's used in a lot of remedies.
A surgeon in London actually uses the root,
or the thin strands of the root,
when he's doing a cancer operation,
or a gut operation,
and he sews them up with liquorice.
It stimulates the stomach
and just dissolves and disappears.
Tom, I think you've been telling me
some tell stories this afternoon.
I don't think so, Michael.
Everything I tell you is perfectly true.
Pontefract's liquorice factories
have almost disappeared, too.
There are now just two left,
including the Dunhill Haribo factory.
Until recently it was owned
by Richard Godson's family.
My great-grandfather bought the company
in 1919.
- Your great-grandfather?
- Yeah.
My grandfather and my father
both worked in the business as well.
How fantastic.
Pontefract's liquorice was originally
made into medical lozenges.
Then in the 17003, George Dunhill added sugar
and created a sweet called Pontefract cakes.
Here we've got a pan with all the ingredients
needed to make Pontefract cakes.
I'm not yet getting the distinctive smell
of liquorice.
When we further process the mass
down the line,
high temperatures will enhance the flavours
and turn the mass from a brown colour
to a black sweet.
The women who nipped and rolled the cakes
were called Spanish Thumpers
and could make around 3,500 per hour.
I imagine that your special recipe
will be a very closely guarded secret.
- That's correct, very closely guarded.
- I won't press you on that one, then.
OK. Let's go.
In 1994, the factory was sold
to German manufacturer Haribo.
It was keen to keep up
the tradition of Pontefract cakes,
and the factory now produces more liquorice
sweets than anywhere else in the UK.
I admit, I've never enjoyed liquorice,
but maybe a fresh Pontefract cake
will make me change my mind.
Actually, not really.
It's just not my kind of thing, Richard.
- I'm very sorry.
- Well, we can't convert everybody, can we?
We”, I'm stiff not a fan, but it's good to see that
liquorice cake production
is still in full flow in Pontefract.
For the next leg of my journey, I'm travelling east
from Pontefract, following the River Humber.
Bradshaw describes the estuary here as two
miles broad, widening to five or six at its mouth.
There was no bridge
in Bradshaw's time, just a ferry.
The Humber suspension bridge, just outside
the city of Hull, was built only in 1981.
In Bradshaw's time,
taking the train to spend time in Hull
was an excursion filled with excitement
In 1840, the railway started selling discounted
tickets on outings to glamorous places.
These were the first monster excursions.
A train left Leeds for Kingston Upon Hull with
1,250 aboard and it was 40 coaches long.
Today, my train has been reduced
to just two carriages,
but I'm sure the attractions of Hull
are undiminished.
When you think of Hull, does it bring
any other European city to mind?
Well, according to Bradshaw's Guide, Venice.
Bradshaw writes of a Hun which,
“in its low situation close to the banks
and surrounded by the masts of the shipping
in the docks,
seems to rise like Venice from amidst the sea. "
I confess, of at! the things that spring to mind
whenever I think of Hull,
Venice isn't one of them,
but maybe Bradshaw's Guide
will make me look at the city afresh.
And if the station's anything to go by,
I look forward to it.
Come and look at this.
Isn't that magnificent?
Isn't that a wonderful Victorian railway shed,
complete with setting sun.
It lifts the heart.
In Bradshaw's time, Hull was expanding
into a grand Victorian city.
Its wealth came from whaling.
At its peak in the 18203, Hull had 60 ships,
the largest fleet in Britain.
But when the railway arrived in 1840,
the whalers turned to fishing.
Hull soon became one of
the biggest white fish ports in the world,
as maritime historian Dr Rob Robinson explains.
The railways make fish
an article of cheap mass consumption.
They create the trawling industry
and it grows phenomenally
over the 30-40 years
after the railways arrived in Hull.
Before railways were here, it was very difficult
to transport fish any distance overland.
A large number of the textile towns
had both man and woman at work in the family.
They needed a cheap fast food.
Fish was the ideal answer.
And the demand for fish grew so rapidly
that more and more trawlers
were built and worked out from Hull
across the fishing grounds of the North Sea.
By the 18503, 20 fish trains
were leaving Hun every day.
The quantity consumed in Manchester atone
went up from three to 80 tonnes a week.
The price of cod dropped by three quarters.
I've seen photographs of the railway lines
running along the dock pontoons,
alongside the warehouses,
the trawlers
coming right alongside the railway wagons.
Yes, the railways came before the fish docks,
but the demand was such
that specialist fish docks were created
and when the railways came,
they spread their way through the fish docks
and large trains of wagons
would be along the dock,
in a morning, waiting to be loaded with fish,
to take the early morning fish trains out,
distributing fish across the country.
My Bradshaw's Guide
talks about standing on a high position,
looking out over the estuary of the Humber
and makes the comparison to Hull,
in its low position,
rising from the water like Venice.
What do you think of that comparison?
I think it's a good comparison. Hull itself is very
close to the water and it has a river on two sides.
The other two sides, at the time Bradshaw
came here, were a string of docks.
Water was like a pearl necklace around the city.
Yeah, there's quite an interesting link
between Hull and Venice in that sense.
I'm very grateful to you. Next time, I won't go
to the Grand Canal, I'll buy a ticket for here.
We'll get you a gondola.
Hull's trawler fleet travelled ever further north
into icy Arctic water to keep up
with the increasing demand for fish.
It required a tough breed of trawlerman,
like skipper Ken Knox,
who worked his way up
from the bottom-most rung.
This is where I started.
I went from a school desk to this school.
A culture shock.
You had three buckets of potatoes to peel
and this is feeling homesick, seasick...
It really was a new environment, you could say.
How many days would you be at sea?
The average time was three weeks.
How long would you be at home
once you finished that voyage?
Usually just two or three days.
Trawlers had to stay at sea until they'd caught
enough fish to cover the cost of the voyage.
They had to cope
with the most extreme weather.
Gates, fog, freezing temperatures that wrapped
the ship in thick ice, threatening to capsize it.
And in the areas that we used to fish,
it was a natural phenomenon for ice to form.
As the sprays came on board the ship,
the temperatures were so low it formed to ice.
The skipper would know
when to start the crew clearing the ice.
All the windows up here would be iced up,
you wouldn't be able to see out of them.
The skipper relied on his clear view screen
to steer the ship to safety.
It's a heated window and it spins round at 3,000
revolutions, so it's permanently clear.
So, a skipper would spend hours
just looking through here
and using
his searchlight to see what is ahead of him.
Do you miss the sea, Ken?
I do, very much. 22 years
coming from the bottom rung in the galley,
all the way up to reach this stage.
I could quite happily say
that I would do it all again.
But Hull's trawling days were coming to an end.
In the early 19703, the Icelanders became
fiercely protective of their fish stocks.
They attacked British trawlers
scooping fish from their waters
in what became known as the God Wars.
NEWS REPORT: The Icelanders' shells
had punched holes
through the trawler's steel plates,
some of them below the waterline,
and at one stage she'd settled low in the water.
As a result, quotas were imposed
on British trawlers, limiting their catch.
Hull's fleet of 127 trawlers
was reduced to just six
and the industry collapsed.
These days, Hull's docks are busy again.
It's the fastest growing cargo port in Britain,
but now it's dealing in Scandinavian timber
rather than fish.
Before I continue my journey,
I'm going to spend the night here,
and my Bradshaw's Guide
has found me a great place to stay.
How wonderfully convenient.
My hotel is in the station.
A half of bitter, please.
In the past, it's provided a bed
for some very distinguished clients.
This hotel is called The Royal
in honour of the fact that Queen Victoria
and Prince Albert stayed here in 1854.
I love these classic railway hotels.
This one even has
the arches of a railway station.
Perfectly positioned to provide
for the weary traveller a well-earned rest.
I'm now moving on from Hull,
up the North Sea coast to Bridlington.
Somewhat surprisingly,
Bradshaw's describes the coastal erosion.
"All this coast of East Riding is in the process
of change, the sea gaining on the shores. "
So, back then, the Victorians were already
worried about the cliffs crumbling away.
But one thing they could never have predicted
was that the North Sea could run out of cod.
I'm keen to find out from climate expert
John Pinnegar what the real situation is.
Over the years there have been many changes.
Obviously Hull isn't the fishing port it used to be.
Some of that's to do with politics,
to do with being driven out of Icelandic waters
and so on.
Can you draw any kind of conclusions
about environmental change?
There's a general thought that cod are moving
northwards, as with most species.
Between about 40 kilometres and
400 kilometres over the last 25 years.
Is anything moving from warmer waters
into our colder waters?
It's very interesting. We're starting to see
a lot more warm-water species
we normally associate with the Mediterranean,
things like red mullet, anchovy
and also sea bass.
Sea bass have their northern limit
to the commercial fishery in Yorkshire here,
although they're caught further north
by sport fishermen.
There's around 25,000 sport fishermen
in the UK that regularly fish for sea bass.
Sea bass numbers in the Channel
have quadrupled over the last 10 years.
So maybe the worry for the British public is not
so much that we're not going to have any fish,
but that we've got to change our tastes.
We'll have to move from, say, cod to sea bass.
Absolutely. In Britain, we're fairly restricted
in the fish that we tend to eat,
so particularly in the south of England,
people prefer cod.
Maybe they'll have to get used to eating
sea bass and red mullet and more anchovy.
Other things like John Dory, as well,
all of which are very nice to eat,
and people eat them further south,
but not traditionally here.
Let them eat sea bass!
It could be worse. It could be a lot worse.
Thank you, John.
Thanks for making the journey. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
This must be one of the most beautifully kept,
one of the prettiest stations, on the network.
Hello! I just wanted to say what a beautiful
station, what a beautiful buffet this is.
It is. It works very well.
It's one of the best kept stations on the line,
if not in the country.
I would say possibly in the country.
Has it been like this for many years?
It was started off approximately 23 years ago
by a lady called Madeleine Crook,
who was the proprietor before me,
and she started off
with a couple of tubs of flowers,
and over the years, it's got to what it is now.
Do many people come in and say,
“Congratulations. This is really lovely“?
A lot of people do, yeah.
Thank you very much.
Bradshaw was captivated by Bridlington.
He says, “This attractive resort
ties on the Yorkshire coast,
but at that point where the tine
turns westward from Flamborough Head
and then sweeping round to the south forms
a capacious bay called Bridlington Bay. "
In Bradshaw's day,
Bridlington was a holiday spot
for industrial workers
arriving by train from West Yorkshire.
It's still a popular destination,
whether it's a spot of fishing you're after,
or an afternoon on the wide sands of the bay.
But it's always been a working fishing port, too,
and just like Hull, its fishermen have had to
adapt to changes in the North Sea.
Frank the sea bass man, how are you?
Local fisherman Frank Powell now casts his net
only in Bridlington waters.
I love your transport.
Yes, well, it's all right for the job, yes.
Anyhow, let's be going,
because the net's drying out,
and in this sun, the bass won't be very good.
Let's get on, shall we?
He's found a new, more sustainable
way to fish, using the tide.
His nets stretch from beach to water.
When the tide comes in,
the fish lodge in the net.
Here we are, Michael.
Then at low tide, Frank moves from net to net
to collect the catch.
Another bass for you. A sea bass.
- A lovely fish.
- Beautiful.
A beautiful, silvery, fat fish.
So you have a net that runs from the sea,
up the beach.
Yes.
What about the bit that's still in the sea?
We have to wade out there, Michael.
Well, you're dressed for it.
Are you going out there?
I am. So are you. I've a pair of waders for you.
OK.
With no hooks and no engines, it's eco-friendly,
and there's little danger of overfishing,
as only small numbers are caught at a time.
So you have to pull it all the way out, do you?
Yeah, you just keep going like this.
All the time, until you come to the end.
Did you find anything out there?
No, that's it. Most of the fish today
have been up the beach.
Have you always fished like this, Frank?
No, I started off on trawlers from Hull,
deep sea ones, when I left school.
When Hull collapsed in '74 after the Cod War,
I moved to Bridlington
and carried on fishing there.
Would you mind if I go ashore
and dry my socks?
Certainly not! Go on, then,
but don't fall over on this net.
You do this sea bass fishing under
some kind of licence certificate?
Yeah, we have a licence for the sea bass.
We're issued with a permit.
You're responsible for maintaining the fish
at a sustainable level, are you?
Yes. Well, as you can see,
it's very low impact fishery, isn't it?
What have I caught today, six or seven bass?
If I do it twice a day, I mean,
you're talking about a premium fish now.
It's wild sea bass,
and with a Marine Stewardship.
It's got the stamp, we've got tags,
we put a gill tag into its gills and that goes on
record for when it was caught,
the traceability of the fish,
and wherever it goes, it can be traced.
And getting so few fish,
can you make a living with this?
Yes, I think if you can do it twice a day, yes.
Let's see the day's catch.
We'll get those out and show you
what we've caught. Mind the spikes.
Here we are, a bass and a mullet.
All the same size,
that shows the selectivity of a gill net.
- It's important to have them the same size?
- Definitely.
It gets rid of the juveniles.
There's no juvenile fish among that lot.
Everything there, what you catch, you keep.
There's no waste,
which is a big thing nowadays in fisheries.
Well, Frank, I've really enjoyed it and now
the moment has come to remove my welly.
We ought to check it for bass, I think!
Maybe it won't be long before sea bass
replaces cod as the nation's favourite.
With slightly damp feet, I head for the station.
Good evening.
Evening.
So, my Bradshaw's Guide
has proved very useful.
It found me a convenient hotel in Hull and
taught me to view that city with new eyes.
It didn't persuade me to enjoy liquorice,
and given the choice between a Pontefract cake
and a Bridlington sea bass,
I'm sorry, no contest.
On my next journey, I'll be catching up
with a very old local in Scarborough.
Excuse me, is this the 2,000-year-old man?
Er, no, actually, this one's 4,000 years old.
He dates from the early Bronze Age.
I'll be finding out about the
fisherman's knits in Filey.
All the patterns have a meaning.
The zig-zag pattern
you never walk down the cliffs
- in a straight line.
- No.
- Then we have the diamond mesh.
- The nets?
The nets, the crab pots.
And I'll be bird-watching
on the wild cliffs of Bempton.
We've got 200,000 breeding sea birds here,
which is just amazing.
The gannets are a relatively recent colony,
maybe in the last 30 years or so.
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.
I'm now more than halfway through my journey
from Liverpool to Scarborough,
and today I'm moving from West to East
across the mighty county of Yorkshire.
I'm hoping that my battered 150-year-old
copy of Bradshaw's handbook
will again prove a useful guide,
not only to the areas of Victorian history
but even to its present day.
Today I'll be discovering
how the railways made Hull
one of the biggest white fish ports in the world.
The railways make fish
an article of cheap mass consumption.
They create the trawling industry
and it grows phenomenally.
I'll be searching for liquorice in Pontefract.
- I'm guessing that is a liquorice plant.
- This is a liquorice plant.
It's a Mediterranean plant.
It came from Spain originally.
That's why in Pontefract we gave it
the nickname, "a stick of Spanish“.
And I'll be finding out why cod
might soon be off the menu.
We're starting to see
a lot more warm-water species
we normally associate with the Mediterranean.
All this week, I'm travelling across the country.
Having started in Liverpool,
I passed through Manchester
and the West Yorkshire moors.
Now I'll turn south along the Humber estuary
and finally up the coast to Scarborough.
Today I'm leaving York for Pontefract.
I'll visit Hull,
and the coastal resort of Bridlington.
And this is my first stop.
Bradshaw's Guide describes mid-19th Century
Pontefract as a large town of 11,000 people.
At the castle, it tells me,
Richard II was put to death,
and it was the scene of
several notable beheadings.
But there's another thing that Pontefract
was famous for in Bradshaw's day.
My reason for coming to Pontefract is an
intriguing reference in my Bradshaw's Guide
to liquorice cakes being made here and the root
being grown in the fields around Ackworth.
Some say it was monks who first grew liquorice
in Pontefract, over 600 years ago.
The soft, loamy soil around here
was perfect for liquorice's long roots.
But I'm struggling to find any Sign of liquorice
growing in these fields now.
- Hello.
- Hello.
You're got lots of liquorice here.
Do they grow liquorice round here?
They used to do years ago,
but I don't know if they still do it.
There used to be a farm, but I think they built
some houses on them. I don't know for certain.
Hello, ladies. What do you think
Pontefract is famous for now?
Pontefract liquorice.
Yeah, but it's not as much now
because all the fields have gone, you know.
They don't grow it any more.
When I was a child, there were
sticks of liquorice we used to chew.
Close by? Yeah.
The liquorice fields of Bradshaw's day
seem to be long gone,
but one man, I'm told,
has the last liquorice bush in Pontefract.
Tom Dixon,
who's from a family of liquorice growers.
- Hello, Michael, how are you?
- Very well, indeed. What a lovely house.
My great-grandfather built it in 1810.
He built it specially here because this
was all the best liquorice land in Pontefract.
In fact, in the country.
It's a Mediterranean plant.
It came from Spain originally.
That's why in Pontefract we gave it
the nickname, "a stick of Spanish“.
A stick of Spanish.
It's known all through Yorkshire
and Pontefract as a stick of Spanish.
- Like to come in?
- Thank you.
- Memorabilia galore.
- Memorabilia.
These are sticks of liquorice, Michael.
They've just been dug up the other day.
My great-grandfather used to
send Queen Victoria
a bunch of this once a month to Osborne House
on the Isle of Wight.
She used to chew it all the time.
We had a doctor here from Manchester, one of
the eminent transplant surgeons in this country,
and he said, "Your family killed Queen Victoria."
I said, "Why?" He said, “She ate that much
liquorice that she lost all her teeth."
It causes very high blood pressure,
which she died of.
So, he says, "Your claim to fame
is your family killed Queen Victoria."
That's a terrible burden to carry through life.
I suppose considering that it causes diarrhea,
it would explain why she spent
so long on the throne.
Very good! Never thought of that!
Tell me about this thing.
Well, there's a firm in Pontefract called Hillaby's.
They got a phone call,
I think it was in the late '303 -
could they make a pair of boots
for Charlie Chaplin in The Gold Rush?
- I remember it.
- Do you remember it?
Yeah, yeah, it's a very sad film
and a very pathetic scene, isn't it?
He's absolutely down and out,
he's nothing to eat
and so he takes his boots off
and starts to eat his boots.
That's one of the remaining boots.
It's unbelievably realistic as a boot, isn't it?
It's unbelievable. I've been offered money for it
by Charlie Chaplin collectors, but it's not for sale.
In Bradshaw's time, the Pontefract fields grew
enough liquorice to supply many local factories.
When the railways arrived, it was transported
all over the country and even overseas,
but by the 19603, all that had stopped.
That, Michael,
is the last commercial crop growing,
just up the road from where we're stood now.
- As you can see, the fields were full of it.
- Absolutely full of it.
Right.
It became cheaper to import liquorice
from Spain, Italy and Turkey
but, thankfully, Tom has his own local supply
which he's been nurturing for the last 10 years.
I'm guessing that is a liquorice plant.
This is a liquorice plant, Michael.
- Some smell.
- Slight.
- But what you're really interested in is the root.
- It's that root, Michael.
And those roots now,
because this plant's
been in about 10 to 12 years,
those roots will go down at least eight feet.
- Wow! Massive big root ball.
- Right.
So when this crop was harvested,
the whole plant, including its root, was dug up.
The whole lot was dug up.
There was men in the trenches
and they used to dig it out.
There was no machinery,
there was nothing, it was all hand dug.
And so then, what would you do with it?
It would be brought here,
to this house where you've had a look,
and it would be stored in the cellars
till the market price was right.
Quite a lot of it was shipped by rail
down to Boots the Chemist in Nottingham.
And Boots used it in what?
They used it in stomach medicines,
cough medicines, chest medicines...
Any medicine that you can think of,
liquorice was used in it.
And that was just to give medicine a sweet taste,
or was it medicinal as well?
No, it's medicinal.
It's used in a lot of remedies.
A surgeon in London actually uses the root,
or the thin strands of the root,
when he's doing a cancer operation,
or a gut operation,
and he sews them up with liquorice.
It stimulates the stomach
and just dissolves and disappears.
Tom, I think you've been telling me
some tell stories this afternoon.
I don't think so, Michael.
Everything I tell you is perfectly true.
Pontefract's liquorice factories
have almost disappeared, too.
There are now just two left,
including the Dunhill Haribo factory.
Until recently it was owned
by Richard Godson's family.
My great-grandfather bought the company
in 1919.
- Your great-grandfather?
- Yeah.
My grandfather and my father
both worked in the business as well.
How fantastic.
Pontefract's liquorice was originally
made into medical lozenges.
Then in the 17003, George Dunhill added sugar
and created a sweet called Pontefract cakes.
Here we've got a pan with all the ingredients
needed to make Pontefract cakes.
I'm not yet getting the distinctive smell
of liquorice.
When we further process the mass
down the line,
high temperatures will enhance the flavours
and turn the mass from a brown colour
to a black sweet.
The women who nipped and rolled the cakes
were called Spanish Thumpers
and could make around 3,500 per hour.
I imagine that your special recipe
will be a very closely guarded secret.
- That's correct, very closely guarded.
- I won't press you on that one, then.
OK. Let's go.
In 1994, the factory was sold
to German manufacturer Haribo.
It was keen to keep up
the tradition of Pontefract cakes,
and the factory now produces more liquorice
sweets than anywhere else in the UK.
I admit, I've never enjoyed liquorice,
but maybe a fresh Pontefract cake
will make me change my mind.
Actually, not really.
It's just not my kind of thing, Richard.
- I'm very sorry.
- Well, we can't convert everybody, can we?
We”, I'm stiff not a fan, but it's good to see that
liquorice cake production
is still in full flow in Pontefract.
For the next leg of my journey, I'm travelling east
from Pontefract, following the River Humber.
Bradshaw describes the estuary here as two
miles broad, widening to five or six at its mouth.
There was no bridge
in Bradshaw's time, just a ferry.
The Humber suspension bridge, just outside
the city of Hull, was built only in 1981.
In Bradshaw's time,
taking the train to spend time in Hull
was an excursion filled with excitement
In 1840, the railway started selling discounted
tickets on outings to glamorous places.
These were the first monster excursions.
A train left Leeds for Kingston Upon Hull with
1,250 aboard and it was 40 coaches long.
Today, my train has been reduced
to just two carriages,
but I'm sure the attractions of Hull
are undiminished.
When you think of Hull, does it bring
any other European city to mind?
Well, according to Bradshaw's Guide, Venice.
Bradshaw writes of a Hun which,
“in its low situation close to the banks
and surrounded by the masts of the shipping
in the docks,
seems to rise like Venice from amidst the sea. "
I confess, of at! the things that spring to mind
whenever I think of Hull,
Venice isn't one of them,
but maybe Bradshaw's Guide
will make me look at the city afresh.
And if the station's anything to go by,
I look forward to it.
Come and look at this.
Isn't that magnificent?
Isn't that a wonderful Victorian railway shed,
complete with setting sun.
It lifts the heart.
In Bradshaw's time, Hull was expanding
into a grand Victorian city.
Its wealth came from whaling.
At its peak in the 18203, Hull had 60 ships,
the largest fleet in Britain.
But when the railway arrived in 1840,
the whalers turned to fishing.
Hull soon became one of
the biggest white fish ports in the world,
as maritime historian Dr Rob Robinson explains.
The railways make fish
an article of cheap mass consumption.
They create the trawling industry
and it grows phenomenally
over the 30-40 years
after the railways arrived in Hull.
Before railways were here, it was very difficult
to transport fish any distance overland.
A large number of the textile towns
had both man and woman at work in the family.
They needed a cheap fast food.
Fish was the ideal answer.
And the demand for fish grew so rapidly
that more and more trawlers
were built and worked out from Hull
across the fishing grounds of the North Sea.
By the 18503, 20 fish trains
were leaving Hun every day.
The quantity consumed in Manchester atone
went up from three to 80 tonnes a week.
The price of cod dropped by three quarters.
I've seen photographs of the railway lines
running along the dock pontoons,
alongside the warehouses,
the trawlers
coming right alongside the railway wagons.
Yes, the railways came before the fish docks,
but the demand was such
that specialist fish docks were created
and when the railways came,
they spread their way through the fish docks
and large trains of wagons
would be along the dock,
in a morning, waiting to be loaded with fish,
to take the early morning fish trains out,
distributing fish across the country.
My Bradshaw's Guide
talks about standing on a high position,
looking out over the estuary of the Humber
and makes the comparison to Hull,
in its low position,
rising from the water like Venice.
What do you think of that comparison?
I think it's a good comparison. Hull itself is very
close to the water and it has a river on two sides.
The other two sides, at the time Bradshaw
came here, were a string of docks.
Water was like a pearl necklace around the city.
Yeah, there's quite an interesting link
between Hull and Venice in that sense.
I'm very grateful to you. Next time, I won't go
to the Grand Canal, I'll buy a ticket for here.
We'll get you a gondola.
Hull's trawler fleet travelled ever further north
into icy Arctic water to keep up
with the increasing demand for fish.
It required a tough breed of trawlerman,
like skipper Ken Knox,
who worked his way up
from the bottom-most rung.
This is where I started.
I went from a school desk to this school.
A culture shock.
You had three buckets of potatoes to peel
and this is feeling homesick, seasick...
It really was a new environment, you could say.
How many days would you be at sea?
The average time was three weeks.
How long would you be at home
once you finished that voyage?
Usually just two or three days.
Trawlers had to stay at sea until they'd caught
enough fish to cover the cost of the voyage.
They had to cope
with the most extreme weather.
Gates, fog, freezing temperatures that wrapped
the ship in thick ice, threatening to capsize it.
And in the areas that we used to fish,
it was a natural phenomenon for ice to form.
As the sprays came on board the ship,
the temperatures were so low it formed to ice.
The skipper would know
when to start the crew clearing the ice.
All the windows up here would be iced up,
you wouldn't be able to see out of them.
The skipper relied on his clear view screen
to steer the ship to safety.
It's a heated window and it spins round at 3,000
revolutions, so it's permanently clear.
So, a skipper would spend hours
just looking through here
and using
his searchlight to see what is ahead of him.
Do you miss the sea, Ken?
I do, very much. 22 years
coming from the bottom rung in the galley,
all the way up to reach this stage.
I could quite happily say
that I would do it all again.
But Hull's trawling days were coming to an end.
In the early 19703, the Icelanders became
fiercely protective of their fish stocks.
They attacked British trawlers
scooping fish from their waters
in what became known as the God Wars.
NEWS REPORT: The Icelanders' shells
had punched holes
through the trawler's steel plates,
some of them below the waterline,
and at one stage she'd settled low in the water.
As a result, quotas were imposed
on British trawlers, limiting their catch.
Hull's fleet of 127 trawlers
was reduced to just six
and the industry collapsed.
These days, Hull's docks are busy again.
It's the fastest growing cargo port in Britain,
but now it's dealing in Scandinavian timber
rather than fish.
Before I continue my journey,
I'm going to spend the night here,
and my Bradshaw's Guide
has found me a great place to stay.
How wonderfully convenient.
My hotel is in the station.
A half of bitter, please.
In the past, it's provided a bed
for some very distinguished clients.
This hotel is called The Royal
in honour of the fact that Queen Victoria
and Prince Albert stayed here in 1854.
I love these classic railway hotels.
This one even has
the arches of a railway station.
Perfectly positioned to provide
for the weary traveller a well-earned rest.
I'm now moving on from Hull,
up the North Sea coast to Bridlington.
Somewhat surprisingly,
Bradshaw's describes the coastal erosion.
"All this coast of East Riding is in the process
of change, the sea gaining on the shores. "
So, back then, the Victorians were already
worried about the cliffs crumbling away.
But one thing they could never have predicted
was that the North Sea could run out of cod.
I'm keen to find out from climate expert
John Pinnegar what the real situation is.
Over the years there have been many changes.
Obviously Hull isn't the fishing port it used to be.
Some of that's to do with politics,
to do with being driven out of Icelandic waters
and so on.
Can you draw any kind of conclusions
about environmental change?
There's a general thought that cod are moving
northwards, as with most species.
Between about 40 kilometres and
400 kilometres over the last 25 years.
Is anything moving from warmer waters
into our colder waters?
It's very interesting. We're starting to see
a lot more warm-water species
we normally associate with the Mediterranean,
things like red mullet, anchovy
and also sea bass.
Sea bass have their northern limit
to the commercial fishery in Yorkshire here,
although they're caught further north
by sport fishermen.
There's around 25,000 sport fishermen
in the UK that regularly fish for sea bass.
Sea bass numbers in the Channel
have quadrupled over the last 10 years.
So maybe the worry for the British public is not
so much that we're not going to have any fish,
but that we've got to change our tastes.
We'll have to move from, say, cod to sea bass.
Absolutely. In Britain, we're fairly restricted
in the fish that we tend to eat,
so particularly in the south of England,
people prefer cod.
Maybe they'll have to get used to eating
sea bass and red mullet and more anchovy.
Other things like John Dory, as well,
all of which are very nice to eat,
and people eat them further south,
but not traditionally here.
Let them eat sea bass!
It could be worse. It could be a lot worse.
Thank you, John.
Thanks for making the journey. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
This must be one of the most beautifully kept,
one of the prettiest stations, on the network.
Hello! I just wanted to say what a beautiful
station, what a beautiful buffet this is.
It is. It works very well.
It's one of the best kept stations on the line,
if not in the country.
I would say possibly in the country.
Has it been like this for many years?
It was started off approximately 23 years ago
by a lady called Madeleine Crook,
who was the proprietor before me,
and she started off
with a couple of tubs of flowers,
and over the years, it's got to what it is now.
Do many people come in and say,
“Congratulations. This is really lovely“?
A lot of people do, yeah.
Thank you very much.
Bradshaw was captivated by Bridlington.
He says, “This attractive resort
ties on the Yorkshire coast,
but at that point where the tine
turns westward from Flamborough Head
and then sweeping round to the south forms
a capacious bay called Bridlington Bay. "
In Bradshaw's day,
Bridlington was a holiday spot
for industrial workers
arriving by train from West Yorkshire.
It's still a popular destination,
whether it's a spot of fishing you're after,
or an afternoon on the wide sands of the bay.
But it's always been a working fishing port, too,
and just like Hull, its fishermen have had to
adapt to changes in the North Sea.
Frank the sea bass man, how are you?
Local fisherman Frank Powell now casts his net
only in Bridlington waters.
I love your transport.
Yes, well, it's all right for the job, yes.
Anyhow, let's be going,
because the net's drying out,
and in this sun, the bass won't be very good.
Let's get on, shall we?
He's found a new, more sustainable
way to fish, using the tide.
His nets stretch from beach to water.
When the tide comes in,
the fish lodge in the net.
Here we are, Michael.
Then at low tide, Frank moves from net to net
to collect the catch.
Another bass for you. A sea bass.
- A lovely fish.
- Beautiful.
A beautiful, silvery, fat fish.
So you have a net that runs from the sea,
up the beach.
Yes.
What about the bit that's still in the sea?
We have to wade out there, Michael.
Well, you're dressed for it.
Are you going out there?
I am. So are you. I've a pair of waders for you.
OK.
With no hooks and no engines, it's eco-friendly,
and there's little danger of overfishing,
as only small numbers are caught at a time.
So you have to pull it all the way out, do you?
Yeah, you just keep going like this.
All the time, until you come to the end.
Did you find anything out there?
No, that's it. Most of the fish today
have been up the beach.
Have you always fished like this, Frank?
No, I started off on trawlers from Hull,
deep sea ones, when I left school.
When Hull collapsed in '74 after the Cod War,
I moved to Bridlington
and carried on fishing there.
Would you mind if I go ashore
and dry my socks?
Certainly not! Go on, then,
but don't fall over on this net.
You do this sea bass fishing under
some kind of licence certificate?
Yeah, we have a licence for the sea bass.
We're issued with a permit.
You're responsible for maintaining the fish
at a sustainable level, are you?
Yes. Well, as you can see,
it's very low impact fishery, isn't it?
What have I caught today, six or seven bass?
If I do it twice a day, I mean,
you're talking about a premium fish now.
It's wild sea bass,
and with a Marine Stewardship.
It's got the stamp, we've got tags,
we put a gill tag into its gills and that goes on
record for when it was caught,
the traceability of the fish,
and wherever it goes, it can be traced.
And getting so few fish,
can you make a living with this?
Yes, I think if you can do it twice a day, yes.
Let's see the day's catch.
We'll get those out and show you
what we've caught. Mind the spikes.
Here we are, a bass and a mullet.
All the same size,
that shows the selectivity of a gill net.
- It's important to have them the same size?
- Definitely.
It gets rid of the juveniles.
There's no juvenile fish among that lot.
Everything there, what you catch, you keep.
There's no waste,
which is a big thing nowadays in fisheries.
Well, Frank, I've really enjoyed it and now
the moment has come to remove my welly.
We ought to check it for bass, I think!
Maybe it won't be long before sea bass
replaces cod as the nation's favourite.
With slightly damp feet, I head for the station.
Good evening.
Evening.
So, my Bradshaw's Guide
has proved very useful.
It found me a convenient hotel in Hull and
taught me to view that city with new eyes.
It didn't persuade me to enjoy liquorice,
and given the choice between a Pontefract cake
and a Bridlington sea bass,
I'm sorry, no contest.
On my next journey, I'll be catching up
with a very old local in Scarborough.
Excuse me, is this the 2,000-year-old man?
Er, no, actually, this one's 4,000 years old.
He dates from the early Bronze Age.
I'll be finding out about the
fisherman's knits in Filey.
All the patterns have a meaning.
The zig-zag pattern
you never walk down the cliffs
- in a straight line.
- No.
- Then we have the diamond mesh.
- The nets?
The nets, the crab pots.
And I'll be bird-watching
on the wild cliffs of Bempton.
We've got 200,000 breeding sea birds here,
which is just amazing.
The gannets are a relatively recent colony,
maybe in the last 30 years or so.