Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 1, Episode 5 - Filey to Scarborough - 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 on the last leg of my railway journey
from Liverpool to Scarborough,
using this dog-eared Victorian handbook.
So far, its pointers have proved remarkably
relevant, even to the modern-day traveller.
I'm continuing to travel by the sea,
so important to our island heritage.
And now I'll discover
whether Bradshaw's is a good guide,
not only to Britain's yesterday and today,
but also to our pre-history.
Today, I'll be catching up with
a very old local in Scarborough.
Excuse me, is this the 2,000 year-old man?
No, actually, this one's 4,000 years old.
He dates from the early Bronze Age.
PH be finding out about fisherman knits in Filey.
All the patterns have a meaning.
The zigzag pattern - you never walk
down the cliffs in a straight line.
- 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 seabirds here,
which is just amazing.
These gannets are a relatively recent colonist,
maybe in the last 30 years or so.
I've almost completed
my journey from Liverpool,
that took me across the North West of England.
Having crossed the Pennines and
visited the historic city of York,
and having passed through Humberside,
I am now heading up the North East coast
Today, I'm leaving the seaside town
of Bridlington
and travelling up the coast to Filey,
before reaching my final destination,
Scarborough.
And my first stop is Bempton.
This is the nearest station to that spectacular
feature of the North East coast,
Flamborough Head.
Bradshaw describes "its lofty
cliffs of nearly 500 feet elevation,
teeming in the spring and summer months with
thousands of birds of every hue and species. "
Bird-watching became a popular hobby
in the late-19th century,
spurred on by the railways,
which brought people to the coast
to enjoy the magnificent seabird colonies.
Isn't that amazing?
In Bradshaw's day, these high cliffs attracted
thousands of puffins and guillemots.
These days, it's also home to England's
largest mainland colony of gannets,
closely monitored by RSPB site manager,
Ian Kendall.
What a fantastic sight.
IAN: Incredible, isn't it? Absolutely incredible.
MICHAEL: That jagged broken cliff
with the birds lined along it.
I'm following this 19th-century guidebook,
Bradshaw.
He talks about Flamborough Head teeming
with birds in the spring and summer.
IAN: They are here spring and summer
but they're hereto early October.
The gannets take a long time
to rear the young,
so they're here right through mid-autumn,
I guess.
They're voracious eaters, aren't they?
When I was a kid, if I was wolfing my food,
I was accused of eating like a gannet.
They're really good hunters, really good feeders
and they take masses and masses of food.
That's why the colony goes
from strength to strength every year.
Am I right in thinking that even though
you've got this huge number of gannets,
they're actually a small minority
of your total bird population?
We've got 200,000 breeding seabirds here,
which is just amazing.
Do you have any problems with egg stealers?
No, that was the Victorian era,
that was a real big issue then.
The climmers, as they were, used to go
over these cliffs, harvesting guillemot eggs.
I think, one year, they harvested 30,000 eggs.
That was obviously
never going to be sustainable,
so I think the Sea Bird Preservation Act
started right here
and that stopped that process
of just taking all those bird eggs
without any thought
for the welfare of the birds.
I like to think George Bradshaw would never
have been guilty of such a heinous crime.
I'm sure not.
The dimmers would
sell the eggs for souvenirs,
but most were stolen
to be eaten by local people.
Thankfully, the climmers have gone
but the bird-watchers remain
a firm fixture on the cliffs.
Do you think seabirds are special?
I think they're absolutely wonderful,
especially the gannets.
The life of a gannet - the life they live,
the way they live and the way they are,
absolutely fascinates me and always has.
What is it about their lifestyle
that fascinates you?
They mate for life.
They have the same nest for life.
The way they bring up their young -
feeding them so much fish.
They look after them...
and the way they are together.
For such a fierce hunting bird,
they're so gentle with one another
and they're so loving.
It's wonderful to see.
- They have the same nest, do they?
- Yes, the same nest for life.
Goodness knows how they do it.
Imagine you've been out
for the whole of the winter
and then you come back to this cliff site
and the three miles of cliff
and you find the one particular
little nest that you had last year.
I just don't know how they do it.
I think it's wonderful.
I do find it hard to put myself
in the position of a gannet.
Not only, how do you find your address again,
but how do you spend months
clinging to a cliff edge?
It's really extraordinary.
Nearby Flamborough Head
has two lighthouses.
The Chalk Tower is the oldest surviving
lighthouse in England, dating back to 1674.
In 1806, it was replaced by another lighthouse
that caught Bradshaw's eye.
It pioneered a new system
for alerting sailors in bad weather.
Bradshaw's mentions this lighthouse
at Flamborough Head,
rising 400 feet above the sea.
It was quite new
at the time of Bradshaw's Guide
and for the first time
they used red glass on the reflector,
a colour that could be better seen in the fog,
giving this lighthouse a characteristic signature
of two white flashes followed by a red,
a model that was quickly adopted
by many other lights.
From the wilds of Flamborough,
it's back to the station for the next leg
of my journey up the East Coast.
My next stop is Filey
and Bradshaw's guide says of it,
that it's a modern watering place.
The guidebook would have been written
around the time that fishing villages were
becoming fashionable seaside resorts.
I shall be interested to see, today,
whether it's more noted for fish or fashion.
What a lovely railway station!
Very, very unexpected.
Beautiful, substantial Victorian brick walls.
Lovely roof.
It must indeed have been
a fashionable watering place.
When the railways arrived in 1846,
Filey expanded from a small fishing village
to an elegant seaside resort.
For those in the know, it was a quieter
alternative to its noisy neighbour, Scarborough.
But fishing was always at its heart.
In 1870,
there were over 100 working vessels here.
Filey fishermen used special cobble boats
that are found only in the Northeast.
Small and sturdy, they could
be launched straight from the beach.
Jeremy Smith is a fisherman,
just like his father,
and uses one of the last remaining
cobble boats in Filey.
- Hello.
- Hello, there.
I've never seen a boat like this before.
It's got a kind of flat bottom.
Yes, it's got a flat bottom with a tunnel
where the propeller is underneath.
We've got a keel on the front for stability.
What's the point of having the flat bottom?
It's just for landing on the wheels,
when we're pulling up the beach.
Because you've no harbour.
Only a harbour at Scarborough.
And do they go back a long time?
Yes, they go back to the 18th century,
these boats.
Originated from the Vikings with a clinker build.
That means the planks will overlap and they
rivet the planks to stop them from leaking.
And they're used for fishing?
Yes, we use them for fishing,
crab potting, netting, long-lining
and sometimes taking visitors out for trips.
Although the boats are sturdy for their size,
fishing on the North East coast in Bradshaw's
time was a hazardous occupation.
I've got a 19th-century guidebook
which talks about a lot of disasters in that period.
Yes, it goes back to about 1850-1860,
when the herring fishing was in action.
They used to travel for miles in these boats
and couldn't get the weather forecasts.
So, there was a lot of drownings in them days.
When other boats were laid up for winter,
the cobbles were still out long-line fishing.
Before the 19003, the boats were
dependent on sail and oar power.
So, if the weather turned,
the boats were left vulnerable to the rough seas.
This old sea mine serves as a memorial
to all the fishermen and mariners
of Filey who've lost their lives.
In fact, Bradshaw's Guide mentions
there are more women than men in the town
because of a catastrophe in 1851.
There were several such disasters
and the sea has created many widows
in this town.
Historically, the fishermen of East Yorkshire
wore thick wool pullovers called Guernseys.
They were hand-knitted by their wives
and heavily patterned with symbols
that represented the village they were from.
Margaret Taylor married a fisherman and the
knitting of Filey pullovers is part of her heritage.
Margaret? I find you hard at work.
- Hello.
- I'm Michael.
Pleased to meet you.
What are you working on there?
I'm working on a traditional
fisherman's Guernsey.
Ours are very highly patterned
because all the patterns have a meaning.
That's the shingle on the beach. If you feel it,
it's a nice texture, little pebbles on the beach.
This is very good.
The zigzag pattern - you never walk
down the cliffs in a straight line.
You go in a zigzag pattern.
- Then we have the diamond mesh which is...
- The nets.
The nets, the crab pots.
GT?
That's my husband's initials, Graham Taylor.
And part of the beauty of these,
in the years ago when people were lost at sea,
it was identification.
A body washed up,
they would all be wearing Guernseys then,
hence the pattern -
people knowing where it came from.
And also, with having the initial in,
the body would be returned
to the rightful owners.
- That's very sad.
- It's very sad but it happened, unfortunately.
A Guernsey is tightly knitted,
making it virtually wind and waterproof.
In the 19th century, they were rarely washed,
and it's said that the build-up of daily grime
added a further protective layer.
- The knitting goes back in your family?
- It does.
There's evidence in a book
that they were around in the 18003
but I'm following my family tree
and I've gone back to the late 17903 now,
and they were wearing Guernseys
in those days.
So, I don't have any photographs,
obviously, from that time
but I do have one of my grandma, and
Granddad wearing one of her Filey Guernseys.
Knitting them requires skill and patience.
It takes even a proficient knitter
at least 100 hours to complete a Filey Guernsey.
Are there many people
in Filey knitting sweaters?
You'd have to be very lucky to find a lady,
one of the very few, who would knit you one.
And you can't buy them?
You can buy them at Flamborough.
They will sell them in a shop up there.
You'd go and order one and say what you want
and they'll tell you when it's ready
which will be months away.
So, if I want a Filey Guernsey for Christmas,
I'd better get my order in quickly.
I'm almost at the end of my journey
from the West Coast to the East of England.
TANNOY: Tickets from Filey, please.
- Morning.
- Morning.
There we go.
Thank you very much.
Which Yorkshire seaside resorts do you like?
I like Hornsey and Withernsea
but you can't get there on the railway any more.
- They used to have railways, did they?
- Yes.
Obviously, back in the '603, they went.
I still travel there by car when I can.
Luckily for me, the railway still does run
to the heart of one of the greatest
Victorian holiday hotspots.
I've been to Bridlington, I've been to Filey -
both very considerable
Victorian seaside resorts.
But now I'm on my way to the mother and father
of Yorkshire holiday destinations.
I refer to the one and only, the inimitable,
Scarborough.
TANNOY: We're now approaching Scarborough
where this service will terminate.
Please remember to take with you all
luggage and any personal belongings.
Scarborough is the next and terminating station.
I've come through beautiful green countryside,
I've picked my way through
the silhouetted spires of Scarborough.
Now I'm at the railway station.
I have a thing about railway clocks.
Scarborough station has the most
wonderful, jaunty, elegant, ecstatic clock tower.
A clock is an adornment to any station.
But in 1884, when this was added,
it was crucial, as few people owned a watch.
In the 17th century, Scarborough spa
and its iron-rich waters
attracted the gentry
and its life as a resort began.
But it was the railways that put
Scarborough on the map
as a major holiday destination for the masses.
Bradshaw writes, “There are 33 mites of coast,
which may be inspected at tow water,
over a course of the finest sands in England. "
My Bradshaw's Guide tells me
that this beach became so popular that in 1861,
they had to ban nude bathing here.
After that, the sands were used
for the Scarborough horse races
and the crowds used to gather on that bridge.
And Bradshaw's Guide tells me that bridge
was the best grandstand in the world.
But now, the sands have changed
from turf to surf.
Tn the mid-19th century, the spa town became
known as a centre of entertainment.
Every summer,
the cotton mills across the Northwest
closed for a holiday called wakes week
and the workers headed to the coast,
many of them ending up at Scarborough.
They came for the many attractions,
which Bradshaw described in detail -
the iron bridge,
the 12th-century castle
and, of course, cliff-top walks
with panoramic views.
And something else.
In Scarborough, Bradshaw's Guide
recommends the Rotunda Museum,
"especially the skeleton of an ancient Briton
and his oak tree coffin,
supposed to be 2,000 years old,
which will be found particularly attractive.
The teeth are all perfect."
So, I'm looking for a man 20 centuries old,
particularly attractive, with a great smile.
The skeleton, called Gristhorpe Man,
was discovered in a tree trunk.
In 2005, it was taken away for testing,
by field archaeologists
Dr Nigel Melton and Janet Montgomery.
Today, it's back on display in the Rotunda.
Excuse me, is this the 2,000 year-old man?
No, actually, this one's 4,000 years old.
He dates from the early Bronze Age.
He must be the one I'm looking for. My Victorian
guidebook says he's 2,000 years old.
This is probably the one you're looking for.
Now we have much
more advanced scientific techniques.
We can use radio carbon dating, which they
didn't have access to in the 19th century.
And how unusual is this intact skeleton?
It's very unusual.
Up until the Gristhorpe Man was found in 1834,
they'd found a lot of coffins
but with no evidence of a body at all.
They thought they were repositories
for people's possessions
and then we found Gristhorpe Man.
There was a full complete skeleton in there
but, since then, there's been no more.
He's unique.
So, do people flock in to see him?
Well, they used to. When he was found
in 1834, he was a national sensation.
But he's son of slipped off the radar a bit,
maybe because he is tucked away
in the North of England.
But we're hoping all the new sort of
forensic-style investigations
we've been able to do on him
will bring him back to prominence.
It says in here that he has a full set of teeth,
which he does.
It's very remarkable, isn't it?
I would have thought his teeth
would have fallen out in those days.
They didn't tend to because they didn't have
as much access to sugars that we have,
so they didn't get as much tooth decay.
They tend to get very worn
because their diet is usually lot harsher.
And I know he's 4,000 years old
but how old was he when he died?
It's very difficult to tell from a skeleton,
but we think he was probably
GO-plus when he died.
Really?
That's a pretty good age for those days, isn't it?
It's a very good age for those days, yes.
And he's big, isn't he?
Yes, he's about six-foot, six-foot-two,
which is very tall for the Bronze Age.
What would he have looked like?
Well, not only was he tall but he was also
an extremely powerfully-built man.
Something like a modern professional athlete
in terms of his muscles and his body mass.
What did he die of?
It's terribly difficult to say
when you've only got a skeleton left,
unless there's something obvious like
someone hit him over the head with an axe.
We've actually CT scanned him,
so that we can take him apart digitally.
And one of the things that turned up on there,
was on the left side of his skull,
there's a large benign brain tumour
that's left the skull only paper thin in places.
As ever more visitors arrived,
Scarborough quickly ran out of hotel space.
So, in 1863, work began on The Grand,
one of the first and largest
purpose-built hotels in Europe.
Very grand and very opulent.
Paul Harlem's worked here
for 15 years and knows it inside out.
- Paul.
- Hello, Michael.
It is magnificent.
A hotel on this scale needed the railways.
It certainly did. It was the railway that actually
brought all the people into the town,
especially on Sundays
and weekends and bank holidays.
Give me its vital statistics.
When it was first designed by Cuthbert Brodrick,
he built it around the calendar.
We have four turrets at the top for the seasons,
we have 12 floors for the months of the year,
365 bedrooms and 52 chimneys.
MICHAEL: Very, very neat.
I suppose, in these old-fashioned hotels,
the bedrooms are all different?
We don't have two bedrooms
the same shape or the same size,
mainly because the building is built in the shape
of a V to commemorate Queen Victoria.
MICHAEL: Wonderfully patriotic and royalist.
It's a magnificent stair.
Yes, as you can see, Michael,
quite a wide staircase,
due to the fact that two ladies in crinoline
dresses could pass each other.
That immediately evokes the whole era,
doesn't it?
It does indeed.
- Swishing from the ballroom down these stairs.
- That's correct.
In its heyday,
the hotel attracted a wealthy clientele
that came for its grand evening balls
and splendid South Bay views.
Oh, yes! That is magnificent.
Isn't it on the grand scale?
It's superb, Michael.
MICHAEL: I love it.
With its great D-windows and beautiful views.
Can we get out there?
We certainly can. I'll just take you across
and out onto the balcony.
Because the prospect is one of
the great advantages of the hotel, isn't it?
Yes.
Ha! What a majestic panorama, isn't it?
Superb, isn't it, Michael? This is what people
come to Scarborough to see.
Your hotel, it is built on such a dominant
position, it's comparable to the castle.
It is indeed. It doesn't matter where you stand
on any cliff-top or in Scarborough,
you will more often than not
see the Grand Hotel.
It's built sheer, like an artificial cliff,
in a way, isn't it?
It is, right the way down to
the sea-line level at the bottom, there.
I suppose, being like a cliff, you also offer
hospitality to quite a lot of seagulls.
We do get quite a few, Michael,
at the seagull season, shall we say.
But only the most discerning seagulls, I think.
Of course.
Hello, Michael.
I hope you don't mind but is that
a Scarborough tan you are sporting?
Of course. I've been here six hours
and it's been more or less sunny.
Have you come to stay or do you live here?
My wife and I met each other
at Scarborough 45 years ago,
so we're here for a bit of reminiscing.
We hope to carve our initials
in a few park benches and things like that.
How very romantic.
Did you meet here at the Grand Hotel?
- At the Spa.
- At the Spa?
Dancing at the Spa.
- And have you been back over the years?
- Oh, yes.
This is a favourite haunt.
We're getting that bit older now
but we still like coming to Scarborough.
- I wish you a very happy 45th anniversary.
- Thank you very much.
- Enjoy your stay.
- Scarborough's just the place to celebrate.
Clearly, romance isn't dead
in this Great British seaside resort.
On this journey, it's been enriching to
explore the country through Bradshaw's eyes
and see how much Victorian achievements
have shaped the Britain that we know today.
Where would I have been this week
without my Bradshaw's handbook?
It's taught me more about my country
than any modern guide.
From Liverpool to Scarborough,
I've seen the transformative impact
that railways had on the history of our country.
Bradshaw's has led me from West to East,
from coast to coast, and this is journey's end.
My next journey takes me
from Preston an the way to Scotland.
I 7! be getting the thrill of a lifetime.
This is a fantastic sight as the steam engine
begins to go over the Ribblehead Viaduct.
You will never see another sight
like this on a railway in Britain.
I'll be realising a life-long ambition.
It gives you an idea of the scale,
the complexity, the height...
and, actually, the beauty.
It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
And I'll be enjoying a music hall revival.
Ready for your performance?
We should get in there, we've got an audience.
♪ Adlington or Darlington
Torrington or Warrington
♪ Sure that she would find it
in the Bradshaw's Guide.
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 on the last leg of my railway journey
from Liverpool to Scarborough,
using this dog-eared Victorian handbook.
So far, its pointers have proved remarkably
relevant, even to the modern-day traveller.
I'm continuing to travel by the sea,
so important to our island heritage.
And now I'll discover
whether Bradshaw's is a good guide,
not only to Britain's yesterday and today,
but also to our pre-history.
Today, I'll be catching up with
a very old local in Scarborough.
Excuse me, is this the 2,000 year-old man?
No, actually, this one's 4,000 years old.
He dates from the early Bronze Age.
PH be finding out about fisherman knits in Filey.
All the patterns have a meaning.
The zigzag pattern - you never walk
down the cliffs in a straight line.
- 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 seabirds here,
which is just amazing.
These gannets are a relatively recent colonist,
maybe in the last 30 years or so.
I've almost completed
my journey from Liverpool,
that took me across the North West of England.
Having crossed the Pennines and
visited the historic city of York,
and having passed through Humberside,
I am now heading up the North East coast
Today, I'm leaving the seaside town
of Bridlington
and travelling up the coast to Filey,
before reaching my final destination,
Scarborough.
And my first stop is Bempton.
This is the nearest station to that spectacular
feature of the North East coast,
Flamborough Head.
Bradshaw describes "its lofty
cliffs of nearly 500 feet elevation,
teeming in the spring and summer months with
thousands of birds of every hue and species. "
Bird-watching became a popular hobby
in the late-19th century,
spurred on by the railways,
which brought people to the coast
to enjoy the magnificent seabird colonies.
Isn't that amazing?
In Bradshaw's day, these high cliffs attracted
thousands of puffins and guillemots.
These days, it's also home to England's
largest mainland colony of gannets,
closely monitored by RSPB site manager,
Ian Kendall.
What a fantastic sight.
IAN: Incredible, isn't it? Absolutely incredible.
MICHAEL: That jagged broken cliff
with the birds lined along it.
I'm following this 19th-century guidebook,
Bradshaw.
He talks about Flamborough Head teeming
with birds in the spring and summer.
IAN: They are here spring and summer
but they're hereto early October.
The gannets take a long time
to rear the young,
so they're here right through mid-autumn,
I guess.
They're voracious eaters, aren't they?
When I was a kid, if I was wolfing my food,
I was accused of eating like a gannet.
They're really good hunters, really good feeders
and they take masses and masses of food.
That's why the colony goes
from strength to strength every year.
Am I right in thinking that even though
you've got this huge number of gannets,
they're actually a small minority
of your total bird population?
We've got 200,000 breeding seabirds here,
which is just amazing.
Do you have any problems with egg stealers?
No, that was the Victorian era,
that was a real big issue then.
The climmers, as they were, used to go
over these cliffs, harvesting guillemot eggs.
I think, one year, they harvested 30,000 eggs.
That was obviously
never going to be sustainable,
so I think the Sea Bird Preservation Act
started right here
and that stopped that process
of just taking all those bird eggs
without any thought
for the welfare of the birds.
I like to think George Bradshaw would never
have been guilty of such a heinous crime.
I'm sure not.
The dimmers would
sell the eggs for souvenirs,
but most were stolen
to be eaten by local people.
Thankfully, the climmers have gone
but the bird-watchers remain
a firm fixture on the cliffs.
Do you think seabirds are special?
I think they're absolutely wonderful,
especially the gannets.
The life of a gannet - the life they live,
the way they live and the way they are,
absolutely fascinates me and always has.
What is it about their lifestyle
that fascinates you?
They mate for life.
They have the same nest for life.
The way they bring up their young -
feeding them so much fish.
They look after them...
and the way they are together.
For such a fierce hunting bird,
they're so gentle with one another
and they're so loving.
It's wonderful to see.
- They have the same nest, do they?
- Yes, the same nest for life.
Goodness knows how they do it.
Imagine you've been out
for the whole of the winter
and then you come back to this cliff site
and the three miles of cliff
and you find the one particular
little nest that you had last year.
I just don't know how they do it.
I think it's wonderful.
I do find it hard to put myself
in the position of a gannet.
Not only, how do you find your address again,
but how do you spend months
clinging to a cliff edge?
It's really extraordinary.
Nearby Flamborough Head
has two lighthouses.
The Chalk Tower is the oldest surviving
lighthouse in England, dating back to 1674.
In 1806, it was replaced by another lighthouse
that caught Bradshaw's eye.
It pioneered a new system
for alerting sailors in bad weather.
Bradshaw's mentions this lighthouse
at Flamborough Head,
rising 400 feet above the sea.
It was quite new
at the time of Bradshaw's Guide
and for the first time
they used red glass on the reflector,
a colour that could be better seen in the fog,
giving this lighthouse a characteristic signature
of two white flashes followed by a red,
a model that was quickly adopted
by many other lights.
From the wilds of Flamborough,
it's back to the station for the next leg
of my journey up the East Coast.
My next stop is Filey
and Bradshaw's guide says of it,
that it's a modern watering place.
The guidebook would have been written
around the time that fishing villages were
becoming fashionable seaside resorts.
I shall be interested to see, today,
whether it's more noted for fish or fashion.
What a lovely railway station!
Very, very unexpected.
Beautiful, substantial Victorian brick walls.
Lovely roof.
It must indeed have been
a fashionable watering place.
When the railways arrived in 1846,
Filey expanded from a small fishing village
to an elegant seaside resort.
For those in the know, it was a quieter
alternative to its noisy neighbour, Scarborough.
But fishing was always at its heart.
In 1870,
there were over 100 working vessels here.
Filey fishermen used special cobble boats
that are found only in the Northeast.
Small and sturdy, they could
be launched straight from the beach.
Jeremy Smith is a fisherman,
just like his father,
and uses one of the last remaining
cobble boats in Filey.
- Hello.
- Hello, there.
I've never seen a boat like this before.
It's got a kind of flat bottom.
Yes, it's got a flat bottom with a tunnel
where the propeller is underneath.
We've got a keel on the front for stability.
What's the point of having the flat bottom?
It's just for landing on the wheels,
when we're pulling up the beach.
Because you've no harbour.
Only a harbour at Scarborough.
And do they go back a long time?
Yes, they go back to the 18th century,
these boats.
Originated from the Vikings with a clinker build.
That means the planks will overlap and they
rivet the planks to stop them from leaking.
And they're used for fishing?
Yes, we use them for fishing,
crab potting, netting, long-lining
and sometimes taking visitors out for trips.
Although the boats are sturdy for their size,
fishing on the North East coast in Bradshaw's
time was a hazardous occupation.
I've got a 19th-century guidebook
which talks about a lot of disasters in that period.
Yes, it goes back to about 1850-1860,
when the herring fishing was in action.
They used to travel for miles in these boats
and couldn't get the weather forecasts.
So, there was a lot of drownings in them days.
When other boats were laid up for winter,
the cobbles were still out long-line fishing.
Before the 19003, the boats were
dependent on sail and oar power.
So, if the weather turned,
the boats were left vulnerable to the rough seas.
This old sea mine serves as a memorial
to all the fishermen and mariners
of Filey who've lost their lives.
In fact, Bradshaw's Guide mentions
there are more women than men in the town
because of a catastrophe in 1851.
There were several such disasters
and the sea has created many widows
in this town.
Historically, the fishermen of East Yorkshire
wore thick wool pullovers called Guernseys.
They were hand-knitted by their wives
and heavily patterned with symbols
that represented the village they were from.
Margaret Taylor married a fisherman and the
knitting of Filey pullovers is part of her heritage.
Margaret? I find you hard at work.
- Hello.
- I'm Michael.
Pleased to meet you.
What are you working on there?
I'm working on a traditional
fisherman's Guernsey.
Ours are very highly patterned
because all the patterns have a meaning.
That's the shingle on the beach. If you feel it,
it's a nice texture, little pebbles on the beach.
This is very good.
The zigzag pattern - you never walk
down the cliffs in a straight line.
You go in a zigzag pattern.
- Then we have the diamond mesh which is...
- The nets.
The nets, the crab pots.
GT?
That's my husband's initials, Graham Taylor.
And part of the beauty of these,
in the years ago when people were lost at sea,
it was identification.
A body washed up,
they would all be wearing Guernseys then,
hence the pattern -
people knowing where it came from.
And also, with having the initial in,
the body would be returned
to the rightful owners.
- That's very sad.
- It's very sad but it happened, unfortunately.
A Guernsey is tightly knitted,
making it virtually wind and waterproof.
In the 19th century, they were rarely washed,
and it's said that the build-up of daily grime
added a further protective layer.
- The knitting goes back in your family?
- It does.
There's evidence in a book
that they were around in the 18003
but I'm following my family tree
and I've gone back to the late 17903 now,
and they were wearing Guernseys
in those days.
So, I don't have any photographs,
obviously, from that time
but I do have one of my grandma, and
Granddad wearing one of her Filey Guernseys.
Knitting them requires skill and patience.
It takes even a proficient knitter
at least 100 hours to complete a Filey Guernsey.
Are there many people
in Filey knitting sweaters?
You'd have to be very lucky to find a lady,
one of the very few, who would knit you one.
And you can't buy them?
You can buy them at Flamborough.
They will sell them in a shop up there.
You'd go and order one and say what you want
and they'll tell you when it's ready
which will be months away.
So, if I want a Filey Guernsey for Christmas,
I'd better get my order in quickly.
I'm almost at the end of my journey
from the West Coast to the East of England.
TANNOY: Tickets from Filey, please.
- Morning.
- Morning.
There we go.
Thank you very much.
Which Yorkshire seaside resorts do you like?
I like Hornsey and Withernsea
but you can't get there on the railway any more.
- They used to have railways, did they?
- Yes.
Obviously, back in the '603, they went.
I still travel there by car when I can.
Luckily for me, the railway still does run
to the heart of one of the greatest
Victorian holiday hotspots.
I've been to Bridlington, I've been to Filey -
both very considerable
Victorian seaside resorts.
But now I'm on my way to the mother and father
of Yorkshire holiday destinations.
I refer to the one and only, the inimitable,
Scarborough.
TANNOY: We're now approaching Scarborough
where this service will terminate.
Please remember to take with you all
luggage and any personal belongings.
Scarborough is the next and terminating station.
I've come through beautiful green countryside,
I've picked my way through
the silhouetted spires of Scarborough.
Now I'm at the railway station.
I have a thing about railway clocks.
Scarborough station has the most
wonderful, jaunty, elegant, ecstatic clock tower.
A clock is an adornment to any station.
But in 1884, when this was added,
it was crucial, as few people owned a watch.
In the 17th century, Scarborough spa
and its iron-rich waters
attracted the gentry
and its life as a resort began.
But it was the railways that put
Scarborough on the map
as a major holiday destination for the masses.
Bradshaw writes, “There are 33 mites of coast,
which may be inspected at tow water,
over a course of the finest sands in England. "
My Bradshaw's Guide tells me
that this beach became so popular that in 1861,
they had to ban nude bathing here.
After that, the sands were used
for the Scarborough horse races
and the crowds used to gather on that bridge.
And Bradshaw's Guide tells me that bridge
was the best grandstand in the world.
But now, the sands have changed
from turf to surf.
Tn the mid-19th century, the spa town became
known as a centre of entertainment.
Every summer,
the cotton mills across the Northwest
closed for a holiday called wakes week
and the workers headed to the coast,
many of them ending up at Scarborough.
They came for the many attractions,
which Bradshaw described in detail -
the iron bridge,
the 12th-century castle
and, of course, cliff-top walks
with panoramic views.
And something else.
In Scarborough, Bradshaw's Guide
recommends the Rotunda Museum,
"especially the skeleton of an ancient Briton
and his oak tree coffin,
supposed to be 2,000 years old,
which will be found particularly attractive.
The teeth are all perfect."
So, I'm looking for a man 20 centuries old,
particularly attractive, with a great smile.
The skeleton, called Gristhorpe Man,
was discovered in a tree trunk.
In 2005, it was taken away for testing,
by field archaeologists
Dr Nigel Melton and Janet Montgomery.
Today, it's back on display in the Rotunda.
Excuse me, is this the 2,000 year-old man?
No, actually, this one's 4,000 years old.
He dates from the early Bronze Age.
He must be the one I'm looking for. My Victorian
guidebook says he's 2,000 years old.
This is probably the one you're looking for.
Now we have much
more advanced scientific techniques.
We can use radio carbon dating, which they
didn't have access to in the 19th century.
And how unusual is this intact skeleton?
It's very unusual.
Up until the Gristhorpe Man was found in 1834,
they'd found a lot of coffins
but with no evidence of a body at all.
They thought they were repositories
for people's possessions
and then we found Gristhorpe Man.
There was a full complete skeleton in there
but, since then, there's been no more.
He's unique.
So, do people flock in to see him?
Well, they used to. When he was found
in 1834, he was a national sensation.
But he's son of slipped off the radar a bit,
maybe because he is tucked away
in the North of England.
But we're hoping all the new sort of
forensic-style investigations
we've been able to do on him
will bring him back to prominence.
It says in here that he has a full set of teeth,
which he does.
It's very remarkable, isn't it?
I would have thought his teeth
would have fallen out in those days.
They didn't tend to because they didn't have
as much access to sugars that we have,
so they didn't get as much tooth decay.
They tend to get very worn
because their diet is usually lot harsher.
And I know he's 4,000 years old
but how old was he when he died?
It's very difficult to tell from a skeleton,
but we think he was probably
GO-plus when he died.
Really?
That's a pretty good age for those days, isn't it?
It's a very good age for those days, yes.
And he's big, isn't he?
Yes, he's about six-foot, six-foot-two,
which is very tall for the Bronze Age.
What would he have looked like?
Well, not only was he tall but he was also
an extremely powerfully-built man.
Something like a modern professional athlete
in terms of his muscles and his body mass.
What did he die of?
It's terribly difficult to say
when you've only got a skeleton left,
unless there's something obvious like
someone hit him over the head with an axe.
We've actually CT scanned him,
so that we can take him apart digitally.
And one of the things that turned up on there,
was on the left side of his skull,
there's a large benign brain tumour
that's left the skull only paper thin in places.
As ever more visitors arrived,
Scarborough quickly ran out of hotel space.
So, in 1863, work began on The Grand,
one of the first and largest
purpose-built hotels in Europe.
Very grand and very opulent.
Paul Harlem's worked here
for 15 years and knows it inside out.
- Paul.
- Hello, Michael.
It is magnificent.
A hotel on this scale needed the railways.
It certainly did. It was the railway that actually
brought all the people into the town,
especially on Sundays
and weekends and bank holidays.
Give me its vital statistics.
When it was first designed by Cuthbert Brodrick,
he built it around the calendar.
We have four turrets at the top for the seasons,
we have 12 floors for the months of the year,
365 bedrooms and 52 chimneys.
MICHAEL: Very, very neat.
I suppose, in these old-fashioned hotels,
the bedrooms are all different?
We don't have two bedrooms
the same shape or the same size,
mainly because the building is built in the shape
of a V to commemorate Queen Victoria.
MICHAEL: Wonderfully patriotic and royalist.
It's a magnificent stair.
Yes, as you can see, Michael,
quite a wide staircase,
due to the fact that two ladies in crinoline
dresses could pass each other.
That immediately evokes the whole era,
doesn't it?
It does indeed.
- Swishing from the ballroom down these stairs.
- That's correct.
In its heyday,
the hotel attracted a wealthy clientele
that came for its grand evening balls
and splendid South Bay views.
Oh, yes! That is magnificent.
Isn't it on the grand scale?
It's superb, Michael.
MICHAEL: I love it.
With its great D-windows and beautiful views.
Can we get out there?
We certainly can. I'll just take you across
and out onto the balcony.
Because the prospect is one of
the great advantages of the hotel, isn't it?
Yes.
Ha! What a majestic panorama, isn't it?
Superb, isn't it, Michael? This is what people
come to Scarborough to see.
Your hotel, it is built on such a dominant
position, it's comparable to the castle.
It is indeed. It doesn't matter where you stand
on any cliff-top or in Scarborough,
you will more often than not
see the Grand Hotel.
It's built sheer, like an artificial cliff,
in a way, isn't it?
It is, right the way down to
the sea-line level at the bottom, there.
I suppose, being like a cliff, you also offer
hospitality to quite a lot of seagulls.
We do get quite a few, Michael,
at the seagull season, shall we say.
But only the most discerning seagulls, I think.
Of course.
Hello, Michael.
I hope you don't mind but is that
a Scarborough tan you are sporting?
Of course. I've been here six hours
and it's been more or less sunny.
Have you come to stay or do you live here?
My wife and I met each other
at Scarborough 45 years ago,
so we're here for a bit of reminiscing.
We hope to carve our initials
in a few park benches and things like that.
How very romantic.
Did you meet here at the Grand Hotel?
- At the Spa.
- At the Spa?
Dancing at the Spa.
- And have you been back over the years?
- Oh, yes.
This is a favourite haunt.
We're getting that bit older now
but we still like coming to Scarborough.
- I wish you a very happy 45th anniversary.
- Thank you very much.
- Enjoy your stay.
- Scarborough's just the place to celebrate.
Clearly, romance isn't dead
in this Great British seaside resort.
On this journey, it's been enriching to
explore the country through Bradshaw's eyes
and see how much Victorian achievements
have shaped the Britain that we know today.
Where would I have been this week
without my Bradshaw's handbook?
It's taught me more about my country
than any modern guide.
From Liverpool to Scarborough,
I've seen the transformative impact
that railways had on the history of our country.
Bradshaw's has led me from West to East,
from coast to coast, and this is journey's end.
My next journey takes me
from Preston an the way to Scotland.
I 7! be getting the thrill of a lifetime.
This is a fantastic sight as the steam engine
begins to go over the Ribblehead Viaduct.
You will never see another sight
like this on a railway in Britain.
I'll be realising a life-long ambition.
It gives you an idea of the scale,
the complexity, the height...
and, actually, the beauty.
It's a beautiful thing, isn't it?
And I'll be enjoying a music hall revival.
Ready for your performance?
We should get in there, we've got an audience.
♪ Adlington or Darlington
Torrington or Warrington
♪ Sure that she would find it
in the Bradshaw's Guide.