Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 2, Episode 1 - Brighton to Crystal Palace - 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 a series of journeys across
the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain
remains.
In the 19th century, trains
transformed Britain fundamentally.
In the early years
of the railway revolution,
6,000 miles of track were laid.
For the first time,
people of modest means
could explore their own country,
and I'm following in their tracks.
Over the coming weeks,
I'll be travelling
to the western outposts of Scotland,
to the rugged mountains of North Wales,
and to the beautiful coastline of Kent.
Using my 19th-century Bradshaw's
Railway Handbook as my guide,
I'll be following in the footsteps
of Victorian railway tourists.
For those first travellers,
planning a rail journey wasn't easy.
Train times were displayed only locally
on the pub wall or the station door.
But in the 1840s,
cartographer George Bradshaw
began publishing rail timetables
covering the country.
It helped the masses to travel
across the British Isles.
And Bradshaw published guidebooks, too,
like the one I'm using now,
to make these journeys.
The route that I begin today
takes me on lines
that were built
not for coal or cotton, but for people.
Victorian carriages running on
these tracks would have been crowded
with shoppers and commuters
and sports enthusiasts.
The railways put the middle classes
on the move.
The very people for whom
George Bradshaw wrote his guidebooks.
Each day, I'll cover another leg
of the journey,
stopping off to see the towns and cities
described in my "Bradshaw's Guide".
Today is taking me to one of
the very first seaside aquariums...
It was the sense of shock and awe that
the Victorian public got coming in here
where they would see
the denizens of the deep.
...showing me the conditions
endured by Victorian miners...
It several times occurred to me
that if you weren't here,
I'd probably get lost and die in here.
I'd never find my way out.
I don't think you would.
...and revealing that greatest wonder of
the Victorian age, the Crystal Palace.
It makes me very sad
that the building no longer stands.
Yes, in November 1936, the building
was totally destroyed by fire.
On this route,
I'll be heading from the south coast
towards Crystal Palace
and the capital itself.
I'll follow the line out of London,
sweeping through Suffolk
into Cambridgeshire.
From there I'll travel to Norfolk
and King's Lynn,
before arriving
at my very final stop, Cromer.
Starting in Brighton today, I'll travel
the first 56 miles via Godstone
to the site of the Crystal Palace.
When the first railways snaked
towards the seafront in the 1840s,
they changed the way that people lived.
Prosperous men of affairs could live far
from their offices in the smoky city.
I'm headed for Brighton.
In 1844, the journey time from London
was already just 90 minutes,
and by 1865, it was down to 75,
and that made long-distance commuting
possible.
And Bradshaw says, "Merchants
who formerly made Dulwich or Dalston
the boundaries of
their suburban residences
now have got their mansions
on the south coast
and still get in less time
by a less expensive conveyance
to the counting houses in the City."
Well, the train I'm on takes 53 minutes,
which is not such a big change
in 150 years.
The age of commuting had dawned.
Before my guide was published,
Brighton was an aristocratic playground
where the blue-blooded
enjoyed the sea air or took the steamer
to begin a European tour.
The railway brought the coast
within easy reach
and those enriched by industry and trade
now occupied Brighton's elegant streets.
As I came into Brighton, I was very
struck by how far the town's extended.
The houses sprawl across
the neighbouring hills.
And this station is vast.
This is why Bradshaw refers to Brighton
as a marine metropolis,
because it was a royal town,
an international port,
then it became a seaside resort,
then it became a commuting town,
and it's a business centre
in its own right.
In the 1840s, the Victorian
middle classes discovered Brighton
and rushed to see it.
The Brighton Pavilion,
then a royal palace,
was swamped with visitors,
much to the disgust of Queen Victoria
who swiftly packed up
and left town for good in 1845.
Her Majesty may not have been amused
by the day-trippers and holidaymakers
pouring in by train, but Bradshaw was.
"Scores of laughing, chubby, thoughtless
children skilled manifestly in the art
of ingeniously tormenting maids, tutors,
governesses and mamas."
"Whilst intent upon
their customary constitutional walk,
the morning habitués
of the promenade swing lustily past.”
"Let us mingle with the throng
and obtain a closer intimacy of
the principal features of this place.”
Well, the social hierarchy has changed,
but people are still enjoying themselves
here, and I'm going to go a-mingling.
The sea front bustles still.
I'm meeting historian Geoff Mead
to help me imagine the attractions
of Victorian Brighton.
- Hello
- Michael Portillo.
- Geoffrey Mead.
Now, my Bradshaw's says
that at one time the Chain Pier
was the item of first consideration
for the visitor,
the highlight of Brighton.
So what did it look like?
It was basically a long suspension
bridge that ran from here.
Chains went through the wall here
and the chains ran out to a tower
down on the beach here.
Stretching over 1,000 feet out to sea,
this was Brighton's first pier.
Constructed in 1823,
it enabled the royal and rich
to glide across the waves
to their yachts and steamers.
Then there were four towers
on timber supports
with chains suspended from them,
rods suspended from the chains,
and the deck hung on the rods.
Then it was secured
to the timber underneath.
Then there was
a square stone-clad pier head
where people could promenade to.
By Bradshaw's time,
piers such as the Chain Pier
were no longer for the rich
to board ships.
They had become a playground
for the middle classes.
(Geoff) Once the railway arrives,
it changes the social demographic
of Brighton,
Before, you needed
your own transport to get here.
You needed to be rich.
Once the railway comes in,
it allows the world and his wife
to come to Brighton.
And so Brighton changes from being
the resort literally of kings
to being the working man's resort.
50 miles from London, easily accessible.
It changes the nature of the resort.
Bradshaw says something
very interesting, very clever.
He talks about the levelling of the
railways literally and metaphorically.
So you had to create flat ground
for the railways
but you produced
a levelling in society, too.
Certainly it revolutionised the seaside
which had been exclusively
for the very rich,
down to the man in the street.
That pier, alas, is no longer here
but one of the other Victorian
attractions survives intact:
the aquarium,
designed by Eugenius Birch.
Before the railways,
few people travelled to the coast.
Many might never have seen a live fish.
So the Brighton Aquarium opened up
a submarine world that was entirely new.
(Geoff) This was designed in 1869,
but it was such
a colossal building project,
it took years three years to complete.
It opened in 1872
as the wonder of the age.
It was the largest aquarium
anywhere in the world.
- And it felt like this, did it?
- It felt like this.
But it was the sense of awe,
of shock and awe that
the Victorian public got coming in here
where they would see the denizens
of the deep at close hand.
And we have to think that today
we're all very familiar
with underwater photography, many
people have been down, skin divers.
In the 1870s,
no one had seen an octopus close to,
no one had seen tropical fish.
Even common British species
that lived in deeper water
would only have been seen
in a fishmonger's shop.
Visitors could buy a train ticket
from London
that included entrance to the aquarium.
At that time, prawns, lobsters
and even salmon were star attractions
alongside more exotic displays
of sea lions.
Building the aquarium, then,
the Victorian seaside town
reinvents itself.
All seaside towns have to
constantly reinvent themselves.
The introduction of piers,
the introduction of things like aquaria,
the cinema is basically
a south coast of England technology.
A whole raft of ideas coming in
to, as you say, reinvent the seaside.
Brighton goes on and on.
Brighton developed pioneering
seaside attractions;
the aquarium was one of the first,
and now I'm going to go on one of
the world's first electric railways.
Ian Gledhill is chairman
of the Volk's Railway Association.
- Hello, Ian.
- Hello, Michael. Nice to meet you.
Michael Portillo.
Now, Volk's Electric Railway, 1883.
So who was Volk?
Well, Magnus Volk
was a local pioneer and inventor
and he was born in Brighton,
born in 1851,
and as a teenager he got absolutely
passionate about electricity,
at a time when most people
didn't understand it.
He put electric light
in the Royal Pavilion.
It was the first public building
in Sussex to be lit with electricity.
And he wanted to show that people
could travel by electricity,
so he built the railway.
Volk copied the idea from Germany
where the first electric railway
had opened in Berlin in 1879.
He wanted to give the people of Brighton
a taste of the future.
We now think of this
as a tourist attraction
but actually, Volk built it as a kind
of industrial demonstration project
to show what electricity could do.
Absolutely,
that's what he wanted to show.
He knew that electricity
was the coming thing
so he wanted to show that it would work.
People were a bit frightened
of it at first,
but once they got used to it,
they flocked to it.
Before long,
the line carried 19th-century tourists
along the seafront.
Travelling at about 6mph,
there were stops at the aquarium
and the Chain Pier.
Some landmarks have changed,
but the rolling stock hasn't
All our cars except one
are over 100 years old.
That is amazing.
Is it a big task to keep them going?
(fan) It is because
the electric motors are the originals.
- They are 100 years old as well.
- That's amazing.
Our national passion
for historic railways is so great
that it affects even celebrities.
- So, driver.
- Yes?
- You're Nicholas Owen, aren't you?
- I am, yes.
- What are you doing here then?
- Well, I love railways.
I'm one of those
very unusual railway enthusiasts,
I like electric railways.
So when I was asked a couple of
years ago to come and declare this
the 125th anniversary,
I think it's on my chest there,
I said I'll come as long as I can look
at the railway properly, understand it,
and they said,
"Would you like to be a volunteer?”
"Would you like to perhaps drive?"
And I've driven a few trains in my life
and this was just irresistible.
(Michael) How fantastic.
- A schoolboy's dream come true.
- Absolutely.
- Your secret is safe with me.
- (laughs) Yes, I fear not.
Replenished by all that sea air,
I'm heading towards my next destination
35 miles away.
Like so many visitors to Brighton
in Victorian times
and modern times as well,
I have been a day-tripper,
and I'm on the main line
headed north towards London.
But I won't go all the way
to the capital.
I'm going to seek Bradshaw's guide
in finding a place to rest my head.
My next stop is the village
of Godstone in Surrey.
Along the way,
my guidebook tells me to look out
for an impressive Victorian landmark.
Now we're passing over the Ouse Viaduct,
one of the finest works
in the kingdom according to Bradshaw's.
"It commands extensive views
over the surrounding countryside."
"As we're whirled along it,
the prospect presents us
with an unbounded scene of beauty.”
And you do feel, heading towards
Gatwick, heading towards London,
that you want to breathe in the openness
before you lose it altogether.
This listed viaduct was built in 1841
by railway engineer, John Rastrick,
and now carries 493 trains a day.
Having changed trains, I'm on the last
stretch of tracks before Godstone.
After sampling the glamorous life
in Brighton,
I've checked "Bradshaw's" for somewhere
suitable to stay the night.
Under the entry for Godstone,
Bradshaw's notes that the parks
of this neighbourhood are much admired.
And then it has a whole list
of what we would call stately homes
that are within striking distance
of the station.
And I've picked one
which I'm managing to stay at tonight,
Starborough Castle, eight miles.
(tannoy)
We are now approaching Godstone.
Bradshaw notes the distance by coach
to Starborough Castle.
It's now a smart B&B and I'll have to
settle for a taxi to get there.
Hello. Can you take me
to Starborough Castle?
- Certainly.
- Thank you.
- Hello.
- Welcome to Starborough Manor.
Now, Starborough Manor, you say?
I'm looking for Starborough Castle.
Is that it?
(woman)
The whole area was Starborough Castle.
In the '70s, it was split up
and became Starborough Manor.
The castle itself was demolished in 1648
on the orders of Parliament
because it could've been a place
of resistance during the Civil War.
The stone from the castle was reused
to construct the present manor house.
My Bradshaw's Guide, written in the
1860s, refers to Starborough Castle.
- So he's referring to the house?
- (woman) Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Well, very beautiful it is, too.
And I'm off to see if I can find my key.
- Let me show you to your room.
- Alright, thank you. Thank you.
Having learnt that the splendid castle
was destroyed
on the orders of Parliamentarians,
I hope that my conscience
won't stop me sleeping.
After splendid hospitality
at Starborough Castle,
I'm now pacing an old Roman road
in search of a clue
in my Bradshaw's Guide
to the underground history of Godstone.
Bradshaw talks about
the famous quarries at Godstone.
I'm here to meet Peter Burgess
who's unearthing their past.
- Hello, Peter.
- Hello there, Michael. Welcome.
Now I have come here
because of my Bradshaw's Guide
and he says that Godstone
is named after "good stone".
Yes, quite a few people have made
this very same statement,
but if you look into it,
you'll find that stone is a reference,
as in other place names, to the Roman
road that runs through the village,
and "God", we believe, is a Saxon family
so this is God's place
on the Roman road.
But nonetheless,
it is famous for stone here?
Oh, yes, there are
very extensive quarries
for the stone that can be found
at Godstone, indeed.
The stone was originally used
as a building material in London,
being the nearest source to the capital.
It was called firestone because of
its special heat-resistant properties
and was later used in factories
as a bed to roll out molten glass
and for domestic hearthstones.
After the late 1850s,
the railway came to Caterham
which is about two miles
up the road from here.
And one of the reasons
for constructing that line,
one of the things that persuaded people
to put money into the line,
was the fact that it would serve
as a link for these quarries
to get the stone up
into the national rail network.
At the time, this quarry produced
the best stone in the area
and the industry grew.
But as the railways spread,
it became easier to bring in
higher-quality building materials
like Bath and Portland stone.
Godstone quarry declined,
and closed in the 1940s.
The old tunnels are still here
and they haven't changed much
since Bradshaw's epoch.
- Pretty cool in here, isn't it?
- Absolutely.
(Michael) Now you and I are having
to squat down a bit in here.
What were conditions like
for the quarrymen in the 19th century?
Well, we have it good because
we've got good lights.
They would've been working
by candlelight
but they would've had the same issues
with the height and so on.
They wouldn't have been wearing helmets.
- Health and safety not a big thing.
- Oh, no, no.
Miners dug over six miles of tunnels
in the quarry.
And as I follow in their footsteps,
I gain a sense of what
the Victorian workers endured.
We've come through such a labyrinth.
It's several times occurred to me
that if you weren't here,
I would probably get lost
and die in here.
I'd never find my way out again.
- I don't think you would, no.
- What are these jottings here?
These appear to be numbers
So my guess is these are tally marks.
And the quarrymen would've been paid
for the amount of stone
they were taking out
and keeping a record.
But in order to get this out,
they had to do it,
and it was all done by hand,
picks and hammers and wedges
and the tools they had.
Inside the mine,
Peter and his colleagues
are excavating the tunnel floors
to reveal more about how
the miners operated.
That just looks like rock,
but persevere.
It's beginning to get a bit rusty.
They've uncovered some very early rails
which carried horse-drawn wagons
of stone to the surface.
Now this rail here, this broken section,
is in fact the same as
you were uncovering here.
It's very different
from what I recognise as a rail.
Indeed it is. It's made of cast iron
so it's not particularly strong.
That limited how much you could carry
on a railway like this.
The rails would break,
as indeed this one has.
(Michael) And what does it say?
This is the name of the railway
that they were made for.
It says C, M and G.
Croydon, Merston and Godstone.
And where you were scraping here,
there's the chance that that lettering
might still be in place.
- Must be worth another go.
- Well, yes, indeed.
Peter's discovered
that these rails were recycled
from one of the earliest horse-drawn
railways built in Surrey in 1803,
They helped the mine to prosper
as larger amounts of stone
could be hauled out more quickly.
Now it's time for me to leave Godstone
for my next destination.
I've emerged more or less intact
from my dark subterranean dungeon.
And now I'm back on the main line
headed for a part of London.
I'm travelling towards a place
whose name more than any other
recalls the triumphs
of Victorian industry: Crystal Palace.
Well, here I have to use
my imagination a bit
because Bradshaw
describes the Crystal Palace
sitting on the summit of Penge Park
as being one of the outstanding sights
in Europe.
But of course now,
the Crystal Palace is gone.
My guide is full of praise
for the Crystal Palace.
"With its marvellous transepts
and wings and galleries,
situated in the most exquisite
and park-like grounds,
ornamented with a noble terrace,
commanding one of the finest views
in England.”
The extraordinary glass palace
was built for the Great Exhibition
of 1851 in Hyde Park.
By 1854, it had been moved
to this suburban hill
with a dedicated station
of suitable grandeur.
Well, it's certainly
a magnificent station,
you can tell that this, in its day,
was quite something.
Maybe this is the kind of traditional
London exhibition architecture.
It reminds me a bit of South Kensington
and the museums there.
Just a few passengers today,
but you have to imagine that
these stairs, built on a colossal scale,
once saw thousands of passengers a day
surging through
on their way to see
the wonders of the Crystal Palace.
On just one day in 1859, over 100,000
Victorians poured through the station.
I'm meeting historian Ken Kiss
to discover what they came to see.
- Hello, Ken.
- Pleased to meet you.
Very good to see you.
This was one of the great wonders
of the world in its day.
This was an enormous building,
a fantastic edifice of iron and glass.
Absolutely.
It was that period of optimism
and interest in everything
that was going on.
So inside the building you would have
models of bridges,
models of all sorts of structure.
There was a whole series of courts
that were given over to architecture,
so you could go in there
and the first court you walked into
was the Egyptian Court.
So you had this remarkable court,
nearly 100 feet long, 60 feet high,
the perfect reproduction
of everything from Egypt.
You'd just move through an archway
into the Greek Court
and then on to the Roman Court.
So you could spend days in the building.
"Bradshaw's" continues to enthuse,
"The sight of the Crystal Palace
on the summit of Penge Park
is one of the most beautiful
in the world."”
When the palace was rebuilt
in South London,
it was even larger
than the one in Hyde Park.
Now I'm guessing that that balustrade
marks the footprint of the building.
- It's just absolutely huge, isn't it?
- Yes, tremendous.
It's this,
running along the bottom of it.
- That's correct, yes.
- In my Bradshaw's Guide.
From one end to the other,
how big would that have been?
That's 1,608 feet from end to end
of the building.
Huge. And how tall?
About 208 feet to the top
of the centre transept.
So give me an idea
against this transmitter mast.
Well, about one, two,
three and a half lifts on there
would give you the main part
of the building.
The Crystal Palace
was built to celebrate
Britain's technological achievements.
Railways epitomised that success,
and appropriately, they conveyed
the visitors who came to admire.
Over six months,
6,200,000 people attended
on special excursion trains
from all over the country.
It makes me very sad being here
that the building no longer stands.
It was destroyed by a fire, wasn't it?
Yes, in November 1936, the building
was totally destroyed by fire.
And we have really no idea
as to how it happened.
We have some clues. We think it was
probably a pipe underneath the floor.
A lot of people stood there that night
and said how can glass and iron burn?
But it was the timber floor
that was burning
and bringing the building down.
Nearly eight acres of timber flooring.
That was more than enough
to destroy the whole building.
The fire burned all night
and was visible in six counties.
Later, Churchill described it
as the end of an age.
Today, rare survivors
of the Victorian exhibits
are the Crystal Palace dinosaurs,
described by "Bradshaw's" as,
"the models of the diluvian
and antediluvian extinct animals."”
It's fantastic that the Victorians
constructed these things, isn't it?
Quite remarkable. Yes.
All this is done years before
Darwin's Origin of Species.
- Oh, yes.
- These ones are absolutely massive.
Apart from anything else,
they're amazing works of sculpture
and even engineering, aren't they?
Yes, indeed, there's
a tremendous amount of iron work.
The armature inside that creature,
that's just several hundred bricks
and five-inch pipes
and things to make sure that the final
structure looks as it does there.
It's amazing to recall that at the time,
no complete dinosaur skeletons
had yet been found.
Although the models aren't 100 percent
accurate, they're not far off.
- The Victorians must have been stunned.
- (Ken) Absolutely. Absolutely.
No one had seen anything like it.
These creatures
are millions of years old
and here they were in three dimensions.
And it's also very Victorian, isn't it?
You come for a day out,
an entertainment, a picnic,
but at the same time,
you've got to be learning.
- Absolutely.
- They're very earnest about that.
Father would ask the children,
"Now, what is the name of that one?"
That's the sort of thing.
They were keen.
They must have felt better
to have been educated
as well as just
enjoying the surroundings.
Following my "Bradshaw's",
I'm stunned by the progress
and the self-confidence
of the Victorian age.
From seaside attractions to mines,
monuments and even dinosaurs,
it was an era of limitless creativity.
Like a good Victorian tourist,
I've taken the train
to the aquarium in Brighton
and to the site of the Crystal Palace,
and that's made me admire even more
the engineering of the time.
But when I was crammed inside
that subterranean quarry,
I thought about the sweat and toil
of thousands of men
that was required to make a reality
of each of those ideas of genius.
On the next leg of the route,
I'll be finding out how even the dead
benefited from the railways...
It was also the terminus
of what was rather irreverently known
as the Stiffs' Express.
...understanding how London became
a great shopping destination...
Part of what's changing
is coming about through the railways.
Suddenly you're getting suburbanites
coming into the centre of London
to walk the streets, to shop.
...and trying my hand at one
of the oldest trades on the river.
- Would you like to have a little drive?
- Left hand down a bit?
It's not like tyres on the road,
it's more like tyres on treacle.
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 a series of journeys across
the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain
remains.
In the 19th century, trains
transformed Britain fundamentally.
In the early years
of the railway revolution,
6,000 miles of track were laid.
For the first time,
people of modest means
could explore their own country,
and I'm following in their tracks.
Over the coming weeks,
I'll be travelling
to the western outposts of Scotland,
to the rugged mountains of North Wales,
and to the beautiful coastline of Kent.
Using my 19th-century Bradshaw's
Railway Handbook as my guide,
I'll be following in the footsteps
of Victorian railway tourists.
For those first travellers,
planning a rail journey wasn't easy.
Train times were displayed only locally
on the pub wall or the station door.
But in the 1840s,
cartographer George Bradshaw
began publishing rail timetables
covering the country.
It helped the masses to travel
across the British Isles.
And Bradshaw published guidebooks, too,
like the one I'm using now,
to make these journeys.
The route that I begin today
takes me on lines
that were built
not for coal or cotton, but for people.
Victorian carriages running on
these tracks would have been crowded
with shoppers and commuters
and sports enthusiasts.
The railways put the middle classes
on the move.
The very people for whom
George Bradshaw wrote his guidebooks.
Each day, I'll cover another leg
of the journey,
stopping off to see the towns and cities
described in my "Bradshaw's Guide".
Today is taking me to one of
the very first seaside aquariums...
It was the sense of shock and awe that
the Victorian public got coming in here
where they would see
the denizens of the deep.
...showing me the conditions
endured by Victorian miners...
It several times occurred to me
that if you weren't here,
I'd probably get lost and die in here.
I'd never find my way out.
I don't think you would.
...and revealing that greatest wonder of
the Victorian age, the Crystal Palace.
It makes me very sad
that the building no longer stands.
Yes, in November 1936, the building
was totally destroyed by fire.
On this route,
I'll be heading from the south coast
towards Crystal Palace
and the capital itself.
I'll follow the line out of London,
sweeping through Suffolk
into Cambridgeshire.
From there I'll travel to Norfolk
and King's Lynn,
before arriving
at my very final stop, Cromer.
Starting in Brighton today, I'll travel
the first 56 miles via Godstone
to the site of the Crystal Palace.
When the first railways snaked
towards the seafront in the 1840s,
they changed the way that people lived.
Prosperous men of affairs could live far
from their offices in the smoky city.
I'm headed for Brighton.
In 1844, the journey time from London
was already just 90 minutes,
and by 1865, it was down to 75,
and that made long-distance commuting
possible.
And Bradshaw says, "Merchants
who formerly made Dulwich or Dalston
the boundaries of
their suburban residences
now have got their mansions
on the south coast
and still get in less time
by a less expensive conveyance
to the counting houses in the City."
Well, the train I'm on takes 53 minutes,
which is not such a big change
in 150 years.
The age of commuting had dawned.
Before my guide was published,
Brighton was an aristocratic playground
where the blue-blooded
enjoyed the sea air or took the steamer
to begin a European tour.
The railway brought the coast
within easy reach
and those enriched by industry and trade
now occupied Brighton's elegant streets.
As I came into Brighton, I was very
struck by how far the town's extended.
The houses sprawl across
the neighbouring hills.
And this station is vast.
This is why Bradshaw refers to Brighton
as a marine metropolis,
because it was a royal town,
an international port,
then it became a seaside resort,
then it became a commuting town,
and it's a business centre
in its own right.
In the 1840s, the Victorian
middle classes discovered Brighton
and rushed to see it.
The Brighton Pavilion,
then a royal palace,
was swamped with visitors,
much to the disgust of Queen Victoria
who swiftly packed up
and left town for good in 1845.
Her Majesty may not have been amused
by the day-trippers and holidaymakers
pouring in by train, but Bradshaw was.
"Scores of laughing, chubby, thoughtless
children skilled manifestly in the art
of ingeniously tormenting maids, tutors,
governesses and mamas."
"Whilst intent upon
their customary constitutional walk,
the morning habitués
of the promenade swing lustily past.”
"Let us mingle with the throng
and obtain a closer intimacy of
the principal features of this place.”
Well, the social hierarchy has changed,
but people are still enjoying themselves
here, and I'm going to go a-mingling.
The sea front bustles still.
I'm meeting historian Geoff Mead
to help me imagine the attractions
of Victorian Brighton.
- Hello
- Michael Portillo.
- Geoffrey Mead.
Now, my Bradshaw's says
that at one time the Chain Pier
was the item of first consideration
for the visitor,
the highlight of Brighton.
So what did it look like?
It was basically a long suspension
bridge that ran from here.
Chains went through the wall here
and the chains ran out to a tower
down on the beach here.
Stretching over 1,000 feet out to sea,
this was Brighton's first pier.
Constructed in 1823,
it enabled the royal and rich
to glide across the waves
to their yachts and steamers.
Then there were four towers
on timber supports
with chains suspended from them,
rods suspended from the chains,
and the deck hung on the rods.
Then it was secured
to the timber underneath.
Then there was
a square stone-clad pier head
where people could promenade to.
By Bradshaw's time,
piers such as the Chain Pier
were no longer for the rich
to board ships.
They had become a playground
for the middle classes.
(Geoff) Once the railway arrives,
it changes the social demographic
of Brighton,
Before, you needed
your own transport to get here.
You needed to be rich.
Once the railway comes in,
it allows the world and his wife
to come to Brighton.
And so Brighton changes from being
the resort literally of kings
to being the working man's resort.
50 miles from London, easily accessible.
It changes the nature of the resort.
Bradshaw says something
very interesting, very clever.
He talks about the levelling of the
railways literally and metaphorically.
So you had to create flat ground
for the railways
but you produced
a levelling in society, too.
Certainly it revolutionised the seaside
which had been exclusively
for the very rich,
down to the man in the street.
That pier, alas, is no longer here
but one of the other Victorian
attractions survives intact:
the aquarium,
designed by Eugenius Birch.
Before the railways,
few people travelled to the coast.
Many might never have seen a live fish.
So the Brighton Aquarium opened up
a submarine world that was entirely new.
(Geoff) This was designed in 1869,
but it was such
a colossal building project,
it took years three years to complete.
It opened in 1872
as the wonder of the age.
It was the largest aquarium
anywhere in the world.
- And it felt like this, did it?
- It felt like this.
But it was the sense of awe,
of shock and awe that
the Victorian public got coming in here
where they would see the denizens
of the deep at close hand.
And we have to think that today
we're all very familiar
with underwater photography, many
people have been down, skin divers.
In the 1870s,
no one had seen an octopus close to,
no one had seen tropical fish.
Even common British species
that lived in deeper water
would only have been seen
in a fishmonger's shop.
Visitors could buy a train ticket
from London
that included entrance to the aquarium.
At that time, prawns, lobsters
and even salmon were star attractions
alongside more exotic displays
of sea lions.
Building the aquarium, then,
the Victorian seaside town
reinvents itself.
All seaside towns have to
constantly reinvent themselves.
The introduction of piers,
the introduction of things like aquaria,
the cinema is basically
a south coast of England technology.
A whole raft of ideas coming in
to, as you say, reinvent the seaside.
Brighton goes on and on.
Brighton developed pioneering
seaside attractions;
the aquarium was one of the first,
and now I'm going to go on one of
the world's first electric railways.
Ian Gledhill is chairman
of the Volk's Railway Association.
- Hello, Ian.
- Hello, Michael. Nice to meet you.
Michael Portillo.
Now, Volk's Electric Railway, 1883.
So who was Volk?
Well, Magnus Volk
was a local pioneer and inventor
and he was born in Brighton,
born in 1851,
and as a teenager he got absolutely
passionate about electricity,
at a time when most people
didn't understand it.
He put electric light
in the Royal Pavilion.
It was the first public building
in Sussex to be lit with electricity.
And he wanted to show that people
could travel by electricity,
so he built the railway.
Volk copied the idea from Germany
where the first electric railway
had opened in Berlin in 1879.
He wanted to give the people of Brighton
a taste of the future.
We now think of this
as a tourist attraction
but actually, Volk built it as a kind
of industrial demonstration project
to show what electricity could do.
Absolutely,
that's what he wanted to show.
He knew that electricity
was the coming thing
so he wanted to show that it would work.
People were a bit frightened
of it at first,
but once they got used to it,
they flocked to it.
Before long,
the line carried 19th-century tourists
along the seafront.
Travelling at about 6mph,
there were stops at the aquarium
and the Chain Pier.
Some landmarks have changed,
but the rolling stock hasn't
All our cars except one
are over 100 years old.
That is amazing.
Is it a big task to keep them going?
(fan) It is because
the electric motors are the originals.
- They are 100 years old as well.
- That's amazing.
Our national passion
for historic railways is so great
that it affects even celebrities.
- So, driver.
- Yes?
- You're Nicholas Owen, aren't you?
- I am, yes.
- What are you doing here then?
- Well, I love railways.
I'm one of those
very unusual railway enthusiasts,
I like electric railways.
So when I was asked a couple of
years ago to come and declare this
the 125th anniversary,
I think it's on my chest there,
I said I'll come as long as I can look
at the railway properly, understand it,
and they said,
"Would you like to be a volunteer?”
"Would you like to perhaps drive?"
And I've driven a few trains in my life
and this was just irresistible.
(Michael) How fantastic.
- A schoolboy's dream come true.
- Absolutely.
- Your secret is safe with me.
- (laughs) Yes, I fear not.
Replenished by all that sea air,
I'm heading towards my next destination
35 miles away.
Like so many visitors to Brighton
in Victorian times
and modern times as well,
I have been a day-tripper,
and I'm on the main line
headed north towards London.
But I won't go all the way
to the capital.
I'm going to seek Bradshaw's guide
in finding a place to rest my head.
My next stop is the village
of Godstone in Surrey.
Along the way,
my guidebook tells me to look out
for an impressive Victorian landmark.
Now we're passing over the Ouse Viaduct,
one of the finest works
in the kingdom according to Bradshaw's.
"It commands extensive views
over the surrounding countryside."
"As we're whirled along it,
the prospect presents us
with an unbounded scene of beauty.”
And you do feel, heading towards
Gatwick, heading towards London,
that you want to breathe in the openness
before you lose it altogether.
This listed viaduct was built in 1841
by railway engineer, John Rastrick,
and now carries 493 trains a day.
Having changed trains, I'm on the last
stretch of tracks before Godstone.
After sampling the glamorous life
in Brighton,
I've checked "Bradshaw's" for somewhere
suitable to stay the night.
Under the entry for Godstone,
Bradshaw's notes that the parks
of this neighbourhood are much admired.
And then it has a whole list
of what we would call stately homes
that are within striking distance
of the station.
And I've picked one
which I'm managing to stay at tonight,
Starborough Castle, eight miles.
(tannoy)
We are now approaching Godstone.
Bradshaw notes the distance by coach
to Starborough Castle.
It's now a smart B&B and I'll have to
settle for a taxi to get there.
Hello. Can you take me
to Starborough Castle?
- Certainly.
- Thank you.
- Hello.
- Welcome to Starborough Manor.
Now, Starborough Manor, you say?
I'm looking for Starborough Castle.
Is that it?
(woman)
The whole area was Starborough Castle.
In the '70s, it was split up
and became Starborough Manor.
The castle itself was demolished in 1648
on the orders of Parliament
because it could've been a place
of resistance during the Civil War.
The stone from the castle was reused
to construct the present manor house.
My Bradshaw's Guide, written in the
1860s, refers to Starborough Castle.
- So he's referring to the house?
- (woman) Yes, exactly. Exactly.
Well, very beautiful it is, too.
And I'm off to see if I can find my key.
- Let me show you to your room.
- Alright, thank you. Thank you.
Having learnt that the splendid castle
was destroyed
on the orders of Parliamentarians,
I hope that my conscience
won't stop me sleeping.
After splendid hospitality
at Starborough Castle,
I'm now pacing an old Roman road
in search of a clue
in my Bradshaw's Guide
to the underground history of Godstone.
Bradshaw talks about
the famous quarries at Godstone.
I'm here to meet Peter Burgess
who's unearthing their past.
- Hello, Peter.
- Hello there, Michael. Welcome.
Now I have come here
because of my Bradshaw's Guide
and he says that Godstone
is named after "good stone".
Yes, quite a few people have made
this very same statement,
but if you look into it,
you'll find that stone is a reference,
as in other place names, to the Roman
road that runs through the village,
and "God", we believe, is a Saxon family
so this is God's place
on the Roman road.
But nonetheless,
it is famous for stone here?
Oh, yes, there are
very extensive quarries
for the stone that can be found
at Godstone, indeed.
The stone was originally used
as a building material in London,
being the nearest source to the capital.
It was called firestone because of
its special heat-resistant properties
and was later used in factories
as a bed to roll out molten glass
and for domestic hearthstones.
After the late 1850s,
the railway came to Caterham
which is about two miles
up the road from here.
And one of the reasons
for constructing that line,
one of the things that persuaded people
to put money into the line,
was the fact that it would serve
as a link for these quarries
to get the stone up
into the national rail network.
At the time, this quarry produced
the best stone in the area
and the industry grew.
But as the railways spread,
it became easier to bring in
higher-quality building materials
like Bath and Portland stone.
Godstone quarry declined,
and closed in the 1940s.
The old tunnels are still here
and they haven't changed much
since Bradshaw's epoch.
- Pretty cool in here, isn't it?
- Absolutely.
(Michael) Now you and I are having
to squat down a bit in here.
What were conditions like
for the quarrymen in the 19th century?
Well, we have it good because
we've got good lights.
They would've been working
by candlelight
but they would've had the same issues
with the height and so on.
They wouldn't have been wearing helmets.
- Health and safety not a big thing.
- Oh, no, no.
Miners dug over six miles of tunnels
in the quarry.
And as I follow in their footsteps,
I gain a sense of what
the Victorian workers endured.
We've come through such a labyrinth.
It's several times occurred to me
that if you weren't here,
I would probably get lost
and die in here.
I'd never find my way out again.
- I don't think you would, no.
- What are these jottings here?
These appear to be numbers
So my guess is these are tally marks.
And the quarrymen would've been paid
for the amount of stone
they were taking out
and keeping a record.
But in order to get this out,
they had to do it,
and it was all done by hand,
picks and hammers and wedges
and the tools they had.
Inside the mine,
Peter and his colleagues
are excavating the tunnel floors
to reveal more about how
the miners operated.
That just looks like rock,
but persevere.
It's beginning to get a bit rusty.
They've uncovered some very early rails
which carried horse-drawn wagons
of stone to the surface.
Now this rail here, this broken section,
is in fact the same as
you were uncovering here.
It's very different
from what I recognise as a rail.
Indeed it is. It's made of cast iron
so it's not particularly strong.
That limited how much you could carry
on a railway like this.
The rails would break,
as indeed this one has.
(Michael) And what does it say?
This is the name of the railway
that they were made for.
It says C, M and G.
Croydon, Merston and Godstone.
And where you were scraping here,
there's the chance that that lettering
might still be in place.
- Must be worth another go.
- Well, yes, indeed.
Peter's discovered
that these rails were recycled
from one of the earliest horse-drawn
railways built in Surrey in 1803,
They helped the mine to prosper
as larger amounts of stone
could be hauled out more quickly.
Now it's time for me to leave Godstone
for my next destination.
I've emerged more or less intact
from my dark subterranean dungeon.
And now I'm back on the main line
headed for a part of London.
I'm travelling towards a place
whose name more than any other
recalls the triumphs
of Victorian industry: Crystal Palace.
Well, here I have to use
my imagination a bit
because Bradshaw
describes the Crystal Palace
sitting on the summit of Penge Park
as being one of the outstanding sights
in Europe.
But of course now,
the Crystal Palace is gone.
My guide is full of praise
for the Crystal Palace.
"With its marvellous transepts
and wings and galleries,
situated in the most exquisite
and park-like grounds,
ornamented with a noble terrace,
commanding one of the finest views
in England.”
The extraordinary glass palace
was built for the Great Exhibition
of 1851 in Hyde Park.
By 1854, it had been moved
to this suburban hill
with a dedicated station
of suitable grandeur.
Well, it's certainly
a magnificent station,
you can tell that this, in its day,
was quite something.
Maybe this is the kind of traditional
London exhibition architecture.
It reminds me a bit of South Kensington
and the museums there.
Just a few passengers today,
but you have to imagine that
these stairs, built on a colossal scale,
once saw thousands of passengers a day
surging through
on their way to see
the wonders of the Crystal Palace.
On just one day in 1859, over 100,000
Victorians poured through the station.
I'm meeting historian Ken Kiss
to discover what they came to see.
- Hello, Ken.
- Pleased to meet you.
Very good to see you.
This was one of the great wonders
of the world in its day.
This was an enormous building,
a fantastic edifice of iron and glass.
Absolutely.
It was that period of optimism
and interest in everything
that was going on.
So inside the building you would have
models of bridges,
models of all sorts of structure.
There was a whole series of courts
that were given over to architecture,
so you could go in there
and the first court you walked into
was the Egyptian Court.
So you had this remarkable court,
nearly 100 feet long, 60 feet high,
the perfect reproduction
of everything from Egypt.
You'd just move through an archway
into the Greek Court
and then on to the Roman Court.
So you could spend days in the building.
"Bradshaw's" continues to enthuse,
"The sight of the Crystal Palace
on the summit of Penge Park
is one of the most beautiful
in the world."”
When the palace was rebuilt
in South London,
it was even larger
than the one in Hyde Park.
Now I'm guessing that that balustrade
marks the footprint of the building.
- It's just absolutely huge, isn't it?
- Yes, tremendous.
It's this,
running along the bottom of it.
- That's correct, yes.
- In my Bradshaw's Guide.
From one end to the other,
how big would that have been?
That's 1,608 feet from end to end
of the building.
Huge. And how tall?
About 208 feet to the top
of the centre transept.
So give me an idea
against this transmitter mast.
Well, about one, two,
three and a half lifts on there
would give you the main part
of the building.
The Crystal Palace
was built to celebrate
Britain's technological achievements.
Railways epitomised that success,
and appropriately, they conveyed
the visitors who came to admire.
Over six months,
6,200,000 people attended
on special excursion trains
from all over the country.
It makes me very sad being here
that the building no longer stands.
It was destroyed by a fire, wasn't it?
Yes, in November 1936, the building
was totally destroyed by fire.
And we have really no idea
as to how it happened.
We have some clues. We think it was
probably a pipe underneath the floor.
A lot of people stood there that night
and said how can glass and iron burn?
But it was the timber floor
that was burning
and bringing the building down.
Nearly eight acres of timber flooring.
That was more than enough
to destroy the whole building.
The fire burned all night
and was visible in six counties.
Later, Churchill described it
as the end of an age.
Today, rare survivors
of the Victorian exhibits
are the Crystal Palace dinosaurs,
described by "Bradshaw's" as,
"the models of the diluvian
and antediluvian extinct animals."”
It's fantastic that the Victorians
constructed these things, isn't it?
Quite remarkable. Yes.
All this is done years before
Darwin's Origin of Species.
- Oh, yes.
- These ones are absolutely massive.
Apart from anything else,
they're amazing works of sculpture
and even engineering, aren't they?
Yes, indeed, there's
a tremendous amount of iron work.
The armature inside that creature,
that's just several hundred bricks
and five-inch pipes
and things to make sure that the final
structure looks as it does there.
It's amazing to recall that at the time,
no complete dinosaur skeletons
had yet been found.
Although the models aren't 100 percent
accurate, they're not far off.
- The Victorians must have been stunned.
- (Ken) Absolutely. Absolutely.
No one had seen anything like it.
These creatures
are millions of years old
and here they were in three dimensions.
And it's also very Victorian, isn't it?
You come for a day out,
an entertainment, a picnic,
but at the same time,
you've got to be learning.
- Absolutely.
- They're very earnest about that.
Father would ask the children,
"Now, what is the name of that one?"
That's the sort of thing.
They were keen.
They must have felt better
to have been educated
as well as just
enjoying the surroundings.
Following my "Bradshaw's",
I'm stunned by the progress
and the self-confidence
of the Victorian age.
From seaside attractions to mines,
monuments and even dinosaurs,
it was an era of limitless creativity.
Like a good Victorian tourist,
I've taken the train
to the aquarium in Brighton
and to the site of the Crystal Palace,
and that's made me admire even more
the engineering of the time.
But when I was crammed inside
that subterranean quarry,
I thought about the sweat and toil
of thousands of men
that was required to make a reality
of each of those ideas of genius.
On the next leg of the route,
I'll be finding out how even the dead
benefited from the railways...
It was also the terminus
of what was rather irreverently known
as the Stiffs' Express.
...understanding how London became
a great shopping destination...
Part of what's changing
is coming about through the railways.
Suddenly you're getting suburbanites
coming into the centre of London
to walk the streets, to shop.
...and trying my hand at one
of the oldest trades on the river.
- Would you like to have a little drive?
- Left hand down a bit?
It's not like tyres on the road,
it's more like tyres on treacle.