Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 2, Episode 11 - Newcastle to Chester-le-Street - 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.
Using my 19th-century Bradshaw's Guide,
I'm now headed for the Northeast,
the cradle of the railways,
where much of
their early technology was developed.
Some of the first lines
were built here by George Stephenson,
and I'll be following them south
to see how they spread throughout
the country transforming Britain.
Each step of the way,
I'll be consulting my "Bradshaw's Guide"
on what to look out for.
With its remarkable descriptions
of Victorian towns and cities,
it's helping me to grasp
the ideas and inventions
that shaped what we enjoy today.
On this journey, I'll be visiting
the birthplace of the railways...
Is this really the shrine
of British railway engineering?
I suppose it is really.
This is the first purpose-built
locomotive factory in the world.
...finding out
about the first lifeboat...
This isn't just about technology.
This is really a way
of thinking about human life.
...and witnessing some traditional
miners' sword dancing.
- Who's lost a hand?
- (laughs)
Starting in Newcastle,
this route takes me south
along some of
the very first railway lines,
Through Darlington and Whitby...
to York.
Then I'll cross the Pennines
and pass through Sheffield
and rural Leicestershire,
before ending up
at the town of Melton Mowbray.
Today, I'll cover the first 37 miles
as I follow the Tyne to South Shields,
then travel south
as far as Chester-le-Street.
Arriving into Newcastle,
there are reminders everywhere
of the city's pioneering role
in railway history.
As we cross the River Tyne,
Bradshaw refers
to the High Level Bridge over there
which was built
by the late R Stephenson.
A 1,400-foot span,
112 and a half feet above the river.
When it opened in 1849,
the High Level Bridge was one of the
earliest wrought-iron railway bridges,
and the first to carry three tracks
along its length.
Its engineer, Robert Stephenson,
worked with the architect John Dobson
to build Newcastle Central Station
in 1850.
Newcastle Station is itself a wonder
of railway archaeology and architecture.
Stephenson used three beautiful
arched iron and glass canopies
to create the station,
and they curve along the platform.
And this became the model for places
all along the Northeast Railway.
This impressive station
provided a fitting gateway to a city
which in Bradshaw's day had
recently been substantially improved.
He writes, "The new town is handsome
and well laid out.”
"The Exchange and other buildings
are built of solid, durable granite
at a cost of nearly £2 million."
Designed by architect Richard Grainger,
and completed around 1841,
these streets are at the heart of one
of England's first conservation areas.
We're on the corner
of Grainger Street and Grey Street.
- What do you think of these streets?
- Grey Street is a really lovely street.
The buildings down there
are just wonderful.
If you walk down and just look up...
A lot of people never ever look up.
They just look straight ahead.
But if you look up,
it's a wonderful place, it really is.
You're awfully young, but do you have
any memories of Newcastle...?
(laughs) I'm actually a grandma,
but that's nice of you to say so.
But do you have any memories of
Newcastle-Gateshead in the old days?
Before the regeneration,
it was quite depressing.
But now it's beautiful down there.
It's really nice.
These days,
Newcastle's classical buildings
are offset by some striking
modern architecture,
including the award-winning
Millennium Bridge.
George Bradshaw,
as a tremendous admirer of technology,
would love the Millennium Bridge,
which tips up like a winking eye
to allow shipping to pass underneath it.
It takes just four and a half minutes
to open,
and is the world's first
and only tilting bridge.
The keys of the Tyne are now home
to a thriving arts and culture scene,
but in Bradshaw's time,
one industry above all others
helped the city to grow.
Bradshaw's says, "Newcastle's situation
on the banks of a navigable river
and in the greatest coal district
in the world
are the chief causes which have tended
to raise it to wealth and importance.”
In the 1860s, Tyneside dominated
Britain's coal mining industry,
supplying almost a third
of London's fuel.
The wealth generated by the collieries
financed pioneering engineers
working on what became the century's
most important technology, the railways.
In 1824, Robert Stephenson
and his father George
set up their locomotive works
in central Newcastle.
I'm meeting Dr Michael Bailey
to see what's left of their empire.
- Good to meet you.
- Wonderful to see you.
I can't believe this place.
Is this really the shrine
of British railway engineering?
Well, I suppose it is really.
This is the first purpose-built
locomotive factory in the world.
The railways were developed
in this country
and we then exported our locomotives
to Europe, to North America,
and the whole railway revolution
developed from that moment on.
(Michael) It must have become
a very big works indeed.
Give me an idea of its size.
(Bailey) When it was completely
developed later on in the 19th century,
it occupied something like six acres.
Two and a half hectares, if you like,
in modern speak.
And there were about 1,200 employees.
So that was a very large site.
(Michael) Looking at this building,
there's very little trace
of what it must have been like,
and yet it's very moving.
For anyone who's interested in railways,
this is the cradle of it all.
- The place where it all begins.
- Yes, it is.
And I think the people of Newcastle
are extremely proud
of the fact that they have here
right on their doorstep
the very beginnings of the railway era.
At this site, the Stephensons designed
some of the first
successful locomotives.
They developed all the elements
of a modern railway,
including setting the distance
between the parallel rails
which became the world standard gauge.
Why does this birth
of railway technology
happen in Newcastle of all places?
It comes back to the coal, of course.
The coal industry was so dominant
in the 18th and then early 19th century
that the competition
between the different coal owners
demanded better and better ways
of moving the coal
from the colliery sites
to the shipping points
for shipment to southern England
or export to Europe.
And therefore, to enable you...
to allow you to be competitive,
you needed better railway technology
to move the coal.
Father and son
George and Robert Stephenson
both started out
as engineers in the coal industry,
and by Bradshaw's day,
they had become household names.
One of the striking things
about George Stephenson
is he's a man of very humble origins,
little education.
Was he a man with rough edges?
Yes, he did have rough edges.
He always had a bit
of a chip on his shoulder,
or some would say
a forest on his shoulder,
because he didn't have an education.
But he was self-taught.
He taught himself to read and write,
and that's obviously very commendable.
But Robert did have an education.
George Stephenson
ensured his son Robert
would have all the education
that he did not have.
When he left school, he could really
have taken a position in any profession,
but he chose to perpetuate
his interest in engineering.
By 1850, he had been responsible
for something like a third of
all the railways built in this country.
(Michael) These two men hopping
between mechanical engineering
and civil engineering, building bridges,
planning railway lines,
this is the stuff of genius, isn't it?
Well, I think it is.
To be the engineers
right at the beginning
of the railway revolution.
Yes, it is. It's the stuff of genius.
In 1859, when Robert Stephenson died,
the railway works were one of
the largest employers on Tyneside.
But they owed their development
to the region's mineral wealth,
its so-called black gold.
Bradshaw's notes that,
"Coal, the true riches of Newcastle,
was first worked here in the year 1260."
"But the produce was scanty
till steam power was used in 1714."
He notes the vastness of the coalfields
and their enormous depth,
and then he says, "All geologists agree
that it will take some hundreds,
if not thousands of years
to exhaust the coal."
Well, I'm going to see now
how that prediction stacks up today.
I'm heading out to the old coalfields
around South Shields on the Metro,
Tyneside's underground.
It's one of four in Britain, alongside
those in London, Glasgow and Liverpool.
Of course, I'm used
to the London Underground.
Coming down the escalators,
it felt like London Underground
except the escalators are shorter
than at most London stations.
And I think the trains are shorter, too.
But still, this railway has 60 stations.
So it may not be London,
but it's a very substantial size.
The Metro was Britain's
first modern light rail system
when it opened in 1980.
Designed to move people
quickly around the region,
its vehicles are lighter
than mainline trains.
Its 47 and a half miles of track
carry passengers far into the suburbs.
Unless, that is,
you happen to pick a day
when they're doing engineering works.
Well, unfortunately,
that's the end of my journey by train
because this being a Sunday, from here
it's a replacement bus service.
The rail replacement bus service
can be regarded as a modern curse,
and I don't suppose it would
have happened much in Bradshaw's day.
But the origin is mid-19th century,
because by Act of Parliament,
rail services were made statutory,
compulsory.
And if there isn't a train,
the rail company
still has to provide a service.
It demonstrates how quickly
people came to rely on the railways
as the main form of transport.
I don't have anything against buses,
but let's face it, they're not
the same as trains, are they?
I'm on my way
to one of the many coal mines
that were sunk into the earth
around Newcastle in Bradshaw's day,
linked by a growing network
of railway tracks.
My guidebook writes,
"Within a circle of eight to ten miles,
more than 50 important collieries
are open,
employing 10 to 15,000 hands."
One of these productive pits was
Whitburn Colliery which opened in 1879.
Its workers had their own village,
built alongside the pit.
But although my "Bradshaw's Guide"
predicted a long future
for Northumbrian coal,
arriving today, there's no sign of life.
It's difficult to believe that
this green expanse at the cliff's edge
was once a village of 700 people:
Marsden.
And now of its nine streets,
its school, its miners' institute,
hardly a trace remains.
It's all been swept away.
To find out what became
of this once-thriving community,
I'm meeting a lifelong resident, Larry
Robertson, who worked here in the 1960s.
So, these gates were once
the entrance to the colliery.
Yes, it's hard to believe.
We had a full colliery here.
Full steam engines for the winders,
and the office block just behind us.
Workshops, everything.
Full industrial huge complex.
More surprising,
not just the colliery has gone
but the whole village has gone.
Yeah, there was a full community.
Most of the workers for the colliery
lived just along the road,
about 400 metres. All disappeared.
Larry grew up in Marsden
and remembers what once stood here.
Describe the village
that you knew as a kid.
(Larry) Oh, a very friendly
little village.
We had North Street here.
The dairy was just here.
I used to get the school bus there.
You could walk it,
but we used to get the bus.
Erm... about 150, 170 houses
and families.
Everybody worked at the colliery.
Everybody knew each other.
In its heyday,
Whitburn Colliery produced
1,500 tons of coal a day
which travelled by train to Newcastle.
And that was the railway line
running there.
(Larry) That's the embankment.
Used to run all the way
to South Shields parallel to the road.
We used to nickname it
the Marsden Rattler.
It used to bring the miners in
from South Shields
because obviously then
transport wasn't that good.
So each shift, four times a day,
would go backwards and forwards.
Well, eight times,
taking all the people home.
The miners worked on seams
that extended for miles under the sea.
But by Larry's day, it was becoming
too costly to extract the coal.
In 1968, the mine closed,
and shortly after,
Marsden Village was pulled down.
I don't really understand
why the village was demolished.
I think it was going to cost
too much to upgrade it. It was...
Basically, we still had the outside
toilets, little back yards and...
It was the same when they knocked
it down as it was when they built it.
I suppose at the end it was expense,
which was a shame.
- A shame.
- Yeah.
(Larry) It was just incredible
that this area supported so much life.
For me as a kid, it was
a wonderful life. I really enjoyed it.
You paint a fantastic picture.
The second half of the 20th century
saw the closure of the region's mines,
and by the 1990s,
all the collieries were gone.
But now it could be time to revisit
Bradshaw's optimistic forecast
for the coal industry.
I'm staying
on the Whitburn Colliery site
to meet mining expert
Professor Paul Younger.
My Bradshaw's Guide
says that many geologists
have considered how long
the coal supply may last,
and they've agreed that it's hundreds,
if not thousands of years.
Were those geologists right?
Basically they were.
If you look at this part of the world,
we've been mining coal
at industrial scale longer here
than on any other part of the planet.
So more than 400 years
of large-scale coal mining,
and yet still 75 percent of the coal
is in the sub-surface waiting for us.
- Three quarters left underground?
- Yeah.
With so much coal under the North Sea,
Paul is hoping to employ
a new technique for extracting
its energy called gasification.
Instead of sending
human beings underground
to go through tunnels and so on,
it's all done with modern steered
drilling technologies from the surface.
So you have a drilling rig,
you send the drilling bit down,
you steer it,
it moves through the coal seam.
You inject steam and oxygen, and then
out of another borehole, out pops gas
which has got 80 percent of
the energy of the original solid coal.
Miners wouldn't need
to go underground
and it's hoped that this could provide
a greener source of energy.
We see the coal here as our way
of bridging our way
to a renewable-energy future,
because everybody's going
to immediately say,
"Are you crazy,
proposing burning more coal
when we've got the problems
with climate change?"
But the beauty of the technology
we're talking about
is that the voids
we're creating in the deep sub-surface,
if they're below depths
of 650, 700 metres,
we can inject the carbon dioxide
straight back into them.
And so we have a way of
getting the energy out of the coal
without further damaging the atmosphere
with carbon dioxide emissions.
Although some fear that
the environmental benefits are unproven,
Paul is upbeat about the future.
- And so far promising?
- Very promising, yes.
The studies we've done
show that this can be done economically,
it can be done safely,
and with the huge dividend that
we then get the energy out of the coal
without further damaging the climate.
Who knows?
Perhaps this coast will support
a new community of energy workers.
One building survived
the demolition of Marsden Village.
The spectacular Souter Lighthouse
built in the 19th century.
Before [ continue my journey,
I want to take a look.
76 steps to the top
of the Souter Lighthouse, I'm told.
But the view is magnificent.
This was built in 1871
and George Bradshaw would
have been thrilled by the technology.
The first lighthouse built
for an electric light
with the power of 800,000 candles.
And the reason was clear;
these were very treacherous rocks.
In 1860 alone, about the time
that my guidebook was published,
20 ships were wrecked here.
And this lighthouse
brought greater safety for seaman.
The profusion of lighthouses
along this shore
underlines just how treacherous
it's always been.
A tiny reference in my guidebook
hints at the perils of these waters.
And my next train is taking me
to South Shields to follow it up.
I'm taking the Metro
because my Bradshaw's tells me
that, "At South Shields
may be seen in the church
a model of Greathead's first lifeboat,
invented and used in 1790."
Now presumably Victorians
understood that reference,
but it means nothing to me,
and I'm intrigued to know
what could have been so special
about that lifeboat.
I'm heading straight from the station
to the church mentioned
in my "Bradshaw's Guide".
I'm hoping historian Ian Whitehead
could help me find the model
that it describes.
Hi, I'm Ian.
Pleased to meet you, Michael.
Very nice to see you.
I am looking for Greathead's lifeboat
because it's mentioned
in my Bradshaw's Guide.
Is it... is it kind of readily visible?
- (Ian) It is readily visible.
- (Michael) Oh!
Wow. I didn't expect it to be there.
That's absolutely fantastic.
(Ian) We can get the boat down
if you'd like. Tom.
(Michael) I thought you just
pressed a button.
(Ian) No, unfortunately not.
The model that hangs from the ceiling
represents what's claimed to be
the first ever lifeboat,
designed in response to the hazardous
conditions of the North Sea.
(Ian) The original boat was made
because of loss of life, really,
and a particular incident in 1789
where a ship ran aground,
and, er... over a period of 24 hours,
everyone watched from the shore as
the boat failed to get off the Herd Sand
and then finally broke up
and half the crew died.
The disaster was so shocking
that a group of locals launched
a competition to design a rescue craft.
So who was Greathead, the man
that Bradshaw attributes this boat to?
Greathead was the man who claimed
to be the inventor of the lifeboat.
In the competition, there were
two people who put in entries.
One was from Greathead.
The other entry
was from William Wouldhave,
who was in fact
the parish clerk of this church.
The committee didn't actually like
either of the designs.
With no clear winner,
Greathead was asked to build a lifeboat
that combined the best ideas
from both men.
It was double ended so that it
could be rowed in either direction,
with a cork lining for buoyancy.
This isn't just about technology.
This is really also about a way
of thinking about human life, isn't it?
There is a commitment to save life,
which was perhaps a little bit of a
novelty at the end of the 18th century.
(Ian) It is. I think if you've got
no way of saving life,
then you have to be fatalistic
and you have to say "Well,
we couldn't have saved them anyway."
But the development
of the coal-mining industry
meant that people had money
from the coal trade
to think about building
a boat like this.
And so it was a world first
for the Northeast of England
to have a lifeboat.
So the Northeast can claim first
in locomotives and in lifeboats.
(Ian) Indeed.
To reach my final destination
on this leg of the journey,
I need to pick up the main line,
so I'm travelling back to Newcastle on
the Metro along the banks of the Tyne.
"Bradshaw's" tells me that this stretch
is home to some remarkable Roman ruins.
Arbeia Fort, built nearly 2,000 years
ago to guard the entrance to the Tyne,
is now a major tourist attraction.
But ancient sites like these
were often plundered.
"Bradshaw's" says, "It's probable
that much of the Priory at Tynemouth
was built with stone from
the Roman station at South Shields."
Thankfully,
parts of Hadrian's Wall have survived,
and its vestiges are apparent
among the housing estates of Newcastle.
Now back on the main line,
I'm leaving Tyne and Wear
to head south into County Durham.
My next stop is the ex-mining town
of Chester-le-Street.
- That's a nice tight one, isn't it?
- It is very tight.
(Michael) Bye.
I'm here
because it's an unusual station.
Welcome to Chester-le-Street.
- Thank you. You're Alex?
- Alex Nelson.
There's something pretty special
about Chester-le-Street Station.
This is one of the few independent
stations in the country,
and the only one on a major main line.
This is the East Coast main line
to London.
I took over this station 11 years ago
as a private venture to reinvigorate it.
(Michael) How on earth did it occur
to you to buy a railway station?
Well, I didn't strictly buy it.
I rent it.
But I was travelling on a train
one afternoon from Durham to Newcastle
and the train pulled up here
about 2:50 in the afternoon.
Boarded-up, derelict,
with a to-let sign.
Alex renovated the station
and turned it into
a successful private business
selling train tickets
to anywhere in the country.
(Alex) This was an unstaffed station,
unloved and in a bad way.
And we have five staff who work here.
We provide information on trains
all over the country by phone.
That's about 100 miles an hour.
You have six seconds
to get off the track if you're there.
It's just as well
we're behind the yellow line.
Today, Chester-le-Street
has just one main line
passing through Alex's station.
In Bradshaw's day, it was at the centre
of a spider's web of colliery railways
bringing coal to the town
for export along the River Wear.
Coal mining has always
been dangerous work,
and 19th-century miners had to
trust each other with their lives.
Close-knit mining communities
developed their own traditions,
and one, the rapper sword dance,
is sustained by local resident
Ricky Forster and his family.
You're beautifully turned out for what?
For rapper...
- Rapper sword dance.
- A rapper sword dance?
- Northeast tradition.
- It goes back how long?
1800s.
I've got family in it in the 1800s
carrying the dance through
to the present day.
Your family has been doing it
all that time?
- And what is it you're carrying here?
- A rapper sword.
A rapper sword. Is that sharp?
No, no, it's blunt.
It does cut like a scissor.
(laughs)
So what was this used for?
For cleaning pit ponies' backs.
So, will you give us a dance please?
Oh, I think we could manage that.
(lively jig)
During the 19th century,
groups of dancers travelled
all over the Northeast by train
performing at competitions
in pubs, clubs and miners' galas.
As well as dancers,
comic characters provided light relief.
You tell them what to do.
Tell them what to do.
- Shall I tell them what to do?
- You do what he says.
Right, come on then. Down here.
Oh, no! Who's lost a hand?
I'll put it in the handbag!
Howay, bonny lads!
That was absolutely fantastic.
As I say goodbye to the rapper dancers,
it's been brought home to me
how this region of Britain
was shaped by two staple
Victorian industries: coal and railways.
History never ends.
Railways have revived and coal,
so recently written off, may return,
its energy harvested in a new way.
In Bradshaw's day, the Northeast
became rich on the back of the railways,
and they in turn depended
on the superabundance of coal.
If we could master the technology
and turn the coal
that remains underground into gas,
then maybe coal could supply
our energy future as well.
On the next leg of my journey,
I'll be experiencing how tough
the work was on a steam train...
The heat from the boiler is intense.
And... the coal is heavy.
And the locomotive... is very hungry.
...meeting one of
the first locomotives...
It's in the most beautiful condition.
Am I allowed to...?
- (man) I think you are, absolutely.
- It's quite thrilling.
...and sounding out the seaside town
that inspired the Victorian
horror story "Dracula”.
(screams)
How was that?
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.
Using my 19th-century Bradshaw's Guide,
I'm now headed for the Northeast,
the cradle of the railways,
where much of
their early technology was developed.
Some of the first lines
were built here by George Stephenson,
and I'll be following them south
to see how they spread throughout
the country transforming Britain.
Each step of the way,
I'll be consulting my "Bradshaw's Guide"
on what to look out for.
With its remarkable descriptions
of Victorian towns and cities,
it's helping me to grasp
the ideas and inventions
that shaped what we enjoy today.
On this journey, I'll be visiting
the birthplace of the railways...
Is this really the shrine
of British railway engineering?
I suppose it is really.
This is the first purpose-built
locomotive factory in the world.
...finding out
about the first lifeboat...
This isn't just about technology.
This is really a way
of thinking about human life.
...and witnessing some traditional
miners' sword dancing.
- Who's lost a hand?
- (laughs)
Starting in Newcastle,
this route takes me south
along some of
the very first railway lines,
Through Darlington and Whitby...
to York.
Then I'll cross the Pennines
and pass through Sheffield
and rural Leicestershire,
before ending up
at the town of Melton Mowbray.
Today, I'll cover the first 37 miles
as I follow the Tyne to South Shields,
then travel south
as far as Chester-le-Street.
Arriving into Newcastle,
there are reminders everywhere
of the city's pioneering role
in railway history.
As we cross the River Tyne,
Bradshaw refers
to the High Level Bridge over there
which was built
by the late R Stephenson.
A 1,400-foot span,
112 and a half feet above the river.
When it opened in 1849,
the High Level Bridge was one of the
earliest wrought-iron railway bridges,
and the first to carry three tracks
along its length.
Its engineer, Robert Stephenson,
worked with the architect John Dobson
to build Newcastle Central Station
in 1850.
Newcastle Station is itself a wonder
of railway archaeology and architecture.
Stephenson used three beautiful
arched iron and glass canopies
to create the station,
and they curve along the platform.
And this became the model for places
all along the Northeast Railway.
This impressive station
provided a fitting gateway to a city
which in Bradshaw's day had
recently been substantially improved.
He writes, "The new town is handsome
and well laid out.”
"The Exchange and other buildings
are built of solid, durable granite
at a cost of nearly £2 million."
Designed by architect Richard Grainger,
and completed around 1841,
these streets are at the heart of one
of England's first conservation areas.
We're on the corner
of Grainger Street and Grey Street.
- What do you think of these streets?
- Grey Street is a really lovely street.
The buildings down there
are just wonderful.
If you walk down and just look up...
A lot of people never ever look up.
They just look straight ahead.
But if you look up,
it's a wonderful place, it really is.
You're awfully young, but do you have
any memories of Newcastle...?
(laughs) I'm actually a grandma,
but that's nice of you to say so.
But do you have any memories of
Newcastle-Gateshead in the old days?
Before the regeneration,
it was quite depressing.
But now it's beautiful down there.
It's really nice.
These days,
Newcastle's classical buildings
are offset by some striking
modern architecture,
including the award-winning
Millennium Bridge.
George Bradshaw,
as a tremendous admirer of technology,
would love the Millennium Bridge,
which tips up like a winking eye
to allow shipping to pass underneath it.
It takes just four and a half minutes
to open,
and is the world's first
and only tilting bridge.
The keys of the Tyne are now home
to a thriving arts and culture scene,
but in Bradshaw's time,
one industry above all others
helped the city to grow.
Bradshaw's says, "Newcastle's situation
on the banks of a navigable river
and in the greatest coal district
in the world
are the chief causes which have tended
to raise it to wealth and importance.”
In the 1860s, Tyneside dominated
Britain's coal mining industry,
supplying almost a third
of London's fuel.
The wealth generated by the collieries
financed pioneering engineers
working on what became the century's
most important technology, the railways.
In 1824, Robert Stephenson
and his father George
set up their locomotive works
in central Newcastle.
I'm meeting Dr Michael Bailey
to see what's left of their empire.
- Good to meet you.
- Wonderful to see you.
I can't believe this place.
Is this really the shrine
of British railway engineering?
Well, I suppose it is really.
This is the first purpose-built
locomotive factory in the world.
The railways were developed
in this country
and we then exported our locomotives
to Europe, to North America,
and the whole railway revolution
developed from that moment on.
(Michael) It must have become
a very big works indeed.
Give me an idea of its size.
(Bailey) When it was completely
developed later on in the 19th century,
it occupied something like six acres.
Two and a half hectares, if you like,
in modern speak.
And there were about 1,200 employees.
So that was a very large site.
(Michael) Looking at this building,
there's very little trace
of what it must have been like,
and yet it's very moving.
For anyone who's interested in railways,
this is the cradle of it all.
- The place where it all begins.
- Yes, it is.
And I think the people of Newcastle
are extremely proud
of the fact that they have here
right on their doorstep
the very beginnings of the railway era.
At this site, the Stephensons designed
some of the first
successful locomotives.
They developed all the elements
of a modern railway,
including setting the distance
between the parallel rails
which became the world standard gauge.
Why does this birth
of railway technology
happen in Newcastle of all places?
It comes back to the coal, of course.
The coal industry was so dominant
in the 18th and then early 19th century
that the competition
between the different coal owners
demanded better and better ways
of moving the coal
from the colliery sites
to the shipping points
for shipment to southern England
or export to Europe.
And therefore, to enable you...
to allow you to be competitive,
you needed better railway technology
to move the coal.
Father and son
George and Robert Stephenson
both started out
as engineers in the coal industry,
and by Bradshaw's day,
they had become household names.
One of the striking things
about George Stephenson
is he's a man of very humble origins,
little education.
Was he a man with rough edges?
Yes, he did have rough edges.
He always had a bit
of a chip on his shoulder,
or some would say
a forest on his shoulder,
because he didn't have an education.
But he was self-taught.
He taught himself to read and write,
and that's obviously very commendable.
But Robert did have an education.
George Stephenson
ensured his son Robert
would have all the education
that he did not have.
When he left school, he could really
have taken a position in any profession,
but he chose to perpetuate
his interest in engineering.
By 1850, he had been responsible
for something like a third of
all the railways built in this country.
(Michael) These two men hopping
between mechanical engineering
and civil engineering, building bridges,
planning railway lines,
this is the stuff of genius, isn't it?
Well, I think it is.
To be the engineers
right at the beginning
of the railway revolution.
Yes, it is. It's the stuff of genius.
In 1859, when Robert Stephenson died,
the railway works were one of
the largest employers on Tyneside.
But they owed their development
to the region's mineral wealth,
its so-called black gold.
Bradshaw's notes that,
"Coal, the true riches of Newcastle,
was first worked here in the year 1260."
"But the produce was scanty
till steam power was used in 1714."
He notes the vastness of the coalfields
and their enormous depth,
and then he says, "All geologists agree
that it will take some hundreds,
if not thousands of years
to exhaust the coal."
Well, I'm going to see now
how that prediction stacks up today.
I'm heading out to the old coalfields
around South Shields on the Metro,
Tyneside's underground.
It's one of four in Britain, alongside
those in London, Glasgow and Liverpool.
Of course, I'm used
to the London Underground.
Coming down the escalators,
it felt like London Underground
except the escalators are shorter
than at most London stations.
And I think the trains are shorter, too.
But still, this railway has 60 stations.
So it may not be London,
but it's a very substantial size.
The Metro was Britain's
first modern light rail system
when it opened in 1980.
Designed to move people
quickly around the region,
its vehicles are lighter
than mainline trains.
Its 47 and a half miles of track
carry passengers far into the suburbs.
Unless, that is,
you happen to pick a day
when they're doing engineering works.
Well, unfortunately,
that's the end of my journey by train
because this being a Sunday, from here
it's a replacement bus service.
The rail replacement bus service
can be regarded as a modern curse,
and I don't suppose it would
have happened much in Bradshaw's day.
But the origin is mid-19th century,
because by Act of Parliament,
rail services were made statutory,
compulsory.
And if there isn't a train,
the rail company
still has to provide a service.
It demonstrates how quickly
people came to rely on the railways
as the main form of transport.
I don't have anything against buses,
but let's face it, they're not
the same as trains, are they?
I'm on my way
to one of the many coal mines
that were sunk into the earth
around Newcastle in Bradshaw's day,
linked by a growing network
of railway tracks.
My guidebook writes,
"Within a circle of eight to ten miles,
more than 50 important collieries
are open,
employing 10 to 15,000 hands."
One of these productive pits was
Whitburn Colliery which opened in 1879.
Its workers had their own village,
built alongside the pit.
But although my "Bradshaw's Guide"
predicted a long future
for Northumbrian coal,
arriving today, there's no sign of life.
It's difficult to believe that
this green expanse at the cliff's edge
was once a village of 700 people:
Marsden.
And now of its nine streets,
its school, its miners' institute,
hardly a trace remains.
It's all been swept away.
To find out what became
of this once-thriving community,
I'm meeting a lifelong resident, Larry
Robertson, who worked here in the 1960s.
So, these gates were once
the entrance to the colliery.
Yes, it's hard to believe.
We had a full colliery here.
Full steam engines for the winders,
and the office block just behind us.
Workshops, everything.
Full industrial huge complex.
More surprising,
not just the colliery has gone
but the whole village has gone.
Yeah, there was a full community.
Most of the workers for the colliery
lived just along the road,
about 400 metres. All disappeared.
Larry grew up in Marsden
and remembers what once stood here.
Describe the village
that you knew as a kid.
(Larry) Oh, a very friendly
little village.
We had North Street here.
The dairy was just here.
I used to get the school bus there.
You could walk it,
but we used to get the bus.
Erm... about 150, 170 houses
and families.
Everybody worked at the colliery.
Everybody knew each other.
In its heyday,
Whitburn Colliery produced
1,500 tons of coal a day
which travelled by train to Newcastle.
And that was the railway line
running there.
(Larry) That's the embankment.
Used to run all the way
to South Shields parallel to the road.
We used to nickname it
the Marsden Rattler.
It used to bring the miners in
from South Shields
because obviously then
transport wasn't that good.
So each shift, four times a day,
would go backwards and forwards.
Well, eight times,
taking all the people home.
The miners worked on seams
that extended for miles under the sea.
But by Larry's day, it was becoming
too costly to extract the coal.
In 1968, the mine closed,
and shortly after,
Marsden Village was pulled down.
I don't really understand
why the village was demolished.
I think it was going to cost
too much to upgrade it. It was...
Basically, we still had the outside
toilets, little back yards and...
It was the same when they knocked
it down as it was when they built it.
I suppose at the end it was expense,
which was a shame.
- A shame.
- Yeah.
(Larry) It was just incredible
that this area supported so much life.
For me as a kid, it was
a wonderful life. I really enjoyed it.
You paint a fantastic picture.
The second half of the 20th century
saw the closure of the region's mines,
and by the 1990s,
all the collieries were gone.
But now it could be time to revisit
Bradshaw's optimistic forecast
for the coal industry.
I'm staying
on the Whitburn Colliery site
to meet mining expert
Professor Paul Younger.
My Bradshaw's Guide
says that many geologists
have considered how long
the coal supply may last,
and they've agreed that it's hundreds,
if not thousands of years.
Were those geologists right?
Basically they were.
If you look at this part of the world,
we've been mining coal
at industrial scale longer here
than on any other part of the planet.
So more than 400 years
of large-scale coal mining,
and yet still 75 percent of the coal
is in the sub-surface waiting for us.
- Three quarters left underground?
- Yeah.
With so much coal under the North Sea,
Paul is hoping to employ
a new technique for extracting
its energy called gasification.
Instead of sending
human beings underground
to go through tunnels and so on,
it's all done with modern steered
drilling technologies from the surface.
So you have a drilling rig,
you send the drilling bit down,
you steer it,
it moves through the coal seam.
You inject steam and oxygen, and then
out of another borehole, out pops gas
which has got 80 percent of
the energy of the original solid coal.
Miners wouldn't need
to go underground
and it's hoped that this could provide
a greener source of energy.
We see the coal here as our way
of bridging our way
to a renewable-energy future,
because everybody's going
to immediately say,
"Are you crazy,
proposing burning more coal
when we've got the problems
with climate change?"
But the beauty of the technology
we're talking about
is that the voids
we're creating in the deep sub-surface,
if they're below depths
of 650, 700 metres,
we can inject the carbon dioxide
straight back into them.
And so we have a way of
getting the energy out of the coal
without further damaging the atmosphere
with carbon dioxide emissions.
Although some fear that
the environmental benefits are unproven,
Paul is upbeat about the future.
- And so far promising?
- Very promising, yes.
The studies we've done
show that this can be done economically,
it can be done safely,
and with the huge dividend that
we then get the energy out of the coal
without further damaging the climate.
Who knows?
Perhaps this coast will support
a new community of energy workers.
One building survived
the demolition of Marsden Village.
The spectacular Souter Lighthouse
built in the 19th century.
Before [ continue my journey,
I want to take a look.
76 steps to the top
of the Souter Lighthouse, I'm told.
But the view is magnificent.
This was built in 1871
and George Bradshaw would
have been thrilled by the technology.
The first lighthouse built
for an electric light
with the power of 800,000 candles.
And the reason was clear;
these were very treacherous rocks.
In 1860 alone, about the time
that my guidebook was published,
20 ships were wrecked here.
And this lighthouse
brought greater safety for seaman.
The profusion of lighthouses
along this shore
underlines just how treacherous
it's always been.
A tiny reference in my guidebook
hints at the perils of these waters.
And my next train is taking me
to South Shields to follow it up.
I'm taking the Metro
because my Bradshaw's tells me
that, "At South Shields
may be seen in the church
a model of Greathead's first lifeboat,
invented and used in 1790."
Now presumably Victorians
understood that reference,
but it means nothing to me,
and I'm intrigued to know
what could have been so special
about that lifeboat.
I'm heading straight from the station
to the church mentioned
in my "Bradshaw's Guide".
I'm hoping historian Ian Whitehead
could help me find the model
that it describes.
Hi, I'm Ian.
Pleased to meet you, Michael.
Very nice to see you.
I am looking for Greathead's lifeboat
because it's mentioned
in my Bradshaw's Guide.
Is it... is it kind of readily visible?
- (Ian) It is readily visible.
- (Michael) Oh!
Wow. I didn't expect it to be there.
That's absolutely fantastic.
(Ian) We can get the boat down
if you'd like. Tom.
(Michael) I thought you just
pressed a button.
(Ian) No, unfortunately not.
The model that hangs from the ceiling
represents what's claimed to be
the first ever lifeboat,
designed in response to the hazardous
conditions of the North Sea.
(Ian) The original boat was made
because of loss of life, really,
and a particular incident in 1789
where a ship ran aground,
and, er... over a period of 24 hours,
everyone watched from the shore as
the boat failed to get off the Herd Sand
and then finally broke up
and half the crew died.
The disaster was so shocking
that a group of locals launched
a competition to design a rescue craft.
So who was Greathead, the man
that Bradshaw attributes this boat to?
Greathead was the man who claimed
to be the inventor of the lifeboat.
In the competition, there were
two people who put in entries.
One was from Greathead.
The other entry
was from William Wouldhave,
who was in fact
the parish clerk of this church.
The committee didn't actually like
either of the designs.
With no clear winner,
Greathead was asked to build a lifeboat
that combined the best ideas
from both men.
It was double ended so that it
could be rowed in either direction,
with a cork lining for buoyancy.
This isn't just about technology.
This is really also about a way
of thinking about human life, isn't it?
There is a commitment to save life,
which was perhaps a little bit of a
novelty at the end of the 18th century.
(Ian) It is. I think if you've got
no way of saving life,
then you have to be fatalistic
and you have to say "Well,
we couldn't have saved them anyway."
But the development
of the coal-mining industry
meant that people had money
from the coal trade
to think about building
a boat like this.
And so it was a world first
for the Northeast of England
to have a lifeboat.
So the Northeast can claim first
in locomotives and in lifeboats.
(Ian) Indeed.
To reach my final destination
on this leg of the journey,
I need to pick up the main line,
so I'm travelling back to Newcastle on
the Metro along the banks of the Tyne.
"Bradshaw's" tells me that this stretch
is home to some remarkable Roman ruins.
Arbeia Fort, built nearly 2,000 years
ago to guard the entrance to the Tyne,
is now a major tourist attraction.
But ancient sites like these
were often plundered.
"Bradshaw's" says, "It's probable
that much of the Priory at Tynemouth
was built with stone from
the Roman station at South Shields."
Thankfully,
parts of Hadrian's Wall have survived,
and its vestiges are apparent
among the housing estates of Newcastle.
Now back on the main line,
I'm leaving Tyne and Wear
to head south into County Durham.
My next stop is the ex-mining town
of Chester-le-Street.
- That's a nice tight one, isn't it?
- It is very tight.
(Michael) Bye.
I'm here
because it's an unusual station.
Welcome to Chester-le-Street.
- Thank you. You're Alex?
- Alex Nelson.
There's something pretty special
about Chester-le-Street Station.
This is one of the few independent
stations in the country,
and the only one on a major main line.
This is the East Coast main line
to London.
I took over this station 11 years ago
as a private venture to reinvigorate it.
(Michael) How on earth did it occur
to you to buy a railway station?
Well, I didn't strictly buy it.
I rent it.
But I was travelling on a train
one afternoon from Durham to Newcastle
and the train pulled up here
about 2:50 in the afternoon.
Boarded-up, derelict,
with a to-let sign.
Alex renovated the station
and turned it into
a successful private business
selling train tickets
to anywhere in the country.
(Alex) This was an unstaffed station,
unloved and in a bad way.
And we have five staff who work here.
We provide information on trains
all over the country by phone.
That's about 100 miles an hour.
You have six seconds
to get off the track if you're there.
It's just as well
we're behind the yellow line.
Today, Chester-le-Street
has just one main line
passing through Alex's station.
In Bradshaw's day, it was at the centre
of a spider's web of colliery railways
bringing coal to the town
for export along the River Wear.
Coal mining has always
been dangerous work,
and 19th-century miners had to
trust each other with their lives.
Close-knit mining communities
developed their own traditions,
and one, the rapper sword dance,
is sustained by local resident
Ricky Forster and his family.
You're beautifully turned out for what?
For rapper...
- Rapper sword dance.
- A rapper sword dance?
- Northeast tradition.
- It goes back how long?
1800s.
I've got family in it in the 1800s
carrying the dance through
to the present day.
Your family has been doing it
all that time?
- And what is it you're carrying here?
- A rapper sword.
A rapper sword. Is that sharp?
No, no, it's blunt.
It does cut like a scissor.
(laughs)
So what was this used for?
For cleaning pit ponies' backs.
So, will you give us a dance please?
Oh, I think we could manage that.
(lively jig)
During the 19th century,
groups of dancers travelled
all over the Northeast by train
performing at competitions
in pubs, clubs and miners' galas.
As well as dancers,
comic characters provided light relief.
You tell them what to do.
Tell them what to do.
- Shall I tell them what to do?
- You do what he says.
Right, come on then. Down here.
Oh, no! Who's lost a hand?
I'll put it in the handbag!
Howay, bonny lads!
That was absolutely fantastic.
As I say goodbye to the rapper dancers,
it's been brought home to me
how this region of Britain
was shaped by two staple
Victorian industries: coal and railways.
History never ends.
Railways have revived and coal,
so recently written off, may return,
its energy harvested in a new way.
In Bradshaw's day, the Northeast
became rich on the back of the railways,
and they in turn depended
on the superabundance of coal.
If we could master the technology
and turn the coal
that remains underground into gas,
then maybe coal could supply
our energy future as well.
On the next leg of my journey,
I'll be experiencing how tough
the work was on a steam train...
The heat from the boiler is intense.
And... the coal is heavy.
And the locomotive... is very hungry.
...meeting one of
the first locomotives...
It's in the most beautiful condition.
Am I allowed to...?
- (man) I think you are, absolutely.
- It's quite thrilling.
...and sounding out the seaside town
that inspired the Victorian
horror story "Dracula”.
(screams)
How was that?