Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 2, Episode 18 - Canterbury to Margate - 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.
My journey now takes me
towards the coast of Kent
and I think of this county
as being England's orchard or garden.
But as Bradshaw reminds us,
"It's bound to the east and Southeast
by the German Ocean
and the Straits of Dover."
And that means
it's also been our frontier
against our Continental enemies.
As the county closest to the Continent,
Kent has always played a crucial role
in our defence.
Its railways provided arterial routes
not only for the flows of commuters,
but also for the needs of war.
And today, I'm following my guidebook
along those tracks.
On this journey,
I'll be finding out how a railway
helped to save Canterbury's
historic heart in World War Two...
The cathedral actually had railway lines
laid into the nave
to deliver sandbags to protect it.
...hearing how the Whitstable
whelk industry has changed
since Bradshaw's day...
In the old days,
that's not what happened.
No, they all used to go away
in the shell.
But when the rail
stopped taking perishable goods,
we had to find another way
of dealing with it.
...and exploring the history
of a seaside swim.
Imagine you're in Margate,
you'd come out of your lodgings
and wait for a bathing machine
to be ready
which apparently always smelt
like rotting carpet,
that kind of horrible sort of smell.
So far, I've travelled over 60 miles
from London, through Kent,
to Tunbridge Wells.
From there,
I'll head east towards the coast
before tracing the shoreline
bordering the Channel
on my way to Folkestone.
Then I'll pass through Ashford,
en route to my final stop, Hastings.
Today I'll begin in Canterbury
and travel on to Whitstable
and skirt the sea to Margate.
(announcer)
We will shortly arrive at Canterbury.
Canterbury's been a destination
for devout pilgrims for millennia,
and especially since Thomas Becket
was murdered in the cathedral
in the 12th century.
Once the railway was built,
it became a magnet
for Victorian tourists
keen to understand their history.
Canterbury Cathedral from the train
is so impressive.
Even when you're prepared for it,
you're not prepared for it
because it just rises so high,
the tower is so magnificent
and dominating of the whole town.
Some of the great views of cathedrals
are from railways.
Time to get off.
"Bradshaw's" waxes lyrical about
the cathedral's Norman architecture
and the unusual double cross
above its 574-foot-long nave.
Lovely morning, isn't it?
Discovering the city through my guide,
I appreciate why Victorian tourists
were inspired to take the train
to Canterbury.
Let me read you this from Bradshaw's.
"The appearance of Canterbury is
exquisitely beautiful, and as we enter,
symbols of its antiquity
stare us in the face everywhere."
"Narrow passages, crazy tenements
with overhanging windows,
peaked gables and wooden balustrades
jut out on every side."
"Here and there, some formless sculpture
of a fractured cherub
or grotesque image
peer out from a creaking doorway."
Isn't that wonderful writing?
Has any modern guidebook
ever said it better?
Fortunately, Bradshaw
couldn't foresee that within a century,
this magnificent city would come under
devastating attack during World War Two.
Now here's something
that's not in my Bradshaw's Guide.
I was tipped off to look for this.
Had Germany attacked in 1940, '41,
then invading troops might well
have passed along this road.
And little rectangles have been cut
in the railway bridge
so that British forces defending
might have hoped to keep them at bay
by pointing their machine guns
through those apertures.
Canterbury sits
on a strategic railway link
between London and the port of Dover.
During the war,
it constituted a major supply route
for troops and materiel,
and the city became a target.
- Paul.
- Michael. Welcome to Canterbury.
Very good to see you.
Paul Bennett's an expert
on Canterbury's history.
This is my Bradshaw's Guide.
Would it be a reliable guide
to Canterbury today?
Sadly not, no.
Parts of Canterbury,
Bradshaw would recognise
but a significant part of it
was lost during the Baedeker Raid
- of 1st June, 1942.
- German air raid.
German air raid on Canterbury,
on historic towns.
And we lost the very heart of the city.
The Luftwaffe consulted a German
tourist guidebook called Baedekers
to select historically important
English cities for bombing.
How sad that a book written
in celebration of human achievement
was so cynically misused.
The phrase "the Baedeker Raids"
comes from Gustav Braun von Stumm,
a German propagandist who said,
"We will bomb every building in Britain
that has three stars
in the Baedeker Guide."
By April '42, they'd bombed Exeter,
and then Bath and then Norwich,
and then on 1st June, 1942,
at 12:45 am,
16 blood-red flares shone out
over the skies of Canterbury
and down rained 8,000 incendiaries
and about 150 high explosives
that devastated parts of the town.
Now given both the strategic
significance of Canterbury
and the wonderful heritage
of Canterbury,
presumably the people of Canterbury
were prepared for all this?
They were very prepared.
The population of Canterbury had been
provided by then with lots of shelters.
Many of the principal buildings
had been covered in sandbags.
The cathedral actually had railway lines
laid into the nave
to deliver sandbags to protect it.
During the raid itself,
there were people chucking incendiaries
off the cathedral roof.
It was such a close-run thing.
We could've lost
Canterbury Cathedral in that raid
if it hadn't been for the organisation
of the city at that time.
People used all kinds of wiles
to defend the city.
They created fake Canterburys
by lighting up areas of the countryside,
while obscuring the real city in smoke.
Despite this, they endured 35 raids
which took their toll.
So we lost 880 buildings,
6,500 buildings were damaged.
But fortunately,
only 115 people were killed.
That's a tribute, I suppose, to how far
civil defence had advanced by then,
that the shelters were in place
and so on.
10,000 shelter places were created
in 1941, and thank goodness for it.
The shelters might be steel boxes
built in people's homes
or half buried in the garden.
Many residents also sought refuge
in the railway tunnel,
and overall,
thousands of lives were saved.
For some who experienced the bombings,
like volunteer rescue operator,
Anthony Swain,
the memories remain powerful.
What do you remember
of the air raids themselves?
The screaming of the planes
as they dived down.
And then the explosions of bombs.
And then shoutings in the street.
Do you remember looking
at the devastation of the city
- after it had occurred?
- Oh, rather.
- It smouldered for about two weeks.
(Michael)
It must've been very shocking.
(Anthony) Oh, it was. We couldn't
even breathe, the air was so hot.
You imagine a whole city burning.
The heat was incredible.
- How would you describe the noises?
- Absolute hell on earth. It was.
It was not only our guns
shooting at the planes,
it was the bombs that dropped,
the screaming of people in the streets.
It was just hell let loose.
But through it came people of strength,
I must say that.
! find it moving to hear at first hand
what the people of Canterbury
lived through
and how their ingenuity
helped to save the cathedral.
And now as I reach the station,
by chance,
another bit of history of thunders past.
It's brilliant just to see
a steam engine race by you.
I've been on several steam journeys
recently
but I'm not normally in the position
of watching an old locomotive race by
with all the wind and the smoke
and the steam. Fabulous sight.
It would've been a common experience
for Victorian tourists
following their "Bradshaw's Guides".
But I'll have to settle
for modern electric efficiency
to get me to Whitstable,
with a change at Faversham.
Faversham. And my connection
goes in three minutes.
- (man) Where are you going?
- Whitstable.
- Whitstable is the front four.
- Oh. Whitstable.
What?
Looks like I'm not the only person
going to Whitstable.
Perched atop the Kent coast,
Whitstable has since Roman times
been famed for shellfish.
In 1830, it gained
one of the very first railways
to convey coal
between the coast and Canterbury.
It also carried seafood, and inevitably,
the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway
was nicknamed the crab and winkle line.
Two years later,
it was joined to a new harbour
serving the expanding shellfish trade.
"Whitstable," says Bradshaw's,
"is the harbour of Canterbury,
and is celebrated
for its oyster fishery,
the produce of which,
under the name of Native's,
is highly esteemed
in the London and other markets."
But I'm here to find out more,
not about the oyster,
beloved of metropolitan toffs,
but rather the Whitstable whelk,
traditionally the food
of the British working classes.
I'm meeting Derek West,
a whelk fishermen
whose family has been fishing here
for three generations.
Derek. Michael, lovely to see you.
In your memory, what was it like
in its heyday, this harbour?
Oh, very, very busy in the war
and just after the war.
There was shipping here.
We used to have all the old rail lines
around the harbour here.
Very good, them days.
The things that were caught here,
the oysters, whelks and so on,
how were they sent on?
What we used to have to do is bag
them up, and take them up the station
and they used to go
to the London market.
- Did they go fresh on the trains?
- No, no, they were all cooked.
They was all put in bags and took up
to the station up at Whitstable
and on the trains.
In Bradshaw's time, fresh and cooked
whelks were sent by rail to the city
and sold as a snack on London streets.
They cost around a penny for five,
and Cockneys loved them.
Demand was high,
so Derek's great-grandfather
employed a different kind of whelk pot
which improved the catch.
Derek's brought
a half-sized one for me to see.
- That was the old original whelk pot.
- This is a kind of iron or steel cage.
That's right, yeah.
We used to rope them up.
Your whelks are attracted
into the pot.
The bait goes in the pot there,
and then the smell
draws the whelks into the pot.
And then what prevents them getting out?
Well, there's a net in here,
a small net,
what we call a criny
which stops them from coming out.
That's like a valve.
They can get in but they can't get out.
Can't get out.
Have you any idea, in the old days, your
grandfather's day, maybe in your youth,
how many people were fishing whelk
in those days?
Oh, there used to be about
ten whelk boats on the harbour here.
- (Michael) And what is it now?
- There's only about two.
In the late 20th century,
as the popularity of whelks declined,
the industry waned.
Derek's family
is one of the few in Whitstable
that still catch
and prepare them for sale.
These days, they're removed from
the shell, cleaned, and sorted by size.
- Hello, Jean.
- Hello there. How do you do?
I won't shake your hands.
Jean West is an expert picker.
She and her team can prepare
200 kilos of whelks per day.
- You're Derek's bride, I believe.
- That's right. 57 years.
And you've done a few of those
in your time, I daresay.
- Yes, I've been doing this since 1963.
- Good heavens.
And these are now put into packets
and they're frozen, is that right?
Yes, they're put in 2.5-kilo packets
and they're frozen
and then people come with
refrigerated lorries and collect them.
We have them from Birmingham,
Essex, London, all over.
(Michael) In the old days,
that's not what happened.
(Jean) No, in the old days,
they all used to go away in the shell
by the train up to Birmingham,
down to Hastings and places like that.
But when the rail
stopped taking perishable goods,
we had to find another way
of dealing with it.
Since the late 1960s,
lorries have replaced trains
as the main carrier
of perishable goods like shellfish.
(Jean) They're something
that you either love or hate.
And the people that like them
really go for them.
I mean, I don't like them very much
but I've got friends that do.
You don't like them
and you spend your entire day with them.
That's right. (laughs)
I see enough of them.
Now, how do you actually
pick a whelk then?
(Jean) Turn the shell. Take the hat off.
Do you think I might have a go at that?
Turn the shell.
- Ah, there we go.
- There you are, well done.
Now you have to take the hat off.
- You have to take the hat off?
- Yeah.
Right. Pop that in there.
With it out of its shell, I'd better try
one of these once-so-popular whelks.
So it's got a kind of tough bit
and a soft bit, hasn't it?
- Mmm, that's nice.
- That good?
They have a reputation for being
very chewy, but that's quite nice.
- The smaller ones are nice.
- Mmm.
The coast here at Whitstable is given
a beauty by the severity of the tide,
the sea is far away and grey
under a greyish sky.
It's really kind of beautiful.
Little fishing boats silhouetted.
In Bradshaw's day,
this coast was heaving with boats,
catching not only whelks
but oysters, too.
The Whitstable Oyster Company sent
60 million to London in one year alone.
So, appropriately, tonight I'm staying
in a place strongly linked to fishing.
This beautiful house, rebuilt in 1778,
was apparently the home
of Captain Jasper Rowden
who was a famous
Whitstable oyster dredger.
Bernard Wright owns and runs
The Captain's House
as a bed and breakfast.
Hello. It's lovely to see you.
- Very nice to meet you.
- Jasper Rowden, who was he?
Jasper Rowden was the pre-eminent
oyster dredgerman of his generation.
This house stood here on the beach
before anything else
was built around it.
There were maybe one or two other houses
scattered about the place.
But he would've lived here and would've
been looking straight out to sea
rather than on to this road
you see here.
In Captain Rowden's day,
oyster dredging was back-breaking work.
The oysters were hauled up by hand
into special boats called yawls
where they were separated
from the rubble from the sea bed.
So, staying in The Captain's House,
I feel respect for him and his crews.
He would've been a very
well-known character in the local area.
We sort of feel him about,
as if he's still here sometimes
in the house, which is a nice feeling,
just to understand
the history of the place
to do with the town being
so famous for oysters.
- Well, I'm here to spend the night.
- Yes, come on in.
- Thank you very much.
- After you.
You'll have to mind your head.
A bright and breezy new day,
and reluctantly I leave behind
the pretty harbour
and delicious seafood of Whitstable.
I'm now heading around 15 miles
along the Kent coast.
The Victorians could be rather pompous.
"The line to Margate."
"This has been called the pleasure line
and certainly the beauty of the country
traversed by its trains justly entitle
it to that distinguishing appellation.”
"Its iron roads and branches
intersect Kent in all directions,
affording the inhabitants
of the great metropolis
facilities of visiting the numerous
watering places on its coast.”
In modern parlance,
that means this is the line
to sun, sand, sea and fun.
- This was called the pleasure line?
- (man) Yes.
Do you still get a lot of weekenders,
sun-seekers, holidaymakers?
Oh, yeah, thousands and thousands.
Especially in the summertime
at Whitstable, Margate, Broadstairs.
(Michael)
No different to Victorian times?
No. No, I don't think so.
We get the whole spectrum
from elderly people to young kids.
The young kids seem to love Margate.
You've got the sea, the beach and
the escapism of it, I should imagine,
- from living up in town.
- Yeah, well, that's what I'm there for.
I'll do a bit of escapism
while I'm here.
(both laugh)
My guide comments on Margate's
meteoric rise in popularity
once the railways arrived.
It says, "Steam has done wonders
and Margate visitors have to be numbered
by hundreds of thousands.”
With new journey times from London
of just two hours,
trainloads of day-trippers sped
their way towards the seaside town.
What a great big impressive station
Margate is.
I suppose that's telling us
that, as Bradshaw says,
hundreds of thousands of people
would come to Margate
for a day trip or a holiday.
- Bye-bye, now.
- You enjoy Margate.
- I'll enjoy it. Thank you.
- I hope you find your escapism.
- Safe trip. Bye.
- Ta-Ra.
Bradshaw goes on to say,
"When [London folks however grew wiser
and found that short trips
had a wonderful power
in preventing doctors' bills,
the place grew rapidly."
In fact, salt water had long been
considered a cure for diseases
like rickets and TB.
The world's first sea bathing hospital
was built here.
I'm meeting historian Alan Brodie
at its grand entrance.
Now this is really rather
a lovely building.
This is the Sea Bathing Hospital.
The committee to establish it
was founded in 1791.
And there was a small building here,
opened in 1796.
Now, the magnificent thing
we're looking at
is a reconstruction
of the mid-19th century.
(Michael) Who are these patients?
They are children
from poor backgrounds
who this charitable committee
have brought down,
firstly on the sailing boats and then
on steamers, to be treated here.
And they're suffering from
the whole range of tuberculosis
as well as probably diseases
that are essentially poverty related.
The upper classes
also came to Margate to bathe
and even to drink
the curative sea water.
But rather than visiting the hospital,
they took a dip in the sea
in a private contraption
that it's claimed was developed here:
the bathing machine.
The bathing machine,
when and where does that originate?
The first bathing machines probably date
from the very early 18th century.
And Margate has a special part
in the story
because it takes
the simple bathing machine,
essentially just a cart
drawn into the sea by a horse,
and puts a strange concertina-shape
canvas cover at the back of it,
so that if you're a lady or a gentleman
who wanted to have a bit of privacy,
you could come down the steps
from your bathing machine
and have a swim inside this...
It was effectively a little private bath
in the sea under this strange canopy.
Our ancestors didn't care to swim
as we do today.
They savoured a ritual which grew up
around the bathing machine.
You'd come out of your lodgings,
you'd go to little bathing rooms
on the high street
where would sign your name
on a blackboard
and you'd wait for a bathing machine
to be ready.
You'd come down into the bathing machine
where you'd be provided
with some kind of costume, or you
may have some costume of your own,
and perhaps some towel
to dry yourself with.
You would change
inside this bathing machine
which apparently always smelt
like rotting carpet,
that kind of horrible sort of smell.
A poor horse dragged the machine into
the sea and then you went down the steps
and bathed under this canvas canopy
in privacy,
or if you were a bit more adventurous
or felt you could swim,
you could come out of the canopy.
From the mid-19th century,
the railways transported a new wave
of working-class visitors to Margate
who entered the sea
not to improve their health,
but for pleasure.
The Victorian period
is a transitional period
between the Georgian period
and the 18th century,
where people drank sea water,
they bathed, dipped in the water.
And by the Victorian period,
you were beginning to get that system
of using bathing machines
to be dipped in the water from,
is being transformed
into the beginning of the swimming
and the beach holiday culture that
we would much more recognise today.
By the end of the 19th century,
so many people were catching the train
to the beach
that the cumbersome bathing machines
made way for the more practical
swimming costume.
The railways made the British seaside
holiday a part of national culture.
And it clings to its position
to this day.
Before I leave town, I'll visit a place
that Victorian tourists
wouldn't have missed;
the mysterious Shell Grotto,
which was discovered
shortly before my guide was written.
Extraordinary. It's like entering
a subterranean cathedral.
Everything's covered in mosaics,
but mosaics made of seashells.
And the whole thing,
very elaborate, very intricate,
incredible amount of work.
And big.
Over 4.5 million shells were used
to create this underground masterpiece.
And this is the greatest room of all.
And you must be Sarah.
Hello, I am.
Sarah Vickery owns the grotto.
I saw a sign saying "Don't touch
the shells because they're delicate."
And here and there,
some have fallen away,
but it's in pretty good condition.
Considering it's been open to the public
since 1837.
So literally millions of people
will have walked through here,
so it's a miracle
the condition it's in, I think.
Believed to have been discovered
by a group of schoolchildren
playing hide and seek,
the grotto quickly drew the crowds.
When it opened, it would've been
the thing to do in Margate.
And Margate was
an incredibly busy town, of course.
And so, yes, I think at one stage,
they had a one-way system going in here,
it was so busy.
So they would've had hundreds and
hundreds of people through every day.
Grottoes became fashionable in Britain
in the 18th century.
Wealthy travellers
returning from grand tours of Italy
recreated the idea
in their landscaped gardens.
Some have suggested that this grotto
was built as a temple.
Others, a secret meeting house.
In truth, nobody knows.
But in a way,
it's a fantastic story, isn't it?
This huge work of art exists
and we don't know who the artist is.
No, exactly, it's anonymous.
Following my "Bradshaw's Guide"
around Britain,
as so many 19th-century tourists did,
I'm continually surprised
that so much that the Victorians saw
we can still see today.
My guide may be over 150 years old,
but much of it remains relevant
for the 21st-century traveller.
For the railway tourist,
Kent offers medieval heritage,
fine seafood and excellent sea bathing.
Whitstable has adjusted
to the 21st century,
Canterbury has been rebuilt
after World War Two
and Margate maintains its position
as a sea-bathing centre
on Kent's pleasure line.
On my next journey, I'll be hearing
how the railways helped Britain
to win the First World War...
It made it possible to supply the troops
with the equipment they needed
in a much greater quantity
than they might otherwise have had.
Simple as that.
...Imagining how to fill
some famous boots...
The ones actually worn by Wellington?
Yes, they're very much the icon
of our collection here.
...and venturing into the very first
railway tunnel under the sea.
(man) It is absolutely unique.
It's massive, yet it's invisible.
And it is honestly one of the wonders
of our modern day.
- A renaissance in rail.
- We hope so.
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.
My journey now takes me
towards the coast of Kent
and I think of this county
as being England's orchard or garden.
But as Bradshaw reminds us,
"It's bound to the east and Southeast
by the German Ocean
and the Straits of Dover."
And that means
it's also been our frontier
against our Continental enemies.
As the county closest to the Continent,
Kent has always played a crucial role
in our defence.
Its railways provided arterial routes
not only for the flows of commuters,
but also for the needs of war.
And today, I'm following my guidebook
along those tracks.
On this journey,
I'll be finding out how a railway
helped to save Canterbury's
historic heart in World War Two...
The cathedral actually had railway lines
laid into the nave
to deliver sandbags to protect it.
...hearing how the Whitstable
whelk industry has changed
since Bradshaw's day...
In the old days,
that's not what happened.
No, they all used to go away
in the shell.
But when the rail
stopped taking perishable goods,
we had to find another way
of dealing with it.
...and exploring the history
of a seaside swim.
Imagine you're in Margate,
you'd come out of your lodgings
and wait for a bathing machine
to be ready
which apparently always smelt
like rotting carpet,
that kind of horrible sort of smell.
So far, I've travelled over 60 miles
from London, through Kent,
to Tunbridge Wells.
From there,
I'll head east towards the coast
before tracing the shoreline
bordering the Channel
on my way to Folkestone.
Then I'll pass through Ashford,
en route to my final stop, Hastings.
Today I'll begin in Canterbury
and travel on to Whitstable
and skirt the sea to Margate.
(announcer)
We will shortly arrive at Canterbury.
Canterbury's been a destination
for devout pilgrims for millennia,
and especially since Thomas Becket
was murdered in the cathedral
in the 12th century.
Once the railway was built,
it became a magnet
for Victorian tourists
keen to understand their history.
Canterbury Cathedral from the train
is so impressive.
Even when you're prepared for it,
you're not prepared for it
because it just rises so high,
the tower is so magnificent
and dominating of the whole town.
Some of the great views of cathedrals
are from railways.
Time to get off.
"Bradshaw's" waxes lyrical about
the cathedral's Norman architecture
and the unusual double cross
above its 574-foot-long nave.
Lovely morning, isn't it?
Discovering the city through my guide,
I appreciate why Victorian tourists
were inspired to take the train
to Canterbury.
Let me read you this from Bradshaw's.
"The appearance of Canterbury is
exquisitely beautiful, and as we enter,
symbols of its antiquity
stare us in the face everywhere."
"Narrow passages, crazy tenements
with overhanging windows,
peaked gables and wooden balustrades
jut out on every side."
"Here and there, some formless sculpture
of a fractured cherub
or grotesque image
peer out from a creaking doorway."
Isn't that wonderful writing?
Has any modern guidebook
ever said it better?
Fortunately, Bradshaw
couldn't foresee that within a century,
this magnificent city would come under
devastating attack during World War Two.
Now here's something
that's not in my Bradshaw's Guide.
I was tipped off to look for this.
Had Germany attacked in 1940, '41,
then invading troops might well
have passed along this road.
And little rectangles have been cut
in the railway bridge
so that British forces defending
might have hoped to keep them at bay
by pointing their machine guns
through those apertures.
Canterbury sits
on a strategic railway link
between London and the port of Dover.
During the war,
it constituted a major supply route
for troops and materiel,
and the city became a target.
- Paul.
- Michael. Welcome to Canterbury.
Very good to see you.
Paul Bennett's an expert
on Canterbury's history.
This is my Bradshaw's Guide.
Would it be a reliable guide
to Canterbury today?
Sadly not, no.
Parts of Canterbury,
Bradshaw would recognise
but a significant part of it
was lost during the Baedeker Raid
- of 1st June, 1942.
- German air raid.
German air raid on Canterbury,
on historic towns.
And we lost the very heart of the city.
The Luftwaffe consulted a German
tourist guidebook called Baedekers
to select historically important
English cities for bombing.
How sad that a book written
in celebration of human achievement
was so cynically misused.
The phrase "the Baedeker Raids"
comes from Gustav Braun von Stumm,
a German propagandist who said,
"We will bomb every building in Britain
that has three stars
in the Baedeker Guide."
By April '42, they'd bombed Exeter,
and then Bath and then Norwich,
and then on 1st June, 1942,
at 12:45 am,
16 blood-red flares shone out
over the skies of Canterbury
and down rained 8,000 incendiaries
and about 150 high explosives
that devastated parts of the town.
Now given both the strategic
significance of Canterbury
and the wonderful heritage
of Canterbury,
presumably the people of Canterbury
were prepared for all this?
They were very prepared.
The population of Canterbury had been
provided by then with lots of shelters.
Many of the principal buildings
had been covered in sandbags.
The cathedral actually had railway lines
laid into the nave
to deliver sandbags to protect it.
During the raid itself,
there were people chucking incendiaries
off the cathedral roof.
It was such a close-run thing.
We could've lost
Canterbury Cathedral in that raid
if it hadn't been for the organisation
of the city at that time.
People used all kinds of wiles
to defend the city.
They created fake Canterburys
by lighting up areas of the countryside,
while obscuring the real city in smoke.
Despite this, they endured 35 raids
which took their toll.
So we lost 880 buildings,
6,500 buildings were damaged.
But fortunately,
only 115 people were killed.
That's a tribute, I suppose, to how far
civil defence had advanced by then,
that the shelters were in place
and so on.
10,000 shelter places were created
in 1941, and thank goodness for it.
The shelters might be steel boxes
built in people's homes
or half buried in the garden.
Many residents also sought refuge
in the railway tunnel,
and overall,
thousands of lives were saved.
For some who experienced the bombings,
like volunteer rescue operator,
Anthony Swain,
the memories remain powerful.
What do you remember
of the air raids themselves?
The screaming of the planes
as they dived down.
And then the explosions of bombs.
And then shoutings in the street.
Do you remember looking
at the devastation of the city
- after it had occurred?
- Oh, rather.
- It smouldered for about two weeks.
(Michael)
It must've been very shocking.
(Anthony) Oh, it was. We couldn't
even breathe, the air was so hot.
You imagine a whole city burning.
The heat was incredible.
- How would you describe the noises?
- Absolute hell on earth. It was.
It was not only our guns
shooting at the planes,
it was the bombs that dropped,
the screaming of people in the streets.
It was just hell let loose.
But through it came people of strength,
I must say that.
! find it moving to hear at first hand
what the people of Canterbury
lived through
and how their ingenuity
helped to save the cathedral.
And now as I reach the station,
by chance,
another bit of history of thunders past.
It's brilliant just to see
a steam engine race by you.
I've been on several steam journeys
recently
but I'm not normally in the position
of watching an old locomotive race by
with all the wind and the smoke
and the steam. Fabulous sight.
It would've been a common experience
for Victorian tourists
following their "Bradshaw's Guides".
But I'll have to settle
for modern electric efficiency
to get me to Whitstable,
with a change at Faversham.
Faversham. And my connection
goes in three minutes.
- (man) Where are you going?
- Whitstable.
- Whitstable is the front four.
- Oh. Whitstable.
What?
Looks like I'm not the only person
going to Whitstable.
Perched atop the Kent coast,
Whitstable has since Roman times
been famed for shellfish.
In 1830, it gained
one of the very first railways
to convey coal
between the coast and Canterbury.
It also carried seafood, and inevitably,
the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway
was nicknamed the crab and winkle line.
Two years later,
it was joined to a new harbour
serving the expanding shellfish trade.
"Whitstable," says Bradshaw's,
"is the harbour of Canterbury,
and is celebrated
for its oyster fishery,
the produce of which,
under the name of Native's,
is highly esteemed
in the London and other markets."
But I'm here to find out more,
not about the oyster,
beloved of metropolitan toffs,
but rather the Whitstable whelk,
traditionally the food
of the British working classes.
I'm meeting Derek West,
a whelk fishermen
whose family has been fishing here
for three generations.
Derek. Michael, lovely to see you.
In your memory, what was it like
in its heyday, this harbour?
Oh, very, very busy in the war
and just after the war.
There was shipping here.
We used to have all the old rail lines
around the harbour here.
Very good, them days.
The things that were caught here,
the oysters, whelks and so on,
how were they sent on?
What we used to have to do is bag
them up, and take them up the station
and they used to go
to the London market.
- Did they go fresh on the trains?
- No, no, they were all cooked.
They was all put in bags and took up
to the station up at Whitstable
and on the trains.
In Bradshaw's time, fresh and cooked
whelks were sent by rail to the city
and sold as a snack on London streets.
They cost around a penny for five,
and Cockneys loved them.
Demand was high,
so Derek's great-grandfather
employed a different kind of whelk pot
which improved the catch.
Derek's brought
a half-sized one for me to see.
- That was the old original whelk pot.
- This is a kind of iron or steel cage.
That's right, yeah.
We used to rope them up.
Your whelks are attracted
into the pot.
The bait goes in the pot there,
and then the smell
draws the whelks into the pot.
And then what prevents them getting out?
Well, there's a net in here,
a small net,
what we call a criny
which stops them from coming out.
That's like a valve.
They can get in but they can't get out.
Can't get out.
Have you any idea, in the old days, your
grandfather's day, maybe in your youth,
how many people were fishing whelk
in those days?
Oh, there used to be about
ten whelk boats on the harbour here.
- (Michael) And what is it now?
- There's only about two.
In the late 20th century,
as the popularity of whelks declined,
the industry waned.
Derek's family
is one of the few in Whitstable
that still catch
and prepare them for sale.
These days, they're removed from
the shell, cleaned, and sorted by size.
- Hello, Jean.
- Hello there. How do you do?
I won't shake your hands.
Jean West is an expert picker.
She and her team can prepare
200 kilos of whelks per day.
- You're Derek's bride, I believe.
- That's right. 57 years.
And you've done a few of those
in your time, I daresay.
- Yes, I've been doing this since 1963.
- Good heavens.
And these are now put into packets
and they're frozen, is that right?
Yes, they're put in 2.5-kilo packets
and they're frozen
and then people come with
refrigerated lorries and collect them.
We have them from Birmingham,
Essex, London, all over.
(Michael) In the old days,
that's not what happened.
(Jean) No, in the old days,
they all used to go away in the shell
by the train up to Birmingham,
down to Hastings and places like that.
But when the rail
stopped taking perishable goods,
we had to find another way
of dealing with it.
Since the late 1960s,
lorries have replaced trains
as the main carrier
of perishable goods like shellfish.
(Jean) They're something
that you either love or hate.
And the people that like them
really go for them.
I mean, I don't like them very much
but I've got friends that do.
You don't like them
and you spend your entire day with them.
That's right. (laughs)
I see enough of them.
Now, how do you actually
pick a whelk then?
(Jean) Turn the shell. Take the hat off.
Do you think I might have a go at that?
Turn the shell.
- Ah, there we go.
- There you are, well done.
Now you have to take the hat off.
- You have to take the hat off?
- Yeah.
Right. Pop that in there.
With it out of its shell, I'd better try
one of these once-so-popular whelks.
So it's got a kind of tough bit
and a soft bit, hasn't it?
- Mmm, that's nice.
- That good?
They have a reputation for being
very chewy, but that's quite nice.
- The smaller ones are nice.
- Mmm.
The coast here at Whitstable is given
a beauty by the severity of the tide,
the sea is far away and grey
under a greyish sky.
It's really kind of beautiful.
Little fishing boats silhouetted.
In Bradshaw's day,
this coast was heaving with boats,
catching not only whelks
but oysters, too.
The Whitstable Oyster Company sent
60 million to London in one year alone.
So, appropriately, tonight I'm staying
in a place strongly linked to fishing.
This beautiful house, rebuilt in 1778,
was apparently the home
of Captain Jasper Rowden
who was a famous
Whitstable oyster dredger.
Bernard Wright owns and runs
The Captain's House
as a bed and breakfast.
Hello. It's lovely to see you.
- Very nice to meet you.
- Jasper Rowden, who was he?
Jasper Rowden was the pre-eminent
oyster dredgerman of his generation.
This house stood here on the beach
before anything else
was built around it.
There were maybe one or two other houses
scattered about the place.
But he would've lived here and would've
been looking straight out to sea
rather than on to this road
you see here.
In Captain Rowden's day,
oyster dredging was back-breaking work.
The oysters were hauled up by hand
into special boats called yawls
where they were separated
from the rubble from the sea bed.
So, staying in The Captain's House,
I feel respect for him and his crews.
He would've been a very
well-known character in the local area.
We sort of feel him about,
as if he's still here sometimes
in the house, which is a nice feeling,
just to understand
the history of the place
to do with the town being
so famous for oysters.
- Well, I'm here to spend the night.
- Yes, come on in.
- Thank you very much.
- After you.
You'll have to mind your head.
A bright and breezy new day,
and reluctantly I leave behind
the pretty harbour
and delicious seafood of Whitstable.
I'm now heading around 15 miles
along the Kent coast.
The Victorians could be rather pompous.
"The line to Margate."
"This has been called the pleasure line
and certainly the beauty of the country
traversed by its trains justly entitle
it to that distinguishing appellation.”
"Its iron roads and branches
intersect Kent in all directions,
affording the inhabitants
of the great metropolis
facilities of visiting the numerous
watering places on its coast.”
In modern parlance,
that means this is the line
to sun, sand, sea and fun.
- This was called the pleasure line?
- (man) Yes.
Do you still get a lot of weekenders,
sun-seekers, holidaymakers?
Oh, yeah, thousands and thousands.
Especially in the summertime
at Whitstable, Margate, Broadstairs.
(Michael)
No different to Victorian times?
No. No, I don't think so.
We get the whole spectrum
from elderly people to young kids.
The young kids seem to love Margate.
You've got the sea, the beach and
the escapism of it, I should imagine,
- from living up in town.
- Yeah, well, that's what I'm there for.
I'll do a bit of escapism
while I'm here.
(both laugh)
My guide comments on Margate's
meteoric rise in popularity
once the railways arrived.
It says, "Steam has done wonders
and Margate visitors have to be numbered
by hundreds of thousands.”
With new journey times from London
of just two hours,
trainloads of day-trippers sped
their way towards the seaside town.
What a great big impressive station
Margate is.
I suppose that's telling us
that, as Bradshaw says,
hundreds of thousands of people
would come to Margate
for a day trip or a holiday.
- Bye-bye, now.
- You enjoy Margate.
- I'll enjoy it. Thank you.
- I hope you find your escapism.
- Safe trip. Bye.
- Ta-Ra.
Bradshaw goes on to say,
"When [London folks however grew wiser
and found that short trips
had a wonderful power
in preventing doctors' bills,
the place grew rapidly."
In fact, salt water had long been
considered a cure for diseases
like rickets and TB.
The world's first sea bathing hospital
was built here.
I'm meeting historian Alan Brodie
at its grand entrance.
Now this is really rather
a lovely building.
This is the Sea Bathing Hospital.
The committee to establish it
was founded in 1791.
And there was a small building here,
opened in 1796.
Now, the magnificent thing
we're looking at
is a reconstruction
of the mid-19th century.
(Michael) Who are these patients?
They are children
from poor backgrounds
who this charitable committee
have brought down,
firstly on the sailing boats and then
on steamers, to be treated here.
And they're suffering from
the whole range of tuberculosis
as well as probably diseases
that are essentially poverty related.
The upper classes
also came to Margate to bathe
and even to drink
the curative sea water.
But rather than visiting the hospital,
they took a dip in the sea
in a private contraption
that it's claimed was developed here:
the bathing machine.
The bathing machine,
when and where does that originate?
The first bathing machines probably date
from the very early 18th century.
And Margate has a special part
in the story
because it takes
the simple bathing machine,
essentially just a cart
drawn into the sea by a horse,
and puts a strange concertina-shape
canvas cover at the back of it,
so that if you're a lady or a gentleman
who wanted to have a bit of privacy,
you could come down the steps
from your bathing machine
and have a swim inside this...
It was effectively a little private bath
in the sea under this strange canopy.
Our ancestors didn't care to swim
as we do today.
They savoured a ritual which grew up
around the bathing machine.
You'd come out of your lodgings,
you'd go to little bathing rooms
on the high street
where would sign your name
on a blackboard
and you'd wait for a bathing machine
to be ready.
You'd come down into the bathing machine
where you'd be provided
with some kind of costume, or you
may have some costume of your own,
and perhaps some towel
to dry yourself with.
You would change
inside this bathing machine
which apparently always smelt
like rotting carpet,
that kind of horrible sort of smell.
A poor horse dragged the machine into
the sea and then you went down the steps
and bathed under this canvas canopy
in privacy,
or if you were a bit more adventurous
or felt you could swim,
you could come out of the canopy.
From the mid-19th century,
the railways transported a new wave
of working-class visitors to Margate
who entered the sea
not to improve their health,
but for pleasure.
The Victorian period
is a transitional period
between the Georgian period
and the 18th century,
where people drank sea water,
they bathed, dipped in the water.
And by the Victorian period,
you were beginning to get that system
of using bathing machines
to be dipped in the water from,
is being transformed
into the beginning of the swimming
and the beach holiday culture that
we would much more recognise today.
By the end of the 19th century,
so many people were catching the train
to the beach
that the cumbersome bathing machines
made way for the more practical
swimming costume.
The railways made the British seaside
holiday a part of national culture.
And it clings to its position
to this day.
Before I leave town, I'll visit a place
that Victorian tourists
wouldn't have missed;
the mysterious Shell Grotto,
which was discovered
shortly before my guide was written.
Extraordinary. It's like entering
a subterranean cathedral.
Everything's covered in mosaics,
but mosaics made of seashells.
And the whole thing,
very elaborate, very intricate,
incredible amount of work.
And big.
Over 4.5 million shells were used
to create this underground masterpiece.
And this is the greatest room of all.
And you must be Sarah.
Hello, I am.
Sarah Vickery owns the grotto.
I saw a sign saying "Don't touch
the shells because they're delicate."
And here and there,
some have fallen away,
but it's in pretty good condition.
Considering it's been open to the public
since 1837.
So literally millions of people
will have walked through here,
so it's a miracle
the condition it's in, I think.
Believed to have been discovered
by a group of schoolchildren
playing hide and seek,
the grotto quickly drew the crowds.
When it opened, it would've been
the thing to do in Margate.
And Margate was
an incredibly busy town, of course.
And so, yes, I think at one stage,
they had a one-way system going in here,
it was so busy.
So they would've had hundreds and
hundreds of people through every day.
Grottoes became fashionable in Britain
in the 18th century.
Wealthy travellers
returning from grand tours of Italy
recreated the idea
in their landscaped gardens.
Some have suggested that this grotto
was built as a temple.
Others, a secret meeting house.
In truth, nobody knows.
But in a way,
it's a fantastic story, isn't it?
This huge work of art exists
and we don't know who the artist is.
No, exactly, it's anonymous.
Following my "Bradshaw's Guide"
around Britain,
as so many 19th-century tourists did,
I'm continually surprised
that so much that the Victorians saw
we can still see today.
My guide may be over 150 years old,
but much of it remains relevant
for the 21st-century traveller.
For the railway tourist,
Kent offers medieval heritage,
fine seafood and excellent sea bathing.
Whitstable has adjusted
to the 21st century,
Canterbury has been rebuilt
after World War Two
and Margate maintains its position
as a sea-bathing centre
on Kent's pleasure line.
On my next journey, I'll be hearing
how the railways helped Britain
to win the First World War...
It made it possible to supply the troops
with the equipment they needed
in a much greater quantity
than they might otherwise have had.
Simple as that.
...Imagining how to fill
some famous boots...
The ones actually worn by Wellington?
Yes, they're very much the icon
of our collection here.
...and venturing into the very first
railway tunnel under the sea.
(man) It is absolutely unique.
It's massive, yet it's invisible.
And it is honestly one of the wonders
of our modern day.
- A renaissance in rail.
- We hope so.