Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 3, Episode 19 - Kirkby-in-Furness to Lancaster - 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 Bradshaw's is now guiding me
across northern England.
The castles that I've seen recently
remind us of the long wars
between the Scots and the English.
I'm now going to visit
the very icon of that enmity.
For, as even recent history
has shown us,
rulers who want to maintain separation
between peoples build walls.
On today's leg of the journey,
I'll be getting down and dirty
in a Roman barracks...
- Well, I am your slave. Back to work.
- Back to work. Quite right.
Discovering a small invention
that made a big difference
to the public...
Let me do the dog ticket first.
That's easy enough.
One dog ticket.
And drinking in
spectacular engineering triumphs
in the Cambrian countryside.
- Thank you for going slowly.
- You're welcome.
- Isn't that a beautiful thing?
- Aye.
I started this journey
in Berwick-upon-Tweed
and I'm travelling south-weal
across the shoulder of England
and will end my trip by crossing
the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man.
Today's leg of the journey begins at
Bardon Mill on historic Hadrian's Wall
and takes me through
Cumbria's breathtaking landscape
to the industrial town of Wigton.
My Bradshaw's says
that Hadrian's Wall is nearly
700 miles long from sea to sea.
I'm afraid that's wrong
by about a factor of ten.
It's much shorter than that.
Bradshaw's goes on to say that "it was
built by the Roman conquerors of Britain
to secure themselves from
the troublesome savages beyond".
Scottish viewers may wish to quarrel
with the accuracy of that, as well.
Having studied history at university,
We always been drawn
to Britain's Roman past.
So, I'm alighting at Bardon Mill
on the Hadrian's Wall Country Line,
32 miles from Newcastle,
to see the iconic barrier
between waning populations
which stretches back two millennia.
If you love history as I do,
you adore Hadrian's Wall.
The Emperor Hadrian was
facing rebellions in Libya and Egypt.
How history repeats itself.
He thought he might
at least limit his problems
by building a wall
to keep out the Caledonians.
It runs from coast to coast.
It was 11ft high.
It had ditches.
It had a castle every mile.
It had fortresses big enough
to hold 17,000 troops.
Four legions built it in eight years.
It was the most fantastic
engineering project.
You have to be impressed.
And you have to be depressed
that so much effort was put into
keeping two peoples separate.
The Victorians, with their new-found
freedom to travel on trains,
loved to visit ancient sites.
One of their favourite destinations was
the Roman garrison fort of Vindolanda
where they indulged their passion
for the new craze of archeology.
I've followed in their footsteps
and I'm meeting site director
Patricia Birley.
I've just come from Hadrian's Wall.
How does the fort here relate
to Hadrian's Wall'?
Well, you're standing a mile south
of Hadrian's Wall here, Michael.
There were forts like Vindolanda
about every seven to eight miles
along the Stanegate Road.
It was to protect the road
for travellers, trade and so forth,
and make a frontier, really.
The aristocracy had habitually
undertaken the Grand Tour of Europe,
exploring the Renaissance
and classical antiquities.
From the early 1800s,
the British started to take an interest
in their own Roman history.
Archeology increased its appeal
and the Victorians realised
that there were treasure troves to be
explored within their own country.
However, their methods of excavation
were somewhat basic.
We have a term for it
in the north of England.
We call it "howking", which is
digging a hole to find something.
Having said that,
the antiquarian excavators did try to
record everything that they were doing
and indeed gave papers
to the newly-formed
literary and philosophical
and archaeological societies
that were springing up.
That was the start of what we
would call modern archeology.
The first tourist group to visit
Vindolanda arrived in 1849.
Their only access to the site was on
a far-from-luxurious industrial railway.
This wagon-way had been built
to carry stone from the quarries.
Our first pilgrims got in the, I hope,
cleaned-out wagons.
And the wagons stopped
just on the hillside beyond us there.
The pilgrims got out
and they had a good look around
and had their no doubt little talk.
And then got back into the wagons
and away they went,
back down to the newly-opened
railway line,
which must have been very exciting.
It brings a wonderful picture to mind.
These earnest Victorians
in partially cleaned-out stone wagons
arriving to pay tribute to this site.
The popularity of hands-on archeology
rose throughout
the 19th and 20th centuries,
leading to improved understanding
of Hadrian's Wall,
military history and Roman Britain.
I've moved to the site of the modern-day
excavations of the fort of Vindolanda
to meet archaeologist Justin Blake.
- Justin, hello.
- Hello.
- Michael.
- Nice to meet you.
What is it you're excavating here?
(Justin) We're right in the middle
of a barrack room
that was built in our early
third-century fort of Vindolanda.
This is where eight men
would have slept overnight,
cooked meals, socialised together.
And, I wouldn't be at all surprised,
moaned about life on the northern
frontier up to a point, as well.
What do we know
from what you've discovered?
(Justin) We know that they've been
using olive oil.
At the back end of last week, we found
a beautiful neck from an olive oil jar,
which is this one here.
So we've got that the handle over there
and part of the spout.
It's a huge, globular bowl. Usually they
hold about 50 or 80 litres of olive oil.
- Lovely thick clay, isn't it?
- It really is.
It's been imported from south Spain.
It's travelled quite a long way
to get to Vindolanda.
Best of all, we know that they've been
playing games and socialising.
Just this morning, we found a wonderful
little black glass gaming counter.
You found that this morning?
It came out about ten minutes
before you arrived to see us.
I can't resist a little dig myself,
just in case another Roman treasure
lurks below the surface.
OK.
I hope you've planted some gem
that I can find here.
To encourage me.
It's one of the wonderful things
about archeology.
You never know what's going to be
underneath the soil.
You've been finding pieces
of these people's lives.
- What impression do you have?
- It's like modern society.
It's a huge spectrum of different people
doing all manner of different jobs.
You get very different impressions
in each little bit that you dig in.
I am your slave. Back to work.
Back to work. Quite right, as well.
It's back to the tracks.
Though thankfully,
not in a horse-drawn mineral wagon
as my Victorian forerunners
would have done.
One of the things that the Romans found
attractive about northern England
was its wealth of minerals.
My Bradshaw's refers to
"mineral specimens that may be
procured in the caves,"
and also refers to the large lead mines
which also produced silver and copper.
Of course, in the 19th century,
these minerals could only be exploited
successfully using the railways.
Leaving Hadrian's Wall behind,
I'm heading west to Haltwhistle,
to make the journey to Alston in Cumbria
and the South Tynedale Railway.
This branch line was key to transporting
the coal, lead and other minerals
mined in the area.
But at the beautifully restored station,
I'm taking a moment to investigate
a clever invention
that was to change
the way we travel on trains.
One ticket on your lovely railway,
please.
(vendor) That'll be £6, please.
(Carmichael) Thank you very much.
Now, that is
what I call a railway ticket.
All my young life, that's
what a railway ticket looked like.
It wasn't orange
and it wasn't made of paper.
It was just a lovely bit of card
like that.
What was the history of these tickets?
Apparently, a revolutionary ticket
system was introduced in this area.
South Tynedale line enthusiast Tom Bell
will show me its simple brilliance.
Why is it called the Edmondson system?
Thomas Edmondson was appointed
station agent at Brampton
by the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway
when it opened in 1836.
Brampton's close to here?
It's about 20 miles from here
and it's on the main line of the company
that built this branch line.
So, what's the great breakthrough
about this system?
Well, first of all,
if you look at this ticket,
you'll see that it has
a serial number printed on.
The first thing he did
was design a system
to serially number all the tickets
from one to 9,999.
That meant that you could
actually print tickets
for one station to every destination
that people wanted to travel.
You had the price. You had the class.
You had whether it was adult or child
or single or return.
Prior to this invention,
railways issued handwritten tickets,
as stagecoach operators had done.
But they'd had
only half a dozen passengers.
With hundreds of people
using the booming railways,
the introduction of the Edmondson
numeric ticketing system
met the modern need.
It also prevented unscrupulous clerks
from lining their pockets
as they had to reconcile daily the cash
against the unsold
serially-numbered tickets.
The system spread rapidly
across the country
and amazingly, served the UK's railways
for over 150 years,
until the dawn of the computer age.
Now, if you have numerical sequences,
it's pretty important to keep
your tickets tidy and in order.
- Yes.
- Did he also invent these racks?
He invented the racks.
Small racks
for the little-used destinations.
The big racks
for frequently-used destinations.
The tickets were put in
with the lowest number at the bottom.
Each station had a ticket assembly
like that.
And like a card shark,
you dealt from the bottom.
Very nice.
How can I help you today?
Can we have a family ticket, please?
- I notice you've got a dog.
- Yeah.
- Would you like a dog ticket as well?
- Yes, please.
Let me do the dog ticket first.
That's easy enough.
One dog ticket.
There we are.
- (child) Thank yam.
- Thank yum.!
From its opening in 1852,
this railway was important
not just for the ticketing system.
The lure of lead in the wild hills
brought the Newcastle and Carlisle
Railway to Alston.
With the South Tyne valley also
producing large quantities of coal,
the arrival of the railway was
the catalyst for major growth in mining.
Today, happily, the line's still open
as a heritage narrow gauge railway.
It's lovely to be
on the South Tynedale Railway.
Historically, though,
this is the railway that used
to bring lead from the mines.
That's right. It was built to take lead
out of the North Pennines ore field.
My Bradshaw's also mentions
silver coming from those mines.
Any record of silver?
(Tom) Yes. Although most of the ore
was lead and zinc,
there was a small amount
of silver brought out as well.
In the Victorian age, lead had become
a very important commodity
for the production of piping,
roofing and paint.
The lead mines brought
jobs and prosperity to the area.
The railway began
to transport both the ore
and the population drawn to the valley.
It used to take
a fair number of passengers.
It also was very early
in the tourist industry.
The North Eastern Railway ran
special trains after Easter up to Alston
for people to rent cottages
for the summer.
We are running through
some beautiful countryside.
It's known as England's last wilderness.
But if you look around,
the landscape's entirely man-made.
It's been man-made since Roman times,
but mainly by the lead miners
since the 17th century.
Its time to retire for the evening.
I'm headed for the small village
of Gilsland
on the edge of the Northumberland
National Park,
situated hard upon Hadrian's Wall.
As the Victorians began to travel
by train, they needed places to stay.
"Bradshaw's" contains
recommendations for the weary tourist.
Where to spend such a pretty evening?
Bradshaw's has the answer.
"Gilsland Spa."
"A good sulphur spring
which issues from a cliff in the glen
at the back of Shaw's excellent hotel."
The hotel has changed shape and name,
but I bet the spring's still there.
To compete against their rivals,
Victorian hotels liked
to offer health experiences,
and the sulphur springs
fitted the bill perfectly.
My guide is local historian Will Higgs.
Well, this is the fountain to which
the sulphur water has now been piped.
Although that was quite a long time ago.
Unfortunately, the pipe seems to be
getting blocked
and it's pretty well dried up.
You can certainly smell the stuff.
(exclaims) That's terrible. Rotten eggs.
- It's delicious.
- (laughs)
And that's not the only attraction
of the hotel.
Deep in the dreamy glens,
a rather suggestive-shaped boulder
called the Popping Stone
enticed the strait-laced
Victorian tourists
to cast aside their inhibitions.
Well, here it is.
The famous Popping Stone.
Legend has it that this is the spot
where Walter Scott proposed to his wife,
Charlotte Carpenter.
It seems to have had associations with
courtship and possibly even fertility.
- What did the Victorians make of that?
- They had plenty of fun.
Certainly the holidaymakers
who came here on the train
frequently made a beeline
for the Popping Stone
and had their photographs taken on it.
I've got a picture postcard here
from 1910,
showing a very smart chap with a lady,
sitting on the stone,
much as it is today.
There's more to this photograph.
It gives us a little hint of what's
at the heart of the hotel's allure.
If you look
at the inscription on the back...
(Carmichael) Er... Yes.
Mr Bonar and Mrs Wilson.
What was Mr Bonar doing with Mrs Wilson
on the Popping Stone?
They seem to look rather shifty
as well, if you look.
Oh! It's a place for dirty weekends.
I hope they came by train.
You may have gathered that I love
Victorian railway architecture.
It's a beautiful summer's morning.
What better time to see a viaduct?
I'm rejoining the tine at
Haltwhistle station in Northumberland,
travelling past the fabulous
Roman milecastle of Poltross Burn,
on my way west towards Carlisle.
This countryside is simply stunning.
It's so beautiful.
O, to be in England,
now that summer's here.
And to be on a train.
Discussing this beautiful landscape,
Bradshaw's refers to the stunning views
and to the ravines.
This was not easy territory
for early Victorian railway builders.
Nothing was going to slow them
in their progress.
I'm heading to the viaduct
at Wetheral,
a place that Bradshaw's says
"is pleasantly situated on the Eden."
Having seen Stephenson's viaduct
on the River Tweed,
the remarkable thing about Wetheral
is that it's much older.
Surprisingly for such
a small, rural community,
the village of Wetheral entered the
railway age very early, in the 1830s.
The Newcastle to Car/isle Line, linking
the east and west coasts of Britain,
needed a spectacular piece
of pre-Victorian engineering
to straddle the daunting 10011 gorge
over the River Eden.
That indeed is what they got.
And now we cross the fantastic viaduct.
The driver has slowed right down
to give us a view.
We are so high above the river.
Isn't that spectacular?
- Driver!
- How are we doing?
Wanted to thank you
for going slowly over the viaduct.
- Isn't that a beautiful thing?
- It's beautiful, aye.
We had a wonderful view.
It's a beautiful piece of architecture.
It is beautiful.
You haven't got a spare book, have you?
There we are. There's Bradshaw's.
You can touch it.
Bye, driver. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Completed in 1834,
the Eden or Wetheral viaduct
was one of the first railway viaducts
to be built in Britain.
It's a notable
early architectural triumph,
built four years
before Victoria came to the throne.
It linked not only the burgeoning cities
of Newcastle and Car/isle,
but also the villages on opposite sides
of the river,
Wetheral and Great Corby.
I'm hoping that no less a personage
than the mayor of Carlisle, Barry Earp,
can tell me more.
Barry, well met.
Welcome to Wetheral. Lovely to have you.
Ordinary Victorians must have
thought it spectacular.
It's a great engineering achievement
and a thing of beauty.
It was a thing of beauty.
People used to come from Carlisle
for day-trips out.
They enjoyed the river trip
across to Great Corby
and then walked across the viaduct,
back into Wetheral.
Locals, meanwhile,
were sidestepping the cost of a ferry
to travel between the two villages
and risking life and limb
to walk across the viaduct
In 1851, the railway was forced to build
a walkway at the side of the track
which is still in use today.
But there was a catch.
The walkway over the viaduct
cost the people a ha'penny
in the old L.s.d coinage.
It was a ha'penny there
and a ha'penny back.
This started in 1851
and continued until 1956,
by which time the cost had gone up
to a penny each way.
The toll was finally scrapped
in the late 1950s.
But Wetheral Station
has another claim to fame.
Despite being closed
in the Beeching cuts of 1967,
Barry and the parish council succeeded
in having it reopened in 1981.
I have to comment that your station
is delightful. Wetheral Station.
Not least this fantastic bridge.
I'm so pleased to see it open.
Wetheral was a growing village and had
more and more people living here.
And, of course, it is only
a very short distance into Carlisle.
It was a lot easier and cheaper
in actual fact to use the train.
It's always extremely cheering
to hear about the reopening
of a station once consigned to history.
All credit to Barry and his colleagues
for campaigning hard.
Now I'm on the last leg
of today's journey, to Carlisle,
to catch the Cambrian Coast Line
to the market town of Wonton.
- Bye-bye!
- Alright.
Well, after all
that beautiful open countryside,
Carlisle feels like a big place.
It's where I'm changing train.
Well, this is
an extraordinarily crowded train.
I'll have to stand here
and tell you that I'm headed for Wigton,
which my Bradshaw's Guide tells me
has print and dye works.
Now, I have a feeling
that those works are no longer there.
But I'm interested to see
what happens in Wigton today.
(announcement)
We are now approaching Wigton.
Why is the train so crowded?
- It's the first train to Carlisle.
- There's only one in three hours.
This is the first train
from Carlisle this morning.
That's why it's overcrowded.
It's not usually as bad as this,
to be truthful.
OK.
Usually you can go
up and down the train.
It's been a very intimate experience.
(laughs) I'll say!
I can only apologise.
- Thank you.
- Not a problem.
I apologise.
No, no. Not at all.
We enjoyed it, actually.
It was fun.
Bye.
The Victorian era saw some
of the most important innovations
of the last two centuries.
From the lightbulb
to effective anaesthesia and plastic.
Invented by Englishmen Alexander Parkes
in 1856,
the first synthetic plastic, Parkesine,
was demonstrated
at the World Fair in London.
It was derived from cellulose,
and began an industry that would
radically change the way we live.
Wigton, just east of Carlisle,
was struggling at the end
of the 19th century
as its traditional industries declined.
But another unique invention from
the use of cellulose came to its rescue
as engineering specialist
Roy Crosthwaite is going to explain.
What was the industrial history
of Wigton?
Well, the industry was based around
tanneries and dye works for cotton,
which has one of the principal products
produced in Wigton at the time.
You now produce
something completely different.
We do indeed.
We actually manufacture cellophane
and polypropylene films on this site.
Cellophane's been produced since 1933.
What's the raw materials for that?
Wood pulp is the principal raw material,
which was brought in by steam trains
down these very lines.
During the 19th and early 20th century,
synthetics were in their infancy.
It was a period of experimentation.
Inkwells, cutlery handles
and the very earliest gramophone records
all pushed
the boundaries of synthetic production,
with the records, rather revoltingly,
being made from mixed beetle excretions
and powdered minerals.
Whilst these innovations were
useful enough,
plastics
and what would become cellophane
didn't really take off
until the 20th century.
(man) You'll put on your plastic
raincoat. Put up your plastic hood.
Wait. It's stopped now.
Open your plastic bag
to see if that plastic hood has
messed up your hairdo.
Roy's company specialises
in food and product wrapping
and is the largest employer in Wigton.
This company and town have
boomed on the back of invention.
But it was the ease of movement
offered by the railway,
including a set of sidings running
into the heart of the factory,
that allowed an isolated Cumbrian town
to compete globally.
And it's because of the railway, in
fact, that we actually had the factory.
We brought in raw materials.
Our product was exported
or shipped out by train.
So it was quite significant.
Without this, there's no doubt
there'd be no factory.
One of the company's key products
is cellophane,
which was invented in 1908
and is now used worldwide in packaging.
It's made from cellulose viscose,
which, to my surprise,
is derived from wood pulp.
So, here is the most interesting
pan of the process.
We've manufactured the viscose.
It's then pumped in through the slop dye
into a bath of sulphuric acid,
when, hey presto...
it hits the acid and forms the film.
This film will then be drawn off
and fed down the casting machine,
where the sulphur is washed out,
and it forms into cellulose.
It's as simple as that.
(laughs) As simple as that.
I mean, I see this product
every day of my life.
It's never occurred to me
to think about how it's made.
(Roy) Absolutely.
The cellophane made here will be found
on everyday consumer products,
from chocolates to perfume,
cheese to teabags.
I saw the wood pulp at the beginning.
A lovely natural resource.
Of course, the food Mappings
come out of the other end
and very often,
they're part of litter in our society.
What can we do about that?
We have developed a product recently
which is biodegradable.
It will actually degrade in six weeks.
You put it in the family compost heap
and in six weeks' time,
it's back to nature.
I tell you, I was disappointed
when I came here
that your railway lines
are no longer in use.
- You don't use the railways any more?
- Not really.
We do pay Network Rail a retainer,
so we have the option to use the siding
some time in the future.
The company stopped using the railway
for transport in the late 1960s
once the M6 motorway reached Carlisle
and road haulage
sadly proved cheaper than rail.
But given that the infrastructure
still exists oh the site,
I hold a hope that,
maybe for this company at least,
the railways might rise again.
I've rarely seen such unspoiled country
as on this journey.
But this terrain has always been made
to work for man.
The Romans quarried its stone.
The Victorians mined its lead.
Now it produces manufactured goods,
including some new products
that aim to be
as green as this landscape.
When I continue my railway adventure,
I'll be taking a train
from coast to mountain top...
Every now and again,
a little smut hits the eye to remind
you of the joys of steam travel.
Gaining rare access to an industry
that divides opinion worldwide,
nuclear power...
And it is absolutely massive.
The golf ball itself
is probably about 60 metres high.
And being present at the unveiling
of an extremely rare Cumberland Luck.
This is, I must say, a rather
emotional moment, isn't it?
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 Bradshaw's is now guiding me
across northern England.
The castles that I've seen recently
remind us of the long wars
between the Scots and the English.
I'm now going to visit
the very icon of that enmity.
For, as even recent history
has shown us,
rulers who want to maintain separation
between peoples build walls.
On today's leg of the journey,
I'll be getting down and dirty
in a Roman barracks...
- Well, I am your slave. Back to work.
- Back to work. Quite right.
Discovering a small invention
that made a big difference
to the public...
Let me do the dog ticket first.
That's easy enough.
One dog ticket.
And drinking in
spectacular engineering triumphs
in the Cambrian countryside.
- Thank you for going slowly.
- You're welcome.
- Isn't that a beautiful thing?
- Aye.
I started this journey
in Berwick-upon-Tweed
and I'm travelling south-weal
across the shoulder of England
and will end my trip by crossing
the Irish Sea to the Isle of Man.
Today's leg of the journey begins at
Bardon Mill on historic Hadrian's Wall
and takes me through
Cumbria's breathtaking landscape
to the industrial town of Wigton.
My Bradshaw's says
that Hadrian's Wall is nearly
700 miles long from sea to sea.
I'm afraid that's wrong
by about a factor of ten.
It's much shorter than that.
Bradshaw's goes on to say that "it was
built by the Roman conquerors of Britain
to secure themselves from
the troublesome savages beyond".
Scottish viewers may wish to quarrel
with the accuracy of that, as well.
Having studied history at university,
We always been drawn
to Britain's Roman past.
So, I'm alighting at Bardon Mill
on the Hadrian's Wall Country Line,
32 miles from Newcastle,
to see the iconic barrier
between waning populations
which stretches back two millennia.
If you love history as I do,
you adore Hadrian's Wall.
The Emperor Hadrian was
facing rebellions in Libya and Egypt.
How history repeats itself.
He thought he might
at least limit his problems
by building a wall
to keep out the Caledonians.
It runs from coast to coast.
It was 11ft high.
It had ditches.
It had a castle every mile.
It had fortresses big enough
to hold 17,000 troops.
Four legions built it in eight years.
It was the most fantastic
engineering project.
You have to be impressed.
And you have to be depressed
that so much effort was put into
keeping two peoples separate.
The Victorians, with their new-found
freedom to travel on trains,
loved to visit ancient sites.
One of their favourite destinations was
the Roman garrison fort of Vindolanda
where they indulged their passion
for the new craze of archeology.
I've followed in their footsteps
and I'm meeting site director
Patricia Birley.
I've just come from Hadrian's Wall.
How does the fort here relate
to Hadrian's Wall'?
Well, you're standing a mile south
of Hadrian's Wall here, Michael.
There were forts like Vindolanda
about every seven to eight miles
along the Stanegate Road.
It was to protect the road
for travellers, trade and so forth,
and make a frontier, really.
The aristocracy had habitually
undertaken the Grand Tour of Europe,
exploring the Renaissance
and classical antiquities.
From the early 1800s,
the British started to take an interest
in their own Roman history.
Archeology increased its appeal
and the Victorians realised
that there were treasure troves to be
explored within their own country.
However, their methods of excavation
were somewhat basic.
We have a term for it
in the north of England.
We call it "howking", which is
digging a hole to find something.
Having said that,
the antiquarian excavators did try to
record everything that they were doing
and indeed gave papers
to the newly-formed
literary and philosophical
and archaeological societies
that were springing up.
That was the start of what we
would call modern archeology.
The first tourist group to visit
Vindolanda arrived in 1849.
Their only access to the site was on
a far-from-luxurious industrial railway.
This wagon-way had been built
to carry stone from the quarries.
Our first pilgrims got in the, I hope,
cleaned-out wagons.
And the wagons stopped
just on the hillside beyond us there.
The pilgrims got out
and they had a good look around
and had their no doubt little talk.
And then got back into the wagons
and away they went,
back down to the newly-opened
railway line,
which must have been very exciting.
It brings a wonderful picture to mind.
These earnest Victorians
in partially cleaned-out stone wagons
arriving to pay tribute to this site.
The popularity of hands-on archeology
rose throughout
the 19th and 20th centuries,
leading to improved understanding
of Hadrian's Wall,
military history and Roman Britain.
I've moved to the site of the modern-day
excavations of the fort of Vindolanda
to meet archaeologist Justin Blake.
- Justin, hello.
- Hello.
- Michael.
- Nice to meet you.
What is it you're excavating here?
(Justin) We're right in the middle
of a barrack room
that was built in our early
third-century fort of Vindolanda.
This is where eight men
would have slept overnight,
cooked meals, socialised together.
And, I wouldn't be at all surprised,
moaned about life on the northern
frontier up to a point, as well.
What do we know
from what you've discovered?
(Justin) We know that they've been
using olive oil.
At the back end of last week, we found
a beautiful neck from an olive oil jar,
which is this one here.
So we've got that the handle over there
and part of the spout.
It's a huge, globular bowl. Usually they
hold about 50 or 80 litres of olive oil.
- Lovely thick clay, isn't it?
- It really is.
It's been imported from south Spain.
It's travelled quite a long way
to get to Vindolanda.
Best of all, we know that they've been
playing games and socialising.
Just this morning, we found a wonderful
little black glass gaming counter.
You found that this morning?
It came out about ten minutes
before you arrived to see us.
I can't resist a little dig myself,
just in case another Roman treasure
lurks below the surface.
OK.
I hope you've planted some gem
that I can find here.
To encourage me.
It's one of the wonderful things
about archeology.
You never know what's going to be
underneath the soil.
You've been finding pieces
of these people's lives.
- What impression do you have?
- It's like modern society.
It's a huge spectrum of different people
doing all manner of different jobs.
You get very different impressions
in each little bit that you dig in.
I am your slave. Back to work.
Back to work. Quite right, as well.
It's back to the tracks.
Though thankfully,
not in a horse-drawn mineral wagon
as my Victorian forerunners
would have done.
One of the things that the Romans found
attractive about northern England
was its wealth of minerals.
My Bradshaw's refers to
"mineral specimens that may be
procured in the caves,"
and also refers to the large lead mines
which also produced silver and copper.
Of course, in the 19th century,
these minerals could only be exploited
successfully using the railways.
Leaving Hadrian's Wall behind,
I'm heading west to Haltwhistle,
to make the journey to Alston in Cumbria
and the South Tynedale Railway.
This branch line was key to transporting
the coal, lead and other minerals
mined in the area.
But at the beautifully restored station,
I'm taking a moment to investigate
a clever invention
that was to change
the way we travel on trains.
One ticket on your lovely railway,
please.
(vendor) That'll be £6, please.
(Carmichael) Thank you very much.
Now, that is
what I call a railway ticket.
All my young life, that's
what a railway ticket looked like.
It wasn't orange
and it wasn't made of paper.
It was just a lovely bit of card
like that.
What was the history of these tickets?
Apparently, a revolutionary ticket
system was introduced in this area.
South Tynedale line enthusiast Tom Bell
will show me its simple brilliance.
Why is it called the Edmondson system?
Thomas Edmondson was appointed
station agent at Brampton
by the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway
when it opened in 1836.
Brampton's close to here?
It's about 20 miles from here
and it's on the main line of the company
that built this branch line.
So, what's the great breakthrough
about this system?
Well, first of all,
if you look at this ticket,
you'll see that it has
a serial number printed on.
The first thing he did
was design a system
to serially number all the tickets
from one to 9,999.
That meant that you could
actually print tickets
for one station to every destination
that people wanted to travel.
You had the price. You had the class.
You had whether it was adult or child
or single or return.
Prior to this invention,
railways issued handwritten tickets,
as stagecoach operators had done.
But they'd had
only half a dozen passengers.
With hundreds of people
using the booming railways,
the introduction of the Edmondson
numeric ticketing system
met the modern need.
It also prevented unscrupulous clerks
from lining their pockets
as they had to reconcile daily the cash
against the unsold
serially-numbered tickets.
The system spread rapidly
across the country
and amazingly, served the UK's railways
for over 150 years,
until the dawn of the computer age.
Now, if you have numerical sequences,
it's pretty important to keep
your tickets tidy and in order.
- Yes.
- Did he also invent these racks?
He invented the racks.
Small racks
for the little-used destinations.
The big racks
for frequently-used destinations.
The tickets were put in
with the lowest number at the bottom.
Each station had a ticket assembly
like that.
And like a card shark,
you dealt from the bottom.
Very nice.
How can I help you today?
Can we have a family ticket, please?
- I notice you've got a dog.
- Yeah.
- Would you like a dog ticket as well?
- Yes, please.
Let me do the dog ticket first.
That's easy enough.
One dog ticket.
There we are.
- (child) Thank yam.
- Thank yum.!
From its opening in 1852,
this railway was important
not just for the ticketing system.
The lure of lead in the wild hills
brought the Newcastle and Carlisle
Railway to Alston.
With the South Tyne valley also
producing large quantities of coal,
the arrival of the railway was
the catalyst for major growth in mining.
Today, happily, the line's still open
as a heritage narrow gauge railway.
It's lovely to be
on the South Tynedale Railway.
Historically, though,
this is the railway that used
to bring lead from the mines.
That's right. It was built to take lead
out of the North Pennines ore field.
My Bradshaw's also mentions
silver coming from those mines.
Any record of silver?
(Tom) Yes. Although most of the ore
was lead and zinc,
there was a small amount
of silver brought out as well.
In the Victorian age, lead had become
a very important commodity
for the production of piping,
roofing and paint.
The lead mines brought
jobs and prosperity to the area.
The railway began
to transport both the ore
and the population drawn to the valley.
It used to take
a fair number of passengers.
It also was very early
in the tourist industry.
The North Eastern Railway ran
special trains after Easter up to Alston
for people to rent cottages
for the summer.
We are running through
some beautiful countryside.
It's known as England's last wilderness.
But if you look around,
the landscape's entirely man-made.
It's been man-made since Roman times,
but mainly by the lead miners
since the 17th century.
Its time to retire for the evening.
I'm headed for the small village
of Gilsland
on the edge of the Northumberland
National Park,
situated hard upon Hadrian's Wall.
As the Victorians began to travel
by train, they needed places to stay.
"Bradshaw's" contains
recommendations for the weary tourist.
Where to spend such a pretty evening?
Bradshaw's has the answer.
"Gilsland Spa."
"A good sulphur spring
which issues from a cliff in the glen
at the back of Shaw's excellent hotel."
The hotel has changed shape and name,
but I bet the spring's still there.
To compete against their rivals,
Victorian hotels liked
to offer health experiences,
and the sulphur springs
fitted the bill perfectly.
My guide is local historian Will Higgs.
Well, this is the fountain to which
the sulphur water has now been piped.
Although that was quite a long time ago.
Unfortunately, the pipe seems to be
getting blocked
and it's pretty well dried up.
You can certainly smell the stuff.
(exclaims) That's terrible. Rotten eggs.
- It's delicious.
- (laughs)
And that's not the only attraction
of the hotel.
Deep in the dreamy glens,
a rather suggestive-shaped boulder
called the Popping Stone
enticed the strait-laced
Victorian tourists
to cast aside their inhibitions.
Well, here it is.
The famous Popping Stone.
Legend has it that this is the spot
where Walter Scott proposed to his wife,
Charlotte Carpenter.
It seems to have had associations with
courtship and possibly even fertility.
- What did the Victorians make of that?
- They had plenty of fun.
Certainly the holidaymakers
who came here on the train
frequently made a beeline
for the Popping Stone
and had their photographs taken on it.
I've got a picture postcard here
from 1910,
showing a very smart chap with a lady,
sitting on the stone,
much as it is today.
There's more to this photograph.
It gives us a little hint of what's
at the heart of the hotel's allure.
If you look
at the inscription on the back...
(Carmichael) Er... Yes.
Mr Bonar and Mrs Wilson.
What was Mr Bonar doing with Mrs Wilson
on the Popping Stone?
They seem to look rather shifty
as well, if you look.
Oh! It's a place for dirty weekends.
I hope they came by train.
You may have gathered that I love
Victorian railway architecture.
It's a beautiful summer's morning.
What better time to see a viaduct?
I'm rejoining the tine at
Haltwhistle station in Northumberland,
travelling past the fabulous
Roman milecastle of Poltross Burn,
on my way west towards Carlisle.
This countryside is simply stunning.
It's so beautiful.
O, to be in England,
now that summer's here.
And to be on a train.
Discussing this beautiful landscape,
Bradshaw's refers to the stunning views
and to the ravines.
This was not easy territory
for early Victorian railway builders.
Nothing was going to slow them
in their progress.
I'm heading to the viaduct
at Wetheral,
a place that Bradshaw's says
"is pleasantly situated on the Eden."
Having seen Stephenson's viaduct
on the River Tweed,
the remarkable thing about Wetheral
is that it's much older.
Surprisingly for such
a small, rural community,
the village of Wetheral entered the
railway age very early, in the 1830s.
The Newcastle to Car/isle Line, linking
the east and west coasts of Britain,
needed a spectacular piece
of pre-Victorian engineering
to straddle the daunting 10011 gorge
over the River Eden.
That indeed is what they got.
And now we cross the fantastic viaduct.
The driver has slowed right down
to give us a view.
We are so high above the river.
Isn't that spectacular?
- Driver!
- How are we doing?
Wanted to thank you
for going slowly over the viaduct.
- Isn't that a beautiful thing?
- It's beautiful, aye.
We had a wonderful view.
It's a beautiful piece of architecture.
It is beautiful.
You haven't got a spare book, have you?
There we are. There's Bradshaw's.
You can touch it.
Bye, driver. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Completed in 1834,
the Eden or Wetheral viaduct
was one of the first railway viaducts
to be built in Britain.
It's a notable
early architectural triumph,
built four years
before Victoria came to the throne.
It linked not only the burgeoning cities
of Newcastle and Car/isle,
but also the villages on opposite sides
of the river,
Wetheral and Great Corby.
I'm hoping that no less a personage
than the mayor of Carlisle, Barry Earp,
can tell me more.
Barry, well met.
Welcome to Wetheral. Lovely to have you.
Ordinary Victorians must have
thought it spectacular.
It's a great engineering achievement
and a thing of beauty.
It was a thing of beauty.
People used to come from Carlisle
for day-trips out.
They enjoyed the river trip
across to Great Corby
and then walked across the viaduct,
back into Wetheral.
Locals, meanwhile,
were sidestepping the cost of a ferry
to travel between the two villages
and risking life and limb
to walk across the viaduct
In 1851, the railway was forced to build
a walkway at the side of the track
which is still in use today.
But there was a catch.
The walkway over the viaduct
cost the people a ha'penny
in the old L.s.d coinage.
It was a ha'penny there
and a ha'penny back.
This started in 1851
and continued until 1956,
by which time the cost had gone up
to a penny each way.
The toll was finally scrapped
in the late 1950s.
But Wetheral Station
has another claim to fame.
Despite being closed
in the Beeching cuts of 1967,
Barry and the parish council succeeded
in having it reopened in 1981.
I have to comment that your station
is delightful. Wetheral Station.
Not least this fantastic bridge.
I'm so pleased to see it open.
Wetheral was a growing village and had
more and more people living here.
And, of course, it is only
a very short distance into Carlisle.
It was a lot easier and cheaper
in actual fact to use the train.
It's always extremely cheering
to hear about the reopening
of a station once consigned to history.
All credit to Barry and his colleagues
for campaigning hard.
Now I'm on the last leg
of today's journey, to Carlisle,
to catch the Cambrian Coast Line
to the market town of Wonton.
- Bye-bye!
- Alright.
Well, after all
that beautiful open countryside,
Carlisle feels like a big place.
It's where I'm changing train.
Well, this is
an extraordinarily crowded train.
I'll have to stand here
and tell you that I'm headed for Wigton,
which my Bradshaw's Guide tells me
has print and dye works.
Now, I have a feeling
that those works are no longer there.
But I'm interested to see
what happens in Wigton today.
(announcement)
We are now approaching Wigton.
Why is the train so crowded?
- It's the first train to Carlisle.
- There's only one in three hours.
This is the first train
from Carlisle this morning.
That's why it's overcrowded.
It's not usually as bad as this,
to be truthful.
OK.
Usually you can go
up and down the train.
It's been a very intimate experience.
(laughs) I'll say!
I can only apologise.
- Thank you.
- Not a problem.
I apologise.
No, no. Not at all.
We enjoyed it, actually.
It was fun.
Bye.
The Victorian era saw some
of the most important innovations
of the last two centuries.
From the lightbulb
to effective anaesthesia and plastic.
Invented by Englishmen Alexander Parkes
in 1856,
the first synthetic plastic, Parkesine,
was demonstrated
at the World Fair in London.
It was derived from cellulose,
and began an industry that would
radically change the way we live.
Wigton, just east of Carlisle,
was struggling at the end
of the 19th century
as its traditional industries declined.
But another unique invention from
the use of cellulose came to its rescue
as engineering specialist
Roy Crosthwaite is going to explain.
What was the industrial history
of Wigton?
Well, the industry was based around
tanneries and dye works for cotton,
which has one of the principal products
produced in Wigton at the time.
You now produce
something completely different.
We do indeed.
We actually manufacture cellophane
and polypropylene films on this site.
Cellophane's been produced since 1933.
What's the raw materials for that?
Wood pulp is the principal raw material,
which was brought in by steam trains
down these very lines.
During the 19th and early 20th century,
synthetics were in their infancy.
It was a period of experimentation.
Inkwells, cutlery handles
and the very earliest gramophone records
all pushed
the boundaries of synthetic production,
with the records, rather revoltingly,
being made from mixed beetle excretions
and powdered minerals.
Whilst these innovations were
useful enough,
plastics
and what would become cellophane
didn't really take off
until the 20th century.
(man) You'll put on your plastic
raincoat. Put up your plastic hood.
Wait. It's stopped now.
Open your plastic bag
to see if that plastic hood has
messed up your hairdo.
Roy's company specialises
in food and product wrapping
and is the largest employer in Wigton.
This company and town have
boomed on the back of invention.
But it was the ease of movement
offered by the railway,
including a set of sidings running
into the heart of the factory,
that allowed an isolated Cumbrian town
to compete globally.
And it's because of the railway, in
fact, that we actually had the factory.
We brought in raw materials.
Our product was exported
or shipped out by train.
So it was quite significant.
Without this, there's no doubt
there'd be no factory.
One of the company's key products
is cellophane,
which was invented in 1908
and is now used worldwide in packaging.
It's made from cellulose viscose,
which, to my surprise,
is derived from wood pulp.
So, here is the most interesting
pan of the process.
We've manufactured the viscose.
It's then pumped in through the slop dye
into a bath of sulphuric acid,
when, hey presto...
it hits the acid and forms the film.
This film will then be drawn off
and fed down the casting machine,
where the sulphur is washed out,
and it forms into cellulose.
It's as simple as that.
(laughs) As simple as that.
I mean, I see this product
every day of my life.
It's never occurred to me
to think about how it's made.
(Roy) Absolutely.
The cellophane made here will be found
on everyday consumer products,
from chocolates to perfume,
cheese to teabags.
I saw the wood pulp at the beginning.
A lovely natural resource.
Of course, the food Mappings
come out of the other end
and very often,
they're part of litter in our society.
What can we do about that?
We have developed a product recently
which is biodegradable.
It will actually degrade in six weeks.
You put it in the family compost heap
and in six weeks' time,
it's back to nature.
I tell you, I was disappointed
when I came here
that your railway lines
are no longer in use.
- You don't use the railways any more?
- Not really.
We do pay Network Rail a retainer,
so we have the option to use the siding
some time in the future.
The company stopped using the railway
for transport in the late 1960s
once the M6 motorway reached Carlisle
and road haulage
sadly proved cheaper than rail.
But given that the infrastructure
still exists oh the site,
I hold a hope that,
maybe for this company at least,
the railways might rise again.
I've rarely seen such unspoiled country
as on this journey.
But this terrain has always been made
to work for man.
The Romans quarried its stone.
The Victorians mined its lead.
Now it produces manufactured goods,
including some new products
that aim to be
as green as this landscape.
When I continue my railway adventure,
I'll be taking a train
from coast to mountain top...
Every now and again,
a little smut hits the eye to remind
you of the joys of steam travel.
Gaining rare access to an industry
that divides opinion worldwide,
nuclear power...
And it is absolutely massive.
The golf ball itself
is probably about 60 metres high.
And being present at the unveiling
of an extremely rare Cumberland Luck.
This is, I must say, a rather
emotional moment, isn't it?