Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 3, Episode 4 - Epping to Hackney - 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.
Pm continuing my journey from
Great Yarmouth to the City of London
on one of the great pioneering lines
of the Victorian age.
My Bradshaw's Guide
has now brought me to Suffolk,
and it says that "this is one of the
best cultivated districts in England".
"Indeed, it may be called almost
exclusively a farming county."
Before industrialisation,
this area was largely dependent
on people travelling by boat,
and the railways opened up
new routes for industry.
And they also allowed tourists in.
Some of them
with a very particular quest.
On today's leg of the journey,
I'll be following Victorian tourists
to an English city
that was lost like Atlantis...
It's not just the church ruins
that go onto the beach,
it's also the bodies of the dead
from the graveyard.
meeting some gentle giants
who were crucial to the
smooth running of the railways...
Face of an angel,
middle like a beer barrel,
and a backside like a farmer's daughter.
That sums up the Suffolk horse.
And discovering how
a 19th-century railway entrepreneur
started something that would grow
beyond his wildest dreams.
I've never been as close to
one of these container ships as this.
It's absolutely enormous.
I started this journey in
Great Vermouth on the east coast.
And now Pm heading south
through Suffolk.
I'll be following a route through what,
in Bradshaw's day,
was forbidding and difficult territory.
But the railways
opened up the region to commerce,
and allowed its riches to be tapped.
On this stretch,
my first stop will be Darsham.
And then I'll travel south through
the scenic East Anglian flatlands,
visiting the great ports
of the east coast.
Tickets, please.
- There we go.
Weather not too bright this morning.
- Horrible, isn't it?
Will it cheer up?
We're supposed to have a heatwave.
- Yeah. We're meant to.
I'm going out on a boat this morning.
How will I get on there, do you think?
If the rain keeps on like this,
it'll be a bit wet.
With the coming of the railways
in the mid-1800s,
this sparsely-populated area
was opened up,
not just for business,
but for tourism, too.
Journey times were dramatically reduced,
and for the first time,
the unexplored treasures
of Suffolk's beautiful
countryside and coast
became a sought-after destination.
This is Darsham.
And Victorian tourists would come here
in their droves, headed for Dunwich.
Attracted, not so much by
the sunshine or the country air,
but by an interest
somewhat more ghoulish.
They came to visit the crumbling,
yet captivating ruins
of what was once
the claimed capital of East Anglia.
One of the country's
biggest medieval towns,
Dunwich's prosperity
once rivalled London's.
Pm meeting Professor David Sear
to find out more about Britain's rival
to the lost city of Atlantis.
Good to see you.
So, I've just arrived on the train,
like a Victorian tourist,
and I believe they used
to come in their hordes.
But what did they come to see?
OK, they'd come to see
the medieval town of Dunwich.
Where we're standing is the
last fragment of the lost town.
The rest is out beyond the cliffs.
This town has gone into the sea.
(Michael) And why so?
What happened to the cliff?
(David) Well, we're standing on,
basically, sands and gravels.
And the town itself
was absolutely decimated
by a series of storms
in the 13th century,
and then subsequently.
And these big storms
just ripped the cliff away,
and the buildings
collapsed down with it.
And you can see here...
There's remains of a Friary here
that we're standing in.
They would have come
to see this and to see,
not only just the romance of the ruins,
but also the ghoulishness associated
with the lost town itself.
How much more of this town
could a Victorian tourist have seen
than I can see today?
Beyond here, now underwater,
was a great big church,
All Saints Church.
And you would have seen this tower
teetering on the edge of the cliffs.
And when the Victorians came here,
it really was on the edge.
And with the tower, of course,
came all the romance
and the legend
of the lost bells of Dunwich.
Which they said, and still do say,
that on a stormy night, you can hear.
Romance seems all well and good,
but the Victorians had a much more
morbid reason for visiting.
Although we think of them
as prudish and repressed,
they had a macabre fascination
with death.
Dunwich allowed them
to indulge their dark side
with a spot of human relic hunting.
Of course, if you've got a church
on the cliffs, you've got a graveyard.
And when the storms come
and the cliff collapses,
it's not just the church ruins
that go onto the beach,
it's also the bodies of the dead
from the graveyard.
And in fact, you still can come
to this day, after a storm
because there's a fragment
of All Saints churchyard left,
and you find bones
and skulls on the beach.
Of course, that attracted them.
I don't fancy searching for the bones
of my forebears on the beach.
But David's taking me on a boat
for a unique view of the submerged city
beyond the Victorians' imagination.
He's conducting research
beneath the murky depths,
using sonar technology
to map what's on the seabed.
Very scientific.
But I'll still keep open
a superstitious ear
for the watery bells
of All Saints Church.
Where did the medieval city
of Dunwich stand, then?
What we can see here is the last
fragments of the medieval city,
quite literally, are on the cliff-line.
And then it stretched
for about a mile to the north.
And it came out about a mile this way.
Big city.
(David) Yeah, really big.
The same size as the City of London.
The port's riches were based on
exports of East Anglian woo! and grain.
And imports of fish, cloth from
the Netherlands and wine from France.
The harbour and port activity
was to the north.
And then you sort of
came up this low hill,
and you entered the hub of the town.
The marketplace, the main churches
clustered round the market place.
And of course,
those are now underneath us.
Literally.
- Literally underneath us.
But tell me what it really looks like.
Are you telling me
there are walls under there?
Or is this, kind of, the vague
outline of where a church was?
What is there actually underneath?
We've been able to map
the whole of the sea floor here.
And incredibly exciting,
we've found the ruins of four churches
from the former medieval city.
But of course, these buildings have
fallen down a 20-metre-high cliff,
so they've broken up as they go down.
So, it's the ruins of ruins,
if you like.
Modern technology is bringing the
submerged antiquity of Dunwich to life.
I like to imagine how fascinated
the Victorians would have been,
had they had this view
of a medieval metropolis.
I suppose what is really
exciting about that is that,
although this place has disappeared,
in a sense,
it's never been tampered with.
It never got modernised.
It didn't have any skyscrapers.
This really is a whole medieval city.
Absolutely, yes. Certainly, we're
beginning to get the geography
of an untouched medieval town.
Loving history as I do, I'd be delighted
to walk the streets of Dunwich,
unsullied by modernity.
A pure, medieval city.
Back on the train at Darsham,
Pm heading south
to the town of Wood bridge.
My Bradshaw's Guide
talks about agriculture in Suffolk
being conducted
"on the most improved principles".
A wonderful Victorian phrase.
And now I'm on my way to see
an innovation in agriculture
that was unique to East Anglia.
The new railways allowed tourists
to flock to Suffolk
in unprecedented numbers.
Many of those visitors might have
glimpsed, toiling in the fields,
a Suffolk icon,
without realising that
that noble beast was also vital
to the smooth running of the railways
on which they were speeding by.
This is Woodbridge.
And I'm looking forward here to
meeting an animal that I really admire
for its strength, its quiet dignity
and its strong work ethic.
The Suffolk Punch is one of the oldest
breeds of working horse in the world.
And Roger Clarke is going to introduce
me to these unassuming creatures.
Roger.
Good afternoon.
- What an amazing horse.
Absolutely huge, aren't they?
Yeah, they are two tremendous geldings.
What makes them so strong?
And what makes them so useful?
With a Suffolk horse,
his main characteristic,
why he can pull so well,
is his angle of draught. And..
His what?
- His angle of draught.
If you see where
the collar sits on his neck,
when he leans into the collar,
he can exert all his power
on the long forearm, short cannons.
That's where the strength is.
He's like Suffolk people,
when he leans into the collar,
something has to give.
(Michael) And it's a fine head as well.
Well, face of an angel,
middle like a beer barrel, and a
backside on it like a farmer's daughter.
That sums up the Suffolk horse.
Before the railways, East Anglia was
isolated from the rest of the country,
and consequently, developed its own
horses and agricultural methods.
The Suffolk Punch was bred
for its immense stamina,
specifically to plough the heavy clay.
We reputed to be able to pull up to
two times its own one-tonne body weight.
In Bradshaw's day,
this power was invaluable,
as they were deployed to railway
goods yards across the eastern counties.
They have a history with
the railways, don't they?
Yes. The bigger ones would be
either for heavy draught,
or for shunting in the goods yards.
They used the horses for shunting?
They were shunting trucks and so forth,
which possibly was
the most economical way
when you think that saved them
actually having to use
a steam engine for that job.
A can horse has a tremendous
surge of power.
And that's what was needed
to get a truck started.
Once it started, then it rolled along.
The railways used all types of heavy
draught horses to shunt wagons,
including Suffolk Punches and Shires.
Trained not to catch
their hooves in the tracks
and to step deftly out of the way
once a wagon was rolling,
they saved large costs
for the railway companies.
As little as 100 years ago, Suffolk
Punch horses were a common sight.
But mechanisation has left
the species' survival in doubt.
How rare is this breed?
Well, it's on the
rare breeds category one
of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust list.
That is to say, it is in fact
an endangered species.
People talk about the panda
and the tiger and so forth.
These are far more in danger
of extinction than they are.
Though, thankfully, we have enthusiasts,
like the Trust here,
that are maintaining the breed,
and hopefully carrying it forward.
The Trust works these
surviving animals regularly,
pulling carts of tourists
through the countryside.
We're all harnessed up.
Perhaps you'd like to take one, Michael.
If you take the one that Bruce has got.
Bit of a responsibility.
- Certainly is.
Watch your toes.
- My toes? Oh, my goodness.
You've got a tonne of horse there.
- Alright, a tonne of horse. Right.
You are a big fella, aren't you?
I'm not quite sure
who's in control here.
Travelling on a wagon
drawn by a Suffolk Punch
gives me a warm appreciation for the
strength of these good-natured animals.
Roger, I suppose most people
would think that
with the coming of the railways
and motor vehicles on the roads,
that would be the last time
that you'd be using big horses.
Is that really what happened?
(Roger) Well, I don't think
it did really.
Although the railways came and obviously
took the road coaches off the road,
the produce and goods
that they took to the station,
obviously, you needed
horsepower to deliver them.
And I think the Great Western
railway in London
boasted something like 800 horses.
Various sizes and that. You know,
parcel vans, heavy goods and so forth.
They could boast that they only had
one parcel, in ten days, mislaid.
I wonder if they could claim that today.
I had no idea that horses were used
on the railways until the 1960s,
when as part of the Beeching reforms,
tractors replaced these gentle giants.
The Suffolk Punch's story
has won my regard and affection.
And I salute these working horses,
who were so familiar
in Victorian Britain.
Rural life in 19th-century Britain
was pretty tough.
But painters of the period
liked to depict the countryside
in idealistic terms.
One of the Victorians' favourite
landscape painters was born in Suffolk,
and worked here much of his life.
And we still love his work today.
I'm alighting at Manningtree
on the Essex/Suffolk border,
one of England's smallest market towns.
Whose warm-hearted scenes attracted
Victorians with magnetic force.
And Constable fans.
- Yes. A lot of Japanese turn up.
(Michael) Really? So Constable's
still doing his bit for tourism?
Indeed.
After all these years of his death.
Very nice to see you. Bye.
- Thank you. Bye.
So, here is a sight that I know so well
from having seen the painting
The Hay Wain so often,
and yet it's so
unbelievably unchanged.
The wagon is stuck in
the middle of the river there,
the buildings look much the same.
It takes your breath away.
My guide here is Mark Cable
from the National Trust.
I thought I was prepared for all this,
having seen the paintings before,
but this is unbelievably beautiful.
And wonderfully unspoiled, isn't it?
(Mark) Unchanged for nearly 200 years.
This is the scene of
The Hay Wain painting, indeed.
Constable made many sketches
of Willy Lott's house
and the surrounding area.
And then put together
in his studio in London.
Three months before
Victoria came to the throne.
There are amateur artists.
I gather many Japanese come.
So that's actually freed up this area
to become what it is today,
did they like it
because it was romanticised?
They were starting to crave
the pictures of England as it was.
So there's a real kind of escapism.
- (Mark) Exactly.
People start to go back to Constable
and realise...
think of these times in fonder memories,
you know, of the countryside,
and we idealise it.
The new industrial conurbations
set Victorians yearning
to escape to the country.
As in so many things,
we feel the same today
and imitate their excursions.
But whilst I've got Mark here,
there's one more thing We always
wanted to know about “The Hay Wain“.
By the way, what is actually
going on in this painting?
Why is the wagon in the middle of the...
Well, there's a number of theories.
Some people think it's cooling down
the wheels here, the rims of the cart.
Other people have suggested
that it's stuck in the mill pond.
I don't think it's either.
I think what's happening is,
we've got some distant hay carts,
so it's travelling across here
to relieve this hay can
and come back with a load of hay.
But interestingly,
even that theory has its issues
because this is actually a log can.
The can was actually sketched by a chap
in the village called Johnny Dunthorne.
Constable requested that he sketch the
cart and send it back to him in London.
He didn't have enough detail
in his memory to recreate the can.
Again, it's possible
that Johnny Dunthorne sent him
a picture of the wrong can...
- (laughs)
that Constable had in mind.
We been a wonderful afternoon
in Constable country.
As the sun sets over this
curiously familiar landscape,
I make for the village of Dedham,
where Constable went to school
and where I'll stay the night.
The next day, my journey continues,
and Pm travelling
on the Mayflower line.
So called because the master
of the ship the Mayflower,
which in 1620 took
the pilgrims to America,
lived in the town
which is my next destination.
I'm on my way to Harwich,
which my Bradshaw's Guide tells me
"is built on a peninsula point of land
close to where the River Stour
joins the German Ocean
and has a number of
maritime advantages."
"it derives considerable profit
from its shipping trade, fisheries
and annual visitors."
Which is interesting because today, I
don't think of Harwich as a major port.
(announcement)
We have now arrived at Harwich Town.
(Michael) In Bradshaw's day,
the coming of the railways
had indeed made Harwich a booming port,
just an hour's journey
from London by train.
But today, it handles mainly
passenger ferries,
having been eclipsed by Felixstowe
just across the River Stour.
Felixstowe's better railway connections
and the invention of
the container in the 1960s
made it the economical choice
for shipping lines.
Felixstowe docks have grown rapidly,
doubling in size every ten years.
We now the largest
container port in the UK,
and one of the biggest in Europe.
I'm setting out from Harwich
on a pilot boat with Captain /an Mace,
Deputy Harbour Master,
to gain an idea
of Felixstowe's vast scale.
Ian, I've never been this close to
one of these container ships as this.
I'm looking down the length of it,
it's absolutely enormous.
Any idea what lengths these get to?
The biggest ones that we have coming
into the Haven are 397 metres long.
So, it's a fairly substantial size.
And over 10,000
20ft containers on board.
(Michael) 10,000 containers on board?
- Yes.
The thing that I see on the back of a
lorry, 10,000 of those on a single ship?
Yes, exactly.
The advent of the freight container,
the box that changed Britain,
means that everything
you can buy on the High Street,
from food and clothes
to electronics and furniture,
arrives on container ships
for sate throughout the United Kingdom.
Astoundingly, ifs estimated that our
shops would start to run out of food
in three days
if Felixstowe docks were closed.
So, give me an idea of how many
of these vessels come to Felixstowe.
In a year, there's about
10,000 movements within the Haven.
In busy times, we can have half-a-dozen
to ten vessels of this similar size
at anchor,
waiting to come into the port.
A bit like aeroplanes stacking
to go into an airport.
These staggering consignments
of containers,
over three million in a year,
come in by sea,
and are then directed around the UK.
Port manager Paul Davey
can give me an idea
of how the importance of railways today
compares with Bradshaw's time.
What I see here is that you're
putting containers onto vehicles,
but please tell me
that you still use railways.
We do. We use rail extensively.
We have more freight trains going from
this port to more destinations in the UK
than any other port.
We have two rail terminals
at the moment.
We're building a third one to
increase further the capacity for rail.
Is this as big as Felixstowe will get?
This is the first phase
of a development,
which will eventually see the
quay here lengthen still further.
We've also got potential
to expand in Harwich,
just on the other side of the river.
You can expand in Harwich?
There's quite a nice symmetry here
because Harwich, over the years,
lost out to Felixstowe.
Now Felixstowe's so big
that it may have to
transfer pan of the business
back to Harwich.
In Victorian Britain,
the railways were pan of
an extensive and efficient network
that sped up delivery times
from dockside to market place.
Thousands of dock workers
worked long hours in all weathers
to unload vessels onto rail wagons,
with small cranes, winches
and sheer brute force.
Things today are rather different.
As Andy Lambert is about to teach me
in a modem dock crane.
I'll just line up over this box,
then I'll let you have a go if you like.
The cranes, the largest
of their type in the world,
are the workhorses of the dock.
Loading and unloading ships,
trains and lames.
(Michael) So, you've lined us up
over the container.
(Andy) That's right.
- What next?
With your right-hand side,
just bring it up nice and gently
Pull it up nice and gently.
There we go.
(Michael) Box coming up.
Beads of sweat coming on my brow here
as I concentrate on this.
Down it goes.
Don't go away, Andy. Don't go away.
(Andy) That's it. Little bit more.
Little bit more. Little bit more.
That's lovely there.
Then just lift your frame up.
By pulling back?
- That's right, yeah.
I'm getting the hang of this.
- (Andy) Absolutely.
(Michael) And off goes the vehicle.
(Andy)
Now we've just got another 25 to do.
(Michael laughs)
Thank you. Fantastic lesson.
Really enjoyed that.
- (Andy) Thanks a lot.
- (Michael) Bye-bye.
After Andy and his colleagues
have unloaded a few thousand containers
from each ship, more than a quarter
go onto freight trains
leaving Felixstowe 28 times a day.
So I don't have to wait long to be able
to depart on one of the freight trains.
And now for something really exciting.
A ride in a brand-new,
highly powerful Class 70 locomotive
pulling 30 wagons behind.
The engine is pulling 1,335 tonnes,
substituting for
a very large number of tomes
that would otherwise throng our roads.
Much though I love passenger trains,
nothing gives you the feeling of power
like a freight locomotive.
And we're heading down
the single-track line
that George Tomline pioneered
more than a century ago.
Nowadays, for international travel,
most of us think of planes,
rather than boats.
But as far as freight is concerned,
the vast majority of our imports,
like the ones that we're towing
on the back of this train,
still come by sea.
And in that respect,
our world is not so very different
from George Bradshaws.
On the next Keg of my journey,
I'll be coming face-to-face
with a medieval politician...
Goodness, that is grotesque.
sharing the Victorians' fascination
with the freakishly stout...
Bags, you're on our team.
How many have we got?
and journeying overseas on one of
the world's first electric railways.
This is a great thrill.
I used to come as a child.
I've never been in a cab before.
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.
Pm continuing my journey from
Great Yarmouth to the City of London
on one of the great pioneering lines
of the Victorian age.
My Bradshaw's Guide
has now brought me to Suffolk,
and it says that "this is one of the
best cultivated districts in England".
"Indeed, it may be called almost
exclusively a farming county."
Before industrialisation,
this area was largely dependent
on people travelling by boat,
and the railways opened up
new routes for industry.
And they also allowed tourists in.
Some of them
with a very particular quest.
On today's leg of the journey,
I'll be following Victorian tourists
to an English city
that was lost like Atlantis...
It's not just the church ruins
that go onto the beach,
it's also the bodies of the dead
from the graveyard.
meeting some gentle giants
who were crucial to the
smooth running of the railways...
Face of an angel,
middle like a beer barrel,
and a backside like a farmer's daughter.
That sums up the Suffolk horse.
And discovering how
a 19th-century railway entrepreneur
started something that would grow
beyond his wildest dreams.
I've never been as close to
one of these container ships as this.
It's absolutely enormous.
I started this journey in
Great Vermouth on the east coast.
And now Pm heading south
through Suffolk.
I'll be following a route through what,
in Bradshaw's day,
was forbidding and difficult territory.
But the railways
opened up the region to commerce,
and allowed its riches to be tapped.
On this stretch,
my first stop will be Darsham.
And then I'll travel south through
the scenic East Anglian flatlands,
visiting the great ports
of the east coast.
Tickets, please.
- There we go.
Weather not too bright this morning.
- Horrible, isn't it?
Will it cheer up?
We're supposed to have a heatwave.
- Yeah. We're meant to.
I'm going out on a boat this morning.
How will I get on there, do you think?
If the rain keeps on like this,
it'll be a bit wet.
With the coming of the railways
in the mid-1800s,
this sparsely-populated area
was opened up,
not just for business,
but for tourism, too.
Journey times were dramatically reduced,
and for the first time,
the unexplored treasures
of Suffolk's beautiful
countryside and coast
became a sought-after destination.
This is Darsham.
And Victorian tourists would come here
in their droves, headed for Dunwich.
Attracted, not so much by
the sunshine or the country air,
but by an interest
somewhat more ghoulish.
They came to visit the crumbling,
yet captivating ruins
of what was once
the claimed capital of East Anglia.
One of the country's
biggest medieval towns,
Dunwich's prosperity
once rivalled London's.
Pm meeting Professor David Sear
to find out more about Britain's rival
to the lost city of Atlantis.
Good to see you.
So, I've just arrived on the train,
like a Victorian tourist,
and I believe they used
to come in their hordes.
But what did they come to see?
OK, they'd come to see
the medieval town of Dunwich.
Where we're standing is the
last fragment of the lost town.
The rest is out beyond the cliffs.
This town has gone into the sea.
(Michael) And why so?
What happened to the cliff?
(David) Well, we're standing on,
basically, sands and gravels.
And the town itself
was absolutely decimated
by a series of storms
in the 13th century,
and then subsequently.
And these big storms
just ripped the cliff away,
and the buildings
collapsed down with it.
And you can see here...
There's remains of a Friary here
that we're standing in.
They would have come
to see this and to see,
not only just the romance of the ruins,
but also the ghoulishness associated
with the lost town itself.
How much more of this town
could a Victorian tourist have seen
than I can see today?
Beyond here, now underwater,
was a great big church,
All Saints Church.
And you would have seen this tower
teetering on the edge of the cliffs.
And when the Victorians came here,
it really was on the edge.
And with the tower, of course,
came all the romance
and the legend
of the lost bells of Dunwich.
Which they said, and still do say,
that on a stormy night, you can hear.
Romance seems all well and good,
but the Victorians had a much more
morbid reason for visiting.
Although we think of them
as prudish and repressed,
they had a macabre fascination
with death.
Dunwich allowed them
to indulge their dark side
with a spot of human relic hunting.
Of course, if you've got a church
on the cliffs, you've got a graveyard.
And when the storms come
and the cliff collapses,
it's not just the church ruins
that go onto the beach,
it's also the bodies of the dead
from the graveyard.
And in fact, you still can come
to this day, after a storm
because there's a fragment
of All Saints churchyard left,
and you find bones
and skulls on the beach.
Of course, that attracted them.
I don't fancy searching for the bones
of my forebears on the beach.
But David's taking me on a boat
for a unique view of the submerged city
beyond the Victorians' imagination.
He's conducting research
beneath the murky depths,
using sonar technology
to map what's on the seabed.
Very scientific.
But I'll still keep open
a superstitious ear
for the watery bells
of All Saints Church.
Where did the medieval city
of Dunwich stand, then?
What we can see here is the last
fragments of the medieval city,
quite literally, are on the cliff-line.
And then it stretched
for about a mile to the north.
And it came out about a mile this way.
Big city.
(David) Yeah, really big.
The same size as the City of London.
The port's riches were based on
exports of East Anglian woo! and grain.
And imports of fish, cloth from
the Netherlands and wine from France.
The harbour and port activity
was to the north.
And then you sort of
came up this low hill,
and you entered the hub of the town.
The marketplace, the main churches
clustered round the market place.
And of course,
those are now underneath us.
Literally.
- Literally underneath us.
But tell me what it really looks like.
Are you telling me
there are walls under there?
Or is this, kind of, the vague
outline of where a church was?
What is there actually underneath?
We've been able to map
the whole of the sea floor here.
And incredibly exciting,
we've found the ruins of four churches
from the former medieval city.
But of course, these buildings have
fallen down a 20-metre-high cliff,
so they've broken up as they go down.
So, it's the ruins of ruins,
if you like.
Modern technology is bringing the
submerged antiquity of Dunwich to life.
I like to imagine how fascinated
the Victorians would have been,
had they had this view
of a medieval metropolis.
I suppose what is really
exciting about that is that,
although this place has disappeared,
in a sense,
it's never been tampered with.
It never got modernised.
It didn't have any skyscrapers.
This really is a whole medieval city.
Absolutely, yes. Certainly, we're
beginning to get the geography
of an untouched medieval town.
Loving history as I do, I'd be delighted
to walk the streets of Dunwich,
unsullied by modernity.
A pure, medieval city.
Back on the train at Darsham,
Pm heading south
to the town of Wood bridge.
My Bradshaw's Guide
talks about agriculture in Suffolk
being conducted
"on the most improved principles".
A wonderful Victorian phrase.
And now I'm on my way to see
an innovation in agriculture
that was unique to East Anglia.
The new railways allowed tourists
to flock to Suffolk
in unprecedented numbers.
Many of those visitors might have
glimpsed, toiling in the fields,
a Suffolk icon,
without realising that
that noble beast was also vital
to the smooth running of the railways
on which they were speeding by.
This is Woodbridge.
And I'm looking forward here to
meeting an animal that I really admire
for its strength, its quiet dignity
and its strong work ethic.
The Suffolk Punch is one of the oldest
breeds of working horse in the world.
And Roger Clarke is going to introduce
me to these unassuming creatures.
Roger.
Good afternoon.
- What an amazing horse.
Absolutely huge, aren't they?
Yeah, they are two tremendous geldings.
What makes them so strong?
And what makes them so useful?
With a Suffolk horse,
his main characteristic,
why he can pull so well,
is his angle of draught. And..
His what?
- His angle of draught.
If you see where
the collar sits on his neck,
when he leans into the collar,
he can exert all his power
on the long forearm, short cannons.
That's where the strength is.
He's like Suffolk people,
when he leans into the collar,
something has to give.
(Michael) And it's a fine head as well.
Well, face of an angel,
middle like a beer barrel, and a
backside on it like a farmer's daughter.
That sums up the Suffolk horse.
Before the railways, East Anglia was
isolated from the rest of the country,
and consequently, developed its own
horses and agricultural methods.
The Suffolk Punch was bred
for its immense stamina,
specifically to plough the heavy clay.
We reputed to be able to pull up to
two times its own one-tonne body weight.
In Bradshaw's day,
this power was invaluable,
as they were deployed to railway
goods yards across the eastern counties.
They have a history with
the railways, don't they?
Yes. The bigger ones would be
either for heavy draught,
or for shunting in the goods yards.
They used the horses for shunting?
They were shunting trucks and so forth,
which possibly was
the most economical way
when you think that saved them
actually having to use
a steam engine for that job.
A can horse has a tremendous
surge of power.
And that's what was needed
to get a truck started.
Once it started, then it rolled along.
The railways used all types of heavy
draught horses to shunt wagons,
including Suffolk Punches and Shires.
Trained not to catch
their hooves in the tracks
and to step deftly out of the way
once a wagon was rolling,
they saved large costs
for the railway companies.
As little as 100 years ago, Suffolk
Punch horses were a common sight.
But mechanisation has left
the species' survival in doubt.
How rare is this breed?
Well, it's on the
rare breeds category one
of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust list.
That is to say, it is in fact
an endangered species.
People talk about the panda
and the tiger and so forth.
These are far more in danger
of extinction than they are.
Though, thankfully, we have enthusiasts,
like the Trust here,
that are maintaining the breed,
and hopefully carrying it forward.
The Trust works these
surviving animals regularly,
pulling carts of tourists
through the countryside.
We're all harnessed up.
Perhaps you'd like to take one, Michael.
If you take the one that Bruce has got.
Bit of a responsibility.
- Certainly is.
Watch your toes.
- My toes? Oh, my goodness.
You've got a tonne of horse there.
- Alright, a tonne of horse. Right.
You are a big fella, aren't you?
I'm not quite sure
who's in control here.
Travelling on a wagon
drawn by a Suffolk Punch
gives me a warm appreciation for the
strength of these good-natured animals.
Roger, I suppose most people
would think that
with the coming of the railways
and motor vehicles on the roads,
that would be the last time
that you'd be using big horses.
Is that really what happened?
(Roger) Well, I don't think
it did really.
Although the railways came and obviously
took the road coaches off the road,
the produce and goods
that they took to the station,
obviously, you needed
horsepower to deliver them.
And I think the Great Western
railway in London
boasted something like 800 horses.
Various sizes and that. You know,
parcel vans, heavy goods and so forth.
They could boast that they only had
one parcel, in ten days, mislaid.
I wonder if they could claim that today.
I had no idea that horses were used
on the railways until the 1960s,
when as part of the Beeching reforms,
tractors replaced these gentle giants.
The Suffolk Punch's story
has won my regard and affection.
And I salute these working horses,
who were so familiar
in Victorian Britain.
Rural life in 19th-century Britain
was pretty tough.
But painters of the period
liked to depict the countryside
in idealistic terms.
One of the Victorians' favourite
landscape painters was born in Suffolk,
and worked here much of his life.
And we still love his work today.
I'm alighting at Manningtree
on the Essex/Suffolk border,
one of England's smallest market towns.
Whose warm-hearted scenes attracted
Victorians with magnetic force.
And Constable fans.
- Yes. A lot of Japanese turn up.
(Michael) Really? So Constable's
still doing his bit for tourism?
Indeed.
After all these years of his death.
Very nice to see you. Bye.
- Thank you. Bye.
So, here is a sight that I know so well
from having seen the painting
The Hay Wain so often,
and yet it's so
unbelievably unchanged.
The wagon is stuck in
the middle of the river there,
the buildings look much the same.
It takes your breath away.
My guide here is Mark Cable
from the National Trust.
I thought I was prepared for all this,
having seen the paintings before,
but this is unbelievably beautiful.
And wonderfully unspoiled, isn't it?
(Mark) Unchanged for nearly 200 years.
This is the scene of
The Hay Wain painting, indeed.
Constable made many sketches
of Willy Lott's house
and the surrounding area.
And then put together
in his studio in London.
Three months before
Victoria came to the throne.
There are amateur artists.
I gather many Japanese come.
So that's actually freed up this area
to become what it is today,
did they like it
because it was romanticised?
They were starting to crave
the pictures of England as it was.
So there's a real kind of escapism.
- (Mark) Exactly.
People start to go back to Constable
and realise...
think of these times in fonder memories,
you know, of the countryside,
and we idealise it.
The new industrial conurbations
set Victorians yearning
to escape to the country.
As in so many things,
we feel the same today
and imitate their excursions.
But whilst I've got Mark here,
there's one more thing We always
wanted to know about “The Hay Wain“.
By the way, what is actually
going on in this painting?
Why is the wagon in the middle of the...
Well, there's a number of theories.
Some people think it's cooling down
the wheels here, the rims of the cart.
Other people have suggested
that it's stuck in the mill pond.
I don't think it's either.
I think what's happening is,
we've got some distant hay carts,
so it's travelling across here
to relieve this hay can
and come back with a load of hay.
But interestingly,
even that theory has its issues
because this is actually a log can.
The can was actually sketched by a chap
in the village called Johnny Dunthorne.
Constable requested that he sketch the
cart and send it back to him in London.
He didn't have enough detail
in his memory to recreate the can.
Again, it's possible
that Johnny Dunthorne sent him
a picture of the wrong can...
- (laughs)
that Constable had in mind.
We been a wonderful afternoon
in Constable country.
As the sun sets over this
curiously familiar landscape,
I make for the village of Dedham,
where Constable went to school
and where I'll stay the night.
The next day, my journey continues,
and Pm travelling
on the Mayflower line.
So called because the master
of the ship the Mayflower,
which in 1620 took
the pilgrims to America,
lived in the town
which is my next destination.
I'm on my way to Harwich,
which my Bradshaw's Guide tells me
"is built on a peninsula point of land
close to where the River Stour
joins the German Ocean
and has a number of
maritime advantages."
"it derives considerable profit
from its shipping trade, fisheries
and annual visitors."
Which is interesting because today, I
don't think of Harwich as a major port.
(announcement)
We have now arrived at Harwich Town.
(Michael) In Bradshaw's day,
the coming of the railways
had indeed made Harwich a booming port,
just an hour's journey
from London by train.
But today, it handles mainly
passenger ferries,
having been eclipsed by Felixstowe
just across the River Stour.
Felixstowe's better railway connections
and the invention of
the container in the 1960s
made it the economical choice
for shipping lines.
Felixstowe docks have grown rapidly,
doubling in size every ten years.
We now the largest
container port in the UK,
and one of the biggest in Europe.
I'm setting out from Harwich
on a pilot boat with Captain /an Mace,
Deputy Harbour Master,
to gain an idea
of Felixstowe's vast scale.
Ian, I've never been this close to
one of these container ships as this.
I'm looking down the length of it,
it's absolutely enormous.
Any idea what lengths these get to?
The biggest ones that we have coming
into the Haven are 397 metres long.
So, it's a fairly substantial size.
And over 10,000
20ft containers on board.
(Michael) 10,000 containers on board?
- Yes.
The thing that I see on the back of a
lorry, 10,000 of those on a single ship?
Yes, exactly.
The advent of the freight container,
the box that changed Britain,
means that everything
you can buy on the High Street,
from food and clothes
to electronics and furniture,
arrives on container ships
for sate throughout the United Kingdom.
Astoundingly, ifs estimated that our
shops would start to run out of food
in three days
if Felixstowe docks were closed.
So, give me an idea of how many
of these vessels come to Felixstowe.
In a year, there's about
10,000 movements within the Haven.
In busy times, we can have half-a-dozen
to ten vessels of this similar size
at anchor,
waiting to come into the port.
A bit like aeroplanes stacking
to go into an airport.
These staggering consignments
of containers,
over three million in a year,
come in by sea,
and are then directed around the UK.
Port manager Paul Davey
can give me an idea
of how the importance of railways today
compares with Bradshaw's time.
What I see here is that you're
putting containers onto vehicles,
but please tell me
that you still use railways.
We do. We use rail extensively.
We have more freight trains going from
this port to more destinations in the UK
than any other port.
We have two rail terminals
at the moment.
We're building a third one to
increase further the capacity for rail.
Is this as big as Felixstowe will get?
This is the first phase
of a development,
which will eventually see the
quay here lengthen still further.
We've also got potential
to expand in Harwich,
just on the other side of the river.
You can expand in Harwich?
There's quite a nice symmetry here
because Harwich, over the years,
lost out to Felixstowe.
Now Felixstowe's so big
that it may have to
transfer pan of the business
back to Harwich.
In Victorian Britain,
the railways were pan of
an extensive and efficient network
that sped up delivery times
from dockside to market place.
Thousands of dock workers
worked long hours in all weathers
to unload vessels onto rail wagons,
with small cranes, winches
and sheer brute force.
Things today are rather different.
As Andy Lambert is about to teach me
in a modem dock crane.
I'll just line up over this box,
then I'll let you have a go if you like.
The cranes, the largest
of their type in the world,
are the workhorses of the dock.
Loading and unloading ships,
trains and lames.
(Michael) So, you've lined us up
over the container.
(Andy) That's right.
- What next?
With your right-hand side,
just bring it up nice and gently
Pull it up nice and gently.
There we go.
(Michael) Box coming up.
Beads of sweat coming on my brow here
as I concentrate on this.
Down it goes.
Don't go away, Andy. Don't go away.
(Andy) That's it. Little bit more.
Little bit more. Little bit more.
That's lovely there.
Then just lift your frame up.
By pulling back?
- That's right, yeah.
I'm getting the hang of this.
- (Andy) Absolutely.
(Michael) And off goes the vehicle.
(Andy)
Now we've just got another 25 to do.
(Michael laughs)
Thank you. Fantastic lesson.
Really enjoyed that.
- (Andy) Thanks a lot.
- (Michael) Bye-bye.
After Andy and his colleagues
have unloaded a few thousand containers
from each ship, more than a quarter
go onto freight trains
leaving Felixstowe 28 times a day.
So I don't have to wait long to be able
to depart on one of the freight trains.
And now for something really exciting.
A ride in a brand-new,
highly powerful Class 70 locomotive
pulling 30 wagons behind.
The engine is pulling 1,335 tonnes,
substituting for
a very large number of tomes
that would otherwise throng our roads.
Much though I love passenger trains,
nothing gives you the feeling of power
like a freight locomotive.
And we're heading down
the single-track line
that George Tomline pioneered
more than a century ago.
Nowadays, for international travel,
most of us think of planes,
rather than boats.
But as far as freight is concerned,
the vast majority of our imports,
like the ones that we're towing
on the back of this train,
still come by sea.
And in that respect,
our world is not so very different
from George Bradshaws.
On the next Keg of my journey,
I'll be coming face-to-face
with a medieval politician...
Goodness, that is grotesque.
sharing the Victorians' fascination
with the freakishly stout...
Bags, you're on our team.
How many have we got?
and journeying overseas on one of
the world's first electric railways.
This is a great thrill.
I used to come as a child.
I've never been in a cab before.