Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 3, Episode 6 - Windsor to Didcot - 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.
Before setting out today,
I'd already explored half the country
using my Bradshaw's Guide.
I found it so enlightening that I can't
wait to discover the second half.
Now I embark on a route
that lured Queen Victoria herself
to risk her royal dignity
by climbing aboard a train.
Today I'll be visiting
a Victorian station fit for a queen...
This is where the Queen would sit
and wait for her train.
Oh! Here is the seat of power.
Examining an engineering triumph
of the railway age...
It has the most fabulous echo,
which is caused by its elliptical shape.
Brunei!
- (echoes)
- Very good.
And using a Victorian invention
that revolutionised the postal service.
(man yells)
Using my "Bradshaw's Guide", I'm
following in Queen Victoria's footsteps,
travelling through
Berkshire and Hampshire
towards her beloved home
on the Isle of Wight.
Then I'll follow the coast,
through the seaside resorts
of Bournemouth and Weymouth,
finishing up on the Isle of Portland.
Today's stretch begins in Royal Windsor,
then takes me west,
through Maidenhead and on to Didcot.
Writing of Windsor, my first stop,
"Bradshaw's" tells me the chief
attractions are the castle and park,
the seat of Her Majesty the Queen.
(tannoy) Our next station
is Windsor & Eton Central.
The advent of the train
enabled Queen Victoria,
much more quickly
than any of her predecessors,
to visit her realm, to view her subjects
and to vary her residences.
This is Windsor, a town of great
significance to royals and rails.
Arriving into Windsor & Eton Central,
the station makes
a rather modest first impression.
But in Bradshaw's day,
this was one of Britain's grandest.
Pm meeting local historian
Brigitte Mitchell
to explore the terminus
built on Queen Victoria's doorstep.
- Hello, Brigitte.
- Hello, Michael.
- Welcome to Windsor Royal Station.
- It's a fantastic station.
It is. It's wonderful.
(Michael) We're standing
in front of a beautiful locomotive.
Obviously with the Queen's coat of arms.
This is a replica of the locomotive
that pulled the train
to Windsor at her Diamond Jubilee.
It was built in 1894.
The whole station was rebuilt
for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
That's why we've got the Jubilee Arch
outside the station.
(Michael) Which explains
the size of the station.
Now it's just one little platform,
one tiny train
that comes into this vast area.
It had six platforms. It was huge.
When Queen Victoria
came to the throne in 1837,
passenger railways were already
spreading fast across the country,
but it was some years
before she braved the trains.
Initially, she had the same fear
that a lot of people had,
that if you go faster than a horse could
carry you, your body would disintegrate.
Eventually she was persuaded by Albert
that she would accept a train journey
and get around her kingdom
a little bit faster.
The young Queen took the plunge in 1842.
Before long,
she had fully embraced rail travel.
This was one of two stations
built in Windsor,
both used extensively by the Queen.
And over the course of her reign
a number of royal trains,
complete with luxurious
private carriages,
were built especially for her.
One of the things that strikes me
is that the great period
of railway building
coincides almost exactly
with the Queen's life.
It does. The Queen in later life
used trains extensively.
She went from here
every time she came to Windsor,
or left Windsor. She used the trains.
Of course, her last journey
was by train to Windsor in her coffin.
Its remarkable to think
that by the time Queen Victoria died,
the technology she'd initially feared
had become so respectable that it was
employed in her state funeral.
Nowadays, most of the station has been
converted into a shopping centre,
but traces can still be scene
of the luxurious facilities
provided for Bradshaw's Queen.
It's not easy for me to orient myself
inside this modern bar. Where are we?
You're standing on the railway line.
I'm on the platform.
The Queen would step out
of her waiting room there
straight onto her train here.
And this is
the magnificent waiting room.
Over there.
(Michael) So this has been
quite nicely preserved.
It's beautiful.
It's still almost as it was.
This is where the Queen would sit
and wait for her train.
I don't think
she'd be sitting here long.
(Michael) Roaring fire.
(Brigitte) Beautiful fireplace.
And the old mirrors there.
And a beautiful dome up there.
Very lovely.
And in here you've got the royal loo
and the royal hand wash basin.
Oh!
And here is the seat of power.
And this, I suppose, the royal flush.
(toilet flushes)
This station couldn't be more convenient
for the royal castle,
which has dominated the town
for 900 years.
Bradshaw says of Windsor Castle,
"It's history is the history
of our country."
"Some of its brightest and blackest
pages are inseparably linked
with the towers that arrest
the eye of the traveller."
"No Briton can view unmoved
the stately towers
of Windsor's Castle Keep."
This isn't a guidebook. It's literature.
It was Queen Victoria who first opened
the castle to the public in 1845.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" also tells
Victorian tourists where to buy tickets,
and even provides a suggested tour.
The castle is still
hugely popular today,
receiving one million visitors a year.
- Hello.
- Hello.
- How is the tourist trade?
- It's picking up now. Picking up.
My guidebook,
which is from the 19th century,
says that the history of England
is the history of the castle,
and that no Englishman
can look at this castle unmoved.
- Do you agree with that?
- I agree with that totally.
- How does it move you?
- It's so big.
It's vast. You could spend a week
in there and not see everything.
Strangely enough, there are people that
live in Windsor that haven't been in.
And people all around the world
come to see it.
- (Michael) Do you still go inside?
- Well, if I get the time.
- Have a great day.
- Thank you, sir.
- Enjoy the sunshine.
- Bye-bye.
The new railways allowed tourists
to flock to Windsor
in unprecedented numbers.
But just across the river,
there was an institution which
strongly disapproved of this invasion.
Even after Prince Albert
had persuaded Queen Victoria
to give her royal seal of approval
to the railways,
there remained one part
of the British establishment,
almost as powerful as the monarchy
itself, that maintained its objection.
Eton College.
Eton's reputation
as one of Britain's elite schools
was already firmly established
in Bradshaw's day,
and its old-boy network
was a formidable force in public life.
My guide directs me to the quadrangle,
where I'll find the founder's bronze
statue, the chapel and upper school.
And its where Pm meeting
the headmaster, Tony Little.
I'm following a 19th-century guidebook.
Can you give me any idea of what Eton
College was like in the 19th century?
In the early 19th century, at the time
of the development of the railways,
it was a robust and physical place.
In the beginning of the century, my
predecessor was a man called Dr Keate,
who was infamous, and rather splendid
in a grotesque kind of way.
He was known as the great flogger.
There are some wonderful stories
about him.
My favourite is that on one afternoon
he became so fed up with the boys
that he decided to flog the whole lot,
and he did.
At the beginning,
boys were howling and jeering,
but by the end they were cheering him
for the physical effort
of managing to beat
all these characters.
19-century Eton was a conservative
institution, steeped in tradition.
But the changes brought
by the Industrial Revolution
threatened the status quo.
I've heard that the college
was very much opposed to the railways
when they were first mooted
back in the 1830s.
I think that's something
of an understatement.
There seemed to be a vehemence about the
way they approached the awful prospect
of this new technology
invading their lives.
What was so worrying about a railway?
When I first heard about this,
I'd assumed it would be
the school authorities
exercised about
the invasion of immorality and vice
from the outside world. But it doesn't
seem to have been that one jot.
It appears that the school was terrified
about what the boys would get up to.
In the late 1830s,
the headmaster was a Dr Hawtrey.
He ran a passionate
anti-railway campaign,
highlighting the dangers
to pupils and public alike.
In his deposition to the
House of Lords Commission in 1835,
Dr Hawtrey cites that, boys being boys,
will inevitably throw stones at railway
carriages and pick fights with navvies
and all kinds of things.
It's the most unflattering picture
of the relationship
between schoolmasters and boys
in the sense that there appears to be
no trust in them whatsoever.
Eton couldn't resist progress forever.
But even once the railway companies
had won the right to build,
the school maintained its opposition.
By this time,
the Great Western Railway is a fact.
Slough Station is a fact.
The issue at stake here
is the line to link Slough to Windsor.
These maps reveal how the college
had the branch line rerouted.
This is the original intention,
the original map.
From Windsor, tracing through Eton,
quite close to the High Street,
then kinking and on its way to Slough.
- (Michael) Is this what happened?
- No.
What happened, as you can see on
this map here, is altogether different.
There's a vast loop,
taking it as far as possible from Eton,
before it then joins the original line.
That is a very remarkable curve.
The Eton kink.
It's certainly distinctive.
The line still follows
the same curving path today.
We extraordinary to think that the
Eton establishment was powerful enough
to send Queen Victoria herself
out of her way
when she took the train to London.
I'm back at Windsor Station.
In the 1880s,
this was the scene of a desperate act
by one of her more unfortunate subjects.
Queen Victoria might never
have warmed to the railways
had she known that one day,
a man called Roderick McLean
would fire a gun at her at this station.
McLean would spend
the next 50 years in Broadmoor,
because, clearly,
to shoot at such a lovely monarch,
in such a beautiful railway station,
was a sign of complete insanity.
I'm now on my way to Slough,
where the Windsor branch
meets the Great Western main line.
In the early 1800s,
Slough was barely more than a village.
But within 50 years
of the arrival of the railways,
the population had trebled.
By the 20th century, though, ugly
development had given Slough a bad name.
The poet John Betjeman once wrote,
"Come, friendly bombs,
and fall on Slough!"
"It isn't fit for humans now."
There's an irony there, because John
Betjeman was a great lover of railways,
and the man who saved
St Pancras station.
If he'd had his way,
and those bombs had fallen,
we would have lost this magnificent
red-brick version of a French chateau.
The new railway fuelled
a building boom in Slough.
One of the most ambitious developments
was a luxury housing estate, Upton Park.
Local builder and entrepreneur
James Bedborough
realised that Slough's fast rail links
made it an ideal spot for wealthy
Londoners looking to escape the city,
and a suburban paradise was created.
Local historian Elias Kupfermann
has been researching the story.
So, people found it convenient
and prestigious to live here.
Very, very convenient,
as can be seen from this advert,
where it says here you could
get to London within 35 minutes.
(Michael) "Messrs Daniel Smith and son
beg to announce
to capitalists, spirited builders
and anyone desirous
of securing a site for a residence
in one of the most treasured spots,
now within 35 minutes' journey
of London."
"now within 35 minutes'..."
The railway clearly had just arrived.
Those who lived at Upton Park were a
far cry from today's suburban commuters.
Bedborough's vision was for an exclusive
retreat for the Victorian A fist,
complete with its own pleasure grounds,
but just half an hour by train
from the capital.
The houses were built by Benjamin Baud.
He was an architect for Windsor Castle.
These houses were 11-bedroom houses.
They had a whole retinue of servants.
These are not necessarily merchants
or City workers,
these are people
able to afford a fine house
but who would like to be able to attend
the metropolis from time to time.
In the 20th century, most of the
grand houses were convened into flats
and the grounds became a public park
falling into decline.
But thanks to Elias
and other local volunteers,
ifs now been restored
to its former elegance.
(Elias) What we were trying to do
is get the park back to what it was like
in the Victorian period.
We even went as far
as bringing in an archaeologist
to find the original pathways
which you see today.
So really, what I see
from my bedroom window now
is glimpses of the Victorian park.
- A Victorian view.
- Yes.
If this beautiful green park
wasn't your idea of Slough,
and I confess, it wasn't mine,
then we should be ashamed of ourselves.
We have done an injustice
to this fine Berkshire town.
At the time my guidebook was written,
the area around Slough
was still predominantly rural,
and "Bradshaw's" writes of the "lofty
and luxuriant foliage of Stoke Park,
about two miles to the right of Slough."
As so often, I've turned to Bradshaw's
for a recommendation for where to stay.
"In Stoke Park, the seat of the Penns,
descended from the founder
of Pennsylvania,
are some remains of an old house which
belonged to Coke, the great lawyer."
"Portraits etcetera
are in the present mansion."
Edward Coke famously tried Guy Fawkes
and the gunpowder plotters,
and apparently also coined the phrase
"an Englishman's home is his castle".
And that sounds suitably luxurious
for me.
- Good evening, Mr Portillo.
- Good evening.
- Welcome to Stoke Park.
- Thank you.
You'll be in the Coke Suite.
That's upstairs on the first floor.
Thank you. Named after the great lawyer.
- Certainly is. Enjoy your stay.
- I'm sure I will. Thank you.
A beautiful morning and the allure of
Slough Station has beckoned me back,
and now it's on to the wonders
of Maidenhead and Didcot.
Pm now heading west,
along a line which, in Bradshaw's day,
was part of the Great Western Railway.
I'm excited about the route ahead.
My Bradshaw's Guide
mentions that the railway spans,
by a bridge of ten arches,
the River Thames.
Like much else on the Great Western
Railway, it's a piece of work by Brunei.
And you and I have probably
been over it countless times
without realising
what a beautiful bridge it is.
The spectacular red-brick bridge
spans the Thames
just before Maidenhead station,
where I'm leaving the train.
To the river!
Richard Pode,
from the local heritage centre,
has invited me onto a boat to take
a closer look at Brunel's bridge.
Good morning.
Welcome to Riverside, Maidenhead.
Thank you. Permission to come aboard?
- Certainly, sir.
- Thank you very much.
Isambard Kingdom Brunei
was appointed chief engineer
of the Great Western Railway in 1833,
when he was just 27 years old.
One of his greatest achievements
was finding a way to cross the Thames.
Richard, what strikes me,
having crossed the bridge,
is it's not so much beautiful,
but very impressive.
Huge, huge spans.
(Richard) The biggest spans ever made
in brick, certainly in Britain,
and probably in the world.
And a really daring feat of engineering.
It's fabulous.
Brunei's bold design
was initially inspired by necessity.
The local authorities
imposed strict restrictions
on the kind of bridge
that they would allow.
(Richard) We have to remember
that the Thames was a trading highway
before the railway came.
They said to him,
"You cannot block up the navigation
channel with traditional little arches."
So he had to leap across the river
in two bounds.
No one had ever constructed arches
so wide before.
And while Brunel was confident of his
skill, not everyone was so convinced.
His critics just bashed away,
saying, "it will not stand up,
it's impossible."
"You cannot build a structure like this
out of tiddly little bricks."
Even once the bridge was complete,
the Great Western Railway
feared that it might not withstand
the weight of a train, and ordered
Brunei to keep the scaffolding in place,
just in case.
(Richard) Brunei decided to play
a little trick on them.
He left the wooden scaffolding
in position,
but he lowered it ever so slightly,
so it wasn't doing any work at all.
He left it there through a winter.
That was the intention.
But in the middle of the winter
there was a horrendous storm,
and one night
all this wooden scaffolding
blew out from under the bridge
and floated down the river to Bray.
The bridge has been here
for 170 years, perfect.
The bridge was a vital link
on the new Great Western main line,
transforming life
for the people of Maidenhead.
Like many towns on the Bath Road,
it was a coaching town,
totally dependent
on coaches and horses.
Suddenly, the railway arrived
and the town went bust,
so it had to reinvent itself.
It reinvented itself
in the second half of the 19th century
as an elegant and ultimately fashionable
riverside resort,
where all the beautiful people came
and all the hoi polloi
came to look at the beautiful people.
It was such a scene that, in fact,
the ordinary people
used to come on excursion trains
on Brunel's railway from London to stand
on the banks of the river in Maidenhead
and look at the beautiful people.
So the effect, actually,
was the making of Maidenhead.
The population went up five times
in the second half of the 19th century
on the basis of
rapid communication to London.
The river is still crowded
with rowers and pleasure boats today.
Many stop beneath the bridge
to checkout a quirk of Brunel's design.
(Richard) Brunel's bridge
is known locally as the Sounding Arch.
It has the most fabulous echo,
which is caused by its elliptical shape.
If we sit here in the middle
of the river and shout,
you should get quite a good echo.
Have a go.
What shall we shout? Brunei!
- (echoes)
- (Richard) Very good. Well done.
With Brunel's name ringing in my ears,
its back to the station
to continue my journey.
I'm travelling west,
in pursuit of an invention that changed
communications in Victorian Britain.
Of course, the coming of the train
didn't just make it easier
for the monarch to get about.
It also made it quicker
for freight and her subjects,
and for newspapers and letters, too.
It was transformatory.
I understand that a good place
to learn more about
that revolution in data is Didcot.
Today,
Didcot's a busy junction station.
But that's not what I'm here to see.
I'm under Didcot Parkway Station.
This is the one way through
to one of Britain's
largest railway heritage sites.
A son of railway preservation paradise.
In the age of steam,
Didcot housed engine sheds
where locomotives were made ready.
When they fell into disuse
in the 20th century,
the site was taken over
by the Great Western Society,
and ifs now home to
their remarkable collection.
It feels to me like walking into the
books that I read when I was a child.
Thomas the Tank Engine
and all that son of thing.
Here is all the infrastructure
and the paraphernalia
of the world of railways
as it used to be.
In Bradshaw's day,
all this was cutting-edge technology.
It was soon to change
the postal service radically.
Before the railways, post was conveyed
by horse-drawn mail coach.
Travelling at just ten miles an hour,
it could take days for a letter
to reach the other end of the country.
It was obvious that the railways
could speed up the post,
and an invention of 1838
revolutionised the mail.
Centre manager Roger Orchard
is going to show me how.
- Roger.
- Michael.
- Nice to see you.
- Nice to meet you. Thank you.
I think this is the bit of kit
I've come to see.
It very much is.
This is the travelling mail apparatus.
Travelling Post Office
mail exchange apparatus.
That means that as a train whooshes by,
a mail bag is delivered into it.
- That's right.
- How does the train grab it?
Is it a big metal hook?
(Roger) It's basically a big
mesh netting that swings out.
The postal men inside the carriages
will throw the mail apparatus out,
ready to collect the bags up.
This ingenious system meant that mail
could be dropped off and picked up
at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour.
It saved the trains having to stop
at each of the stations
and the mailbags being exchanged,
so the trains could travel at high speed
throughout their journey,
collecting the mailbags,
and the mail being sorted en route.
So the overall journey time
and the delivery time of the letters
was greatly reduced.
Soon, Travelling Post Office trains
were criss-crossing the country,
carrying postal workers
who sorted the mail on the move.
- First division, coming over.
- And again, Bill.
Harry, second division!
The Victorian apparatus
continued to be used until 1971.
And mail trains survived
into the 21st century.
Sadly, they're how a thing of the past.
But Didcot volunteer Oliver Collins
is going to snow me one in action.
- This is the apparatus?
- Yep.
You have two types of apparatus
on the coach.
You have the drop-off and the pick-up.
(Michael) Very good.
We'll have a go at this.
- Yes.
- What's my role?
I'll get you to do the net.
Nice and simple job.
Oh, yeah.
- Stand here. Like this.
- Yes.
On there. In one motion...
- (Michael) Whoa! Oh, my goodness.
- Put your foot on the back.
- The net comes out.
- Right. OK. The net is indeed out.
(Oliver) Once the exchange has happened,
somebody will clear the bags
out of the net.
Shout, "Net!", as in "net clear",
and then it's on there to release it.
And up in one movement.
If I get this wrong,
what are the dangers attached to this?
- Mailbags may not be collected.
- Yeah.
If you don't bring it in in time,
you could rip the side of the coach off.
- So there's not much hanging on this?
- No, not really.
We time for me to step into the shoes
of a Victorian postal worker.
(Oliver) Get ready on the lever.
(Oliver shouts)
(Oliver) Net!
That was pretty exciting. Did it work?
- Yep. All three bags in. Nice and safe.
- Fantastic.
- And all the train is still intact?
- Yes.
Throwing my weight
into working the mail train
has brought home
just how exciting and shocking
are the speed and power
of steam locomotives.
"This is the Night Mail
crossing the border
Bringing the cheque
and the postal order."
Ever since I learnt that poem as a kid,
I've known something
about Travelling Post Offices.
But I didn't know the history
of Queen Victoria and the trains.
The railways changed so much
for both the royals and the mails.
On the next leg of my journey, I'll be
tasting a Victorian superfood...
You've got a basket of the stuff here.
That lovely tangy mustardy taste.
Discovering an industrial process
unchanged since Bradshaw's day...
So all of that is happening by a process
that started with water wheel.
- (man) Yes.
- Brilliant.
And experiencing life
as a 19th-century train driver.
I love that rhythm of the steam engine.
- The engine is talking to you.
- Absolutely.
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.
Before setting out today,
I'd already explored half the country
using my Bradshaw's Guide.
I found it so enlightening that I can't
wait to discover the second half.
Now I embark on a route
that lured Queen Victoria herself
to risk her royal dignity
by climbing aboard a train.
Today I'll be visiting
a Victorian station fit for a queen...
This is where the Queen would sit
and wait for her train.
Oh! Here is the seat of power.
Examining an engineering triumph
of the railway age...
It has the most fabulous echo,
which is caused by its elliptical shape.
Brunei!
- (echoes)
- Very good.
And using a Victorian invention
that revolutionised the postal service.
(man yells)
Using my "Bradshaw's Guide", I'm
following in Queen Victoria's footsteps,
travelling through
Berkshire and Hampshire
towards her beloved home
on the Isle of Wight.
Then I'll follow the coast,
through the seaside resorts
of Bournemouth and Weymouth,
finishing up on the Isle of Portland.
Today's stretch begins in Royal Windsor,
then takes me west,
through Maidenhead and on to Didcot.
Writing of Windsor, my first stop,
"Bradshaw's" tells me the chief
attractions are the castle and park,
the seat of Her Majesty the Queen.
(tannoy) Our next station
is Windsor & Eton Central.
The advent of the train
enabled Queen Victoria,
much more quickly
than any of her predecessors,
to visit her realm, to view her subjects
and to vary her residences.
This is Windsor, a town of great
significance to royals and rails.
Arriving into Windsor & Eton Central,
the station makes
a rather modest first impression.
But in Bradshaw's day,
this was one of Britain's grandest.
Pm meeting local historian
Brigitte Mitchell
to explore the terminus
built on Queen Victoria's doorstep.
- Hello, Brigitte.
- Hello, Michael.
- Welcome to Windsor Royal Station.
- It's a fantastic station.
It is. It's wonderful.
(Michael) We're standing
in front of a beautiful locomotive.
Obviously with the Queen's coat of arms.
This is a replica of the locomotive
that pulled the train
to Windsor at her Diamond Jubilee.
It was built in 1894.
The whole station was rebuilt
for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.
That's why we've got the Jubilee Arch
outside the station.
(Michael) Which explains
the size of the station.
Now it's just one little platform,
one tiny train
that comes into this vast area.
It had six platforms. It was huge.
When Queen Victoria
came to the throne in 1837,
passenger railways were already
spreading fast across the country,
but it was some years
before she braved the trains.
Initially, she had the same fear
that a lot of people had,
that if you go faster than a horse could
carry you, your body would disintegrate.
Eventually she was persuaded by Albert
that she would accept a train journey
and get around her kingdom
a little bit faster.
The young Queen took the plunge in 1842.
Before long,
she had fully embraced rail travel.
This was one of two stations
built in Windsor,
both used extensively by the Queen.
And over the course of her reign
a number of royal trains,
complete with luxurious
private carriages,
were built especially for her.
One of the things that strikes me
is that the great period
of railway building
coincides almost exactly
with the Queen's life.
It does. The Queen in later life
used trains extensively.
She went from here
every time she came to Windsor,
or left Windsor. She used the trains.
Of course, her last journey
was by train to Windsor in her coffin.
Its remarkable to think
that by the time Queen Victoria died,
the technology she'd initially feared
had become so respectable that it was
employed in her state funeral.
Nowadays, most of the station has been
converted into a shopping centre,
but traces can still be scene
of the luxurious facilities
provided for Bradshaw's Queen.
It's not easy for me to orient myself
inside this modern bar. Where are we?
You're standing on the railway line.
I'm on the platform.
The Queen would step out
of her waiting room there
straight onto her train here.
And this is
the magnificent waiting room.
Over there.
(Michael) So this has been
quite nicely preserved.
It's beautiful.
It's still almost as it was.
This is where the Queen would sit
and wait for her train.
I don't think
she'd be sitting here long.
(Michael) Roaring fire.
(Brigitte) Beautiful fireplace.
And the old mirrors there.
And a beautiful dome up there.
Very lovely.
And in here you've got the royal loo
and the royal hand wash basin.
Oh!
And here is the seat of power.
And this, I suppose, the royal flush.
(toilet flushes)
This station couldn't be more convenient
for the royal castle,
which has dominated the town
for 900 years.
Bradshaw says of Windsor Castle,
"It's history is the history
of our country."
"Some of its brightest and blackest
pages are inseparably linked
with the towers that arrest
the eye of the traveller."
"No Briton can view unmoved
the stately towers
of Windsor's Castle Keep."
This isn't a guidebook. It's literature.
It was Queen Victoria who first opened
the castle to the public in 1845.
My "Bradshaw's Guide" also tells
Victorian tourists where to buy tickets,
and even provides a suggested tour.
The castle is still
hugely popular today,
receiving one million visitors a year.
- Hello.
- Hello.
- How is the tourist trade?
- It's picking up now. Picking up.
My guidebook,
which is from the 19th century,
says that the history of England
is the history of the castle,
and that no Englishman
can look at this castle unmoved.
- Do you agree with that?
- I agree with that totally.
- How does it move you?
- It's so big.
It's vast. You could spend a week
in there and not see everything.
Strangely enough, there are people that
live in Windsor that haven't been in.
And people all around the world
come to see it.
- (Michael) Do you still go inside?
- Well, if I get the time.
- Have a great day.
- Thank you, sir.
- Enjoy the sunshine.
- Bye-bye.
The new railways allowed tourists
to flock to Windsor
in unprecedented numbers.
But just across the river,
there was an institution which
strongly disapproved of this invasion.
Even after Prince Albert
had persuaded Queen Victoria
to give her royal seal of approval
to the railways,
there remained one part
of the British establishment,
almost as powerful as the monarchy
itself, that maintained its objection.
Eton College.
Eton's reputation
as one of Britain's elite schools
was already firmly established
in Bradshaw's day,
and its old-boy network
was a formidable force in public life.
My guide directs me to the quadrangle,
where I'll find the founder's bronze
statue, the chapel and upper school.
And its where Pm meeting
the headmaster, Tony Little.
I'm following a 19th-century guidebook.
Can you give me any idea of what Eton
College was like in the 19th century?
In the early 19th century, at the time
of the development of the railways,
it was a robust and physical place.
In the beginning of the century, my
predecessor was a man called Dr Keate,
who was infamous, and rather splendid
in a grotesque kind of way.
He was known as the great flogger.
There are some wonderful stories
about him.
My favourite is that on one afternoon
he became so fed up with the boys
that he decided to flog the whole lot,
and he did.
At the beginning,
boys were howling and jeering,
but by the end they were cheering him
for the physical effort
of managing to beat
all these characters.
19-century Eton was a conservative
institution, steeped in tradition.
But the changes brought
by the Industrial Revolution
threatened the status quo.
I've heard that the college
was very much opposed to the railways
when they were first mooted
back in the 1830s.
I think that's something
of an understatement.
There seemed to be a vehemence about the
way they approached the awful prospect
of this new technology
invading their lives.
What was so worrying about a railway?
When I first heard about this,
I'd assumed it would be
the school authorities
exercised about
the invasion of immorality and vice
from the outside world. But it doesn't
seem to have been that one jot.
It appears that the school was terrified
about what the boys would get up to.
In the late 1830s,
the headmaster was a Dr Hawtrey.
He ran a passionate
anti-railway campaign,
highlighting the dangers
to pupils and public alike.
In his deposition to the
House of Lords Commission in 1835,
Dr Hawtrey cites that, boys being boys,
will inevitably throw stones at railway
carriages and pick fights with navvies
and all kinds of things.
It's the most unflattering picture
of the relationship
between schoolmasters and boys
in the sense that there appears to be
no trust in them whatsoever.
Eton couldn't resist progress forever.
But even once the railway companies
had won the right to build,
the school maintained its opposition.
By this time,
the Great Western Railway is a fact.
Slough Station is a fact.
The issue at stake here
is the line to link Slough to Windsor.
These maps reveal how the college
had the branch line rerouted.
This is the original intention,
the original map.
From Windsor, tracing through Eton,
quite close to the High Street,
then kinking and on its way to Slough.
- (Michael) Is this what happened?
- No.
What happened, as you can see on
this map here, is altogether different.
There's a vast loop,
taking it as far as possible from Eton,
before it then joins the original line.
That is a very remarkable curve.
The Eton kink.
It's certainly distinctive.
The line still follows
the same curving path today.
We extraordinary to think that the
Eton establishment was powerful enough
to send Queen Victoria herself
out of her way
when she took the train to London.
I'm back at Windsor Station.
In the 1880s,
this was the scene of a desperate act
by one of her more unfortunate subjects.
Queen Victoria might never
have warmed to the railways
had she known that one day,
a man called Roderick McLean
would fire a gun at her at this station.
McLean would spend
the next 50 years in Broadmoor,
because, clearly,
to shoot at such a lovely monarch,
in such a beautiful railway station,
was a sign of complete insanity.
I'm now on my way to Slough,
where the Windsor branch
meets the Great Western main line.
In the early 1800s,
Slough was barely more than a village.
But within 50 years
of the arrival of the railways,
the population had trebled.
By the 20th century, though, ugly
development had given Slough a bad name.
The poet John Betjeman once wrote,
"Come, friendly bombs,
and fall on Slough!"
"It isn't fit for humans now."
There's an irony there, because John
Betjeman was a great lover of railways,
and the man who saved
St Pancras station.
If he'd had his way,
and those bombs had fallen,
we would have lost this magnificent
red-brick version of a French chateau.
The new railway fuelled
a building boom in Slough.
One of the most ambitious developments
was a luxury housing estate, Upton Park.
Local builder and entrepreneur
James Bedborough
realised that Slough's fast rail links
made it an ideal spot for wealthy
Londoners looking to escape the city,
and a suburban paradise was created.
Local historian Elias Kupfermann
has been researching the story.
So, people found it convenient
and prestigious to live here.
Very, very convenient,
as can be seen from this advert,
where it says here you could
get to London within 35 minutes.
(Michael) "Messrs Daniel Smith and son
beg to announce
to capitalists, spirited builders
and anyone desirous
of securing a site for a residence
in one of the most treasured spots,
now within 35 minutes' journey
of London."
"now within 35 minutes'..."
The railway clearly had just arrived.
Those who lived at Upton Park were a
far cry from today's suburban commuters.
Bedborough's vision was for an exclusive
retreat for the Victorian A fist,
complete with its own pleasure grounds,
but just half an hour by train
from the capital.
The houses were built by Benjamin Baud.
He was an architect for Windsor Castle.
These houses were 11-bedroom houses.
They had a whole retinue of servants.
These are not necessarily merchants
or City workers,
these are people
able to afford a fine house
but who would like to be able to attend
the metropolis from time to time.
In the 20th century, most of the
grand houses were convened into flats
and the grounds became a public park
falling into decline.
But thanks to Elias
and other local volunteers,
ifs now been restored
to its former elegance.
(Elias) What we were trying to do
is get the park back to what it was like
in the Victorian period.
We even went as far
as bringing in an archaeologist
to find the original pathways
which you see today.
So really, what I see
from my bedroom window now
is glimpses of the Victorian park.
- A Victorian view.
- Yes.
If this beautiful green park
wasn't your idea of Slough,
and I confess, it wasn't mine,
then we should be ashamed of ourselves.
We have done an injustice
to this fine Berkshire town.
At the time my guidebook was written,
the area around Slough
was still predominantly rural,
and "Bradshaw's" writes of the "lofty
and luxuriant foliage of Stoke Park,
about two miles to the right of Slough."
As so often, I've turned to Bradshaw's
for a recommendation for where to stay.
"In Stoke Park, the seat of the Penns,
descended from the founder
of Pennsylvania,
are some remains of an old house which
belonged to Coke, the great lawyer."
"Portraits etcetera
are in the present mansion."
Edward Coke famously tried Guy Fawkes
and the gunpowder plotters,
and apparently also coined the phrase
"an Englishman's home is his castle".
And that sounds suitably luxurious
for me.
- Good evening, Mr Portillo.
- Good evening.
- Welcome to Stoke Park.
- Thank you.
You'll be in the Coke Suite.
That's upstairs on the first floor.
Thank you. Named after the great lawyer.
- Certainly is. Enjoy your stay.
- I'm sure I will. Thank you.
A beautiful morning and the allure of
Slough Station has beckoned me back,
and now it's on to the wonders
of Maidenhead and Didcot.
Pm now heading west,
along a line which, in Bradshaw's day,
was part of the Great Western Railway.
I'm excited about the route ahead.
My Bradshaw's Guide
mentions that the railway spans,
by a bridge of ten arches,
the River Thames.
Like much else on the Great Western
Railway, it's a piece of work by Brunei.
And you and I have probably
been over it countless times
without realising
what a beautiful bridge it is.
The spectacular red-brick bridge
spans the Thames
just before Maidenhead station,
where I'm leaving the train.
To the river!
Richard Pode,
from the local heritage centre,
has invited me onto a boat to take
a closer look at Brunel's bridge.
Good morning.
Welcome to Riverside, Maidenhead.
Thank you. Permission to come aboard?
- Certainly, sir.
- Thank you very much.
Isambard Kingdom Brunei
was appointed chief engineer
of the Great Western Railway in 1833,
when he was just 27 years old.
One of his greatest achievements
was finding a way to cross the Thames.
Richard, what strikes me,
having crossed the bridge,
is it's not so much beautiful,
but very impressive.
Huge, huge spans.
(Richard) The biggest spans ever made
in brick, certainly in Britain,
and probably in the world.
And a really daring feat of engineering.
It's fabulous.
Brunei's bold design
was initially inspired by necessity.
The local authorities
imposed strict restrictions
on the kind of bridge
that they would allow.
(Richard) We have to remember
that the Thames was a trading highway
before the railway came.
They said to him,
"You cannot block up the navigation
channel with traditional little arches."
So he had to leap across the river
in two bounds.
No one had ever constructed arches
so wide before.
And while Brunel was confident of his
skill, not everyone was so convinced.
His critics just bashed away,
saying, "it will not stand up,
it's impossible."
"You cannot build a structure like this
out of tiddly little bricks."
Even once the bridge was complete,
the Great Western Railway
feared that it might not withstand
the weight of a train, and ordered
Brunei to keep the scaffolding in place,
just in case.
(Richard) Brunei decided to play
a little trick on them.
He left the wooden scaffolding
in position,
but he lowered it ever so slightly,
so it wasn't doing any work at all.
He left it there through a winter.
That was the intention.
But in the middle of the winter
there was a horrendous storm,
and one night
all this wooden scaffolding
blew out from under the bridge
and floated down the river to Bray.
The bridge has been here
for 170 years, perfect.
The bridge was a vital link
on the new Great Western main line,
transforming life
for the people of Maidenhead.
Like many towns on the Bath Road,
it was a coaching town,
totally dependent
on coaches and horses.
Suddenly, the railway arrived
and the town went bust,
so it had to reinvent itself.
It reinvented itself
in the second half of the 19th century
as an elegant and ultimately fashionable
riverside resort,
where all the beautiful people came
and all the hoi polloi
came to look at the beautiful people.
It was such a scene that, in fact,
the ordinary people
used to come on excursion trains
on Brunel's railway from London to stand
on the banks of the river in Maidenhead
and look at the beautiful people.
So the effect, actually,
was the making of Maidenhead.
The population went up five times
in the second half of the 19th century
on the basis of
rapid communication to London.
The river is still crowded
with rowers and pleasure boats today.
Many stop beneath the bridge
to checkout a quirk of Brunel's design.
(Richard) Brunel's bridge
is known locally as the Sounding Arch.
It has the most fabulous echo,
which is caused by its elliptical shape.
If we sit here in the middle
of the river and shout,
you should get quite a good echo.
Have a go.
What shall we shout? Brunei!
- (echoes)
- (Richard) Very good. Well done.
With Brunel's name ringing in my ears,
its back to the station
to continue my journey.
I'm travelling west,
in pursuit of an invention that changed
communications in Victorian Britain.
Of course, the coming of the train
didn't just make it easier
for the monarch to get about.
It also made it quicker
for freight and her subjects,
and for newspapers and letters, too.
It was transformatory.
I understand that a good place
to learn more about
that revolution in data is Didcot.
Today,
Didcot's a busy junction station.
But that's not what I'm here to see.
I'm under Didcot Parkway Station.
This is the one way through
to one of Britain's
largest railway heritage sites.
A son of railway preservation paradise.
In the age of steam,
Didcot housed engine sheds
where locomotives were made ready.
When they fell into disuse
in the 20th century,
the site was taken over
by the Great Western Society,
and ifs now home to
their remarkable collection.
It feels to me like walking into the
books that I read when I was a child.
Thomas the Tank Engine
and all that son of thing.
Here is all the infrastructure
and the paraphernalia
of the world of railways
as it used to be.
In Bradshaw's day,
all this was cutting-edge technology.
It was soon to change
the postal service radically.
Before the railways, post was conveyed
by horse-drawn mail coach.
Travelling at just ten miles an hour,
it could take days for a letter
to reach the other end of the country.
It was obvious that the railways
could speed up the post,
and an invention of 1838
revolutionised the mail.
Centre manager Roger Orchard
is going to show me how.
- Roger.
- Michael.
- Nice to see you.
- Nice to meet you. Thank you.
I think this is the bit of kit
I've come to see.
It very much is.
This is the travelling mail apparatus.
Travelling Post Office
mail exchange apparatus.
That means that as a train whooshes by,
a mail bag is delivered into it.
- That's right.
- How does the train grab it?
Is it a big metal hook?
(Roger) It's basically a big
mesh netting that swings out.
The postal men inside the carriages
will throw the mail apparatus out,
ready to collect the bags up.
This ingenious system meant that mail
could be dropped off and picked up
at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour.
It saved the trains having to stop
at each of the stations
and the mailbags being exchanged,
so the trains could travel at high speed
throughout their journey,
collecting the mailbags,
and the mail being sorted en route.
So the overall journey time
and the delivery time of the letters
was greatly reduced.
Soon, Travelling Post Office trains
were criss-crossing the country,
carrying postal workers
who sorted the mail on the move.
- First division, coming over.
- And again, Bill.
Harry, second division!
The Victorian apparatus
continued to be used until 1971.
And mail trains survived
into the 21st century.
Sadly, they're how a thing of the past.
But Didcot volunteer Oliver Collins
is going to snow me one in action.
- This is the apparatus?
- Yep.
You have two types of apparatus
on the coach.
You have the drop-off and the pick-up.
(Michael) Very good.
We'll have a go at this.
- Yes.
- What's my role?
I'll get you to do the net.
Nice and simple job.
Oh, yeah.
- Stand here. Like this.
- Yes.
On there. In one motion...
- (Michael) Whoa! Oh, my goodness.
- Put your foot on the back.
- The net comes out.
- Right. OK. The net is indeed out.
(Oliver) Once the exchange has happened,
somebody will clear the bags
out of the net.
Shout, "Net!", as in "net clear",
and then it's on there to release it.
And up in one movement.
If I get this wrong,
what are the dangers attached to this?
- Mailbags may not be collected.
- Yeah.
If you don't bring it in in time,
you could rip the side of the coach off.
- So there's not much hanging on this?
- No, not really.
We time for me to step into the shoes
of a Victorian postal worker.
(Oliver) Get ready on the lever.
(Oliver shouts)
(Oliver) Net!
That was pretty exciting. Did it work?
- Yep. All three bags in. Nice and safe.
- Fantastic.
- And all the train is still intact?
- Yes.
Throwing my weight
into working the mail train
has brought home
just how exciting and shocking
are the speed and power
of steam locomotives.
"This is the Night Mail
crossing the border
Bringing the cheque
and the postal order."
Ever since I learnt that poem as a kid,
I've known something
about Travelling Post Offices.
But I didn't know the history
of Queen Victoria and the trains.
The railways changed so much
for both the royals and the mails.
On the next leg of my journey, I'll be
tasting a Victorian superfood...
You've got a basket of the stuff here.
That lovely tangy mustardy taste.
Discovering an industrial process
unchanged since Bradshaw's day...
So all of that is happening by a process
that started with water wheel.
- (man) Yes.
- Brilliant.
And experiencing life
as a 19th-century train driver.
I love that rhythm of the steam engine.
- The engine is talking to you.
- Absolutely.