Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 4, Episode 1 - High Wycombe to Stratford-Upon-Avon - full transcript
In 1840, one man transformed travel
in the British Isles.
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 these isles
to see what of Bradshaws Britain
remains.
I've embarked on a new journey
following the tracks of
Victorian entrepreneurs and travellers
along railways that were the arteries
to industrial England's
Black Country heartland.
And from there on to
the verdant beauties of Wales.
On today's stretch,
I'll meet the remarkable craftsmen
behind the Victorian furniture trade...
My dear bodger,
I believe that I have made a bodge.
Discover how George Bradshaw helped
to save Britain's canal heritage...
He inspired railway travellers
in the 19th century
and canal travellers in the 20th.
And see Shakespeare through the eyes
of a 19th-century railway tourist.
"Our revels now are ended."
- "These our actors."
- Bravo.
Starting in the rolling Chiltern Hills,
my guidebook will lead me through
Oxfordshire and Warwickshire
towards the industrial centres
of the Midlands.
Turning west, I'll experience
the stunning Severn Valley Railway
en route to mid Wales, and the Victorian
seaside resort of Aberystwyth.
Starting in High Wycombe,
this leg takes me Northwest
to one of the Victorians'
favourite spa towns,
before heading for
the heart of Shakespeare country.
My first stop will be High Wycombe,
seated deep in the Chiltern Hills.
My Bradshaw's says, "Wycombe is a
borough in Buckinghamshire on the Wyck."
"In the vicinity are many
corn and paper mills."
But the arrival of the trains here
in 1854
helped to furnish the town
with a new industry.
Trains puffed into High Wycombe
courtesy of the Wycombe Railway,
which linked the town
to Brunel's famous Great Western.
Today, ifs a popular commuter town,
and, indeed, even in the 19th century
the area attracted those who wanted to
live at a distance from the big smoke.
I've always wanted to come to
High Wycombe Station, seriously,
because near here was the country home
of one of my great heroes,
the Conservative Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli,
who had a very good relationship
with Queen Victoria,
mainly because he was a great flatterer.
By his own admission,
he laid it on with a trowel.
Queen Victoria did him
the extraordinary honour
of visiting her Prime Minister
at his home.
And imagine how gratified
he would have been
when he received Queen Victoria
at this very railway station.
When she arrived here in 1877,
the Queen was collected by carriage
and driven past an eye-catching display."
a giant arch
constructed from wooden chairs.
It was built in honour of an industry
which thrived here in the 19th century
thanks to a very special
kind of craftsman.
I'm going down to the woods today
to get a big surprise.
The exceptional tale of
the Chiltem chair badgers.
- Hello.
- Hello to you.
- Bit of a stranger in these woods.
- I'm sorry to interrupt your work.
I see you are Stuart King
of the Dodgers.
- (Stuart) Indeed, yes.
- What is a bodger?
A bodger, historically,
was a wood turner
who turned chair legs
for the High Wycombe chair industry,
mostly working in the woods
amongst his raw material,
which was usually the beech trees.
Why would you come to the woods
to do this work?
Much easier to take my simple equipment
like this to your raw material
than to take very heavy beech logs
perhaps many miles to a workshop.
Badgers have worked here
since at least the 18th century,
but their heyday
came in the railway age.
Train transport transformed
the High Wycombe chair industry.
It opened up new markets,
and sped up getting to those markets.
Before the railway, everything was taken
to London or the Midlands,
the south coast, by horse and can.
With the coming of the railways, they
were there within hours instead of days.
In the late 19th century,
there were 340 men at work in this area.
But by the 1960s,
the advent of electric powered lathes
had seen off the last of the badgers.
Thankfully, craft historian Stuart King
is keeping the skill alive,
which means mastering
the badgers key machine tool.
Well, this is the chair bodger's
pole lathe. There's the pole.
So I'm going to put a hollow here.
- That's magnificent.
- Do you think you could put one there?
- No!
- (they laugh)
- You put the tool on the rest first.
- Yeah.
So have you any idea,
when the industry was at its height,
how many chair legs
were being turned out?
Oh, enormous numbers.
If we take a pair of chair Dodgers,
they would produce maybe three gross
a week, a gross being 144 chair legs.
Fantastic output. My dear bodger,
I believe that I have made a bodge.
In fact, you've done pretty well.
I have to give you eight out of ten.
The badgers' finished
legs and stretchers
were destined to be incorporated into
High Wycombe's famous Windsor chairs.
Apparently, the name dates back to
before the arrival of the railway,
when the chairs were taken overland
to Windsor and then by river to London.
But by Bradshaws day,
over 4,700 chairs a day
were being carried
out of High Wycombe by rail.
Stuart Linford is amongst
the last of the town's chair makers.
- Stuart.
- Hello, sir!
- Welcome to Kitchener Works.
- Thank you. Lovely to be here.
- Is this a Victorian factory in origin?
- Absolutely right.
This was built in the 1890s
and it is the last working chair making
workshop left in High Wycombe,
sadly out of over 100.
High Wycombe's thriving factories
helped to meet the demand
from Britain's
rapidly expanding middle classes.
They flaunted their newfound status
by buying elegant furniture,
and the Windsor chair
was a firm favourite.
- And this is the famous Windsor chair.
- Absolutely.
What are its chief characteristics?
Right, it's got a solid wooden seat into
which the back and legs are socketed.
So the axis of construction is the seat.
These days, the legs and stretchers
are turned by machine, not by badgers.
But the method
for assembling the Windsor chair
remains unchanged since Victorian times.
This, Michael,
is the Windsor framing shop.
This is where we actually
make the Windsor chairs.
Stuart's going to demonstrate
just how quickly a framer
could make a chair in Bradshaw's day.
So this process is called legging up.
So that's a legged up base.
Now we've got to put the sticks in.
Amazing. This construction kit
just goes together in moments.
If I just grab that. Hand me
that lovely steam-bent component.
And that fits in there like that.
(Stuart) A finished Windsor chair.
Please have a seat.
Bravo. That's fantastic.
Sadly,
there's no time for me to sit around.
I'm continuing my journey along the
Chiltem mainline, heading Northwest.
We crossed the border from
Buckinghamshire into Oxfordshire,
where I'm seeking out the roots of
Britain's Victorian prosperity.
Next stop for me is Banbury.
Bradshaw's tells me that "the navigable
canal from Coventry to Oxford passes by
and is conveyed through a hill
by a tunnel three quarters of a mile
in length...
George Bradshaw began his career
by mapping canals,
and he may have been upset
that his beloved railways
eventually put them out of business.
In the Kate 18th century,
Britain's canals helped to launch
the Industrial Revolution,
transporting coal and other materials
faster than ever before.
Banbury soon found itself
on an important route
from the Midlands to London.
I've come to Tooley's historic boatyard
to hear the story
from director Matthew Armitage.
- Matthew.
- Oh, Michael, hello.
- Good to see you.
- And you.
A boatyard more than 220 years old.
That must be some kind of record.
Yeah, it's something pretty special,
isn't it?
The boatyard was built in 1788,
around the same time
as the Oxford Canal,
one of the major arteries
of the fledgling canal system.
It provided the final link in
an ambitious grand cross of waterways,
connecting up the rivers Mersey,
Trent, Severn and Thames.
The canal became very busy
and was actually the M40 of its time,
and transporting goods down to London,
pretty much connecting Coventry
down to the River Thames at Oxford.
When this canal was thriving,
what would the scene here have been?
Boats coming from all directions,
there's horses,
you'd have had a blacksmith
in the forge.
There'd be a hammer ringing where
they're making the horse shoes
and pans for the boats.
Soon, the Oxford canal
encountered competition,
when the Grand Junction canal
opened a more direct route
from the Midlands to Central London,
bypassing the Thames.
But before long
an even bigger rival emerged.
The canals must have faced intense
competition from the railways
- when they came along?
- That's right.
They actually used the canals
to transport all the goods and equipment
needed to build the railways.
Once the railways were built,
they filled them in afterwards,
stopping any competition, but that
wasn't the case of the Oxford canal.
It kept going, which was pretty amazing.
There's something special about it.
The boats plying the Oxford route
could stop off here for repairs,
and this boatyard continued to thrive
through the 19th century
and right up to today.
So we're in the bottom of the dry dock
now, you can see it's pretty dry.
Here we are.
We've got a boat, we're blacking it.
We're busy, so I think we could do
with a bit of a hand, really.
These days, ifs pleasure boats
that come here to be serviced.
After a period of decline
in the early 20th century,
Britain's canals had a revival
as a place of leisure.
And that story began with
a man called Tom Rolt,
who in 1939 bought himself
a dilapidated narrow boat.
- He brought his boat to the dry dock.
- To this very dry dock?
This very dry dock,
and it was repaired by the Tooleys.
He set up his boat and went on
a journey around the waterways.
During his time, he wrote a book,
Narrow Boat,
which became very famous
and was pretty much a catalyst
for setting up
the Inland Waterways Association,
which campaigned for the canals,
bringing them up to what they are today.
So Rolt's book set people
travelling on the canals
in the same way as my Bradshaw's
set me travelling on the railways?
Yes, very much so. In fact,
I've actually got a copy here.
There's something here which I think
you might find rather interesting.
Have a look at just that point there.
"A large scale map of the canal system
hung on the wall of my bedroom
and I would lie abed
planning imaginary journeys."
"I had also acquired
a second-hand copy of a book
which is indispensable
to the canal traveller,
Bradshaws guide to the Canals and
Navigable Rivers of England and Wales.
Good old George Bradshaw. He inspired
railway travellers in the 19th century
and canal travellers in the 20th.
We heartening to think that Bradshaw
helped to preserve the canals
for us all to enjoy.
Having brushed up my skills
in the boatyard,
I'm now in search of refreshment
worthy of a Victorian bargeman.
Bradshaw's informs me that Banbury is
famous for its cakes, cheese and ale,
the cakes being sold in the metropolis.
After the day of physical exertion
that I've had,
I hope they're still for sale
in Banbury.
We never heard of Banbury cakes,
but in Victorian times,
the trains carried this local delicacy
all over the country.
Back in Bradshaws day,
Philip Brown's ancestors owned
a thriving bakery on this street.
We've stopped outside the pub. Cakes and
ale seem to go together in Banbury.
Yes, they certainly appear that way.
There were 81 alehouses in Banbury,
and seven bakeries.
Four in this street, as it happens,
one of which was ours on the opposite
side of the road to The Reindeer.
- (Michael) What happened to it?
- I'm afraid we sold it in 1967
because it needed a lot of modernisation
and we hadn't got the money to do it.
It was knocked down by the developers
in 1968.
(Michael) Shame. But do you remember it?
(Philip) Oh, very much so, yes.
The front part of it was quite a delight
and people took a great interest in it.
Although the bakery's Kong gone,
Philip still makes and sells the cakes.
The exact recipe,
thought to have been brought back
from the Crusades in medieval times,
is a closely guarded secret.
But he's brought a sample to my hotel
for me to try.
Time to find out
what all the fuss is about.
Oh, yes. Buttery, spicy, fruity,
full of Eastern promise.
That's what they're like. (chuckles)
A delicious end to a long day
of Victorian railway travel.
An excellent night's sleep
thanks to the Banbury cakes.
Or was it the Banbury ale?
I'm now continuing my journey
through central England,
and my next destination
was clearly a Victorian favourite.
My first stop is Leamington Spa,
which my Bradshaw's says is now,
"though still small and picturesque,
become a large, handsome town".
"Better paved, lighted and regulated
than any other town of its size."
"Few places possess so many attractions
as this highly favoured town."
There must be something in the water.
Leamington Spa owed its fame to
its mineral water springs,
which from the late 1700s
were recommended as a cure
for all sorts of ills.
- Morning, thank you.
- Thank you.
By the 1850s, the railways were bringing
wealthy Victorians here in their droves.
The curative properties of
the waters of Leamington Spa
are, according to my Bradshaw's,
"resorted to by vast numbers of invalids
and a constant succession of
fashionable visitors".
But I was struck by this reference.
"Amongst Leamington's
numerous attractions
are a splendid tennis court
and racquet ground
attached to
an elegant pile of buildings."
I think a visit there
would serve me well.
The Leamington Spa Tennis Court Club
was founded in 1846
when lawn tennis as we know it
had yet to be invented.
- Marc, good morning.
- Welcome to the Tennis Court Club.
- Thank you.
- Come through.
Very spacious and very Victorian.
The Victorian gentlemen of leisure
who came here
played the ancient indoor game
of real tennis.
Marc Seigneur is one of a select few
who play it today.
A real tennis court
is just immensely different
from a lawn tennis court, isn't it?
What are all these lines about
and these sloping roofs?
The lines are what we call the chases.
That's the complicated bit of the game.
The sloping roofs are called penthouses,
and they would have dated back from
the cloisters because the monks played.
So this is a very historic game,
but I've seen a real tennis court
at Hampton Court.
Yes. Henry VIII would have played.
Henry V would have played before him.
It dates back from
the 12th, 13th century.
- Henry V went to war because of it.
- Went to war because of tennis?
Well, the French dauphin
sent him a box of balls
when Henry V claimed the throne of
France and the message going with it was
play tennis with the boys
and leave war to the men.
Mm, an insult.
For the Victorians, this rich history
served to make real tennis irresistible,
sparking a revival of the game.
When lawn tennis burst upon the scene
in the 1870s,
some of this club's members
helped to draw up the rules,
but the older sport wasn't forgotten.
So that's our equipment.
Oh. These feel quite different.
Yes, this is what we call a pilota.
Hardly bounces at all.
And these are quite heavy, aren't they?
Yes, there are different weights
and different balances,
but they're all made out of wood,
with very taut strings.
Much tauter than
the lawn tennis version.
And a very, very small sweet spot,
so it's actually quite difficult
to strike the ball.
I see! (laughs) Right.
Nonetheless, would you like to show me
how the game is played?
I'd love to.
Modern tennis owes some terminology
to the medieval game,
such as "service ",
which comes from when servants
used to throw the ball into play.
- Swing slowly.
- Swing slowly.
The basics might be straightforward,
but the game gets trickier
when your opponent starts
to bounce balls off the walls.
I'm going to serve onto this sloping
roof which we call the penthouse.
- You'll have to try and hit it.
- (chuckles) OK.
(Marc) Good. You're too good at this.
Well done.
- Thank you, Marc.
- It's a pleasure.
I feel you've not only introduced me
to a sport
but to history, the sport of kings.
I mean, real tennis, royal tennis.
Yes, you're welcome,
and membership is still open.
Thank you very much.
Pd love to linger
to develop my backhand,
but ifs time for me
to take my last train for today.
I'm making a short hop Southwest,
on the trail of a national icon.
My Bradshaw's provides a clue
as to my next destination.
"Where his first infant lays
sweet Shakespeare sung,
where the last accents
faltered on his tongue,
and to which the genius of one man
has given immortality."
In other words, Stratford-upon-Avon,
which by any other name
would be as sweet.
The entry for Stratford
in my Victorian guidebook
dedicates nearly two whole pages
to the Bard,
and judging by this busy train,
he's just as popular
with modem railway tourists.
- Are you headed for Stratford?
- Yes, I am.
Would I be right in detecting
that you're not from the UK?
- I'm not.
- Where are you from?
I'm from the United States of America.
- Where are you from?
- I am from Peru.
- Shakespeare's well known in Peru?
- Yes.
- Can you do any quotations?
- (speaks Spanish)
- "To be or not to be."
- Yeah.
- "To be..."
- To be. Oh.
- Do you know how that finishes'?
- To be... or not to be.
There we are.
"Romeo, Romeo, where an thou Romeo."
- Any more?
- Erm...
- No.
- (laughs)
It seems that these days
Stratford attracts Shakespeare pilgrims
from across the world.
There's no option
but to join the throng.
The crowds getting off this train
are absolutely amazing
and it's like the Tower of Babel.
There are so many languages
being spoken on this train
and they're all here
for a man who died 400 years ago.
Shakespeares emergence
as a global icon
was we" underway in Bradshaws day.
The Victorians' passion
for the immortal poet
shines through in my guidebook.
It describes how, in Stratford,
“We tread the very ground
that he has trod a thousand times,
and feel as he has felt."
And to do just that, it sends readers
to the old-fashioned timbered house
where Shakespeare was born.
Here, Victorian admirers
went to extreme lengths
to preserve Stratford's
Shakespearian heritage.
I'm hearing the story
from Dr Anjna Chouhan.
My Bradshaw's tells me that,
"Shakespeare's birthplace,
after some changes and the risk even of
being transferred as it stood to America
by a calculating speculator,
was at last purchased by the Shakespeare
Club and adopted by the government."
So apparently the house was saved
in Victorian times.
Yes, that's true.
It was going to be purchased by
an American businessman and showman,
P. T. Barnum.
Now, obviously, people in England
got very angry about this.
They decided to form
the Shakespeare Birthday Committee
and purchase the birthplace.
As industrialisation swept Britain,
nostalgia for the past grew,
and with it a desire to protect
historic sites like this.
But Shakespeare had an extra special
resonance for the Victorians.
Shakespeare was somebody
people could look up to as a man.
He transformed from somebody
who was just the son of a glove maker
in a market town
and he became a prolific play writer and
a great businessman in his own right.
And this was incredibly admirable
in the period of industrialisation.
Of capitalism, as well.
Of self-improvement.
As well as applauding
Shakespeare's example of diligence,
19th-century audiences interpreted the
plays in a particularly Victorian way.
(Anjna) They were great literature
but they were also considered great
moral tales, cautionary tales, as well.
Stories about justice, about mercy,
about what's right, what's wrong,
what's good, what's bad.
From 1860, high-minded Victorian
visitors could arrive here by rail.
Down in the Birthplace archive,
documents show that trains brought
Stratford within reach of day trippers.
We have a record of the rail journeys
to and from Stratford-upon-Avon
and the rail fares during
the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth.
So 1864 to celebrate 300 years
after the birth of William Shakespeare.
The highlight of the archive
is this edition of
Shakespeare's complete works,
published in 1623,
brought here in the 19th century.
Now, without this particular text,
we'd be missing
18 of Shakespeare's plays.
So it's very important.
We'd be missing plays such as
The Tempest, Macbeth and Twelfth Night.
I've never felt closer to the Bard
than at this moment.
That's wonderful to hear.
At first,
railway tourists came to Stratford
to see Shakespeare's birthplace
and grave,
but from 1879 they could also attend
performances of his plays here.
That was when the curtain rose
in Stratford's first successful theatre
dedicated to the Bard
and its modern day descendant
is the recently renovated
Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
Before I leave town, I'm taking a tour
with actor Jonathan Slinger.
(Jonathan) If we walk through here,
I make an entrance down this lift.
- (Michael laughs)
- In Twelfth Night.
This is a fantastic space now, isn't it'?
(Jonathan) It's stunning.
Now, in Victorian times, I imagine
nearly all theatres would have been...
The stage would have been behind
an arch, proscenium.
- And now thrust out into the audience.
- (Jonathan) Exactly.
I much prefer this
because I very strongly believe
that Shakespeare vi/rote his plays
with audience participation in mind.
A lot of the text
that you can read sometimes
lends itself to the kind of audience
participation that we don't get any more
except in panto.
But in Shakespeare's day,
there would have been a lot more
heckling going on of the actors.
We not just the staging
that's changed since Bradshaw's day.
Acting techniques have moved on, too.
There was much more of an emphasis
on stance and gesture,
so if we take a bit from The Tempest,
let's say, erm...
"Our revels now are ended."
"These our actors,
as I foretold you, were all spirits
and are melted into air, into thin air."
Bravo.
And how are you delivering it today?
OK. Well, today would be
a much more naturalistic affair, so...
"Our revels now are ended."
"These our actors,
as I foretold you, were all spirits
and are melted into air, into thin air."
Very moving indeed.
So I've been privileged
to hear one version,
and George Bradshaw
would have heard another.
On today's journey, my guidebook has
shown me how our 19th-century forebears
helped to shape many things,
from furniture
to our appreciation of theatre.
Ever since I sat in
that Windsor chair in High Wycombe,
Queen Victoria
has never been far from my mind.
During her reign,
there was a revival of interest
in both real tennis and in Shakespeare.
Having been bashed about
the tennis court,
I've now trodden the boards
in Stratford-upon-Avon.
So all's well that ends well.
On the next stretch,
I'll learn how the railways helped
pen making to boom in Birmingham...
It was a trade that brought writing
to the masses, really.
Hear the chilling tale of
one of 19th-century Britain's
most notorious murderers...
(man) Thirty-thousand turned up
for his execution.
They had special trains laid on
from Bristol,
from Manchester and from London.
And sample the delicacies
concocted in a Victorian kitchen.
Look at that. Wow. That's got a real
wobble factor on it, hasn't it?
in the British Isles.
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 these isles
to see what of Bradshaws Britain
remains.
I've embarked on a new journey
following the tracks of
Victorian entrepreneurs and travellers
along railways that were the arteries
to industrial England's
Black Country heartland.
And from there on to
the verdant beauties of Wales.
On today's stretch,
I'll meet the remarkable craftsmen
behind the Victorian furniture trade...
My dear bodger,
I believe that I have made a bodge.
Discover how George Bradshaw helped
to save Britain's canal heritage...
He inspired railway travellers
in the 19th century
and canal travellers in the 20th.
And see Shakespeare through the eyes
of a 19th-century railway tourist.
"Our revels now are ended."
- "These our actors."
- Bravo.
Starting in the rolling Chiltern Hills,
my guidebook will lead me through
Oxfordshire and Warwickshire
towards the industrial centres
of the Midlands.
Turning west, I'll experience
the stunning Severn Valley Railway
en route to mid Wales, and the Victorian
seaside resort of Aberystwyth.
Starting in High Wycombe,
this leg takes me Northwest
to one of the Victorians'
favourite spa towns,
before heading for
the heart of Shakespeare country.
My first stop will be High Wycombe,
seated deep in the Chiltern Hills.
My Bradshaw's says, "Wycombe is a
borough in Buckinghamshire on the Wyck."
"In the vicinity are many
corn and paper mills."
But the arrival of the trains here
in 1854
helped to furnish the town
with a new industry.
Trains puffed into High Wycombe
courtesy of the Wycombe Railway,
which linked the town
to Brunel's famous Great Western.
Today, ifs a popular commuter town,
and, indeed, even in the 19th century
the area attracted those who wanted to
live at a distance from the big smoke.
I've always wanted to come to
High Wycombe Station, seriously,
because near here was the country home
of one of my great heroes,
the Conservative Prime Minister
Benjamin Disraeli,
who had a very good relationship
with Queen Victoria,
mainly because he was a great flatterer.
By his own admission,
he laid it on with a trowel.
Queen Victoria did him
the extraordinary honour
of visiting her Prime Minister
at his home.
And imagine how gratified
he would have been
when he received Queen Victoria
at this very railway station.
When she arrived here in 1877,
the Queen was collected by carriage
and driven past an eye-catching display."
a giant arch
constructed from wooden chairs.
It was built in honour of an industry
which thrived here in the 19th century
thanks to a very special
kind of craftsman.
I'm going down to the woods today
to get a big surprise.
The exceptional tale of
the Chiltem chair badgers.
- Hello.
- Hello to you.
- Bit of a stranger in these woods.
- I'm sorry to interrupt your work.
I see you are Stuart King
of the Dodgers.
- (Stuart) Indeed, yes.
- What is a bodger?
A bodger, historically,
was a wood turner
who turned chair legs
for the High Wycombe chair industry,
mostly working in the woods
amongst his raw material,
which was usually the beech trees.
Why would you come to the woods
to do this work?
Much easier to take my simple equipment
like this to your raw material
than to take very heavy beech logs
perhaps many miles to a workshop.
Badgers have worked here
since at least the 18th century,
but their heyday
came in the railway age.
Train transport transformed
the High Wycombe chair industry.
It opened up new markets,
and sped up getting to those markets.
Before the railway, everything was taken
to London or the Midlands,
the south coast, by horse and can.
With the coming of the railways, they
were there within hours instead of days.
In the late 19th century,
there were 340 men at work in this area.
But by the 1960s,
the advent of electric powered lathes
had seen off the last of the badgers.
Thankfully, craft historian Stuart King
is keeping the skill alive,
which means mastering
the badgers key machine tool.
Well, this is the chair bodger's
pole lathe. There's the pole.
So I'm going to put a hollow here.
- That's magnificent.
- Do you think you could put one there?
- No!
- (they laugh)
- You put the tool on the rest first.
- Yeah.
So have you any idea,
when the industry was at its height,
how many chair legs
were being turned out?
Oh, enormous numbers.
If we take a pair of chair Dodgers,
they would produce maybe three gross
a week, a gross being 144 chair legs.
Fantastic output. My dear bodger,
I believe that I have made a bodge.
In fact, you've done pretty well.
I have to give you eight out of ten.
The badgers' finished
legs and stretchers
were destined to be incorporated into
High Wycombe's famous Windsor chairs.
Apparently, the name dates back to
before the arrival of the railway,
when the chairs were taken overland
to Windsor and then by river to London.
But by Bradshaws day,
over 4,700 chairs a day
were being carried
out of High Wycombe by rail.
Stuart Linford is amongst
the last of the town's chair makers.
- Stuart.
- Hello, sir!
- Welcome to Kitchener Works.
- Thank you. Lovely to be here.
- Is this a Victorian factory in origin?
- Absolutely right.
This was built in the 1890s
and it is the last working chair making
workshop left in High Wycombe,
sadly out of over 100.
High Wycombe's thriving factories
helped to meet the demand
from Britain's
rapidly expanding middle classes.
They flaunted their newfound status
by buying elegant furniture,
and the Windsor chair
was a firm favourite.
- And this is the famous Windsor chair.
- Absolutely.
What are its chief characteristics?
Right, it's got a solid wooden seat into
which the back and legs are socketed.
So the axis of construction is the seat.
These days, the legs and stretchers
are turned by machine, not by badgers.
But the method
for assembling the Windsor chair
remains unchanged since Victorian times.
This, Michael,
is the Windsor framing shop.
This is where we actually
make the Windsor chairs.
Stuart's going to demonstrate
just how quickly a framer
could make a chair in Bradshaw's day.
So this process is called legging up.
So that's a legged up base.
Now we've got to put the sticks in.
Amazing. This construction kit
just goes together in moments.
If I just grab that. Hand me
that lovely steam-bent component.
And that fits in there like that.
(Stuart) A finished Windsor chair.
Please have a seat.
Bravo. That's fantastic.
Sadly,
there's no time for me to sit around.
I'm continuing my journey along the
Chiltem mainline, heading Northwest.
We crossed the border from
Buckinghamshire into Oxfordshire,
where I'm seeking out the roots of
Britain's Victorian prosperity.
Next stop for me is Banbury.
Bradshaw's tells me that "the navigable
canal from Coventry to Oxford passes by
and is conveyed through a hill
by a tunnel three quarters of a mile
in length...
George Bradshaw began his career
by mapping canals,
and he may have been upset
that his beloved railways
eventually put them out of business.
In the Kate 18th century,
Britain's canals helped to launch
the Industrial Revolution,
transporting coal and other materials
faster than ever before.
Banbury soon found itself
on an important route
from the Midlands to London.
I've come to Tooley's historic boatyard
to hear the story
from director Matthew Armitage.
- Matthew.
- Oh, Michael, hello.
- Good to see you.
- And you.
A boatyard more than 220 years old.
That must be some kind of record.
Yeah, it's something pretty special,
isn't it?
The boatyard was built in 1788,
around the same time
as the Oxford Canal,
one of the major arteries
of the fledgling canal system.
It provided the final link in
an ambitious grand cross of waterways,
connecting up the rivers Mersey,
Trent, Severn and Thames.
The canal became very busy
and was actually the M40 of its time,
and transporting goods down to London,
pretty much connecting Coventry
down to the River Thames at Oxford.
When this canal was thriving,
what would the scene here have been?
Boats coming from all directions,
there's horses,
you'd have had a blacksmith
in the forge.
There'd be a hammer ringing where
they're making the horse shoes
and pans for the boats.
Soon, the Oxford canal
encountered competition,
when the Grand Junction canal
opened a more direct route
from the Midlands to Central London,
bypassing the Thames.
But before long
an even bigger rival emerged.
The canals must have faced intense
competition from the railways
- when they came along?
- That's right.
They actually used the canals
to transport all the goods and equipment
needed to build the railways.
Once the railways were built,
they filled them in afterwards,
stopping any competition, but that
wasn't the case of the Oxford canal.
It kept going, which was pretty amazing.
There's something special about it.
The boats plying the Oxford route
could stop off here for repairs,
and this boatyard continued to thrive
through the 19th century
and right up to today.
So we're in the bottom of the dry dock
now, you can see it's pretty dry.
Here we are.
We've got a boat, we're blacking it.
We're busy, so I think we could do
with a bit of a hand, really.
These days, ifs pleasure boats
that come here to be serviced.
After a period of decline
in the early 20th century,
Britain's canals had a revival
as a place of leisure.
And that story began with
a man called Tom Rolt,
who in 1939 bought himself
a dilapidated narrow boat.
- He brought his boat to the dry dock.
- To this very dry dock?
This very dry dock,
and it was repaired by the Tooleys.
He set up his boat and went on
a journey around the waterways.
During his time, he wrote a book,
Narrow Boat,
which became very famous
and was pretty much a catalyst
for setting up
the Inland Waterways Association,
which campaigned for the canals,
bringing them up to what they are today.
So Rolt's book set people
travelling on the canals
in the same way as my Bradshaw's
set me travelling on the railways?
Yes, very much so. In fact,
I've actually got a copy here.
There's something here which I think
you might find rather interesting.
Have a look at just that point there.
"A large scale map of the canal system
hung on the wall of my bedroom
and I would lie abed
planning imaginary journeys."
"I had also acquired
a second-hand copy of a book
which is indispensable
to the canal traveller,
Bradshaws guide to the Canals and
Navigable Rivers of England and Wales.
Good old George Bradshaw. He inspired
railway travellers in the 19th century
and canal travellers in the 20th.
We heartening to think that Bradshaw
helped to preserve the canals
for us all to enjoy.
Having brushed up my skills
in the boatyard,
I'm now in search of refreshment
worthy of a Victorian bargeman.
Bradshaw's informs me that Banbury is
famous for its cakes, cheese and ale,
the cakes being sold in the metropolis.
After the day of physical exertion
that I've had,
I hope they're still for sale
in Banbury.
We never heard of Banbury cakes,
but in Victorian times,
the trains carried this local delicacy
all over the country.
Back in Bradshaws day,
Philip Brown's ancestors owned
a thriving bakery on this street.
We've stopped outside the pub. Cakes and
ale seem to go together in Banbury.
Yes, they certainly appear that way.
There were 81 alehouses in Banbury,
and seven bakeries.
Four in this street, as it happens,
one of which was ours on the opposite
side of the road to The Reindeer.
- (Michael) What happened to it?
- I'm afraid we sold it in 1967
because it needed a lot of modernisation
and we hadn't got the money to do it.
It was knocked down by the developers
in 1968.
(Michael) Shame. But do you remember it?
(Philip) Oh, very much so, yes.
The front part of it was quite a delight
and people took a great interest in it.
Although the bakery's Kong gone,
Philip still makes and sells the cakes.
The exact recipe,
thought to have been brought back
from the Crusades in medieval times,
is a closely guarded secret.
But he's brought a sample to my hotel
for me to try.
Time to find out
what all the fuss is about.
Oh, yes. Buttery, spicy, fruity,
full of Eastern promise.
That's what they're like. (chuckles)
A delicious end to a long day
of Victorian railway travel.
An excellent night's sleep
thanks to the Banbury cakes.
Or was it the Banbury ale?
I'm now continuing my journey
through central England,
and my next destination
was clearly a Victorian favourite.
My first stop is Leamington Spa,
which my Bradshaw's says is now,
"though still small and picturesque,
become a large, handsome town".
"Better paved, lighted and regulated
than any other town of its size."
"Few places possess so many attractions
as this highly favoured town."
There must be something in the water.
Leamington Spa owed its fame to
its mineral water springs,
which from the late 1700s
were recommended as a cure
for all sorts of ills.
- Morning, thank you.
- Thank you.
By the 1850s, the railways were bringing
wealthy Victorians here in their droves.
The curative properties of
the waters of Leamington Spa
are, according to my Bradshaw's,
"resorted to by vast numbers of invalids
and a constant succession of
fashionable visitors".
But I was struck by this reference.
"Amongst Leamington's
numerous attractions
are a splendid tennis court
and racquet ground
attached to
an elegant pile of buildings."
I think a visit there
would serve me well.
The Leamington Spa Tennis Court Club
was founded in 1846
when lawn tennis as we know it
had yet to be invented.
- Marc, good morning.
- Welcome to the Tennis Court Club.
- Thank you.
- Come through.
Very spacious and very Victorian.
The Victorian gentlemen of leisure
who came here
played the ancient indoor game
of real tennis.
Marc Seigneur is one of a select few
who play it today.
A real tennis court
is just immensely different
from a lawn tennis court, isn't it?
What are all these lines about
and these sloping roofs?
The lines are what we call the chases.
That's the complicated bit of the game.
The sloping roofs are called penthouses,
and they would have dated back from
the cloisters because the monks played.
So this is a very historic game,
but I've seen a real tennis court
at Hampton Court.
Yes. Henry VIII would have played.
Henry V would have played before him.
It dates back from
the 12th, 13th century.
- Henry V went to war because of it.
- Went to war because of tennis?
Well, the French dauphin
sent him a box of balls
when Henry V claimed the throne of
France and the message going with it was
play tennis with the boys
and leave war to the men.
Mm, an insult.
For the Victorians, this rich history
served to make real tennis irresistible,
sparking a revival of the game.
When lawn tennis burst upon the scene
in the 1870s,
some of this club's members
helped to draw up the rules,
but the older sport wasn't forgotten.
So that's our equipment.
Oh. These feel quite different.
Yes, this is what we call a pilota.
Hardly bounces at all.
And these are quite heavy, aren't they?
Yes, there are different weights
and different balances,
but they're all made out of wood,
with very taut strings.
Much tauter than
the lawn tennis version.
And a very, very small sweet spot,
so it's actually quite difficult
to strike the ball.
I see! (laughs) Right.
Nonetheless, would you like to show me
how the game is played?
I'd love to.
Modern tennis owes some terminology
to the medieval game,
such as "service ",
which comes from when servants
used to throw the ball into play.
- Swing slowly.
- Swing slowly.
The basics might be straightforward,
but the game gets trickier
when your opponent starts
to bounce balls off the walls.
I'm going to serve onto this sloping
roof which we call the penthouse.
- You'll have to try and hit it.
- (chuckles) OK.
(Marc) Good. You're too good at this.
Well done.
- Thank you, Marc.
- It's a pleasure.
I feel you've not only introduced me
to a sport
but to history, the sport of kings.
I mean, real tennis, royal tennis.
Yes, you're welcome,
and membership is still open.
Thank you very much.
Pd love to linger
to develop my backhand,
but ifs time for me
to take my last train for today.
I'm making a short hop Southwest,
on the trail of a national icon.
My Bradshaw's provides a clue
as to my next destination.
"Where his first infant lays
sweet Shakespeare sung,
where the last accents
faltered on his tongue,
and to which the genius of one man
has given immortality."
In other words, Stratford-upon-Avon,
which by any other name
would be as sweet.
The entry for Stratford
in my Victorian guidebook
dedicates nearly two whole pages
to the Bard,
and judging by this busy train,
he's just as popular
with modem railway tourists.
- Are you headed for Stratford?
- Yes, I am.
Would I be right in detecting
that you're not from the UK?
- I'm not.
- Where are you from?
I'm from the United States of America.
- Where are you from?
- I am from Peru.
- Shakespeare's well known in Peru?
- Yes.
- Can you do any quotations?
- (speaks Spanish)
- "To be or not to be."
- Yeah.
- "To be..."
- To be. Oh.
- Do you know how that finishes'?
- To be... or not to be.
There we are.
"Romeo, Romeo, where an thou Romeo."
- Any more?
- Erm...
- No.
- (laughs)
It seems that these days
Stratford attracts Shakespeare pilgrims
from across the world.
There's no option
but to join the throng.
The crowds getting off this train
are absolutely amazing
and it's like the Tower of Babel.
There are so many languages
being spoken on this train
and they're all here
for a man who died 400 years ago.
Shakespeares emergence
as a global icon
was we" underway in Bradshaws day.
The Victorians' passion
for the immortal poet
shines through in my guidebook.
It describes how, in Stratford,
“We tread the very ground
that he has trod a thousand times,
and feel as he has felt."
And to do just that, it sends readers
to the old-fashioned timbered house
where Shakespeare was born.
Here, Victorian admirers
went to extreme lengths
to preserve Stratford's
Shakespearian heritage.
I'm hearing the story
from Dr Anjna Chouhan.
My Bradshaw's tells me that,
"Shakespeare's birthplace,
after some changes and the risk even of
being transferred as it stood to America
by a calculating speculator,
was at last purchased by the Shakespeare
Club and adopted by the government."
So apparently the house was saved
in Victorian times.
Yes, that's true.
It was going to be purchased by
an American businessman and showman,
P. T. Barnum.
Now, obviously, people in England
got very angry about this.
They decided to form
the Shakespeare Birthday Committee
and purchase the birthplace.
As industrialisation swept Britain,
nostalgia for the past grew,
and with it a desire to protect
historic sites like this.
But Shakespeare had an extra special
resonance for the Victorians.
Shakespeare was somebody
people could look up to as a man.
He transformed from somebody
who was just the son of a glove maker
in a market town
and he became a prolific play writer and
a great businessman in his own right.
And this was incredibly admirable
in the period of industrialisation.
Of capitalism, as well.
Of self-improvement.
As well as applauding
Shakespeare's example of diligence,
19th-century audiences interpreted the
plays in a particularly Victorian way.
(Anjna) They were great literature
but they were also considered great
moral tales, cautionary tales, as well.
Stories about justice, about mercy,
about what's right, what's wrong,
what's good, what's bad.
From 1860, high-minded Victorian
visitors could arrive here by rail.
Down in the Birthplace archive,
documents show that trains brought
Stratford within reach of day trippers.
We have a record of the rail journeys
to and from Stratford-upon-Avon
and the rail fares during
the tercentenary of Shakespeare's birth.
So 1864 to celebrate 300 years
after the birth of William Shakespeare.
The highlight of the archive
is this edition of
Shakespeare's complete works,
published in 1623,
brought here in the 19th century.
Now, without this particular text,
we'd be missing
18 of Shakespeare's plays.
So it's very important.
We'd be missing plays such as
The Tempest, Macbeth and Twelfth Night.
I've never felt closer to the Bard
than at this moment.
That's wonderful to hear.
At first,
railway tourists came to Stratford
to see Shakespeare's birthplace
and grave,
but from 1879 they could also attend
performances of his plays here.
That was when the curtain rose
in Stratford's first successful theatre
dedicated to the Bard
and its modern day descendant
is the recently renovated
Royal Shakespeare Theatre.
Before I leave town, I'm taking a tour
with actor Jonathan Slinger.
(Jonathan) If we walk through here,
I make an entrance down this lift.
- (Michael laughs)
- In Twelfth Night.
This is a fantastic space now, isn't it'?
(Jonathan) It's stunning.
Now, in Victorian times, I imagine
nearly all theatres would have been...
The stage would have been behind
an arch, proscenium.
- And now thrust out into the audience.
- (Jonathan) Exactly.
I much prefer this
because I very strongly believe
that Shakespeare vi/rote his plays
with audience participation in mind.
A lot of the text
that you can read sometimes
lends itself to the kind of audience
participation that we don't get any more
except in panto.
But in Shakespeare's day,
there would have been a lot more
heckling going on of the actors.
We not just the staging
that's changed since Bradshaw's day.
Acting techniques have moved on, too.
There was much more of an emphasis
on stance and gesture,
so if we take a bit from The Tempest,
let's say, erm...
"Our revels now are ended."
"These our actors,
as I foretold you, were all spirits
and are melted into air, into thin air."
Bravo.
And how are you delivering it today?
OK. Well, today would be
a much more naturalistic affair, so...
"Our revels now are ended."
"These our actors,
as I foretold you, were all spirits
and are melted into air, into thin air."
Very moving indeed.
So I've been privileged
to hear one version,
and George Bradshaw
would have heard another.
On today's journey, my guidebook has
shown me how our 19th-century forebears
helped to shape many things,
from furniture
to our appreciation of theatre.
Ever since I sat in
that Windsor chair in High Wycombe,
Queen Victoria
has never been far from my mind.
During her reign,
there was a revival of interest
in both real tennis and in Shakespeare.
Having been bashed about
the tennis court,
I've now trodden the boards
in Stratford-upon-Avon.
So all's well that ends well.
On the next stretch,
I'll learn how the railways helped
pen making to boom in Birmingham...
It was a trade that brought writing
to the masses, really.
Hear the chilling tale of
one of 19th-century Britain's
most notorious murderers...
(man) Thirty-thousand turned up
for his execution.
They had special trains laid on
from Bristol,
from Manchester and from London.
And sample the delicacies
concocted in a Victorian kitchen.
Look at that. Wow. That's got a real
wobble factor on it, hasn't it?