Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 4, Episode 12 - Dundee to Aberdeen - 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'm continuing my journey
across Scotland.
I've left behind
the cities of Stirling and Perth.
This train will now take me
towards the east coast
where I shall look for traces of the
region's Victorian industrial heritage.
On today's leg,
/learn how Queen Victoria
used trackside trees
to screen her from her subjects.
(man) They were planted
at Queen Victoria's request,
because when she was going to Balmoral,
the royal train would stop here
for her breakfast
and she didn't like the locals
seeing her eating.
I lend an ear
to the history of a textile mill.
Everybody in the factory
went deaf eventually.
- Oh, yes, we're all deaf.
- Awful.
And I go out with a bang
in Aberdeenshire.
Lord! Look at that!
It has changed the shape of the quarry!
Using my 1880s “Bradshaws”,
my northward journey starred
in Stifling, headed to Perthshire,
moves on to the oil-rich city
of Aberdeen,
and then west, through Inverness-shire
and the classic lochs of the Highlands,
before finishing at John o'Groats.
Today's leg begins in Dundee,
gets smoky in Arbroath,
steamy in Montrose,
and hits some granite in Aberdeen.
My first destination will be Dundee,
which Bradshaw's tells me is
"the capital of Forfarshire,
seat of the Scottish linen trade,
a port situated on the Tay."
"The factories for spinning and weaving
flax exceed a hundred in number,
employing as many as 20,000 hands,
three fourths of whom are women."
I'm intrigued
that the workforce was mainly female
at a time when men
dominated employment nationally.
Originally a small 11th-century port,
Dundee grew to become a medieval
exporter of wool and importer of wine,
but it was in the 19th century
that weaving, whaling and shipbuilding
combined to make the port
one of the most important
economic hubs in Scotland.
To find out more, I'm meeting Heritage
and Exhibitions Director Gill Poulter
at Verdant Works,
a mill that's become a museum.
Gill, hello.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to verdant Works.
It's lovely to be here.
My Bradshaw's says,
"Coarse linens, osnaburgs, diapers,
sail cloth rope, canvas
are the chief goods made up in Dundee."
I don't understand all of those words,
but a lot of them lead me to believe
that it must have been connected
to shipping in the early days.
Would that be right?
Well, Dundee was the centre of the
coarse-linen trade in the 19th century,
and was making all those goods
and shipping them around the world,
and they weren't your fine damask
tablecloths for fine dining.
They were very much materials
used for transportation.
For bags, for sacking,
for baling materials.
And what was the raw material
that they used?
Well, coarse linen is made from
the flax plant, and it's a bast fibre.
And the majority of the flax
used in Dundee
was imported from the Baltic states.
But when the supply of flax
from the Baltic area was interrupted,
Dundee needed an alternative.
Jute is a natural vegetable fibre
first introduced to Britain
in the late 18th century from India.
By the 1820s,
Dundee had begun to import it,
but its brittle fibres
made jute difficult to process,
until the Dundonians discovered
that soaking it in whale oil and water
rendered it pliable and easy to spin,
and the city was on its way
to being nicknamed Jutopolis.
Why did the industry spring up
in Dundee of all places, anyway?
It had a skilled workforce
used to the textile industry,
but one of the key things was Dundee
was one of the biggest whaling ports
in the UK at that time,
so had a ready supply of raw whale oil
that could be used for the jute
industry, so it was a very good synergy.
(Michael) And which is this,
flax or jute?
(Gill) This is raw jute,
which arrives from India.
It has to go through the factory
before it ends up as hessian,
which is what people
will be familiar with.
Your supermarket eco-friendly
shopping bags today, made from jute.
In the 19th century,
which is what I'm mainly interested in,
what would the scene have been like
in a mill like this?
(Gill) It would have been very dirty,
very noisy, very chaotic.
The workforce was predominantly women.
They outnumbered men by three to one.
There would have been
young children working as pickers,
cleaning underneath the machines,
and a pretty dangerous place to work
as well.
People regularly lost fingertips.
Obviously,
there were fatal accidents as well.
We know of at least two
that took place here.
Such a dangerous and noisy place,
why women and children?
It's cheaper to employ,
so there was a real role reversal
in the city and the men stayed at home.
So, Dundee became known as She Town,
and the mill girls were called
bold, you know, wide-eyed loud girls
lording it up in the streets, you know,
and it really did son of
have a social impact on the city.
I don't want to sound like a Marxist,
but somebody must have been
making money from this.
The jute barons,
which is the very grand,
aristocratic title for the mill owners,
and they were making fortunes.
They were making millions.
Multimillionaires, they were,
and they built very grand estates
in the countryside of Angus
or in the seaside suburb of
Broughty Ferry just a few miles away,
so they could get away from the grime
of the population here
and the industrial life.
And at one time,
Broughty Ferry was thought to have
more millionaires per square mile
than any other pan of the country.
So, quite a concentration of wealth
in one small little place.
Astute entrepreneurs,
the jute barons built their fortunes
on the skills of their weavers.
Their techniques were passed
from generation to generation.
An example was Lily Thomson's family.
She started working the looms aged 15.
- Lily, hello, I'm Michael.
- How do you do?
(Michael)
Now, this is a very ancient loom here.
How different was this one
from the one that you used to use?
The one I used was like this as well,
but the other one
was much, much bigger.
May we start the machine, please?
Yes, we can. Would you like
to stand back so you don't get hurt?
- For my safety, yes.
- For your safety.
(loom clatters)
(Michael) That is an amazing noise.
Is it the shuttle
going backwards and forwards?
- Is that where the noise is from?
- (Lily) Yes, that's it.
(Michael) Now,
when you were working here,
or in a mill, how many of these machines
were there in a room?
About 300.
300? That must have been
an incredible noise.
Some factories had 400.
And everybody in the factory
went deaf eventually.
Oh, yes, we're all deaf.
(Michael) Awful.
I think I've had enough.
(loom stops)
(Michael) In your day,
what did you make in a very good week?
Towards the end of my career,
my ambition was to make £20 a week,
and I did it once.
(Michael) So, looking back on your life
struggling to make £20 a week,
do you think it was a hard life?
Do you think you were dealt a bad deal?
Oh, yes.
But it was just where you were born.
If you were born to a jute family,
you're going to the mills
and you didn't say no.
Lily, it's been a pleasure
and a privilege
to meet such a skilful and charming
Dundee weaver.
Thank you very much.
* News.
- BYE-bye.
(Michael) Visiting this mill
has been poignant for me
because my own grandfather, John Blyth,
was a Scottish Victorian gentleman
who had a linen factory
full of noisy looms like these.
(whistle blows)
Waves are battering
Scotland's east coast
as I make my way up towards Arbroath,
where my Bradshaw's tells me,
"In 1807101811,
a noble lighthouse was built by
Stevenson on the model of the Eddystone,
which is shaped like
the trunk of a tree."
"It's of solid stone
for 30ft upwards,
the total height being 115ft ."
"Four men live here,
each of whom, every six weeks, for a
change takes a fortnight's turn ashore."
I wonder why such a major structure
was built,
and what impact it had
on local people and the economy.
In the year 1320,
the Declaration of Scottish Independence
was signed in Arbroath.
But after 1811, the fishing port became
famous for a building, its lighthouse.
The Bell Rock, situated 11 miles
from Arbroath on Inchcape,
a notorious reef in the North Sea.
It's the oldest existing sea-washed
lighthouse in the British isles.
On this stormy afternoon,
I can't get out to sea.
Instead, I'm climbing
a lighthouse-like building,
in fact the Signal Tower Museum,
to meet Bob Spink, a local councillor.
- Bob, I assume.
- Hello, Michael.
(Michael) Was it an important decision
to build the lighthouse?
(Bob) It had been a threat
for a long time
and goodness knows how many ships
had been wrecked on it.
One that comes to mind right away
was the HMS York,
which was a 64-gun ship of the line,
which was wrecked in 1804,
which was obviously before
the lighthouse was built in 1811.
491 of her crew, and all perished.
It was based
on the 18th-century design
of John Smeaton's Eddystone Lighthouse
off Cornwall.
The Bell Rocks engineer,
Robert Stevenson,
was Robert Louis Stevenson's
grandfather.
A gifted engineer,
as pan of the project,
he built a railway on cast-iron props
running to the western tip of the reef
to carry material for the lighthouse.
Almost 3,000 precisely out slabs of rock
were dovetailed in 90 layers
to create a structure
which for two centuries
has been untroubled by the raging seas.
It takes a specie! breed to man it.
My Bradshaw's talks about
the Bell Rock Lighthouse,
about men being out there six weeks
with two weeks back on shore.
I mean, the idea of men
living in such a confined space,
and today you get a bit of a feeling
of what it must be like
to be battered by the weather,
but we're on solid terra firma here.
But out there, it must have taken
a bit of courage, mustn't it?
(Bob) It must have been awful.
I think it's not a job
I could have done.
I think it would take
a particular type of person.
Somebody who's more or less
happy with himself.
I knew some of the keepers
that were on the lighthouse
and they spent so much time on there
and so much time ashore,
and they all usually had hobbies
of some kind to keep them busy.
But it wouldn't be the life for me.
I mean, if you enjoy a walk,
you don't want to be on the Bell Rock.
- (Michael) It's fearsome indeed.
- (Bob) Fearsome.
(Michael) But on days like those,
of course,
that's when they were
saving men's lives.
(Bob) Exactly. It's easy to see
the function of the lighthouse
and why it's there.
Robert Stevenson did very well.
Whilst the mighty lighthouse
protects Arbroath's fleet
from the dangers of the ocean,
the town also benefits from the bounty
that the North Sea provides.
One fish is synonymous with the town.
We the haddock, or rather,
the way it's cooked here.
The Arbroath smokie.
The fish is so important
to the local economy
that in 2004, it was granted
protected geographical indication
by the European Commission
to forbid non-Arbroath imitations
using its name.
Fishmonger and fish smoker Stuart Scott
has agreed to show me how they're made.
- Oh, hello, Michael.
- It's good to see you.
I find you in your smoky den.
It really is smoky in here, isn't it?
How are you producing that stuff?
(Stuart) Well, it's a hardwood fire.
Any type of hardwood does it.
At the moment we're using oak,
and it's kind of like a barbecue effect.
I've jumped in there this morning
and created quite a big fire,
and then just brought the lid down
and slowly cooked these fresh haddocks
on the bone for about one hour.
Not to be confused
with a kippered herring,
the exact origins of
Arbroath smoked haddock aren't clear.
But ifs thought to have originated
from a nearby fishing village
called Auchmithie,
where Robert Burns himself
breakfasted on smoked fish.
In the 19th century,
the fishermen were lured to Arbroath
after the harbour was renovated.
- Shall we take a look?
- See if they're ready.
(Michael) Whoa! That is smoky!
Yeah. initially, there's quite a bit
of smoke, but once the air clears,
you'll see a roaring hardwood fire
underneath there.
(Michael) And these are by now
Arbroath smokies, are they?
Yes, they've moved from being a fresh
ingredient of the humble haddock
to a fully cooked ingredient
ready to eat.
(Michael) Very tasty.
What do you do next?
(Stuart) I'm going to take them off.
- (Michael) Can I help you?
- (Stuart) Yeah, get stuck in.
Stuart, the Arbroath smokie, pretty
well known now, pretty far and wide.
Yeah, very much so.
(Michael) Did the railways help?
Definitely.
If it wasn't for the railways,
I don't think there would
have been an Arbroath smokie.
It would have still been
an Auchmithie smokie.
But because we had the rail link,
we commercialised
on what was a very good recipe
and we managed to make
a little bit more of it.
Again, the rail came in very handy,
where wives of the fish merchants
would go on the train
and go to the nearest city,
which is Dundee.
They would just have wicker baskets
strapped across their shoulders
full of Arbroath smokies, and they
would sell them to housewives of Dundee.
(Michael) I have a funny feeling
you're leaving all this to me now.
(Stuart) It's for the best.
You're welcome to give a hand
any time you like.
Arbroath's fame
for its smokies and its pretty harbour
attract day-trippers and holidaymakers
who can reach here by train.
Having helped produce and stack them,
its now time for me
to taste the Smokies.
I've heard that Marco Macari, the owner
and chef at a local restaurant,
has some innovative recipes.
- Marco?
- (Marco) Hello!
- Hi, I'm Michael.
- Hello.
I've been hearing about Arbroath
smokies, I've seen Arbroath smokies,
I've smoked Arbroath smokies,
so I've come actually
to taste some Arbroath smokies.
Sure, yes.
We certainly can help you out there.
I think you can. How many
different ways could I have them?
Well, on the menu, currently we have
about four or five different ways,
but it really is
a very versatile ingredient.
The most popular way
is to have it traditionally.
Just warmed up as it is
from the barrel, as they call it.
So that's what, especially tourists,
they come to have it
in the traditional manner.
If I wanted to be less traditional,
what would I do?
Well, we could give you some pâté.
We could do some dauphinoise
with a chowder through it.
We could give you some linguine
with crayfish and smokie.
- How would it be if I leave it to you?
- Excellent.
(Michael) Thank you very much.
Marco's described four of
the smokie recipes on offer.
I wonder what his fifth might be.
That looks lovely. What is it?
This is Arbroath smokie ice cream.
Arbroath smokie ice cream?
What have you been smoking?
That's amazing. That is amazing.
Anyone who didn't like that
would be a real cold fish.
I'm glad to hear it.
Arbroath smokie ice cream
is surprisingly delicious,
but I'll leave smoked fish
off my breakfast menu tomorrow.
Fumigated and ready for a new day,
I'm beginning the next leg
of my Scottish journey
This crowded train
is taking me towards Montrose.
My Bradshaw's says, "The appearance
of Montrose is peculiarly striking."
"The basin,
in all the beauty of a circular lake,
the fertile and finely cultivated
fields rising gently from its banks,
the town, harbour
and bay stretching further,
and the lofty summit of the Grampians
closing the scene
towards the northwest
present to the traveller
one of the most magnificent
and diversified amphitheatres
found in the United Kingdom."
Now, there's something
to look forward to on this sunny morn.
These days,
the train brings commuters to the town,
but in the 19th century,
Montrose was home to wealthy merchants
who were attracted
by the rich agricultural hinterland
that enabled the natural harbour
to flourish.
Today, the port of Montrose
is modern and bustling,
and I'm prepared to bet that
its transformation since Victorian times
owes something to the railways.
And one in particular
transformed the local economy.
In 1848,
opened by the Aberdeen Railway
and later bought by the Caledonian,
it ran to Montrose from nearby Brechin,
carrying produce between
the Vale of Strathmore and Montrose.
The line closed to goods traffic
in 1981,
but I'm driving to Brechin
where a section of the railway
has been restored by steam enthusiast
Steve Pegg and his colleagues,
who've kindly invited me to take
the controls of their locomotive.
- (Michael) Steve.
- Michael.
I find you up close and dirty with the
locomotive. What are you actually doing?
Oiling it. There's a multitude
of oiling points on these things.
Every one has to be filled up
before we go anywhere.
- Have you done that one?
- I have. Would you like to have a go?
Take the lid off that one there.
Give it a twirl.
When you're oiling, always have an oily
rag in your hand in case of spillages.
OK. Thank you.
There we are. And if you want to
just fill that up with that.
(Michael) How much is it going to take?
Oh, not a lot.
A couple of fluid ounces.
- (Michael) Just showing at the top.
- That's excellent.
(Michael) The Victorians, what oils
were they using in the early days?
In the very early days, oils were
often animal oils or vegetable oils
which were OK for the small locos
that were originally built,
but weren't particularly good for
higher speeds and higher temperatures.
It was only really later on
that mineral oils came in in a big way,
which allowed the engines to improve
in size and performance at that stage.
With the loco oiled and steam up,
ifs time to take to the tracks.
Brake off.
Toot the whistle
to let them know we're coming.
(whistle toots)
Excellent.
Now, gently open the regulator.
- (Michael) There we are.
- (Steve) A little bit more. There we go
(Michael) Whoa, we're off.
We're going backwards!
(Steve) We're going backwards.
(Steve) A little bit fast, Michael. If
we slow down, that would be marvellous.
That's it. Coming to a gentle stand now,
just ideal.
That is fun. That gives you
such a feeling of satisfaction
being able to stop a great powerful
machine like this in its tracks.
This was the railway line
down to Montrose, yes?
(Steve) Yes, indeed.
What son of cargos
were going in and out of Montrose?
(Steve) All kinds of things. There
would be timber from the Baltic states,
coal and lime going to Brechin,
there was quite a flow of guano
which was a phosphate fertiliser.
Coming the other way,
there'd be agricultural produce.
There was a manure works in Brechin that
collected it and loaded it into wagons,
which went off to farmers
to be put back in the fields.
Everything was recycled.
Bird poo and horse droppings.
Things they had to use
before agrochemicals came in.
It's called organic these days.
The Caledonian was an eclectic railway
transporting agricultural fertilisers,
and with its proximity
to the castle at Balmoral,
also the most precious passenger
of Bradshaw's day.
Now, you see that row of trees
down the left hand side, Michael?
(Michael) Yes.
(Steve) They were planted
at Queen Victoria's request
because when she was going to Balmoral,
the royal train would stop here
for her breakfast
and she didn't like the locals
seeing her eating.
They were planted on her request
and they're still here to this day.
That's wonderful. She usually stopped
her train when she was going to eat.
She did not like particularly to
eat on the move, whereas I love it.
We returned to Montrose Station
to catch a train northbound
to my next destination.
I'm now in Aberdeenshire,
and Bradshaw's tells me, "It forms
the northeast corner of the island
to the easternmost point of a triangle,
which juts out
far into the German Ocean."
Because of the conflicts of the 20th
century, that was renamed North Sea,
but the name of the city
where I'm going now, Aberdeen,
is as durable as granite.
And Bradshaw's tells me that,
"It is white granite
which gives the city
a handsome appearance."
"The almost inexhaustible supplies
of this stone are close at hand."
Well, almost a century and a half later
is a good time to find out
just how inexhaustible they've been.
During the Middle Ages,
the people of Aberdeen
lived from fishing, weaving,
wool and leather.
Recently, the oil and gas
found under the North Sea
has made the city
a son of Houston of Europe.
But in Bradshaws day,
because of the unfailing supply
of another expensive mineral,
Aberdeen was known as the Granite City.
The town's Victorian buildings
are resplendent in it.
In a nearby quarry,
production manager Andy Henderson
will show me how the stone is extracted.
Andy, it would be difficult to describe
the scale of this thing.
It's absolutely massive!
- (Michael) Stretches hundreds of yards.
- (Andy) Hm-hmm.
Amazing sight.
How many tons of rock
are you going to move today?
(Andy) 23,000. And with five tons' worth
of explosives to do that.
(Michael) That is an enormous explosion.
(radio) Firing in ten seconds.
Ten seconds.
I must say, my heart is racing.
(Andy laughs)
Prepare to have the earth moved.
Lord! Look at that!
It has changed the shape of the quarry!
It's brought down
an unbelievable amount of stuff. Wow.
(Andy) That's all there is to it.
Just 23,000 tons
moved from one place to another.
- You could sell tickets to that.
- (Andy) It's maybe a thought.
(Michael) ls the method similar
to the Victorian?
(Andy) Very similar.
The explosives are probably better,
more efficient than they were then.
We'll be boring larger holes
than they would have,
because in Victorian times, they'd have
been doing maybe inch-and-a-half holes,
approximately that size,
probably by hand.
Now we're using a big drilling rig,
putting in higher-voltage explosives.
Different sons of explosives
from the Victorians?
Definitely. Much more efficient.
We'll get more yield, if you like,
for less explosives
than they would have had to use.
And considerably safer now as well.
They'd have been transporting
the explosives into the site
as explosives, if you like.
Here, we'll actually mix them
prior to them being necessary.
- Sounds a bit safer.
- Definitely.
Aberdeen's granite industry
developed from the 18th century
with stone first sent to London
for paving in 1764.
It formed the base of
Trafalgar Square's original fountains.
As the industry expanded,
materials and skills were so plentiful
that much of the city of Aberdeen
was constructed from the rock.
Quarries were deep,
so retrieving the stone was a challenge.
Before the steam-powered derrick cranes
of the 1880s,
the industry relied upon the invention
of a local quarry owner, John Fyfe.
His Blondin, named after
a famous tightrope walker,
consisted of steel cables strung across
the quarry which carried a trolley.
From that, an enormous bucket
was lowered into the hole.
The process is now mechanised.
I wonder how much more stone is left.
Andy, my Bradshaw's Guide,
written more than a century ago,
predicts that these reserves of granite
are inexhaustible.
Would you agree with that?
Pretty much, to be honest with you.
Here, the current extraction rates
at this quarry,
you've got in excess of 150,
probably closer to double that.
Probably about 300 years.
That's a lot.
And then this is not the only quarry.
It isn't. No, it isn't. it's probably
one of the major ones left in this area,
but certainly not the only one.
(Michael) Many of the great buildings of
Aberdeen, and even many of the houses,
are made of this son of granite.
It gives the city
a very distinctive look, doesn't it?
It's what it's called, the Granite City.
The silver city.
The one that sparkles back at you.
This leg of my journey
has reminded me how much
19th-century Scotland
depended on hard physical work
to heave the cargos onto ships,
to weave the hessian in the mills,
to quarry the granite
and to land the fish.
And even as I discovered today,
to drive a locomotive.
Our modern world owes a heavy debt
to what the Victorians called
"the horny hands of toil".
On the next Keg of this journey,
I ride the most northerly
heritage line in Britain.
And /learn how Victorian whisky trains
were raided by robbers.
- You think anyone's spotted us yet?
- No, I don't think so. You're OK.
I traverse one of Scotland's
most impressive viaducts,..
It really is a spectacular piece
of architecture and engineering.
And I discover that life ism always
sweet on a shortbread production line.
Stop the conveyor belt!
I want to get off!
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'm continuing my journey
across Scotland.
I've left behind
the cities of Stirling and Perth.
This train will now take me
towards the east coast
where I shall look for traces of the
region's Victorian industrial heritage.
On today's leg,
/learn how Queen Victoria
used trackside trees
to screen her from her subjects.
(man) They were planted
at Queen Victoria's request,
because when she was going to Balmoral,
the royal train would stop here
for her breakfast
and she didn't like the locals
seeing her eating.
I lend an ear
to the history of a textile mill.
Everybody in the factory
went deaf eventually.
- Oh, yes, we're all deaf.
- Awful.
And I go out with a bang
in Aberdeenshire.
Lord! Look at that!
It has changed the shape of the quarry!
Using my 1880s “Bradshaws”,
my northward journey starred
in Stifling, headed to Perthshire,
moves on to the oil-rich city
of Aberdeen,
and then west, through Inverness-shire
and the classic lochs of the Highlands,
before finishing at John o'Groats.
Today's leg begins in Dundee,
gets smoky in Arbroath,
steamy in Montrose,
and hits some granite in Aberdeen.
My first destination will be Dundee,
which Bradshaw's tells me is
"the capital of Forfarshire,
seat of the Scottish linen trade,
a port situated on the Tay."
"The factories for spinning and weaving
flax exceed a hundred in number,
employing as many as 20,000 hands,
three fourths of whom are women."
I'm intrigued
that the workforce was mainly female
at a time when men
dominated employment nationally.
Originally a small 11th-century port,
Dundee grew to become a medieval
exporter of wool and importer of wine,
but it was in the 19th century
that weaving, whaling and shipbuilding
combined to make the port
one of the most important
economic hubs in Scotland.
To find out more, I'm meeting Heritage
and Exhibitions Director Gill Poulter
at Verdant Works,
a mill that's become a museum.
Gill, hello.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to verdant Works.
It's lovely to be here.
My Bradshaw's says,
"Coarse linens, osnaburgs, diapers,
sail cloth rope, canvas
are the chief goods made up in Dundee."
I don't understand all of those words,
but a lot of them lead me to believe
that it must have been connected
to shipping in the early days.
Would that be right?
Well, Dundee was the centre of the
coarse-linen trade in the 19th century,
and was making all those goods
and shipping them around the world,
and they weren't your fine damask
tablecloths for fine dining.
They were very much materials
used for transportation.
For bags, for sacking,
for baling materials.
And what was the raw material
that they used?
Well, coarse linen is made from
the flax plant, and it's a bast fibre.
And the majority of the flax
used in Dundee
was imported from the Baltic states.
But when the supply of flax
from the Baltic area was interrupted,
Dundee needed an alternative.
Jute is a natural vegetable fibre
first introduced to Britain
in the late 18th century from India.
By the 1820s,
Dundee had begun to import it,
but its brittle fibres
made jute difficult to process,
until the Dundonians discovered
that soaking it in whale oil and water
rendered it pliable and easy to spin,
and the city was on its way
to being nicknamed Jutopolis.
Why did the industry spring up
in Dundee of all places, anyway?
It had a skilled workforce
used to the textile industry,
but one of the key things was Dundee
was one of the biggest whaling ports
in the UK at that time,
so had a ready supply of raw whale oil
that could be used for the jute
industry, so it was a very good synergy.
(Michael) And which is this,
flax or jute?
(Gill) This is raw jute,
which arrives from India.
It has to go through the factory
before it ends up as hessian,
which is what people
will be familiar with.
Your supermarket eco-friendly
shopping bags today, made from jute.
In the 19th century,
which is what I'm mainly interested in,
what would the scene have been like
in a mill like this?
(Gill) It would have been very dirty,
very noisy, very chaotic.
The workforce was predominantly women.
They outnumbered men by three to one.
There would have been
young children working as pickers,
cleaning underneath the machines,
and a pretty dangerous place to work
as well.
People regularly lost fingertips.
Obviously,
there were fatal accidents as well.
We know of at least two
that took place here.
Such a dangerous and noisy place,
why women and children?
It's cheaper to employ,
so there was a real role reversal
in the city and the men stayed at home.
So, Dundee became known as She Town,
and the mill girls were called
bold, you know, wide-eyed loud girls
lording it up in the streets, you know,
and it really did son of
have a social impact on the city.
I don't want to sound like a Marxist,
but somebody must have been
making money from this.
The jute barons,
which is the very grand,
aristocratic title for the mill owners,
and they were making fortunes.
They were making millions.
Multimillionaires, they were,
and they built very grand estates
in the countryside of Angus
or in the seaside suburb of
Broughty Ferry just a few miles away,
so they could get away from the grime
of the population here
and the industrial life.
And at one time,
Broughty Ferry was thought to have
more millionaires per square mile
than any other pan of the country.
So, quite a concentration of wealth
in one small little place.
Astute entrepreneurs,
the jute barons built their fortunes
on the skills of their weavers.
Their techniques were passed
from generation to generation.
An example was Lily Thomson's family.
She started working the looms aged 15.
- Lily, hello, I'm Michael.
- How do you do?
(Michael)
Now, this is a very ancient loom here.
How different was this one
from the one that you used to use?
The one I used was like this as well,
but the other one
was much, much bigger.
May we start the machine, please?
Yes, we can. Would you like
to stand back so you don't get hurt?
- For my safety, yes.
- For your safety.
(loom clatters)
(Michael) That is an amazing noise.
Is it the shuttle
going backwards and forwards?
- Is that where the noise is from?
- (Lily) Yes, that's it.
(Michael) Now,
when you were working here,
or in a mill, how many of these machines
were there in a room?
About 300.
300? That must have been
an incredible noise.
Some factories had 400.
And everybody in the factory
went deaf eventually.
Oh, yes, we're all deaf.
(Michael) Awful.
I think I've had enough.
(loom stops)
(Michael) In your day,
what did you make in a very good week?
Towards the end of my career,
my ambition was to make £20 a week,
and I did it once.
(Michael) So, looking back on your life
struggling to make £20 a week,
do you think it was a hard life?
Do you think you were dealt a bad deal?
Oh, yes.
But it was just where you were born.
If you were born to a jute family,
you're going to the mills
and you didn't say no.
Lily, it's been a pleasure
and a privilege
to meet such a skilful and charming
Dundee weaver.
Thank you very much.
* News.
- BYE-bye.
(Michael) Visiting this mill
has been poignant for me
because my own grandfather, John Blyth,
was a Scottish Victorian gentleman
who had a linen factory
full of noisy looms like these.
(whistle blows)
Waves are battering
Scotland's east coast
as I make my way up towards Arbroath,
where my Bradshaw's tells me,
"In 1807101811,
a noble lighthouse was built by
Stevenson on the model of the Eddystone,
which is shaped like
the trunk of a tree."
"It's of solid stone
for 30ft upwards,
the total height being 115ft ."
"Four men live here,
each of whom, every six weeks, for a
change takes a fortnight's turn ashore."
I wonder why such a major structure
was built,
and what impact it had
on local people and the economy.
In the year 1320,
the Declaration of Scottish Independence
was signed in Arbroath.
But after 1811, the fishing port became
famous for a building, its lighthouse.
The Bell Rock, situated 11 miles
from Arbroath on Inchcape,
a notorious reef in the North Sea.
It's the oldest existing sea-washed
lighthouse in the British isles.
On this stormy afternoon,
I can't get out to sea.
Instead, I'm climbing
a lighthouse-like building,
in fact the Signal Tower Museum,
to meet Bob Spink, a local councillor.
- Bob, I assume.
- Hello, Michael.
(Michael) Was it an important decision
to build the lighthouse?
(Bob) It had been a threat
for a long time
and goodness knows how many ships
had been wrecked on it.
One that comes to mind right away
was the HMS York,
which was a 64-gun ship of the line,
which was wrecked in 1804,
which was obviously before
the lighthouse was built in 1811.
491 of her crew, and all perished.
It was based
on the 18th-century design
of John Smeaton's Eddystone Lighthouse
off Cornwall.
The Bell Rocks engineer,
Robert Stevenson,
was Robert Louis Stevenson's
grandfather.
A gifted engineer,
as pan of the project,
he built a railway on cast-iron props
running to the western tip of the reef
to carry material for the lighthouse.
Almost 3,000 precisely out slabs of rock
were dovetailed in 90 layers
to create a structure
which for two centuries
has been untroubled by the raging seas.
It takes a specie! breed to man it.
My Bradshaw's talks about
the Bell Rock Lighthouse,
about men being out there six weeks
with two weeks back on shore.
I mean, the idea of men
living in such a confined space,
and today you get a bit of a feeling
of what it must be like
to be battered by the weather,
but we're on solid terra firma here.
But out there, it must have taken
a bit of courage, mustn't it?
(Bob) It must have been awful.
I think it's not a job
I could have done.
I think it would take
a particular type of person.
Somebody who's more or less
happy with himself.
I knew some of the keepers
that were on the lighthouse
and they spent so much time on there
and so much time ashore,
and they all usually had hobbies
of some kind to keep them busy.
But it wouldn't be the life for me.
I mean, if you enjoy a walk,
you don't want to be on the Bell Rock.
- (Michael) It's fearsome indeed.
- (Bob) Fearsome.
(Michael) But on days like those,
of course,
that's when they were
saving men's lives.
(Bob) Exactly. It's easy to see
the function of the lighthouse
and why it's there.
Robert Stevenson did very well.
Whilst the mighty lighthouse
protects Arbroath's fleet
from the dangers of the ocean,
the town also benefits from the bounty
that the North Sea provides.
One fish is synonymous with the town.
We the haddock, or rather,
the way it's cooked here.
The Arbroath smokie.
The fish is so important
to the local economy
that in 2004, it was granted
protected geographical indication
by the European Commission
to forbid non-Arbroath imitations
using its name.
Fishmonger and fish smoker Stuart Scott
has agreed to show me how they're made.
- Oh, hello, Michael.
- It's good to see you.
I find you in your smoky den.
It really is smoky in here, isn't it?
How are you producing that stuff?
(Stuart) Well, it's a hardwood fire.
Any type of hardwood does it.
At the moment we're using oak,
and it's kind of like a barbecue effect.
I've jumped in there this morning
and created quite a big fire,
and then just brought the lid down
and slowly cooked these fresh haddocks
on the bone for about one hour.
Not to be confused
with a kippered herring,
the exact origins of
Arbroath smoked haddock aren't clear.
But ifs thought to have originated
from a nearby fishing village
called Auchmithie,
where Robert Burns himself
breakfasted on smoked fish.
In the 19th century,
the fishermen were lured to Arbroath
after the harbour was renovated.
- Shall we take a look?
- See if they're ready.
(Michael) Whoa! That is smoky!
Yeah. initially, there's quite a bit
of smoke, but once the air clears,
you'll see a roaring hardwood fire
underneath there.
(Michael) And these are by now
Arbroath smokies, are they?
Yes, they've moved from being a fresh
ingredient of the humble haddock
to a fully cooked ingredient
ready to eat.
(Michael) Very tasty.
What do you do next?
(Stuart) I'm going to take them off.
- (Michael) Can I help you?
- (Stuart) Yeah, get stuck in.
Stuart, the Arbroath smokie, pretty
well known now, pretty far and wide.
Yeah, very much so.
(Michael) Did the railways help?
Definitely.
If it wasn't for the railways,
I don't think there would
have been an Arbroath smokie.
It would have still been
an Auchmithie smokie.
But because we had the rail link,
we commercialised
on what was a very good recipe
and we managed to make
a little bit more of it.
Again, the rail came in very handy,
where wives of the fish merchants
would go on the train
and go to the nearest city,
which is Dundee.
They would just have wicker baskets
strapped across their shoulders
full of Arbroath smokies, and they
would sell them to housewives of Dundee.
(Michael) I have a funny feeling
you're leaving all this to me now.
(Stuart) It's for the best.
You're welcome to give a hand
any time you like.
Arbroath's fame
for its smokies and its pretty harbour
attract day-trippers and holidaymakers
who can reach here by train.
Having helped produce and stack them,
its now time for me
to taste the Smokies.
I've heard that Marco Macari, the owner
and chef at a local restaurant,
has some innovative recipes.
- Marco?
- (Marco) Hello!
- Hi, I'm Michael.
- Hello.
I've been hearing about Arbroath
smokies, I've seen Arbroath smokies,
I've smoked Arbroath smokies,
so I've come actually
to taste some Arbroath smokies.
Sure, yes.
We certainly can help you out there.
I think you can. How many
different ways could I have them?
Well, on the menu, currently we have
about four or five different ways,
but it really is
a very versatile ingredient.
The most popular way
is to have it traditionally.
Just warmed up as it is
from the barrel, as they call it.
So that's what, especially tourists,
they come to have it
in the traditional manner.
If I wanted to be less traditional,
what would I do?
Well, we could give you some pâté.
We could do some dauphinoise
with a chowder through it.
We could give you some linguine
with crayfish and smokie.
- How would it be if I leave it to you?
- Excellent.
(Michael) Thank you very much.
Marco's described four of
the smokie recipes on offer.
I wonder what his fifth might be.
That looks lovely. What is it?
This is Arbroath smokie ice cream.
Arbroath smokie ice cream?
What have you been smoking?
That's amazing. That is amazing.
Anyone who didn't like that
would be a real cold fish.
I'm glad to hear it.
Arbroath smokie ice cream
is surprisingly delicious,
but I'll leave smoked fish
off my breakfast menu tomorrow.
Fumigated and ready for a new day,
I'm beginning the next leg
of my Scottish journey
This crowded train
is taking me towards Montrose.
My Bradshaw's says, "The appearance
of Montrose is peculiarly striking."
"The basin,
in all the beauty of a circular lake,
the fertile and finely cultivated
fields rising gently from its banks,
the town, harbour
and bay stretching further,
and the lofty summit of the Grampians
closing the scene
towards the northwest
present to the traveller
one of the most magnificent
and diversified amphitheatres
found in the United Kingdom."
Now, there's something
to look forward to on this sunny morn.
These days,
the train brings commuters to the town,
but in the 19th century,
Montrose was home to wealthy merchants
who were attracted
by the rich agricultural hinterland
that enabled the natural harbour
to flourish.
Today, the port of Montrose
is modern and bustling,
and I'm prepared to bet that
its transformation since Victorian times
owes something to the railways.
And one in particular
transformed the local economy.
In 1848,
opened by the Aberdeen Railway
and later bought by the Caledonian,
it ran to Montrose from nearby Brechin,
carrying produce between
the Vale of Strathmore and Montrose.
The line closed to goods traffic
in 1981,
but I'm driving to Brechin
where a section of the railway
has been restored by steam enthusiast
Steve Pegg and his colleagues,
who've kindly invited me to take
the controls of their locomotive.
- (Michael) Steve.
- Michael.
I find you up close and dirty with the
locomotive. What are you actually doing?
Oiling it. There's a multitude
of oiling points on these things.
Every one has to be filled up
before we go anywhere.
- Have you done that one?
- I have. Would you like to have a go?
Take the lid off that one there.
Give it a twirl.
When you're oiling, always have an oily
rag in your hand in case of spillages.
OK. Thank you.
There we are. And if you want to
just fill that up with that.
(Michael) How much is it going to take?
Oh, not a lot.
A couple of fluid ounces.
- (Michael) Just showing at the top.
- That's excellent.
(Michael) The Victorians, what oils
were they using in the early days?
In the very early days, oils were
often animal oils or vegetable oils
which were OK for the small locos
that were originally built,
but weren't particularly good for
higher speeds and higher temperatures.
It was only really later on
that mineral oils came in in a big way,
which allowed the engines to improve
in size and performance at that stage.
With the loco oiled and steam up,
ifs time to take to the tracks.
Brake off.
Toot the whistle
to let them know we're coming.
(whistle toots)
Excellent.
Now, gently open the regulator.
- (Michael) There we are.
- (Steve) A little bit more. There we go
(Michael) Whoa, we're off.
We're going backwards!
(Steve) We're going backwards.
(Steve) A little bit fast, Michael. If
we slow down, that would be marvellous.
That's it. Coming to a gentle stand now,
just ideal.
That is fun. That gives you
such a feeling of satisfaction
being able to stop a great powerful
machine like this in its tracks.
This was the railway line
down to Montrose, yes?
(Steve) Yes, indeed.
What son of cargos
were going in and out of Montrose?
(Steve) All kinds of things. There
would be timber from the Baltic states,
coal and lime going to Brechin,
there was quite a flow of guano
which was a phosphate fertiliser.
Coming the other way,
there'd be agricultural produce.
There was a manure works in Brechin that
collected it and loaded it into wagons,
which went off to farmers
to be put back in the fields.
Everything was recycled.
Bird poo and horse droppings.
Things they had to use
before agrochemicals came in.
It's called organic these days.
The Caledonian was an eclectic railway
transporting agricultural fertilisers,
and with its proximity
to the castle at Balmoral,
also the most precious passenger
of Bradshaw's day.
Now, you see that row of trees
down the left hand side, Michael?
(Michael) Yes.
(Steve) They were planted
at Queen Victoria's request
because when she was going to Balmoral,
the royal train would stop here
for her breakfast
and she didn't like the locals
seeing her eating.
They were planted on her request
and they're still here to this day.
That's wonderful. She usually stopped
her train when she was going to eat.
She did not like particularly to
eat on the move, whereas I love it.
We returned to Montrose Station
to catch a train northbound
to my next destination.
I'm now in Aberdeenshire,
and Bradshaw's tells me, "It forms
the northeast corner of the island
to the easternmost point of a triangle,
which juts out
far into the German Ocean."
Because of the conflicts of the 20th
century, that was renamed North Sea,
but the name of the city
where I'm going now, Aberdeen,
is as durable as granite.
And Bradshaw's tells me that,
"It is white granite
which gives the city
a handsome appearance."
"The almost inexhaustible supplies
of this stone are close at hand."
Well, almost a century and a half later
is a good time to find out
just how inexhaustible they've been.
During the Middle Ages,
the people of Aberdeen
lived from fishing, weaving,
wool and leather.
Recently, the oil and gas
found under the North Sea
has made the city
a son of Houston of Europe.
But in Bradshaws day,
because of the unfailing supply
of another expensive mineral,
Aberdeen was known as the Granite City.
The town's Victorian buildings
are resplendent in it.
In a nearby quarry,
production manager Andy Henderson
will show me how the stone is extracted.
Andy, it would be difficult to describe
the scale of this thing.
It's absolutely massive!
- (Michael) Stretches hundreds of yards.
- (Andy) Hm-hmm.
Amazing sight.
How many tons of rock
are you going to move today?
(Andy) 23,000. And with five tons' worth
of explosives to do that.
(Michael) That is an enormous explosion.
(radio) Firing in ten seconds.
Ten seconds.
I must say, my heart is racing.
(Andy laughs)
Prepare to have the earth moved.
Lord! Look at that!
It has changed the shape of the quarry!
It's brought down
an unbelievable amount of stuff. Wow.
(Andy) That's all there is to it.
Just 23,000 tons
moved from one place to another.
- You could sell tickets to that.
- (Andy) It's maybe a thought.
(Michael) ls the method similar
to the Victorian?
(Andy) Very similar.
The explosives are probably better,
more efficient than they were then.
We'll be boring larger holes
than they would have,
because in Victorian times, they'd have
been doing maybe inch-and-a-half holes,
approximately that size,
probably by hand.
Now we're using a big drilling rig,
putting in higher-voltage explosives.
Different sons of explosives
from the Victorians?
Definitely. Much more efficient.
We'll get more yield, if you like,
for less explosives
than they would have had to use.
And considerably safer now as well.
They'd have been transporting
the explosives into the site
as explosives, if you like.
Here, we'll actually mix them
prior to them being necessary.
- Sounds a bit safer.
- Definitely.
Aberdeen's granite industry
developed from the 18th century
with stone first sent to London
for paving in 1764.
It formed the base of
Trafalgar Square's original fountains.
As the industry expanded,
materials and skills were so plentiful
that much of the city of Aberdeen
was constructed from the rock.
Quarries were deep,
so retrieving the stone was a challenge.
Before the steam-powered derrick cranes
of the 1880s,
the industry relied upon the invention
of a local quarry owner, John Fyfe.
His Blondin, named after
a famous tightrope walker,
consisted of steel cables strung across
the quarry which carried a trolley.
From that, an enormous bucket
was lowered into the hole.
The process is now mechanised.
I wonder how much more stone is left.
Andy, my Bradshaw's Guide,
written more than a century ago,
predicts that these reserves of granite
are inexhaustible.
Would you agree with that?
Pretty much, to be honest with you.
Here, the current extraction rates
at this quarry,
you've got in excess of 150,
probably closer to double that.
Probably about 300 years.
That's a lot.
And then this is not the only quarry.
It isn't. No, it isn't. it's probably
one of the major ones left in this area,
but certainly not the only one.
(Michael) Many of the great buildings of
Aberdeen, and even many of the houses,
are made of this son of granite.
It gives the city
a very distinctive look, doesn't it?
It's what it's called, the Granite City.
The silver city.
The one that sparkles back at you.
This leg of my journey
has reminded me how much
19th-century Scotland
depended on hard physical work
to heave the cargos onto ships,
to weave the hessian in the mills,
to quarry the granite
and to land the fish.
And even as I discovered today,
to drive a locomotive.
Our modern world owes a heavy debt
to what the Victorians called
"the horny hands of toil".
On the next Keg of this journey,
I ride the most northerly
heritage line in Britain.
And /learn how Victorian whisky trains
were raided by robbers.
- You think anyone's spotted us yet?
- No, I don't think so. You're OK.
I traverse one of Scotland's
most impressive viaducts,..
It really is a spectacular piece
of architecture and engineering.
And I discover that life ism always
sweet on a shortbread production line.
Stop the conveyor belt!
I want to get off!