Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 4, Episode 16 - London Paddington to Warminster - 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 embarking on a new journey,
tracking the master engineer of
the Great Western Railway,
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
I'll begin at the line's London gateway,
Paddington Station,
travel west through Berkshire,
Wiltshire and Somerset,
before finishing up
in Newton Abbot, Devon,
the scene of one of Brunel's
heroic failures.
This leg covers 99 miles.
Starting in London,
it's a short hop to Hanwell,
then on to Hungerford in Berkshire,
before crossing counties into Wiltshire.
On this stretch,
I'll apply my mind to a Victorian asylum
and come to grips
with the old grey matter...
When I got on the Underground
this morning,
I never dreamt that I was going to
end up today handling a human brain.
I'll scale great heights
to give an historic horse a facelift...
(man)
The horse is about 800 square metres.
(Michael laughs)
I think I'll just do
this little postage stamp's worth here.
And make malt 19th-century style.
I must say, these feel like
Victorian conditions to me.
I'm starting my journey in the capital.
I'm travelling along
the London Underground
on a line that was opened
for steam trains in 1863,
roughly the year
that my Bradshaw's Guide was published.
It ran from King's Cross to Paddington,
the terminus built by Brunei
for the Great Western Railway.
And the scene of railway engineering
triumphs past, present and to come.
Even to 21st-century commuters,
Paddington's grandiose roof spans
are awe inspiring.
But when the station was built
in the 19th century,
recent advances in technology
made it possible to construct
from iron and glass
buildings whose like
had never been seen before.
I was rather surprised
to find my Bradshaw's says
that the exterior of Paddington
is not very remarkable.
But, of course,
most people arrive here by train,
and they see a station "spacious enough
to accommodate the largest number
of excursionists ever accumulated".
And Bradshaw's talks about the "immense
roofs, which impart to the traveller
the impression that he is about to start
by the railway of a first-rate company".
And impressions were everything for the
competing Victorian railway companies.
The London terminus reassuringly
indicated to first-class passengers
the railway's wealth and stature,
and inspired wonder amongst the hordes
who could now go on holiday by train.
For the Great Western,
Brunet built the grandest yet.
A veritable palace of steam.
But its inauguration came 16 long years
after the railway had opened.
I'm meeting Brunei expert
and railway historian John Christopher
in front of Isambard himself.
Paddington Station, when was it built?
It was opened in 1854, but the key
to understanding this Paddington
is in its full name.
This is Paddington New Station.
So the original station was built beyond
the Bishop's Road bridge at the far end
as a temporary structure.
Initially, they didn't have
the land they needed, or the money.
He'd spent so much
building the railway to Bristol
that they built a wooden station,
and only when land and money
became available by 1850
did they start work on this station.
So this is a rare example of
late Brunel.
Thanks to advances in engineering,
and inspired by the Palm House at Sew
Gardens and Paxtorfs Crystal Palace,
Brunei was able to build
a far more ambitious station
than he'd originally planned in 1835.
The most spectacular aspect
being the roof.
Three 700ft long spans of
glass and iron,
making it, at the time of building,
the largest in existence.
So, here we are, the important bit,
Brunel's wonderful roof.
So, this uses the techniques
that have been developed
between the time that the railway
and the station were built.
(John) Specifically the use of
wrought iron and glass in structures.
There's many aspects to this.
Partly it's an upturned ship,
which Brunei was familiar with.
He'd already built the Great Britain,
the large iron ship at that stage,
but it's also an early example of
modular architecture.
So you've got the same components
repeated again and again and again,
until you've got a whole building.
We're used to it now,
but the Victorians
were only just discovering it.
The station took three years
to build and cost around £620,000,
which is equivalent to £62 million
in today's money.
Worth every penny, I think.
That is a magnificent bird. What is it?
Thank you very much.
She's a Harris hawk.
And why are you here, the two of you?
Were doing pigeon control.
So, the pigeons obviously
are pretty frightened of this fellow.
Yes, she's a predator to pigeons.
And, so is it enough for the pigeon
just to see the bird
and they keep away, do they?
Pretty much, yes. The shape and size of
her is enough of a deterrent.
If I were a pigeon,
I'd be quaking right now.
- Lovely to see you. Bye.
- You too. Take care.
Today, Paddington is one site
in a new mum-billion pound
railway project
which will include
additional platforms beneath ground,
and represents one of the most
significant changes to the station
since Brunei completed it.
If there's one thing that excites me
as much as railway history,
it's the thought that
new railways are being built,
and I can't wait to travel on Crossrail,
which will go from Paddington
to east London.
And it really thrills me
that today we're using a technology
that's largely unchanged
since the beginning of the 19th century.
Near Paddington Station,
work has commenced.
Crossrail is currently Europe's
largest civil engineering project,
costing nearly £15 billion.
Thirteen miles of new twin-bore tunnels
are being built
under the heart of London,
and a total of 37 stations will link
Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west
with Shenfield and Abbey Wood
in the east.
Andy Alder is the project manager.
- Andy, good morning
- Good morning.
So, where we're standing now, just
about a mile from Paddington Station,
and what are you going to do from here?
So we've got
two tunnel boring machines here.
We've got Ada, our second machine,
and Phyllis is our first machine.
Phyllis is down in the ground
at the moment,
starting to dig the tunnels
from here to Paddington.
So our tunnelling machines will dig
from here all the way to Farringdon,
and then we'll start excavating
the station tunnels
at Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road.
And six more machines
that are almost identical to this
are working their way
from the east of London,
coming in to Farringdon,
going up to Stratford.
It's quite a big moment for me,
because in the 1980s,
I was the Minister of Transport
and we were already talking
about Crossrail then.
Yeah.
But we had another project
on the books as well
which was the Jubilee Line extension
out to Canary Wharf.
We only had money for one
so we did the other one.
But if I see this machine turn
in a moment,
I'll really feel that I'm,
well, I don't know,
- that it's an ambition achieved.
- Absolutely.
Each custom-made boring machine
is 148 metres long.
That's the equivalent of 14 buses
end to end.
These giant machines will work
nearly 24 hours a day excavating soil,
and as they move forward, they set
in place pre-cast concrete segments,
creating the tunnel as they burrow.
Could you please
turn the machine for us?
Everybody's clear.
Everybody's standing clear.
There she goes.
And so I've got to imagine now
this would be going through the rock
and the clay,
and all of that then would be prised out
and then fed back through the machine.
(Andy) That's correct.
Fed back through the machine,
onto the conveyers and then to here so
we can take the material away by train.
About 190 years ago,
Isambard Brunei and his father Marc
were constructing the Thames Tunnel.
How does the way that you tunnel now
compare with the days of Isambard
Kingdom Brunei and his father, Marc?
The basic technology is the same, having
a shield that supports the ground,
excavating,
and building the tunnel behind us.
The differences are that
we've got the mechanical cutter head.
He had 36 partitions in the front
with miners working by hand,
excavating the ground away.
And while we're building
concrete segments,
he had bricklayers
building brickwork behind.
They were achieving 350ft
in a whole year,
we'll achieve 350ft in a week.
(Michael) That's amazing.
I want to get closer to the action,
so we're making our way
to the tunnel head,
passing the rear sections of
the boring machine.
As well as containing toilets
and a kitchen,
it hosts a narrow gauge railway
running its full length,
so that pre-cast concrete segments
can be delivered to the cutting head.
A railway helping to build a railway.
(Andy) This is where it really happens.
(Michael) As you're tunnelling, you must
be dodging Victorian infrastructure.
(Andy) This machine will pass close
in ten locations
the London Underground
tube tunnels and tracks.
We're also tunnelling underneath
the Bazalgette sewer system
that was the first Victorian
sewer system for London.
So there's a lot of very historic and
very important infrastructure to London
that we need to protect
as we go through.
Not much pressure on you there then.
(laughs)
Crossrail is due to open
in Central London in 2018,
and I feel honoured
to have had a glimpse
into the future of rail travel
in the capital.
But ifs now time
to return to Brunel's Paddington
where my journey on his historic
Great Western Railway begins.
My Bradshaw's,
written in the 1860s, comments,
"A metamorphosis has taken place
in the environs of the line."
"Walls have become green embankments,
embankments diminished into hedges,
and hedges grown into avenues of trees
waving a leafy adieu
as we're carried past."
The leafy goodbye and verdant outlook
had been incorporated into London
as the capital has expanded.
And so also Hanwell, now part of
the London Borough of Ealing.
In Bradshaws day
it was a village in Middlesex,
and the first stop out of the metropolis
on the Great Western
to win a mention in the guidebook.
No devotee of Brunel can come to Hanwell
without wanting to visit
one of his masterpieces.
It's not just the grand stations
and powerful locomotives
that have so captured our imaginations,
because spectacular viaducts and bridges
made it possible for the railways
to traverse rivers and valleys.
This imposing viaduct
across the Brent Valley
was actually the first contract to be
let on Brunel's Great Western Railway,
and it was completed in 1837.
And I can do no better
than to quote Bradshaw's,
"A massive and elegant structure."
Over 900ft long, the viaduct
was Brunel's first major structure.
In Bradshaw's day, it was said locally
that Queen Victoria so much enjoyed
the view over the River Brent
that she would have her train
halt there awhile.
On such a journey, she and her subjects
travelling on the Great Western Railway
couldn't possibly fail to notice
a huge neoclassical building
just a stone's throw from the viaduct.
My Bradshaw's Guide says, "The most
interesting object in the landscape
is Hanwell Asylum,
generously devoted to the reception of
the indigent insane."
Now, the Victorians were pretty blunt
in their language, but actually,
they made as much progress in
mental health as in railway engineering.
Opened in 1831, it was the United
Kingdom's first purpose-built asylum
and represented a massive shift
in attitudes towards mental health.
Previously, the so-called pauper insane
were locked up in workhouses and jails.
Even at Hanwell,
treatment was tar from sympathetic.
Inmates spent much of their time
in restraints,
with no attempt at treatment.
But this was set to change
when Superintendent John Conolly
took charge in 1839.
Current librarian Paul Lang
is going to tell me more.
- Hello, Paul.
- Hello.
This was founded
before the Victorian era.
The Victorians were progressive
in mental health. Was there a change?
(Paul) Oh, yes,
particularly under John Conolly.
He did away with the restraints
within the first few months
of him being there.
He encouraged them
in music, dancing, outings,
as long as they were supervised,
of course.
There was basket weaving
and coir mat making,
and like a proto-industrial therapy.
They got them to do various things.
He took a far more humane approach
to the patients.
Conolly's methods
were to become general practice
throughout the United Kingdom,
and Hanwell, a model for future asylums.
Thai pioneering Victorian legacy
is sensed to this day,
as it's how the headquarters
for the West London Mental Health Trust,
and home to a very rare
and intriguing archive.
I'm meeting curator and
consultant psychiatrist Michael Mater.
- Hello.
- Hello, I'm Michael.
This looks like some collection of
some son. What on earth is it?
Well, it's a collection of brains
across the age range,
from birth right through
to hundred-plus.
The collection was started in the 1950s
by a consultant pathologist,
Professor Corsellis.
Determined to develop
a better understanding
of neurological and mental disease,
he kept his patients' brains postmortem
for research.
Today, the collection amounts
to 6,000 specimens.
(Michael M) This collection
has been really significant
in understanding what we used
to consider functional illnesses,
ie illnesses that didn't seem to have
a biological reason,
that they were somehow to do
with the person.
So we used to believe
that schizophrenia perhaps
wasn't based on any biological cause.
In this collection with the work
that Professor Corsellis did,
he showed that the brains of
people with schizophrenia
did have abnormalities
that could explain some of the symptoms.
Today, the collection is linked
to the research network Brain UK,
and is accessible to medical
researchers throughout the world.
(Michael M) This is a typical brain.
Do you have a sense of awe
that we're all wandering around
with something up here that we
only understand to a limited extent?
This is what makes you what you are.
It's my brain talking to yours,
not my liver or kidneys.
What we are is a product of this organ,
which is quite astonishing.
Do you want to take this?
I can tell you this is definitely
going to be a first for me.
I have never held a brain in my hands.
Now, that is extraordinary.
Considering what it does,
it doesn't weigh much at all.
When I got on the Underground
this morning,
I never dreamt that I was going
to end up today handling a human brain.
Well, your life is full of surprises.
Ifs time to continue westwards,
and I'm picking up a train
from Southall,
the next station along the line.
This is going to be crowded.
We hit rush hour,
and the trains coming from London
are packed with commuters.
We slow going as we leave the suburbs,
stop by stop,
and finally make our way into Berkshire.
A long journey on the stopping train
has bought me at last to Hungerford,
and it's time for me to turn in.
And my Bradshaw's mentions a hotel,
the Black Bear.
Good evening.
So, it's an old coaching inn, is it?
We're one of the oldest in the country.
Were on the main son of
Bath to London coaching route.
Once upon a time owned by Henry VIII.
He used to come here when they cleared
the palaces in London of plague.
So, it's full of history.
- Do you have a room for me, please?
- I do indeed, sir.
There we are, number 11.
You're in the main pan of the building.
- Thank you. Good night.
- Thank you very much.
We a new day
and I'm continuing my journey westwards
on Brunel's famous railway.
I'm rejoining the train at Hungerford
and crossing the county border
into rural Wiltshire.
As I approach Westbury,
there's a tantalising reference
in my Bradshaw's Guide,
"An ancient encampment on the edge of
the chalk downs near Bratton."
"On the escapement below
is the figure of a white horse,
the origin of which
is doubtful and obscure."
Very intriguing.
Clearly visible from passing trains,
this chalk horse must have been
an unmissable attraction
for those early Victorian tourists,
fascinated as they were
by all things mystical.
I'm going to take a closer look
and see whether any Westbury locals
are in the know.
You're visiting the White Horse.
Do you know what its origins are?
Well, I know what its origins
are linked to rather than are.
It was the Battle of Ethandune
between King Alfred and the Danes,
and Ethandune is thought to be
the Edington area,
and this was put up
at some much, much later stage
to commemorate the battle of Ethandune.
Indeed, this particular horse
isn't so tong in the tooth,
and dates not from the time
of the battle in 9th century,
but from the early 18th.
Ever since, the Westbury community
has gathered on a regular basis
on the hillside
to weed the site
and keep the horse white.
In the 1950s, Westbury's snowy steed
was concreted over
in a controversial bid
to reduce maintenance.
The horse still needs regular grooming,
but today, instead of trowels and hoes,
the community comes armed
with paint pots and rollers.
- Hello.
- Hiya.
I'm admiring the White Horse
as maybe you are as well.
- Are you pan of the community?
- Yeah, I live in one of the villages
and I came up myself last weekend
to have a go.
So, weren't you scared
when you went down and painted it?
It was a bit hairy at first
getting the hang of the abseiling,
but once you get down
and you start painting,
it's just like painting your living room
but while being on a rope.
Now, a chance to put
my DIV skills to the test
with team leader Steve Carrington.
I may be a fool to suggest this,
but may I have a go?
Absolutely.
Let's get you on a rope painting.
(Michael) Thank you. Excellent.
Now, luckily I do have
a reasonable head for heights,
but even so,
the angle is pretty daunting.
- (Steve) You know what you're doing?
- (Michael) Hope so.
(Steve) Good.
Mind the lumps with your left foot.
Wow, home decorating
has nothing on this, does it really?
(Steve laughs)
(Steve) The horse is about
800 square metres.
(Michael laughs)
I think I'll just do this little postage
stamp's worth here, if you don't mind.
Have you any idea how in the 18th or
19th century they would have done this?
Did they have ropes?
Well, they would have had ropes,
but certainly all the accounts
that we've seen of them
doing the Uffington White Horse,
people are shown
just walking around on it working.
Rather they than me.
Former politician involved in white wash
and hung out to dry.
I'll hand back the reigns to Steve,
as I'm returning to Westbury Station
to rejoin the Great Western.
I'm not travelling far along the line,
just one stop.
“Bradshaws” refers to this borough
as being “well populated with makings“.
In fact, in the early 1800s,
there were 25 malt houses in Wiltshire.
Today there's just one,
but ifs the oldest working malt house
in the United Kingdom,
and they're making malt
exactly as they did 150 years ago.
I'm meeting the owner, Robin Appel.
Robin, hello.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to Warminster Maltings.
It's great to be here,
thank you so much.
A beautiful garden,
but actually beautiful architecture
all together. ls it Victorian?
Yes, it is. it was built in 1855
by a man called William Morgan
who was an established maltster
and brewer in the town.
The town at that stage had about 30-plus
malt houses, all very small,
and I suppose William Morgan
had the vision of realising,
"If I build a really big one, I'll get
the economics that will allow me
to basically be the dominant maltster
in the town."
By the end of the 19th century,
he had basically put all the other ones
out of business.
I'm going to ask you a really stupid
and basic question. What is malt?
Malt is principally barley. Barley is
a grain that is packed full of starch,
and we convert that starch to sugar
which is the product
that the brewers brew with.
From the 17th century,
malt was heavily taxed.
For nearly 300 years,
the Crown drew in excess of
10% of its income from malt tax,
and could raise the levy at will
and often did so.
By the 19th century,
the maltsters had had enough
of what they perceived to be
unfair harassment,
and came together
to petition Customs and Excise.
And this is your archive.
Yes, this is... I think what I've got
here, Michael, is the blotted copy,
which was drawn up in 1845
by the maltsters of Wessex.
It included William Morgan
from Warminster.
I like this line here.
It accuses the commissioners
of "harassing the industry
with a vigour beyond the law,
which, excited by dangerous stimulants,
is calculated to create
an apparent delinquency
where none by fair procedure
would be found to exist...
My Bradshaw's is written in very
similar flowery language. I love it.
It took nearly 40 years,
but in the 1880s,
malt tax was abolished
and this makings flourished.
Its success was greatly aided
by the railway,
which enabled the malt
to be sold far and wide.
By the time we got
to the end of the 19th century
and William Frank Morgan
took over from his father,
here we have his cashbook from 1903,
and lo and behold, February 2nd,
only the second entry,
the Great Western Railway,
135 pounds, 9 shillings and 9 pence.
- A very considerable sum.
- Absolutely.
And he was paying
the Great Western Railway for what?
For malt freighted out of
Warminster Station.
And if we go through the book,
we find an entry of that sort of level
at the beginning of every month.
It's a wonderful archive.
I'm interested to see
the traditional way of making malt.
The first part of the process
is to seep the grain,
which kick starts germination.
(Robin) So we put it underwater
for about four to six hours,
and then we drain it
for the remainder of that 24 hours.
And in the next 24 hours,
we put it underwater for 12 hours,
and then we drain it for 12 hours.
And then the third 24-hour period, we
put it underwater for another 12 hours,
and then drain it for 12 hours.
It's amazing that anybody discovered
how to do this.
Exactly! (laughs)
So, when the process is complete,
what we do is we transfer it out of here
onto the floors behind us.
Next it needs to be dried
and aerated by ploughing.
Well, this really is a Victorian looking
process, or maybe much older.
What we want to end up achieving
is the maximum amount of starch
still encased in that grain
converted into sugar.
You have to react
to exactly how that barley behaves,
and if that means you have to come back
at 10 o'clock at night to plough it,
you come back at 10 o'clock.
There is no blueprint for doing this,
and this is where the maltster's skill
really comes into its own.
In modern-day maltings,
this is done on an industrial scale,
and of course, it's all fully automated.
But here in Warminster,
tradition is kept alive.
Time to see whether I would make
a good plough horse.
It's quite heavy.
(worker) It's the actual jerk
that makes it easier.
So, we're putting the air into this,
are we?
(worker) That's it.
Also, by the way, the ceiling
is getting lower and lower. Yeah.
I must say, these feel like
Victorian conditions to me.
Exhausted by my day at the plough,
I'm heading back to the station.
Engineers building railways today
still draw inspiration
from role models like Brunei.
The Victorians brought passion
to everything they did,
from viaducts to novel treatments
for the mentally ill.
And, of course,
to the making of their beer.
Cheers.
On the next leg of my journey,
I'll be visiting a tourist hotspot
that's been captivating visitors
since Victorian times...
This is the granddaddy of all
castles and cathedrals and skyscrapers.
This is the beginning of architecture.
(Michael) Thank you very much.
VIII take to the air...
I think George Bradshaw
would have loved this machine,
but he would have been
even more amazed to find out
that there would be trains
that went faster than this thing does.
And I'll try my hand at cloth making
the 19th-century way.
This is more difficult that it looks.
You're horsing around with me,
aren't you?
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 embarking on a new journey,
tracking the master engineer of
the Great Western Railway,
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
I'll begin at the line's London gateway,
Paddington Station,
travel west through Berkshire,
Wiltshire and Somerset,
before finishing up
in Newton Abbot, Devon,
the scene of one of Brunel's
heroic failures.
This leg covers 99 miles.
Starting in London,
it's a short hop to Hanwell,
then on to Hungerford in Berkshire,
before crossing counties into Wiltshire.
On this stretch,
I'll apply my mind to a Victorian asylum
and come to grips
with the old grey matter...
When I got on the Underground
this morning,
I never dreamt that I was going to
end up today handling a human brain.
I'll scale great heights
to give an historic horse a facelift...
(man)
The horse is about 800 square metres.
(Michael laughs)
I think I'll just do
this little postage stamp's worth here.
And make malt 19th-century style.
I must say, these feel like
Victorian conditions to me.
I'm starting my journey in the capital.
I'm travelling along
the London Underground
on a line that was opened
for steam trains in 1863,
roughly the year
that my Bradshaw's Guide was published.
It ran from King's Cross to Paddington,
the terminus built by Brunei
for the Great Western Railway.
And the scene of railway engineering
triumphs past, present and to come.
Even to 21st-century commuters,
Paddington's grandiose roof spans
are awe inspiring.
But when the station was built
in the 19th century,
recent advances in technology
made it possible to construct
from iron and glass
buildings whose like
had never been seen before.
I was rather surprised
to find my Bradshaw's says
that the exterior of Paddington
is not very remarkable.
But, of course,
most people arrive here by train,
and they see a station "spacious enough
to accommodate the largest number
of excursionists ever accumulated".
And Bradshaw's talks about the "immense
roofs, which impart to the traveller
the impression that he is about to start
by the railway of a first-rate company".
And impressions were everything for the
competing Victorian railway companies.
The London terminus reassuringly
indicated to first-class passengers
the railway's wealth and stature,
and inspired wonder amongst the hordes
who could now go on holiday by train.
For the Great Western,
Brunet built the grandest yet.
A veritable palace of steam.
But its inauguration came 16 long years
after the railway had opened.
I'm meeting Brunei expert
and railway historian John Christopher
in front of Isambard himself.
Paddington Station, when was it built?
It was opened in 1854, but the key
to understanding this Paddington
is in its full name.
This is Paddington New Station.
So the original station was built beyond
the Bishop's Road bridge at the far end
as a temporary structure.
Initially, they didn't have
the land they needed, or the money.
He'd spent so much
building the railway to Bristol
that they built a wooden station,
and only when land and money
became available by 1850
did they start work on this station.
So this is a rare example of
late Brunel.
Thanks to advances in engineering,
and inspired by the Palm House at Sew
Gardens and Paxtorfs Crystal Palace,
Brunei was able to build
a far more ambitious station
than he'd originally planned in 1835.
The most spectacular aspect
being the roof.
Three 700ft long spans of
glass and iron,
making it, at the time of building,
the largest in existence.
So, here we are, the important bit,
Brunel's wonderful roof.
So, this uses the techniques
that have been developed
between the time that the railway
and the station were built.
(John) Specifically the use of
wrought iron and glass in structures.
There's many aspects to this.
Partly it's an upturned ship,
which Brunei was familiar with.
He'd already built the Great Britain,
the large iron ship at that stage,
but it's also an early example of
modular architecture.
So you've got the same components
repeated again and again and again,
until you've got a whole building.
We're used to it now,
but the Victorians
were only just discovering it.
The station took three years
to build and cost around £620,000,
which is equivalent to £62 million
in today's money.
Worth every penny, I think.
That is a magnificent bird. What is it?
Thank you very much.
She's a Harris hawk.
And why are you here, the two of you?
Were doing pigeon control.
So, the pigeons obviously
are pretty frightened of this fellow.
Yes, she's a predator to pigeons.
And, so is it enough for the pigeon
just to see the bird
and they keep away, do they?
Pretty much, yes. The shape and size of
her is enough of a deterrent.
If I were a pigeon,
I'd be quaking right now.
- Lovely to see you. Bye.
- You too. Take care.
Today, Paddington is one site
in a new mum-billion pound
railway project
which will include
additional platforms beneath ground,
and represents one of the most
significant changes to the station
since Brunei completed it.
If there's one thing that excites me
as much as railway history,
it's the thought that
new railways are being built,
and I can't wait to travel on Crossrail,
which will go from Paddington
to east London.
And it really thrills me
that today we're using a technology
that's largely unchanged
since the beginning of the 19th century.
Near Paddington Station,
work has commenced.
Crossrail is currently Europe's
largest civil engineering project,
costing nearly £15 billion.
Thirteen miles of new twin-bore tunnels
are being built
under the heart of London,
and a total of 37 stations will link
Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west
with Shenfield and Abbey Wood
in the east.
Andy Alder is the project manager.
- Andy, good morning
- Good morning.
So, where we're standing now, just
about a mile from Paddington Station,
and what are you going to do from here?
So we've got
two tunnel boring machines here.
We've got Ada, our second machine,
and Phyllis is our first machine.
Phyllis is down in the ground
at the moment,
starting to dig the tunnels
from here to Paddington.
So our tunnelling machines will dig
from here all the way to Farringdon,
and then we'll start excavating
the station tunnels
at Bond Street and Tottenham Court Road.
And six more machines
that are almost identical to this
are working their way
from the east of London,
coming in to Farringdon,
going up to Stratford.
It's quite a big moment for me,
because in the 1980s,
I was the Minister of Transport
and we were already talking
about Crossrail then.
Yeah.
But we had another project
on the books as well
which was the Jubilee Line extension
out to Canary Wharf.
We only had money for one
so we did the other one.
But if I see this machine turn
in a moment,
I'll really feel that I'm,
well, I don't know,
- that it's an ambition achieved.
- Absolutely.
Each custom-made boring machine
is 148 metres long.
That's the equivalent of 14 buses
end to end.
These giant machines will work
nearly 24 hours a day excavating soil,
and as they move forward, they set
in place pre-cast concrete segments,
creating the tunnel as they burrow.
Could you please
turn the machine for us?
Everybody's clear.
Everybody's standing clear.
There she goes.
And so I've got to imagine now
this would be going through the rock
and the clay,
and all of that then would be prised out
and then fed back through the machine.
(Andy) That's correct.
Fed back through the machine,
onto the conveyers and then to here so
we can take the material away by train.
About 190 years ago,
Isambard Brunei and his father Marc
were constructing the Thames Tunnel.
How does the way that you tunnel now
compare with the days of Isambard
Kingdom Brunei and his father, Marc?
The basic technology is the same, having
a shield that supports the ground,
excavating,
and building the tunnel behind us.
The differences are that
we've got the mechanical cutter head.
He had 36 partitions in the front
with miners working by hand,
excavating the ground away.
And while we're building
concrete segments,
he had bricklayers
building brickwork behind.
They were achieving 350ft
in a whole year,
we'll achieve 350ft in a week.
(Michael) That's amazing.
I want to get closer to the action,
so we're making our way
to the tunnel head,
passing the rear sections of
the boring machine.
As well as containing toilets
and a kitchen,
it hosts a narrow gauge railway
running its full length,
so that pre-cast concrete segments
can be delivered to the cutting head.
A railway helping to build a railway.
(Andy) This is where it really happens.
(Michael) As you're tunnelling, you must
be dodging Victorian infrastructure.
(Andy) This machine will pass close
in ten locations
the London Underground
tube tunnels and tracks.
We're also tunnelling underneath
the Bazalgette sewer system
that was the first Victorian
sewer system for London.
So there's a lot of very historic and
very important infrastructure to London
that we need to protect
as we go through.
Not much pressure on you there then.
(laughs)
Crossrail is due to open
in Central London in 2018,
and I feel honoured
to have had a glimpse
into the future of rail travel
in the capital.
But ifs now time
to return to Brunel's Paddington
where my journey on his historic
Great Western Railway begins.
My Bradshaw's,
written in the 1860s, comments,
"A metamorphosis has taken place
in the environs of the line."
"Walls have become green embankments,
embankments diminished into hedges,
and hedges grown into avenues of trees
waving a leafy adieu
as we're carried past."
The leafy goodbye and verdant outlook
had been incorporated into London
as the capital has expanded.
And so also Hanwell, now part of
the London Borough of Ealing.
In Bradshaws day
it was a village in Middlesex,
and the first stop out of the metropolis
on the Great Western
to win a mention in the guidebook.
No devotee of Brunel can come to Hanwell
without wanting to visit
one of his masterpieces.
It's not just the grand stations
and powerful locomotives
that have so captured our imaginations,
because spectacular viaducts and bridges
made it possible for the railways
to traverse rivers and valleys.
This imposing viaduct
across the Brent Valley
was actually the first contract to be
let on Brunel's Great Western Railway,
and it was completed in 1837.
And I can do no better
than to quote Bradshaw's,
"A massive and elegant structure."
Over 900ft long, the viaduct
was Brunel's first major structure.
In Bradshaw's day, it was said locally
that Queen Victoria so much enjoyed
the view over the River Brent
that she would have her train
halt there awhile.
On such a journey, she and her subjects
travelling on the Great Western Railway
couldn't possibly fail to notice
a huge neoclassical building
just a stone's throw from the viaduct.
My Bradshaw's Guide says, "The most
interesting object in the landscape
is Hanwell Asylum,
generously devoted to the reception of
the indigent insane."
Now, the Victorians were pretty blunt
in their language, but actually,
they made as much progress in
mental health as in railway engineering.
Opened in 1831, it was the United
Kingdom's first purpose-built asylum
and represented a massive shift
in attitudes towards mental health.
Previously, the so-called pauper insane
were locked up in workhouses and jails.
Even at Hanwell,
treatment was tar from sympathetic.
Inmates spent much of their time
in restraints,
with no attempt at treatment.
But this was set to change
when Superintendent John Conolly
took charge in 1839.
Current librarian Paul Lang
is going to tell me more.
- Hello, Paul.
- Hello.
This was founded
before the Victorian era.
The Victorians were progressive
in mental health. Was there a change?
(Paul) Oh, yes,
particularly under John Conolly.
He did away with the restraints
within the first few months
of him being there.
He encouraged them
in music, dancing, outings,
as long as they were supervised,
of course.
There was basket weaving
and coir mat making,
and like a proto-industrial therapy.
They got them to do various things.
He took a far more humane approach
to the patients.
Conolly's methods
were to become general practice
throughout the United Kingdom,
and Hanwell, a model for future asylums.
Thai pioneering Victorian legacy
is sensed to this day,
as it's how the headquarters
for the West London Mental Health Trust,
and home to a very rare
and intriguing archive.
I'm meeting curator and
consultant psychiatrist Michael Mater.
- Hello.
- Hello, I'm Michael.
This looks like some collection of
some son. What on earth is it?
Well, it's a collection of brains
across the age range,
from birth right through
to hundred-plus.
The collection was started in the 1950s
by a consultant pathologist,
Professor Corsellis.
Determined to develop
a better understanding
of neurological and mental disease,
he kept his patients' brains postmortem
for research.
Today, the collection amounts
to 6,000 specimens.
(Michael M) This collection
has been really significant
in understanding what we used
to consider functional illnesses,
ie illnesses that didn't seem to have
a biological reason,
that they were somehow to do
with the person.
So we used to believe
that schizophrenia perhaps
wasn't based on any biological cause.
In this collection with the work
that Professor Corsellis did,
he showed that the brains of
people with schizophrenia
did have abnormalities
that could explain some of the symptoms.
Today, the collection is linked
to the research network Brain UK,
and is accessible to medical
researchers throughout the world.
(Michael M) This is a typical brain.
Do you have a sense of awe
that we're all wandering around
with something up here that we
only understand to a limited extent?
This is what makes you what you are.
It's my brain talking to yours,
not my liver or kidneys.
What we are is a product of this organ,
which is quite astonishing.
Do you want to take this?
I can tell you this is definitely
going to be a first for me.
I have never held a brain in my hands.
Now, that is extraordinary.
Considering what it does,
it doesn't weigh much at all.
When I got on the Underground
this morning,
I never dreamt that I was going
to end up today handling a human brain.
Well, your life is full of surprises.
Ifs time to continue westwards,
and I'm picking up a train
from Southall,
the next station along the line.
This is going to be crowded.
We hit rush hour,
and the trains coming from London
are packed with commuters.
We slow going as we leave the suburbs,
stop by stop,
and finally make our way into Berkshire.
A long journey on the stopping train
has bought me at last to Hungerford,
and it's time for me to turn in.
And my Bradshaw's mentions a hotel,
the Black Bear.
Good evening.
So, it's an old coaching inn, is it?
We're one of the oldest in the country.
Were on the main son of
Bath to London coaching route.
Once upon a time owned by Henry VIII.
He used to come here when they cleared
the palaces in London of plague.
So, it's full of history.
- Do you have a room for me, please?
- I do indeed, sir.
There we are, number 11.
You're in the main pan of the building.
- Thank you. Good night.
- Thank you very much.
We a new day
and I'm continuing my journey westwards
on Brunel's famous railway.
I'm rejoining the train at Hungerford
and crossing the county border
into rural Wiltshire.
As I approach Westbury,
there's a tantalising reference
in my Bradshaw's Guide,
"An ancient encampment on the edge of
the chalk downs near Bratton."
"On the escapement below
is the figure of a white horse,
the origin of which
is doubtful and obscure."
Very intriguing.
Clearly visible from passing trains,
this chalk horse must have been
an unmissable attraction
for those early Victorian tourists,
fascinated as they were
by all things mystical.
I'm going to take a closer look
and see whether any Westbury locals
are in the know.
You're visiting the White Horse.
Do you know what its origins are?
Well, I know what its origins
are linked to rather than are.
It was the Battle of Ethandune
between King Alfred and the Danes,
and Ethandune is thought to be
the Edington area,
and this was put up
at some much, much later stage
to commemorate the battle of Ethandune.
Indeed, this particular horse
isn't so tong in the tooth,
and dates not from the time
of the battle in 9th century,
but from the early 18th.
Ever since, the Westbury community
has gathered on a regular basis
on the hillside
to weed the site
and keep the horse white.
In the 1950s, Westbury's snowy steed
was concreted over
in a controversial bid
to reduce maintenance.
The horse still needs regular grooming,
but today, instead of trowels and hoes,
the community comes armed
with paint pots and rollers.
- Hello.
- Hiya.
I'm admiring the White Horse
as maybe you are as well.
- Are you pan of the community?
- Yeah, I live in one of the villages
and I came up myself last weekend
to have a go.
So, weren't you scared
when you went down and painted it?
It was a bit hairy at first
getting the hang of the abseiling,
but once you get down
and you start painting,
it's just like painting your living room
but while being on a rope.
Now, a chance to put
my DIV skills to the test
with team leader Steve Carrington.
I may be a fool to suggest this,
but may I have a go?
Absolutely.
Let's get you on a rope painting.
(Michael) Thank you. Excellent.
Now, luckily I do have
a reasonable head for heights,
but even so,
the angle is pretty daunting.
- (Steve) You know what you're doing?
- (Michael) Hope so.
(Steve) Good.
Mind the lumps with your left foot.
Wow, home decorating
has nothing on this, does it really?
(Steve laughs)
(Steve) The horse is about
800 square metres.
(Michael laughs)
I think I'll just do this little postage
stamp's worth here, if you don't mind.
Have you any idea how in the 18th or
19th century they would have done this?
Did they have ropes?
Well, they would have had ropes,
but certainly all the accounts
that we've seen of them
doing the Uffington White Horse,
people are shown
just walking around on it working.
Rather they than me.
Former politician involved in white wash
and hung out to dry.
I'll hand back the reigns to Steve,
as I'm returning to Westbury Station
to rejoin the Great Western.
I'm not travelling far along the line,
just one stop.
“Bradshaws” refers to this borough
as being “well populated with makings“.
In fact, in the early 1800s,
there were 25 malt houses in Wiltshire.
Today there's just one,
but ifs the oldest working malt house
in the United Kingdom,
and they're making malt
exactly as they did 150 years ago.
I'm meeting the owner, Robin Appel.
Robin, hello.
Hello, Michael.
Welcome to Warminster Maltings.
It's great to be here,
thank you so much.
A beautiful garden,
but actually beautiful architecture
all together. ls it Victorian?
Yes, it is. it was built in 1855
by a man called William Morgan
who was an established maltster
and brewer in the town.
The town at that stage had about 30-plus
malt houses, all very small,
and I suppose William Morgan
had the vision of realising,
"If I build a really big one, I'll get
the economics that will allow me
to basically be the dominant maltster
in the town."
By the end of the 19th century,
he had basically put all the other ones
out of business.
I'm going to ask you a really stupid
and basic question. What is malt?
Malt is principally barley. Barley is
a grain that is packed full of starch,
and we convert that starch to sugar
which is the product
that the brewers brew with.
From the 17th century,
malt was heavily taxed.
For nearly 300 years,
the Crown drew in excess of
10% of its income from malt tax,
and could raise the levy at will
and often did so.
By the 19th century,
the maltsters had had enough
of what they perceived to be
unfair harassment,
and came together
to petition Customs and Excise.
And this is your archive.
Yes, this is... I think what I've got
here, Michael, is the blotted copy,
which was drawn up in 1845
by the maltsters of Wessex.
It included William Morgan
from Warminster.
I like this line here.
It accuses the commissioners
of "harassing the industry
with a vigour beyond the law,
which, excited by dangerous stimulants,
is calculated to create
an apparent delinquency
where none by fair procedure
would be found to exist...
My Bradshaw's is written in very
similar flowery language. I love it.
It took nearly 40 years,
but in the 1880s,
malt tax was abolished
and this makings flourished.
Its success was greatly aided
by the railway,
which enabled the malt
to be sold far and wide.
By the time we got
to the end of the 19th century
and William Frank Morgan
took over from his father,
here we have his cashbook from 1903,
and lo and behold, February 2nd,
only the second entry,
the Great Western Railway,
135 pounds, 9 shillings and 9 pence.
- A very considerable sum.
- Absolutely.
And he was paying
the Great Western Railway for what?
For malt freighted out of
Warminster Station.
And if we go through the book,
we find an entry of that sort of level
at the beginning of every month.
It's a wonderful archive.
I'm interested to see
the traditional way of making malt.
The first part of the process
is to seep the grain,
which kick starts germination.
(Robin) So we put it underwater
for about four to six hours,
and then we drain it
for the remainder of that 24 hours.
And in the next 24 hours,
we put it underwater for 12 hours,
and then we drain it for 12 hours.
And then the third 24-hour period, we
put it underwater for another 12 hours,
and then drain it for 12 hours.
It's amazing that anybody discovered
how to do this.
Exactly! (laughs)
So, when the process is complete,
what we do is we transfer it out of here
onto the floors behind us.
Next it needs to be dried
and aerated by ploughing.
Well, this really is a Victorian looking
process, or maybe much older.
What we want to end up achieving
is the maximum amount of starch
still encased in that grain
converted into sugar.
You have to react
to exactly how that barley behaves,
and if that means you have to come back
at 10 o'clock at night to plough it,
you come back at 10 o'clock.
There is no blueprint for doing this,
and this is where the maltster's skill
really comes into its own.
In modern-day maltings,
this is done on an industrial scale,
and of course, it's all fully automated.
But here in Warminster,
tradition is kept alive.
Time to see whether I would make
a good plough horse.
It's quite heavy.
(worker) It's the actual jerk
that makes it easier.
So, we're putting the air into this,
are we?
(worker) That's it.
Also, by the way, the ceiling
is getting lower and lower. Yeah.
I must say, these feel like
Victorian conditions to me.
Exhausted by my day at the plough,
I'm heading back to the station.
Engineers building railways today
still draw inspiration
from role models like Brunei.
The Victorians brought passion
to everything they did,
from viaducts to novel treatments
for the mentally ill.
And, of course,
to the making of their beer.
Cheers.
On the next leg of my journey,
I'll be visiting a tourist hotspot
that's been captivating visitors
since Victorian times...
This is the granddaddy of all
castles and cathedrals and skyscrapers.
This is the beginning of architecture.
(Michael) Thank you very much.
VIII take to the air...
I think George Bradshaw
would have loved this machine,
but he would have been
even more amazed to find out
that there would be trains
that went faster than this thing does.
And I'll try my hand at cloth making
the 19th-century way.
This is more difficult that it looks.
You're horsing around with me,
aren't you?