Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 4, Episode 3 - Stoke-on-Trent to Winsford - 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 at the midpoint of my journey
from Buckinghamshire to Aberystwyth.
And at this point,
I'm going to make a small diversion,
dragged northwards from
my direct route to Wales
by that magnet for train enthusiasts,
the railway works at Crewe.
On today's journey, I'll explore
one of the greatest locomotive factories
in railway history, ..
Records are sketchy,
but they talk about 20,000 people,
so the size of it was immense.
Discover the dark side of
the Industrial Revolution...
(man) The place was
heavily spoilt by pollution,
and the stench of the sewage,
it was like a large cesspit.
And learn how in Victorian times
the potteries brought
their products to the masses.
This is incredibly difficult.
This is fiendish.
So far, my journey has brought me
from the rural Home Counties
into the heart of
the industrial Midlands.
I'll soon be heading west,
through the Severn Valley
along its heritage railway,
before venturing into Wales,
and my final stop at Aberystwyth.
Today I'm making a detour
to explore Stoke-on-Trent,
en route to
the fabled railway works of Crewe,
finishing up in
the Cheshire town of Winsford.
My Bradshaw's contains
a gripping description
of my first destination,
Stoke-on-Trent,
at the height of
the Industrial Revolution.
"There may be seen
the surrounding hills,
crowned with towering columns
and huge pyramids of chimneys
and great rounded furnaces,
clustering together like hives."
Yes, I'm headed for the potteries.
Sounds like my cup of tea.
At their Victorian peak,
the six pottery towns,
strung along
the North Staffordshire railway,
were home to 250,000 people,
almost all employed in the manufacture.
Those communities have since merged
into modem Stoke-on-Trent,
but the story began in Burslem,
the so-called “mother town“.
I'm exploring with local historian
Fred Hughes.
(Fred) This is the Wedgwood Institute.
As you can see,
it rather is a magnificent building.
It's a statement, it's a picture,
of what the potteries were
in the Victorian times.
This is the image that the people
of Burslem wanted to portray
to the rest of the world.
We gave birth to pottery,
and Josiah Wedgwood, the great
Josiah Wedgwood, was born here,
and this is a tribute to him.
Pottery began in this area
as a cottage industry,
using the abundant local coal and clay.
Then, in the mid 18th century,
Josiah Wedgwood, inspired by
the scientific advances of his day,
applied industrial methods
for the first time.
Over the years, thousands of
bottle kilns dotted the landscape.
Bradshaw's Guide gives me
a very powerful description
of the potteries towns
in the middle 19th century.
Give me an idea of what they looked like
and felt like and smelt like.
(Fred) It was satanic, it was dark,
it was dingy, it was dirty,
you couldn't see the sky.
Grit got in your eyes all the time.
People were choking virtually to death
on the smoke and the pollution
that was coming out of these places.
Out of this inferno came
some of the finest porcelain ever made.
By the turn of the 18th century,
delicate bone china had been developed,
and local red clay was abandoned
in favour of finer white clay,
imported from Southwest England.
At first,
it was brought by sea and canal,
but by the mid 19th century,
the smoke of the bottle ovens mingled
with smoke from railway locomotives.
The railways sped everything up.
First of all, it could carry
more ware and more clay in.
It still had to come from Cornwall
round the coast to Liverpool.
It sped up that transportation
from Liverpool into the potteries.
The rails also exported
the finished goods
across the country and beyond,
helping the industry to flourish
for over a century.
The region remains an important centre
for British ceramics,
though ifs a far cry from
its Victorian heyday.
Electrification certainly
did away with coal and smoke,
and, of course, the Clean Air Act.
But I think
the most important thing was
the big change in the way
other nations had come in.
I mean, we'd had
our Industrial Revolution,
we started the whole thing.
All of a sudden, other nations
wanted a piece of the action.
So they followed on where we left off.
- We led it and we lost it.
- That's absolutely right.
Luckily, not every trace of
the Victorian trade has disappeared.
Close at hand, the Middleport Pottery
has survived virtually unchanged
since the 19th century.
I'm taking a tour with company historian
Jemma Baskeyfield.
Was this state of the art when it was
built in the 19th century?
Yeah, people came to visit
this factory
because it was
a very cutting-edge factory.
The most cutting-edge factory
you could wish to visit.
Today, we are possibly the most
backwards factory you'll ever visit,
but, yeah,
that's part of the charm, certainly.
A few years ago, the historic buildings
here had fallen into such disrepair
that the factory was at risk of closure.
However, in 2011,
the Prince of Wales's Regeneration Trust
stepped in with ambitious plans
to redevelop the site
on behalf of the whole community.
So this remarkable snapshot of the
Victorian pottery industry will survive.
So this is the largest collection
of the blocks and cases,
the master copies of moulds,
left in any factory anywhere.
We've kept all of them.
And there's 15,000 plus.
Piled up, well, as high as you can see,
and it goes on forever.
(Jemma) Yeah, in all directions.
One of the most extraordinary sights.
Mass production
using moulds like these
helped Victorian putters
to meet unprecedented demand
from the new aspirational middle class.
And to supply decorated products
on an industrial scale,
they embraced the art of
transfer printing.
It's a way that you can affordably,
to a high quality,
decorate pottery over and over again.
And that's replacing the hand painting
process which is what went before.
This is the only pottery
still using the method.
The pattern is printed on to
sheets of tissue paper,
before transferring the colour
on to the pottery.
(Jemma)
These ladies are incredibly skilled.
Traditionally, it takes seven years
to learn to do this.
They take the sticky paper
and they've got to apply it
to the once-fired pottery,
what we call biscuit ware.
They apply the print, but they can't
peel it off and put it on again
because it sticks,
so it's first time every time.
The colour is oil-based,
so when you wash these items,
the tissue paper washes away
and you're just left with the print
on the surface of the pottery.
- I'm amazed
- Yep.
Well, if you'd like to have a go...
I'll be more amazed. (laughs)
The transferrers work
with amazing speed.
Time to see how I measure up.
Try and get your hand down to the bottom
and swing it round this side,
like a cone.
Like a cone.
- Oh.
- The scissors are there.
The trick is to minimise
the creases and joins
so they won't be detectable.
But I begin to see why it takes you
seven years to perfect the an.
- This is incredibly difficult.
- (woman) We make it look easy.
This is fiendish.
(woman)
You've got the hang of it now.
That's it.
Covering the outside is one thing,
but the inside is quite another.
Now begins the really difficult bit.
(woman) That's it.
Seven years down the line
you might be on the production line.
Oh, dear. I've got a hole.
Well, you can repair it.
And then out it off
when you've pressed it over.
That's it. Perfect match.
- Where's the reject bin'?
- (Laughter)
We don't reject anything.
I think I'd better stop
distracting the skilled transferrers
and continue my tour of
Victorian Staffordshire.
The phenomenal success
of the potteries here
had unforeseen consequences for some,
and before Heave Stoke-on-Trent,
I'm visiting a place which reveals the
drawbacks of rapid industrial growth.
I've come to Trentham Park
which is described in my Bradshaw's
as "the Duke of Sutherland's seat
on the River Trent of great extent".
"The old seat has been rebuilt
by Sir Charles Barry."
"The Trent is made
to spread into a fine lake
planted with ornamental timber,
the work of Capability Brown,
the famous landscape artist."
Here is the Trent, here is the lake,
all beautifully described.
But where is the house?
When my guidebook was published,
Trentham Park was one of the
most fashionable houses in the land,
having been remodelled in the 1830s by
celebrity architect Sir Charles Barry,
the man who built
the Houses of Parliament.
To learn what became of
this magnificent pile,
I'm meeting estate manager
Michael Walker.
- Hello, Michael.
- Very nice to meet you.
There are certain disadvantages
to using a guidebook 150 years old.
I'm looking for a house and I rather
fear it's not here, is that right?
That's absolutely right.
The majority of Trentham Hall
was demolished in 1911
by the Duke of Sutherland.
(Michael P) What brought that about?
The pottery industry was expanding
all the time in the 1840s,
and so was the local housing.
But there was no provision
for proper sanitation.
And the sewage from the houses
pretty much ran directly into
many of the local brooks and rivers.
And at that time,
the River Trent used to feed directly
into Capability Brown's mile-long lake,
so the place was
very heavily spoilt by pollution,
both in the air,
sometimes it could be, you know, black,
and the stench of the sewage.
It was like a large cesspit.
It's quite an interesting antidote
because I get very enthusiastic about
the Victorian period from my Bradshaw's.
But there was a pretty ghastly downside
to it all.
By the turn of the 20th century,
the problem had become so bad
that the Sutherlands chose
to abandon the park.
No buyer was found for the house,
so it was demolished for
its building materials.
All that remained of
Charles Barry's masterpiece
was his remarkable formal garden.
So what we're seeing here,
this is Charles Barry, is it?
(Michael W) This is Charles Barry.
It's a very grand Italian garden
in the nee-classical style
And this formality suited
the Victorians?
(Michael W) I think this was
the must-have accessory
for the aristocracy at the time.
It was a new trend, a new fashion,
and one which was really pioneered
in this country at Trentham.
Visiting the park today, it's possible,
with a little imagination,
to savour its Victorian zenith.
(Michael W) The garden was of course
designed to be viewed from upstairs,
within the grand bedrooms of the house,
looking down,
and it's only really from above
that you get the detail, the formality.
(Michael P) It's tremendous.
How was it that
the garden was able to survive'?
After the house was demolished,
Trentham ran as a private business
for the local people
as a pay for public visitor attraction.
For most of the 20th century,
the gardens were
the playground of the potteries.
There were dance halls and a bandstand,
and a new branch line, opened in 1910,
enabled visitors to flock here
to enjoy the attractions.
Trentham Park took visitors within
five minutes' walk
of the front gates of the estate.
That was very important.
During the holiday periods, that train
service was very well used indeed.
Sadly, by the end of the 20th century,
the gardens themselves
had fallen into decline.
But, in 2004,
a major renovation project began.
Barry's Italianate "parterre"
was restored,
and new areas were landscaped
by leading garden designers.
So Bradshaw might be astonished
that the house has gone,
but he probably would recognise
the garden.
I hope he would.
The manicured elegance
of Trentham is stunning,
but I'm now taking to the tracks
in search of a wilder landscape.
My last stop of the day was
a favourite Victorian beauty spot.
As evening approaches,
I'm on the train to Kidsgrove.
"Mow Cop," says Bradshaw's,
"is a mountain in miniature."
"From the summit of this hill,
1,091ft high,
the finest views imaginable
are obtainable in every direction."
I suppose that depends on the weather,
and I'm hoping that my luck will hold.
Built by the North Staffordshire Railway
and originally called Harecastle,
Kidsgrove Station opened in 1848.
Soon, readers of “Bradshaws”
would alight here
to admire the vista from a nearby park.
Guide Des Ball is showing me the way.
You know, Des, my Bradshaw's has
quite a long paragraph about Mow Cop.
And I was thinking, "What is all
the fuss about, it's only 1,000ft high,"
but now I get here, I see.
You've got this 360-degree view.
Amazing.
Seven counties are visible from here,
and my guidebook tells me that on
a fine day you can see as far as Wales.
(Des) First we have
Shropshire over there.
Then we have Denbighshire,
Welsh mountains there,
go all the way to north Wales
that way there.
And over to this side
we have Derbyshire.
My “Bradshaws” also points out
an artificial ruin
which has a good appearance
in every point of view.
Built as a folly in the 1750s,
by the time my guidebook was published,
it was in use as a summerhouse,
complete with windows and doors.
These days, romantic as it is,
it's rather windswept,
so Des is leading me
to a more hospitable venue.
Here is the pub I mentioned
called the Cheshire View,
but it used to be called
the Railway Inn.
And of course, in the hollow there
is the railway and Mow Cop station
that used to be.
No longer here, I'm afraid.
An ideal spot for
a thirsty railway traveller
to revel in the English landscape
that unfolds below.
- It is an amazing view, isn't it'?
- Wait till the sun sets in a moment.
And to think that you and I can see it
without the smoke and pollution
of the Victorian era.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
My Midlands railway adventure continues,
and my next stop is
almost hallowed ground.
Crewe, says my Bradshaw's,
"is a railway town
and a first-class depot".
"Nearly 2,000 men are employed."
"Here are immense rolling mills
for the rails and locomotive factories."
"An engine with its tender
is made up of 5,416 separate pieces,
and a new one is turned out
every Monday morning."
Any self-respecting Great British
railway traveller must visit Crewe.
The works at Crewe were once amongst
the foremost in the world,
and the town still has
a place in every train buffs heart.
- Morning.
- Morning. Thank you very much.
So I'm going to the very heart of
the railways, Crewe.
Crewe?
Can you imagine that, in the 1860s,
apparently a locomotive and its tender
- was made up of 5,416 separate pieces.
- That's amazing, isn't it'?
- Bet you didn't know that.
- No, I didn't.
- I bet you didn't before you read that.
- (both laugh)
- Have a good day.
- And you.
The story of the immense works at Crewe
began as a meeting point of
major railways.
Even with its elegant 19th-century
architecture covered in scaffolding,
the station remains a key hub
as it was in Victorian days.
Crewe started its railway history
as a major junction,
and in the next few minutes,
there'll be trains leaving from here
for Liverpool, for Manchester,
for Edinburgh and for south Wales.
In the early 1800s,
there was a hamlet of just 360 souls,
but the arrival of the railway
in 1837 changed that.
In 1877,
the borough of Crewe was established,
and by 1881,
its population exceeded 24,000,
complete with rows of
railway workers' cottages.
At the heart was a vast factory,
which I'm exploring with
general manager Tony Webb.
- (Michael) Hello, Tony.
- (Tony) Welcome to Crewe.
The first line to reach Crewe
was the Grand Junction Railway,
which linked Birmingham with the
pioneering Liverpool to Manchester line.
It was soon joined by other routes,
and Crewe found itself
at the junction of three of
Britain's busiest main lines.
It was the ideal spot for
a railway works on an epic scale.
My Bradshaw's says
2,000 people are working at the site,
but I think it got to be
much more than that, didn't it?
The war years, the records are sketchy,
but they talk about 20,000 people,
so the size of it was immense.
Is this the full extent of the works?
You get some idea of the scale
that there's a football ground here,
- which is kind of lost in space.
- It is huge.
You're talking about erecting shops
and buildings hundreds of metres long.
Obviously it created not only a works
but it created a town as well.
How were the people housed?
The railway was
a very paternalistic organisation.
There would have been
railway schooling, railway homes.
It had its own hospital on site.
The accident book
is very interesting reading.
Not uncommon for people to lose eyes,
fingers and even limbs.
There are some drawings
that were created at the works
of artificial limbs.
More than 8,250 locomotives
were built here,
from Victorian steam engines
to modern electric trains.
These days, however,
the works focus on renovating bogies,
the wheel systems
that sit beneath carriages.
They start in a pretty filthy condition.
(Tony) You can imagine running round
for half a million miles or more.
At the end of the process,
you wouldn't recognise them,
and I'm offering a helping hand
with the finishing touches.
It all looks now
so beautiful, so pristine.
It's ready for another
half a million miles.
Just as it comes down now,
you just steady it.
Beautiful. Spot on.
- (Tony) If you could remove the stand.
- Take that away'?
- Yeah.
- Whoa!
There we go.
- (Michael) Did I do that?
- You did that, yeah.
By building their tracks through Crewe,
Victorian railway engineers
shaped the town's history.
Today, it remains an important junction,
and a magnet for some of Britain's
most committed railway enthusiasts
like Tom and William Snook.
- Tom and William, hello.
- (both) Good afternoon.
Nice to see you both. You're
a father and son team, is that right?
- We are indeed.
- Yes.
Now, I quite like trains,
but I'm not a trainspotter.
For those of us who are not in on this,
can you explain the intrigue
of photographing trains,
and taking down numbers and so on?
(Tom) Well, for me it started in 1952.
By the time of eight, I was
travelling on my own down into London
and seeing all sons of things,
which you can't do these days.
The camaraderie of
all the youngsters together
and screaming and shouting
when something really unusual came in.
It's the enthusiasm
to try and see everything, for me.
I want to see everything.
My dad has nearly seen everything.
I'm not that far behind him.
What's that you're clutching there?
Well, my son compiled this.
I created this book over three years.
I finished it last year.
It goes from locomotives,
passenger trains,
testing trains that run around
the country for Network Rail.
I thought I'd bring you up a copy,
and it's yours to keep and take away.
Oh, my goodness.
I mean, I'm really flattered,
but it's not kind of easy reading,
is it'?
- How can I put this?
- The page you're on now...
You wouldn't go to sleep reading this,
or, actually, maybe you would.
(all laugh)
it's really a historical document,
like Bradshaw's, really,
in as much as it tells you
what is totally on the network
at that particular time
in the summer of this year.
We no replacement
for my trusty “Bradshaw's Guide“,
but ifs good to know that, for some,
the romance of the railways lives on.
It's a class 350.
For me, the best thing about
train travel!
Is the chance to discover the remarkable
range of Victorian industries
that were served by the railways.
I'm on my way to Winsford,
which Bradshaw's tells me
is situated in one of the most
important salt districts in the country.
"There are 28 salt works here,
some of them being like
small towns in extent."
Now, other towns around here
are Middlewich, Northwich and Nantwich.
Which is very interesting
because I think wich
is the Anglo Saxon for "salt".
Beneath Cheshires “wish” towns
lies an enormous salt deposit,
formed from a sea bed
200 million years ago.
Ever since Roman times,
the brine that bubbles up
in local springs
has been evaporated to make salt.
And by the 1600s, rock salt was
also being mined in the area.
Then, in Victorian times,
a fresh rock salt deposit
was discovered in nearby Winsford,
and a mine dug to extract it,
still in operation today.
I'm heading 180 metres below ground
with mine manager Gordon Dunn.
Now, in Victorian times, I guess they
didn't go in beautiful lifts like this.
How did they go down?
They went down in the same buckets
that was used to lift the salt.
It wasn't regarded as unsafe,
it was just the only way to do it.
Prospectors looking for coal
first discovered the extent of
the salt seam.
Using explosives, picks and shovels,
they began to carve out
vast subterranean rooms,
supported by pillars of salt.
I was expecting I would be
crawling on hands and knees,
but this is like walking into
an underground ballroom, it's huge.
(Gordon) Yes, it is very large.
As well as being needed
for the Victorian table,
the 19th century saw
demand for salt rise
thanks to the growing chemical industry,
which used it for everything
from caustic soda to chlorine.
Between 1844 and 1892, one million
tons of salt were mined at Winsford.
An extraordinary feat, given the basic
equipment that the miners were using.
You can see the black marks on the
roof from the soot from the candles,
as that was the only way
they were able to light the...
- Seriously?
- Yeah, seriously.
It was all candlelit
and we've found evidence
of old tallow candles
and old small packets of cigarettes,
cos they were allowed to smoke
underground in those days.
And where we are now
is the old two-foot gauge railway line.
And once they'd taken
the salt up to the surface,
- was it also transported by train'?
- Yes, it was.
Some was transported by train in
special carriages that were timber lined
to stop the salts
reacting with the steel,
and other salt was put into barges,
sent to Liverpool,
and traded as Liverpool salt,
although it was really from Cheshire.
Victorian mining was so efficient
that, by the late 1800s,
prices had plummeted,
and Winsford was forced to close.
But it reopened in the 1920s
when a local competitor flooded,
and since then has prospered.
Today, the salt mined in
its 142 miles of underground tunnels
is used mostly for gritting the roads.
- And you're still at it.
- We certainly are.
We mine over a million tons a year
and we've got enough reserves
for up to 100 years.
Despite the mine's resources,
a decade ago, it began to diversify
in a highly unexpected direction.
The salt in the rock here helps regulate
the humidity in the disused tunnels,
creating stable conditions
which are excellent
for storing historic documents.
I'm hunting out archive manager
Stuart Elwood.
Stuart?
This is bizarre.
Rows and rows of bookshelves
in a salt mine.
- (Stuart) Hello.
- Hello.
Why are there all these records
in a salt mine'?
Well, this is the National Archives
off-site storage facility.
The repositories in Sew where National
Archives is based are filling up,
and we needed a safe
and secure environment to hold them in.
The National Archive, formerly
known as the Public Record Office,
was established in the 19th century
to impose Victorian order
on Britain's official records.
Nowadays, the collection holds material
from the middle ages
right up to the present day.
This census was taken in this area
at the time of my "Bradshaw's Guide".
Inside, you've got the actual printed
and then written record
from the night in 1861
when they took the census.
And the first person listed here
is a salt maker, George Whit ton,
and then his wife is Martha Whit ton,
gives her age,
and then their daughter, Maria Whit ton.
Quite a thought, though, that those salt
workers might have dug these tunnels
and now their records
are housed here in perpetuity.
Yes, indeed. I mean, we will be
keeping them safe down here
for the foreseeable future
and beyond, really.
Once again, my 19th-century guidebook
has led me to fresh insights
into Britain's past and present.
From hidden underground archives
to potteries untouched
by the passage of time,
this country is full of surprises.
Minerals have dominated
this leg of my journey.
The salt and coal and clays
buried in the ground
had been known about throughout history,
but they were exploited by
the Victorians on an industrial scale,
shaping the destinies of
Staffordshire and Cheshire.
In the mines, the collieries
and the kilns,
workers toiled
to make Britain prosperous.
They were the salt of the earth.
On the next Keg of my journey,
I learn how Victorian blacksmithing
was not for the faint-hearted, ..
It's very hard physical work.
There's no doubt of that.
I'll ride one of Britain's
most modern trains...
And there we go. A surge of power.
And traverse the remarkable
Victoria Bridge.
In its day, it was
the longest clear span in the world,
and it is, of course, majestic.
(train whistle)
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 at the midpoint of my journey
from Buckinghamshire to Aberystwyth.
And at this point,
I'm going to make a small diversion,
dragged northwards from
my direct route to Wales
by that magnet for train enthusiasts,
the railway works at Crewe.
On today's journey, I'll explore
one of the greatest locomotive factories
in railway history, ..
Records are sketchy,
but they talk about 20,000 people,
so the size of it was immense.
Discover the dark side of
the Industrial Revolution...
(man) The place was
heavily spoilt by pollution,
and the stench of the sewage,
it was like a large cesspit.
And learn how in Victorian times
the potteries brought
their products to the masses.
This is incredibly difficult.
This is fiendish.
So far, my journey has brought me
from the rural Home Counties
into the heart of
the industrial Midlands.
I'll soon be heading west,
through the Severn Valley
along its heritage railway,
before venturing into Wales,
and my final stop at Aberystwyth.
Today I'm making a detour
to explore Stoke-on-Trent,
en route to
the fabled railway works of Crewe,
finishing up in
the Cheshire town of Winsford.
My Bradshaw's contains
a gripping description
of my first destination,
Stoke-on-Trent,
at the height of
the Industrial Revolution.
"There may be seen
the surrounding hills,
crowned with towering columns
and huge pyramids of chimneys
and great rounded furnaces,
clustering together like hives."
Yes, I'm headed for the potteries.
Sounds like my cup of tea.
At their Victorian peak,
the six pottery towns,
strung along
the North Staffordshire railway,
were home to 250,000 people,
almost all employed in the manufacture.
Those communities have since merged
into modem Stoke-on-Trent,
but the story began in Burslem,
the so-called “mother town“.
I'm exploring with local historian
Fred Hughes.
(Fred) This is the Wedgwood Institute.
As you can see,
it rather is a magnificent building.
It's a statement, it's a picture,
of what the potteries were
in the Victorian times.
This is the image that the people
of Burslem wanted to portray
to the rest of the world.
We gave birth to pottery,
and Josiah Wedgwood, the great
Josiah Wedgwood, was born here,
and this is a tribute to him.
Pottery began in this area
as a cottage industry,
using the abundant local coal and clay.
Then, in the mid 18th century,
Josiah Wedgwood, inspired by
the scientific advances of his day,
applied industrial methods
for the first time.
Over the years, thousands of
bottle kilns dotted the landscape.
Bradshaw's Guide gives me
a very powerful description
of the potteries towns
in the middle 19th century.
Give me an idea of what they looked like
and felt like and smelt like.
(Fred) It was satanic, it was dark,
it was dingy, it was dirty,
you couldn't see the sky.
Grit got in your eyes all the time.
People were choking virtually to death
on the smoke and the pollution
that was coming out of these places.
Out of this inferno came
some of the finest porcelain ever made.
By the turn of the 18th century,
delicate bone china had been developed,
and local red clay was abandoned
in favour of finer white clay,
imported from Southwest England.
At first,
it was brought by sea and canal,
but by the mid 19th century,
the smoke of the bottle ovens mingled
with smoke from railway locomotives.
The railways sped everything up.
First of all, it could carry
more ware and more clay in.
It still had to come from Cornwall
round the coast to Liverpool.
It sped up that transportation
from Liverpool into the potteries.
The rails also exported
the finished goods
across the country and beyond,
helping the industry to flourish
for over a century.
The region remains an important centre
for British ceramics,
though ifs a far cry from
its Victorian heyday.
Electrification certainly
did away with coal and smoke,
and, of course, the Clean Air Act.
But I think
the most important thing was
the big change in the way
other nations had come in.
I mean, we'd had
our Industrial Revolution,
we started the whole thing.
All of a sudden, other nations
wanted a piece of the action.
So they followed on where we left off.
- We led it and we lost it.
- That's absolutely right.
Luckily, not every trace of
the Victorian trade has disappeared.
Close at hand, the Middleport Pottery
has survived virtually unchanged
since the 19th century.
I'm taking a tour with company historian
Jemma Baskeyfield.
Was this state of the art when it was
built in the 19th century?
Yeah, people came to visit
this factory
because it was
a very cutting-edge factory.
The most cutting-edge factory
you could wish to visit.
Today, we are possibly the most
backwards factory you'll ever visit,
but, yeah,
that's part of the charm, certainly.
A few years ago, the historic buildings
here had fallen into such disrepair
that the factory was at risk of closure.
However, in 2011,
the Prince of Wales's Regeneration Trust
stepped in with ambitious plans
to redevelop the site
on behalf of the whole community.
So this remarkable snapshot of the
Victorian pottery industry will survive.
So this is the largest collection
of the blocks and cases,
the master copies of moulds,
left in any factory anywhere.
We've kept all of them.
And there's 15,000 plus.
Piled up, well, as high as you can see,
and it goes on forever.
(Jemma) Yeah, in all directions.
One of the most extraordinary sights.
Mass production
using moulds like these
helped Victorian putters
to meet unprecedented demand
from the new aspirational middle class.
And to supply decorated products
on an industrial scale,
they embraced the art of
transfer printing.
It's a way that you can affordably,
to a high quality,
decorate pottery over and over again.
And that's replacing the hand painting
process which is what went before.
This is the only pottery
still using the method.
The pattern is printed on to
sheets of tissue paper,
before transferring the colour
on to the pottery.
(Jemma)
These ladies are incredibly skilled.
Traditionally, it takes seven years
to learn to do this.
They take the sticky paper
and they've got to apply it
to the once-fired pottery,
what we call biscuit ware.
They apply the print, but they can't
peel it off and put it on again
because it sticks,
so it's first time every time.
The colour is oil-based,
so when you wash these items,
the tissue paper washes away
and you're just left with the print
on the surface of the pottery.
- I'm amazed
- Yep.
Well, if you'd like to have a go...
I'll be more amazed. (laughs)
The transferrers work
with amazing speed.
Time to see how I measure up.
Try and get your hand down to the bottom
and swing it round this side,
like a cone.
Like a cone.
- Oh.
- The scissors are there.
The trick is to minimise
the creases and joins
so they won't be detectable.
But I begin to see why it takes you
seven years to perfect the an.
- This is incredibly difficult.
- (woman) We make it look easy.
This is fiendish.
(woman)
You've got the hang of it now.
That's it.
Covering the outside is one thing,
but the inside is quite another.
Now begins the really difficult bit.
(woman) That's it.
Seven years down the line
you might be on the production line.
Oh, dear. I've got a hole.
Well, you can repair it.
And then out it off
when you've pressed it over.
That's it. Perfect match.
- Where's the reject bin'?
- (Laughter)
We don't reject anything.
I think I'd better stop
distracting the skilled transferrers
and continue my tour of
Victorian Staffordshire.
The phenomenal success
of the potteries here
had unforeseen consequences for some,
and before Heave Stoke-on-Trent,
I'm visiting a place which reveals the
drawbacks of rapid industrial growth.
I've come to Trentham Park
which is described in my Bradshaw's
as "the Duke of Sutherland's seat
on the River Trent of great extent".
"The old seat has been rebuilt
by Sir Charles Barry."
"The Trent is made
to spread into a fine lake
planted with ornamental timber,
the work of Capability Brown,
the famous landscape artist."
Here is the Trent, here is the lake,
all beautifully described.
But where is the house?
When my guidebook was published,
Trentham Park was one of the
most fashionable houses in the land,
having been remodelled in the 1830s by
celebrity architect Sir Charles Barry,
the man who built
the Houses of Parliament.
To learn what became of
this magnificent pile,
I'm meeting estate manager
Michael Walker.
- Hello, Michael.
- Very nice to meet you.
There are certain disadvantages
to using a guidebook 150 years old.
I'm looking for a house and I rather
fear it's not here, is that right?
That's absolutely right.
The majority of Trentham Hall
was demolished in 1911
by the Duke of Sutherland.
(Michael P) What brought that about?
The pottery industry was expanding
all the time in the 1840s,
and so was the local housing.
But there was no provision
for proper sanitation.
And the sewage from the houses
pretty much ran directly into
many of the local brooks and rivers.
And at that time,
the River Trent used to feed directly
into Capability Brown's mile-long lake,
so the place was
very heavily spoilt by pollution,
both in the air,
sometimes it could be, you know, black,
and the stench of the sewage.
It was like a large cesspit.
It's quite an interesting antidote
because I get very enthusiastic about
the Victorian period from my Bradshaw's.
But there was a pretty ghastly downside
to it all.
By the turn of the 20th century,
the problem had become so bad
that the Sutherlands chose
to abandon the park.
No buyer was found for the house,
so it was demolished for
its building materials.
All that remained of
Charles Barry's masterpiece
was his remarkable formal garden.
So what we're seeing here,
this is Charles Barry, is it?
(Michael W) This is Charles Barry.
It's a very grand Italian garden
in the nee-classical style
And this formality suited
the Victorians?
(Michael W) I think this was
the must-have accessory
for the aristocracy at the time.
It was a new trend, a new fashion,
and one which was really pioneered
in this country at Trentham.
Visiting the park today, it's possible,
with a little imagination,
to savour its Victorian zenith.
(Michael W) The garden was of course
designed to be viewed from upstairs,
within the grand bedrooms of the house,
looking down,
and it's only really from above
that you get the detail, the formality.
(Michael P) It's tremendous.
How was it that
the garden was able to survive'?
After the house was demolished,
Trentham ran as a private business
for the local people
as a pay for public visitor attraction.
For most of the 20th century,
the gardens were
the playground of the potteries.
There were dance halls and a bandstand,
and a new branch line, opened in 1910,
enabled visitors to flock here
to enjoy the attractions.
Trentham Park took visitors within
five minutes' walk
of the front gates of the estate.
That was very important.
During the holiday periods, that train
service was very well used indeed.
Sadly, by the end of the 20th century,
the gardens themselves
had fallen into decline.
But, in 2004,
a major renovation project began.
Barry's Italianate "parterre"
was restored,
and new areas were landscaped
by leading garden designers.
So Bradshaw might be astonished
that the house has gone,
but he probably would recognise
the garden.
I hope he would.
The manicured elegance
of Trentham is stunning,
but I'm now taking to the tracks
in search of a wilder landscape.
My last stop of the day was
a favourite Victorian beauty spot.
As evening approaches,
I'm on the train to Kidsgrove.
"Mow Cop," says Bradshaw's,
"is a mountain in miniature."
"From the summit of this hill,
1,091ft high,
the finest views imaginable
are obtainable in every direction."
I suppose that depends on the weather,
and I'm hoping that my luck will hold.
Built by the North Staffordshire Railway
and originally called Harecastle,
Kidsgrove Station opened in 1848.
Soon, readers of “Bradshaws”
would alight here
to admire the vista from a nearby park.
Guide Des Ball is showing me the way.
You know, Des, my Bradshaw's has
quite a long paragraph about Mow Cop.
And I was thinking, "What is all
the fuss about, it's only 1,000ft high,"
but now I get here, I see.
You've got this 360-degree view.
Amazing.
Seven counties are visible from here,
and my guidebook tells me that on
a fine day you can see as far as Wales.
(Des) First we have
Shropshire over there.
Then we have Denbighshire,
Welsh mountains there,
go all the way to north Wales
that way there.
And over to this side
we have Derbyshire.
My “Bradshaws” also points out
an artificial ruin
which has a good appearance
in every point of view.
Built as a folly in the 1750s,
by the time my guidebook was published,
it was in use as a summerhouse,
complete with windows and doors.
These days, romantic as it is,
it's rather windswept,
so Des is leading me
to a more hospitable venue.
Here is the pub I mentioned
called the Cheshire View,
but it used to be called
the Railway Inn.
And of course, in the hollow there
is the railway and Mow Cop station
that used to be.
No longer here, I'm afraid.
An ideal spot for
a thirsty railway traveller
to revel in the English landscape
that unfolds below.
- It is an amazing view, isn't it'?
- Wait till the sun sets in a moment.
And to think that you and I can see it
without the smoke and pollution
of the Victorian era.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
My Midlands railway adventure continues,
and my next stop is
almost hallowed ground.
Crewe, says my Bradshaw's,
"is a railway town
and a first-class depot".
"Nearly 2,000 men are employed."
"Here are immense rolling mills
for the rails and locomotive factories."
"An engine with its tender
is made up of 5,416 separate pieces,
and a new one is turned out
every Monday morning."
Any self-respecting Great British
railway traveller must visit Crewe.
The works at Crewe were once amongst
the foremost in the world,
and the town still has
a place in every train buffs heart.
- Morning.
- Morning. Thank you very much.
So I'm going to the very heart of
the railways, Crewe.
Crewe?
Can you imagine that, in the 1860s,
apparently a locomotive and its tender
- was made up of 5,416 separate pieces.
- That's amazing, isn't it'?
- Bet you didn't know that.
- No, I didn't.
- I bet you didn't before you read that.
- (both laugh)
- Have a good day.
- And you.
The story of the immense works at Crewe
began as a meeting point of
major railways.
Even with its elegant 19th-century
architecture covered in scaffolding,
the station remains a key hub
as it was in Victorian days.
Crewe started its railway history
as a major junction,
and in the next few minutes,
there'll be trains leaving from here
for Liverpool, for Manchester,
for Edinburgh and for south Wales.
In the early 1800s,
there was a hamlet of just 360 souls,
but the arrival of the railway
in 1837 changed that.
In 1877,
the borough of Crewe was established,
and by 1881,
its population exceeded 24,000,
complete with rows of
railway workers' cottages.
At the heart was a vast factory,
which I'm exploring with
general manager Tony Webb.
- (Michael) Hello, Tony.
- (Tony) Welcome to Crewe.
The first line to reach Crewe
was the Grand Junction Railway,
which linked Birmingham with the
pioneering Liverpool to Manchester line.
It was soon joined by other routes,
and Crewe found itself
at the junction of three of
Britain's busiest main lines.
It was the ideal spot for
a railway works on an epic scale.
My Bradshaw's says
2,000 people are working at the site,
but I think it got to be
much more than that, didn't it?
The war years, the records are sketchy,
but they talk about 20,000 people,
so the size of it was immense.
Is this the full extent of the works?
You get some idea of the scale
that there's a football ground here,
- which is kind of lost in space.
- It is huge.
You're talking about erecting shops
and buildings hundreds of metres long.
Obviously it created not only a works
but it created a town as well.
How were the people housed?
The railway was
a very paternalistic organisation.
There would have been
railway schooling, railway homes.
It had its own hospital on site.
The accident book
is very interesting reading.
Not uncommon for people to lose eyes,
fingers and even limbs.
There are some drawings
that were created at the works
of artificial limbs.
More than 8,250 locomotives
were built here,
from Victorian steam engines
to modern electric trains.
These days, however,
the works focus on renovating bogies,
the wheel systems
that sit beneath carriages.
They start in a pretty filthy condition.
(Tony) You can imagine running round
for half a million miles or more.
At the end of the process,
you wouldn't recognise them,
and I'm offering a helping hand
with the finishing touches.
It all looks now
so beautiful, so pristine.
It's ready for another
half a million miles.
Just as it comes down now,
you just steady it.
Beautiful. Spot on.
- (Tony) If you could remove the stand.
- Take that away'?
- Yeah.
- Whoa!
There we go.
- (Michael) Did I do that?
- You did that, yeah.
By building their tracks through Crewe,
Victorian railway engineers
shaped the town's history.
Today, it remains an important junction,
and a magnet for some of Britain's
most committed railway enthusiasts
like Tom and William Snook.
- Tom and William, hello.
- (both) Good afternoon.
Nice to see you both. You're
a father and son team, is that right?
- We are indeed.
- Yes.
Now, I quite like trains,
but I'm not a trainspotter.
For those of us who are not in on this,
can you explain the intrigue
of photographing trains,
and taking down numbers and so on?
(Tom) Well, for me it started in 1952.
By the time of eight, I was
travelling on my own down into London
and seeing all sons of things,
which you can't do these days.
The camaraderie of
all the youngsters together
and screaming and shouting
when something really unusual came in.
It's the enthusiasm
to try and see everything, for me.
I want to see everything.
My dad has nearly seen everything.
I'm not that far behind him.
What's that you're clutching there?
Well, my son compiled this.
I created this book over three years.
I finished it last year.
It goes from locomotives,
passenger trains,
testing trains that run around
the country for Network Rail.
I thought I'd bring you up a copy,
and it's yours to keep and take away.
Oh, my goodness.
I mean, I'm really flattered,
but it's not kind of easy reading,
is it'?
- How can I put this?
- The page you're on now...
You wouldn't go to sleep reading this,
or, actually, maybe you would.
(all laugh)
it's really a historical document,
like Bradshaw's, really,
in as much as it tells you
what is totally on the network
at that particular time
in the summer of this year.
We no replacement
for my trusty “Bradshaw's Guide“,
but ifs good to know that, for some,
the romance of the railways lives on.
It's a class 350.
For me, the best thing about
train travel!
Is the chance to discover the remarkable
range of Victorian industries
that were served by the railways.
I'm on my way to Winsford,
which Bradshaw's tells me
is situated in one of the most
important salt districts in the country.
"There are 28 salt works here,
some of them being like
small towns in extent."
Now, other towns around here
are Middlewich, Northwich and Nantwich.
Which is very interesting
because I think wich
is the Anglo Saxon for "salt".
Beneath Cheshires “wish” towns
lies an enormous salt deposit,
formed from a sea bed
200 million years ago.
Ever since Roman times,
the brine that bubbles up
in local springs
has been evaporated to make salt.
And by the 1600s, rock salt was
also being mined in the area.
Then, in Victorian times,
a fresh rock salt deposit
was discovered in nearby Winsford,
and a mine dug to extract it,
still in operation today.
I'm heading 180 metres below ground
with mine manager Gordon Dunn.
Now, in Victorian times, I guess they
didn't go in beautiful lifts like this.
How did they go down?
They went down in the same buckets
that was used to lift the salt.
It wasn't regarded as unsafe,
it was just the only way to do it.
Prospectors looking for coal
first discovered the extent of
the salt seam.
Using explosives, picks and shovels,
they began to carve out
vast subterranean rooms,
supported by pillars of salt.
I was expecting I would be
crawling on hands and knees,
but this is like walking into
an underground ballroom, it's huge.
(Gordon) Yes, it is very large.
As well as being needed
for the Victorian table,
the 19th century saw
demand for salt rise
thanks to the growing chemical industry,
which used it for everything
from caustic soda to chlorine.
Between 1844 and 1892, one million
tons of salt were mined at Winsford.
An extraordinary feat, given the basic
equipment that the miners were using.
You can see the black marks on the
roof from the soot from the candles,
as that was the only way
they were able to light the...
- Seriously?
- Yeah, seriously.
It was all candlelit
and we've found evidence
of old tallow candles
and old small packets of cigarettes,
cos they were allowed to smoke
underground in those days.
And where we are now
is the old two-foot gauge railway line.
And once they'd taken
the salt up to the surface,
- was it also transported by train'?
- Yes, it was.
Some was transported by train in
special carriages that were timber lined
to stop the salts
reacting with the steel,
and other salt was put into barges,
sent to Liverpool,
and traded as Liverpool salt,
although it was really from Cheshire.
Victorian mining was so efficient
that, by the late 1800s,
prices had plummeted,
and Winsford was forced to close.
But it reopened in the 1920s
when a local competitor flooded,
and since then has prospered.
Today, the salt mined in
its 142 miles of underground tunnels
is used mostly for gritting the roads.
- And you're still at it.
- We certainly are.
We mine over a million tons a year
and we've got enough reserves
for up to 100 years.
Despite the mine's resources,
a decade ago, it began to diversify
in a highly unexpected direction.
The salt in the rock here helps regulate
the humidity in the disused tunnels,
creating stable conditions
which are excellent
for storing historic documents.
I'm hunting out archive manager
Stuart Elwood.
Stuart?
This is bizarre.
Rows and rows of bookshelves
in a salt mine.
- (Stuart) Hello.
- Hello.
Why are there all these records
in a salt mine'?
Well, this is the National Archives
off-site storage facility.
The repositories in Sew where National
Archives is based are filling up,
and we needed a safe
and secure environment to hold them in.
The National Archive, formerly
known as the Public Record Office,
was established in the 19th century
to impose Victorian order
on Britain's official records.
Nowadays, the collection holds material
from the middle ages
right up to the present day.
This census was taken in this area
at the time of my "Bradshaw's Guide".
Inside, you've got the actual printed
and then written record
from the night in 1861
when they took the census.
And the first person listed here
is a salt maker, George Whit ton,
and then his wife is Martha Whit ton,
gives her age,
and then their daughter, Maria Whit ton.
Quite a thought, though, that those salt
workers might have dug these tunnels
and now their records
are housed here in perpetuity.
Yes, indeed. I mean, we will be
keeping them safe down here
for the foreseeable future
and beyond, really.
Once again, my 19th-century guidebook
has led me to fresh insights
into Britain's past and present.
From hidden underground archives
to potteries untouched
by the passage of time,
this country is full of surprises.
Minerals have dominated
this leg of my journey.
The salt and coal and clays
buried in the ground
had been known about throughout history,
but they were exploited by
the Victorians on an industrial scale,
shaping the destinies of
Staffordshire and Cheshire.
In the mines, the collieries
and the kilns,
workers toiled
to make Britain prosperous.
They were the salt of the earth.
On the next Keg of my journey,
I learn how Victorian blacksmithing
was not for the faint-hearted, ..
It's very hard physical work.
There's no doubt of that.
I'll ride one of Britain's
most modern trains...
And there we go. A surge of power.
And traverse the remarkable
Victoria Bridge.
In its day, it was
the longest clear span in the world,
and it is, of course, majestic.
(train whistle)