Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 4, Episode 8 - London Victoria to Abbey Wood - 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 halfway point of my journey
from Portsmouth to Grimsby,
and today I'm going to linger in
one of Britain's greatest ports, London.
Our capital, my home city.
On today's journey, I'll learn how
volunteer Victorian fire fighters
liked a tipple...
To encourage people to
help pump the fire engine,
insurance brigades would
take kegs of beer to a fire,
or they would take beer tokens
with them.
I'll discover how even
19th-century sewage pumps
were a celebration of design...
(man) Open this valve here.
And I'll put in a shift at
the oldest fish market in Bfltain.
Thank you, Michael.
Let's get them boxed up.
Man wants his fish today,
not the weekend.
Using my “Bradshaws Guide”,
I began this journey on
the Hampshire coast,
and have travelled up
through Surrey to London.
Twill then push northeast
to Cambridgeshire,
alighting, finally, in Grimsby
on the Humber Estuary.
The third leg of my journey
starts in Victoria,
heads east to Southwark,
on to Canary Wharf
and, finally, downstream to Abbey Wood.
On previous railway journeys to London,
I've noted Bradshaws view,
which reflected the Victorian outlook
on our capital.
"London is the capital of
the civilised world,
the largest mass of human life, of arts,
science, wealth, power and architecture
that exists."
"Our gigantic metropolis
is enabled by the Thames
to carry on a water communication
with every pan of the globe."
And on this trip, I intend to
focus on Old Father Thames.
Today's leg of my journey starts
at Victoria Station,
which began in 1862
as two distinct sites,
one serving Kent and the other Sussex.
In the early 1900s, the brick and stone
structures were beautifully rebuilt,
and in the 1920s, it became the
single station that we know today.
Victoria is my local station,
but I shed a tear every time I come here
because the Edwardian architecture
has become so cluttered with
illuminated advertising hoardings
and shopping centres,
and what they need to do is
sweep the lot away and reveal the beauty
of the original brick and stone.
Leaving the station behind,
I'm taking a short stroll to the Thames
to visit one of the most imposing
Victorian buildings on the riverbank,
Tate Britain,
a gallery containing the worlds
greatest collection of British art,
including works by Blake, Constable,
Gainsborough, Stubbs and Turner.
But according to my “Bradshaws”,
this site at Millbank was once for
those who'd had brushes with the law.
Archivist Krzysztof Cieszkowski
should know more.
- Hello, Krzysztof.
- Hello, Michael.
- Very pleased to meet you.
- It's lovely to be back.
My Bradshaw's Guide refers to
a penitentiary being on this site.
Do you know anything about that?
Yes, it was variously called Millbank
Prison and Millbank Penitentiary.
It was a prison for convicts
who were being sent to Australia.
(Michael) And what brought about
a gallery on this site?
Well, there was no gallery
of British an
in the way that there was,
for example, in Paris.
It was only when Henry Tate, in 1889,
offered his collection of
contemporary British an to the nation
that the idea started to
become a reality.
- Who was Henry Tate?
- He was born in Lancashire,
he made his fortune, first of all,
in the grocery business,
then in sugar refining.
This is the Tate that
later became Tate and Lyle?
Yes, he was the
most important sugar refiner,
and he introduced the sugar cube
to this country.
This is a volume of correspondence
relating to the opening of the gallery.
Here is a letter from
the Queen's secretary, Arthur Bigge,
thanking Henry Tate for the invitation
and for an album, in which all the works
in the Tate collection were reproduced.
(Michael) They're wonderful documents.
Henry Tate offered his
£75,000 collection to the nation,
but the press snobbishly complained
that a mere sugar boiler
should impose his taste.
So Tate spent £80,000 on
building his own gallery,
which contained many works by
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
an art movement founded in 1848
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
William Holman Hunt
and John Everett Millais.
To create work that explored
social, moral and political issues
in a way that was new
and often shocking,
the brotherhood took characters
from literature and history
and paid homage to the
perfect realism of their hero Raphael
by painting in the open air,
directly from nature,
and not in a studio from sketches.
Curator Alison Smith believes that
their art relied oh train travel.
Well, now you're bringing me towards a
very famous picture, Millais's Ophelia,
and you tell me that this has
something to do with the railways?
(Alison) That's right.
This is because the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed
at exactly the time when the
railway network was developing
in and around London.
He worked on this for about five, six
months, about July to November 1851.
This was a place called
Cuddington, near Maiden.
It's near Yewell in Surrey,
and so he would have travelled to Yewell
from either London Bridge or Waterloo.
(Michael) It's disillusioning
that it was painted
near the suburban railway stations,
of course, of the mid 19th century.
It wasn't exactly near
the suburban railway stations.
He opted to stay in a rambling farmhouse
called Worcester Park Farm.
And from that, each day, he would
walk about four miles to the site
and he, in fact, encountered lots of
problems when he painted this.
He was once arrested for trespassing.
He was attacked by sheep, a bull.
But it was fundamentally important
to him
to paint nature in nature, not to do it
from sketches back in the studio?
Yes, this is the key point, that this
was painted en plein air, in nature.
Are there other examples here
of Pre-Raphaelites who were
using the train to get to nature?
(Alison) We could look at Hunt,
who worked in this area,
in Yewell with Millais.
We've got another painting by him
produced the following year,
which was Strayed Sheep
or Our English Coasts,
which he painted near Hastings.
(Michael) What's the importance
of the Pre-Raphaelites?
The Pre-Raphaelites are probably the
first modern an movement in Britain
in that they really wanted to
break with the past
and the fact that British artists had
been indebted to European old masters
and they actually wanted to paint
in a new, radical way
which really reflected modernity.
In Bradshaws day,
one of the most efficient ways
of navigating London was by river.
He might have taken
an elegant paddle steamer.
I'm impressed by this
state-of-the-art catamaran.
I'm now using a
Bradshaw's Guide to London dated 1862.
I'm on the boat that takes us
from the Tate Britain
to the Tate Modern galleries.
My Bradshaw's says,
"For the sake of variety,
we shall proceed to the journey
by water,
which of a fine day
is not only the most agreeable,
but furnishing an excellent opportunity
of seeing the scenery of the Thames."
And to me, of course,
the finest piece of scenery on
the Thames is the Houses of Parliament.
The river's popularity as a transport
route may have dwindled in modern times,
but even on its choppiest days,
there are some who remained loyal.
Hello. (laughs)
Are you enjoying your trip on the river?
- (woman) Certainly am.
- Would you say, as my Bradshaw's says,
that seeing London from the river
is the best way?
A lovely way. It really is. There's
so much to see, the history's there,
the way the city has developed
over the years. It's all there.
Nowadays, we use the river so little.
It's underused, I'm sure. Yes.
We've also arrived at our destination,
so we'd better be careful
we don't get left on.
- We'd better get off.
- (they laugh)
Thank you. Bye.
From Bankside Pier,
home of the magnificent
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre,
I'm heading inland to Southwark
to visit a place
that was highly significant
for the safety of Victorian Londoners.
My Bradshaw's Guide is very concerned
about fire in London.
"Sometimes as many as
five or six occur in one night."
"To guard against the loss of life,
the Royal Society for the
Preservation of Life from Fire
have been most active
in establishing stations,
where fire escapes with conductors
are ready to be called
upon the first alarm."
"No society more richly
deserves encouragement."
It's extraordinary to think
that our capital city
had no publicly funded fire brigade.
With its origins dating back to 1828,
The Royal Society for the
Preservation of Life from Fire
placed mobile fire escape ladders
on street corners at night.
I'm hoping Jane Rugg, curator of
the London Fire Brigade Museum
can tell me who was actually
fighting fires in London at the time.
- Hello.
- Hello there.
- I'm Michael.
- I'm Jane. Nice to meet you.
- Good to see you.
- Come on in.
When my Bradshaw's Guides were written
at the beginning of the 1860s,
what son of fire provision
was there in London?
We didn't have a public service
until 1866.
So, before that time,
you would have had insurance brigades
that made up the
London Fire Engine Establishment.
So just like house insurance today,
you insured your property
and then if your house was on fire,
the insurance would send
their fire brigade
and they would come along
to put the fire out for you.
Obviously, there wasn't a fair system.
Not everybody could afford
to have the fire brigades.
It was not as a public service is now.
The 1666 Great Fire of London,
which started in a baker's shop
in the aptly named Pudding Lane,
destroying over 13,000 homes,
is well remembered in history.
Less well known is that,
almost two centuries later,
the 1861 Tootey Street fire
was a catalyst to the formation
of a publicly funded brigade.
Fire fighters from all over the country
attended the blaze,
but couldn't cope with an inferno
that started in a warehouse
and burned for two weeks.
Five years later, the
Metropolitan Fire Brigade was formed.
Chief Officer
Captain Sir Eyre Massey Shaw
inherited the
insurance brigades equipment.
You have wonderful machines here.
What is this one?
This is an example of a manual pump
inherited by the public service.
The arms open all the way out, and then
the other one comes out the other way
and you'd have ten people on this side,
ten on the other
and you pump up and down, working the
pistons inside to push the water out.
But you can only pump for five minutes
before you're too exhausted
and you need to swap with somebody else.
I'm not surprised.
I felt exhausted just standing there.
(Jane) To encourage people walking past
to help pump the fire engine,
the insurance brigades would either
take kegs of beer with them to a fire,
or they would take beer tokens
with them,
so you can see an example
of a beer token.
You would be given it
once you'd helped pump,
and then you could go to
your local public house
and exchange it for a drink.
And they did that because,
with kegs of beer at a fire,
people were more interested in
drinking the beer
than pumping the fire engine.
Did they have lots of
drunken volunteers?
They could have done, yes,
there was the potential.
Sometimes they would
take cash with them to a fire,
but in the end, the pumping tokens
seemed to work the best.
So, what else can you show me?
(Jane) This is an example of
a steam fire engine.
So we moved from the manual pumps
to using steam,
mainly when we had a public service.
(Michael)
That would be under Captain ShavW
It would, indeed, yeah.
He was the chief officer that
really wanted the new technology.
He also introduced a new uniform
into the fire brigade.
So, he introduced a woollen tunic,
and this is a replica of a tunic
worn at the time.
So you can get an idea of
how heavy it would've been
and what the fire fighters had to wear
when they went into an incident.
It is very, very heavy.
I imagine if it was soaked with water,
it would be quite impractical.
Yeah. I mean, the water helped
to protect them when it was wet,
but they also made sure that
it didn't have hems,
so it could run off the jacket
to try and keep it a bit lighter.
In addition, they also introduced
new helmets into the brigade.
So, again, this is a replica, but it
gives you an idea of the brass helmets
that would have been worn at the time.
Take me to my hose.
I'm keen to find out how things
have changed since Massey Shaw's day.
Southwark is also where
the brigade trains new recruits.
Assistant Commissioner Danni Cotton
assures me that beer tokens
no longer feature in the curriculum.
At what stage of their development
are these trainee fire fighters now
About eight weeks now, so they're about
halfway through their basic training,
which lasts 17 weeks.
(Michael)
What's the exercise we're watching now
(Danni) It's demonstrating their ability
to use hoses combined with ladders,
so it's a simulation of a fire
in a three-storey building.
- Do you remember your training?
- Oh, vividly.
It took place here in 1988.
It was quite different.
It involved a lot of marching,
a lot of saluting,
a lot more shiny shoes
and shouting and running.
But it was a lot more basic.
But now the fire fighting role
is so much more complicated.
- Why?
- Well, technology advances, mainly.
Cars, for instance, were very basic,
if you went to cut a car up, you could
cut it anywhere. It didn't matter.
Now cars have got so many different
systems in them to protect us,
air bags and things,
that you need the training for that.
Then you've got things like
terrorist threats, chemicals.
(Michael) You're no longer
squirting hoses yourself?
Sadly not.
I did that for a number of years.
I point at people
and tell them to squirt hoses.
(Michael) What's the proportion of women
in the London Fire Brigade?
Still a relatively low number.
We've got nearly 350 women
out of nearly 6,000 fire fighters.
(Michael) There's no reason a woman
couldn't fight a fire as well as a man?
Absolutely not.
It's the best job in the world.
I would recommend it to anyone.
I've loved every minute of my 24 years.
In an area where old London meets new,
I'm heading back towards the river
through Borough Market,
whose traders have sold food
and supplies since the 11th century,
to my final destination of the day.
The George Inn also has a long past,
which historian Pete Brown
has investigated.
- Pete, hello.
- Hello.
- Great to see you.
- And you.
My Bradshaws Guide to London says,
"The old inns in the Borough
with their wide rambling staircases
and wooden galleries round the inn yards
are pleasant reminiscences
of ancient days of
coach and wagon traffic."
Absolutely, yeah
I'm amazed to find it so brilliantly
preserved here at the George.
(Pete) It's an amazing survivor
from a previous age.
Borough High Street used to be
the main thoroughfare into London
from the southeast and the continent.
London Bridge, up the road, was the only
bridge across the Thames until 1750.
It was a huge bottleneck,
everything came here, had to stay here.
So these inns cropped up all down
the street, there were 20 at one time.
And this is the last survivor.
It's the railways that killed off
places like this.
Anything in the way of that railway line
just disappeared, was obliterated.
And when you look at maps of Southwark
from before and after,
it's like a child with a pen came in
and scribbled these lines across it,
completely transforming
the geography of the place.
How do you account for the
unique survival of The George?
Partly, it's because the Great
North Railway Company bought it,
demolished a lot of it
and kept some of it for office space,
and partly it's because, at that time,
the landlady was this lady Agnes Murray,
this formidable woman.
She basically appropriated the mythology
of all of Southwark's coaching inns
and son of centred it here.
So, on this side, for example,
stood The White Han.
The White Han played a pivotal role in
Dickens's first novel Pickwick Papers.
It's where Mr Pickwick meets Sam Weller.
And Agnes Murray basically said,
"Oh, no, that happened here."
"Dickens said The White Han,
but he meant The George."
She would show people the bedroom
where this meeting supposedly took place
and the table where Dickens
supposedly sat
and built up this mythology
around the place.
And does the pub still have
a warm hearth and warm beer?
It's got a warm hearth
and pleasantly cool beer.
Let's go in.
With an early start tomorrow,
it's just one for the road.
- Well, Pete, cheers.
- Cheers.
- What a delightful way to end the day.
- Absolutely.
I'm up too early to catch
the Jubilee tube line
or the Docklands Light Railway
to Canary Wharf
because to get the full flavour of
my next destination,
Billingsgate Fish Market,
requires a pre-dawn start.
My Bradshaws Guide says,
"Billingsgate, situated chiefly at
the back of that cluster of buildings
by the Custom House, has been,
since the days of William III,
the most famous fish market in Europe."
In Bradshaws day,
the fish used to arrive by train.
Now they come mainly by lorry,
and the market has been
relocated to Canary Wharf.
But here at five in the morning,
it has lost none of its bustle.
And the change of location
has made Billingsgate no less famous.
Billingsgate became synonymous with fish
when a 1699 Act of Parliament made it
"a free and open market
for all sorts of fish whatsoever."
Originally situated on the river
adjacent to London Bridge,
the market was supplied by boat,
but the coming of the railways
revolutionised the fishing industry,
and as it satisfied the new demand
for affordable fresh product,
ports like Grimsby boomed.
Billingsgate customers are still
buying the freshest fish possible
at a price that suits them.
Excuse me? I see you buying fish
this early in the morning.
Are you in the business,
or are you buying it for yourself?
- No, it's for my personal use.
- Do you do that a lot?
Yes, very often. It's good value.
Come down here at 5am
and buy your fish?
Absolutely. Very good value.
Are you looking for
anything special in the fish line?
I tend to look for sea bream,
which is extremely good value.
Salmon, as well.
(Michael) How do you cook
your sea bream?
First of all, I prepare the sauce,
and then put the sea bream on top,
and then cook it for about
five, ten minutes, just steam it.
- It sounds absolutely fantastic.
- Beautiful. Caribbean style.
You enjoy that. Mouth watering.
Thank you.
Most orders placed here are wholesale.
At busy times, the larger firms can sell
up to two tons of fish each morning.
Mark Morris works for the market's
longest established family business,
and he's offered to show me the basics.
Has your family
been in the business long?
We're the fourth generation.
We go back to the early 1900s
when our great-grandfather
founded the business.
We bring our fish in from
all over the UK, all over Europe.
We've got pollock and coley there.
And mackerel. Beautiful mackerel there.
Have a little feel of that.
- Feel the pinch on that.
- Oh, beautiful fish.
And if you turn him upside down,
open up his gills,
you'll see the lovely, thick,
rich red blood colour in there.
That's what we're looking for.
Bright-eyed, nice and firm.
Lovely hake here.
We pick it up by the eyes because,
as you see,
the teeth are absolutely razor sharp.
We don't want to get our fingers
caught in there.
Thumb and forefinger, Michael.
So, thumb in one eye.
Forefinger in the other.
And lift straight up.
There we go, that's a nice safe way
of picking up a hake.
So I'm avoiding the sharp teeth, I'm
avoiding the sharpness round the gills.
And it's a rather yucky feeling,
sticking your fingers
in the eyes of a hake.
Having got a handle on his fish,
I'm set to work.
Michael, I need two hake, please.
Let's get them boxed up. Man wants
his fish today, not the weekend.
- (Michael laughs)
- Give me a headless cod now, please.
- Headless cod?
- One of those large headless cod.
- 3.88 of headless cod!
- Thank you.
Two salmon fillets as well, please.
No, no, no. Fillets, Michael.
Michael, the fillets, please, sir.
Fillets, thank you.
Yes, of course, fillets.
I do apologise.
New boy on the firm today.
(Michael) Oh, it's got to go on
the weighing machine first.
- 3.46 of salmon fillets!
- Thank you, Michael.
We'll make a salesman
out of you yet, sir.
OK. Lovely. Thank you very much.
Yeah, sorry about the delay.
- Thank you. Bye-bye.
- (Michael laughs)
Lovely, Michael. Great job.
Well done, sir. Thank you very much.
Oh, dear.
I don't think I could get used to this.
What I could gel used lo
is travelling on Old Father Thames.
I'm heading east to Abbey Wood,
and my route takes me past one of the
most famous of all London landmarks.
Bradshaws London guide says,
"Greenwich presents a striking
appearance from the river,
its hospital forming one of the most
prominent attractions of the place."
I've always loved Greenwich.
Its wonderful architecture,
its spacious buildings,
its association with one of my heroes,
Horatio Nelson.
And now that the Cutty Sark
has been restored, it is complete again.
I marvel at the river's wonderful views
of London landmarks, old and new,
but one should always remember
that the river is a potent force
to be reckoned with.
In Bradshaws day,
and indeed, until quite recently,
the Thames posed
a mighty danger of flooding.
And the erection of the Thames Barrier
has much reduced that risk.
In Bradshaws day, there was
another peril from the Thames as well.
The water was filthy.
The final destination
on this leg of my journey
lies six miles further downstream
at Abbey Wood.
The Crossness Pumping Station was
opened in 1865 as an essential element
of one of the largest
engineering projects ever undertaken
anywhere in the world.
Author Stephen Halliday
should be able to tell me more.
- Stephen, hello.
- Hello.
I've just travelled here on the river
and it was very nice,
but I believe it was not always
that pleasant on the Thames?
Indeed. The sewage of 2.5 million people
was flowing into the river Thames
and, of course, the Thames is
a tidal river, so it never went away.
Why hadn't that happened before?
Because until about 1800,
if you wanted to spend a penny,
you would go into
the basement of your home,
you would do what you had to do
in a cesspit,
which would be emptied at intervals
by night soil men,
who caned it away
and sold it to farmers.
And what happened after 1800?
The importation of guano
from South America,
solidified bird droppings,
gave a better form of fertiliser.
But the real killer was
the introduction of the water closet.
When you flushed,
what you sent round the S bend
was a very small quantity of potential
fertiliser and a huge volume of water.
So the cesspits filled up ten
or 20 times as quickly with liquid,
which people didn't want to buy,
and which leaked.
And they leaked into surrounding
water courses, wells,
sources of drinking water,
and dysentery, cholera and typhoid
started to spread throughout London.
That's the so-called Great Stink?
Indeed. In the summer of 1858,
you would not have wanted to be
on the river at all.
After the 1853 cholera outbreak
had claimed over 10,000 lives
and the hot summer of 1858
created the Great Stink,
action was finally taken.
As chief engineer to London's
Metropolitan Board of Works,
Joseph Bazalgette oversaw
the building of 82 miles of main sewers
under the streets of London,
which intercepted existing sewers and
dispatched the capital's human waste
out to sea via two steam-powered
pumping stations, like Crossness.
It's currently undergoing restoration.
It's absolutely glorious. It's as highly
decorated as the House of Commons.
(Stephen) Yes, for a sewage pumping
station, they didn't stint, did they?
What a fantastic restoration.
Hello, I'm Michael.
I'm Mike Jones.
So, when was the pumping station
restored?
Well, we're still restoring it,
but I suppose the trust
really started around 1988.
It was, in fact, scheduled for
demolition for quite a while,
and wasn't demolished
because the engines are so large.
So it's very fortunate it's still here.
I think people will be amazed,
overwhelmed
that the Victorians decorated
a pumping station like this.
I think it's a reflection of the
Victorian pride in what they were doing.
(Michael) And I believe
one of the engines actually works?
(Mike) That's true. Prince Consort
has been in steam since 2003,
and if you'd like to, you can start it.
(Michael) I would love to.
It would be a privilege.
Crossness has four
gigantic steam engines...
each boasting 47-ton beams...
and 52-ton flywheels.
We blow the whistle before we stall
the engine. Give it a long blast.
(whistle blows)
Open this valve here.
My Bradshaw's Guide is right,
the best way to see London is by boat.
From the Tate Gallery
past the Houses of Parliament
to Billingsgate Fish Market,
the Thames was London's
highway to the world.
But when, during the Great Stink,
it began to carry
more sewage than exports,
those magnificent Victorians
engineered a solution.
On the grand scale, as usual.
On the next Keg of my journey,
I'll discover how
derelict Victorian London
is being rejuvenated
to its former glory, ..
(man) This is to be called
Granary Square,
and will be bigger than
Trafalgar Square.
Amazing.
I'll put in a shift
at a Cambridgeshire brick factory
that helped to rebuild
post-war London...
- Would you like a go?
- Always one for a challenge.
and I'll meet a brick-built
immigrant community.
(all sing "Nessun Dorma")
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 halfway point of my journey
from Portsmouth to Grimsby,
and today I'm going to linger in
one of Britain's greatest ports, London.
Our capital, my home city.
On today's journey, I'll learn how
volunteer Victorian fire fighters
liked a tipple...
To encourage people to
help pump the fire engine,
insurance brigades would
take kegs of beer to a fire,
or they would take beer tokens
with them.
I'll discover how even
19th-century sewage pumps
were a celebration of design...
(man) Open this valve here.
And I'll put in a shift at
the oldest fish market in Bfltain.
Thank you, Michael.
Let's get them boxed up.
Man wants his fish today,
not the weekend.
Using my “Bradshaws Guide”,
I began this journey on
the Hampshire coast,
and have travelled up
through Surrey to London.
Twill then push northeast
to Cambridgeshire,
alighting, finally, in Grimsby
on the Humber Estuary.
The third leg of my journey
starts in Victoria,
heads east to Southwark,
on to Canary Wharf
and, finally, downstream to Abbey Wood.
On previous railway journeys to London,
I've noted Bradshaws view,
which reflected the Victorian outlook
on our capital.
"London is the capital of
the civilised world,
the largest mass of human life, of arts,
science, wealth, power and architecture
that exists."
"Our gigantic metropolis
is enabled by the Thames
to carry on a water communication
with every pan of the globe."
And on this trip, I intend to
focus on Old Father Thames.
Today's leg of my journey starts
at Victoria Station,
which began in 1862
as two distinct sites,
one serving Kent and the other Sussex.
In the early 1900s, the brick and stone
structures were beautifully rebuilt,
and in the 1920s, it became the
single station that we know today.
Victoria is my local station,
but I shed a tear every time I come here
because the Edwardian architecture
has become so cluttered with
illuminated advertising hoardings
and shopping centres,
and what they need to do is
sweep the lot away and reveal the beauty
of the original brick and stone.
Leaving the station behind,
I'm taking a short stroll to the Thames
to visit one of the most imposing
Victorian buildings on the riverbank,
Tate Britain,
a gallery containing the worlds
greatest collection of British art,
including works by Blake, Constable,
Gainsborough, Stubbs and Turner.
But according to my “Bradshaws”,
this site at Millbank was once for
those who'd had brushes with the law.
Archivist Krzysztof Cieszkowski
should know more.
- Hello, Krzysztof.
- Hello, Michael.
- Very pleased to meet you.
- It's lovely to be back.
My Bradshaw's Guide refers to
a penitentiary being on this site.
Do you know anything about that?
Yes, it was variously called Millbank
Prison and Millbank Penitentiary.
It was a prison for convicts
who were being sent to Australia.
(Michael) And what brought about
a gallery on this site?
Well, there was no gallery
of British an
in the way that there was,
for example, in Paris.
It was only when Henry Tate, in 1889,
offered his collection of
contemporary British an to the nation
that the idea started to
become a reality.
- Who was Henry Tate?
- He was born in Lancashire,
he made his fortune, first of all,
in the grocery business,
then in sugar refining.
This is the Tate that
later became Tate and Lyle?
Yes, he was the
most important sugar refiner,
and he introduced the sugar cube
to this country.
This is a volume of correspondence
relating to the opening of the gallery.
Here is a letter from
the Queen's secretary, Arthur Bigge,
thanking Henry Tate for the invitation
and for an album, in which all the works
in the Tate collection were reproduced.
(Michael) They're wonderful documents.
Henry Tate offered his
£75,000 collection to the nation,
but the press snobbishly complained
that a mere sugar boiler
should impose his taste.
So Tate spent £80,000 on
building his own gallery,
which contained many works by
the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,
an art movement founded in 1848
by Dante Gabriel Rossetti,
William Holman Hunt
and John Everett Millais.
To create work that explored
social, moral and political issues
in a way that was new
and often shocking,
the brotherhood took characters
from literature and history
and paid homage to the
perfect realism of their hero Raphael
by painting in the open air,
directly from nature,
and not in a studio from sketches.
Curator Alison Smith believes that
their art relied oh train travel.
Well, now you're bringing me towards a
very famous picture, Millais's Ophelia,
and you tell me that this has
something to do with the railways?
(Alison) That's right.
This is because the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was formed
at exactly the time when the
railway network was developing
in and around London.
He worked on this for about five, six
months, about July to November 1851.
This was a place called
Cuddington, near Maiden.
It's near Yewell in Surrey,
and so he would have travelled to Yewell
from either London Bridge or Waterloo.
(Michael) It's disillusioning
that it was painted
near the suburban railway stations,
of course, of the mid 19th century.
It wasn't exactly near
the suburban railway stations.
He opted to stay in a rambling farmhouse
called Worcester Park Farm.
And from that, each day, he would
walk about four miles to the site
and he, in fact, encountered lots of
problems when he painted this.
He was once arrested for trespassing.
He was attacked by sheep, a bull.
But it was fundamentally important
to him
to paint nature in nature, not to do it
from sketches back in the studio?
Yes, this is the key point, that this
was painted en plein air, in nature.
Are there other examples here
of Pre-Raphaelites who were
using the train to get to nature?
(Alison) We could look at Hunt,
who worked in this area,
in Yewell with Millais.
We've got another painting by him
produced the following year,
which was Strayed Sheep
or Our English Coasts,
which he painted near Hastings.
(Michael) What's the importance
of the Pre-Raphaelites?
The Pre-Raphaelites are probably the
first modern an movement in Britain
in that they really wanted to
break with the past
and the fact that British artists had
been indebted to European old masters
and they actually wanted to paint
in a new, radical way
which really reflected modernity.
In Bradshaws day,
one of the most efficient ways
of navigating London was by river.
He might have taken
an elegant paddle steamer.
I'm impressed by this
state-of-the-art catamaran.
I'm now using a
Bradshaw's Guide to London dated 1862.
I'm on the boat that takes us
from the Tate Britain
to the Tate Modern galleries.
My Bradshaw's says,
"For the sake of variety,
we shall proceed to the journey
by water,
which of a fine day
is not only the most agreeable,
but furnishing an excellent opportunity
of seeing the scenery of the Thames."
And to me, of course,
the finest piece of scenery on
the Thames is the Houses of Parliament.
The river's popularity as a transport
route may have dwindled in modern times,
but even on its choppiest days,
there are some who remained loyal.
Hello. (laughs)
Are you enjoying your trip on the river?
- (woman) Certainly am.
- Would you say, as my Bradshaw's says,
that seeing London from the river
is the best way?
A lovely way. It really is. There's
so much to see, the history's there,
the way the city has developed
over the years. It's all there.
Nowadays, we use the river so little.
It's underused, I'm sure. Yes.
We've also arrived at our destination,
so we'd better be careful
we don't get left on.
- We'd better get off.
- (they laugh)
Thank you. Bye.
From Bankside Pier,
home of the magnificent
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre,
I'm heading inland to Southwark
to visit a place
that was highly significant
for the safety of Victorian Londoners.
My Bradshaw's Guide is very concerned
about fire in London.
"Sometimes as many as
five or six occur in one night."
"To guard against the loss of life,
the Royal Society for the
Preservation of Life from Fire
have been most active
in establishing stations,
where fire escapes with conductors
are ready to be called
upon the first alarm."
"No society more richly
deserves encouragement."
It's extraordinary to think
that our capital city
had no publicly funded fire brigade.
With its origins dating back to 1828,
The Royal Society for the
Preservation of Life from Fire
placed mobile fire escape ladders
on street corners at night.
I'm hoping Jane Rugg, curator of
the London Fire Brigade Museum
can tell me who was actually
fighting fires in London at the time.
- Hello.
- Hello there.
- I'm Michael.
- I'm Jane. Nice to meet you.
- Good to see you.
- Come on in.
When my Bradshaw's Guides were written
at the beginning of the 1860s,
what son of fire provision
was there in London?
We didn't have a public service
until 1866.
So, before that time,
you would have had insurance brigades
that made up the
London Fire Engine Establishment.
So just like house insurance today,
you insured your property
and then if your house was on fire,
the insurance would send
their fire brigade
and they would come along
to put the fire out for you.
Obviously, there wasn't a fair system.
Not everybody could afford
to have the fire brigades.
It was not as a public service is now.
The 1666 Great Fire of London,
which started in a baker's shop
in the aptly named Pudding Lane,
destroying over 13,000 homes,
is well remembered in history.
Less well known is that,
almost two centuries later,
the 1861 Tootey Street fire
was a catalyst to the formation
of a publicly funded brigade.
Fire fighters from all over the country
attended the blaze,
but couldn't cope with an inferno
that started in a warehouse
and burned for two weeks.
Five years later, the
Metropolitan Fire Brigade was formed.
Chief Officer
Captain Sir Eyre Massey Shaw
inherited the
insurance brigades equipment.
You have wonderful machines here.
What is this one?
This is an example of a manual pump
inherited by the public service.
The arms open all the way out, and then
the other one comes out the other way
and you'd have ten people on this side,
ten on the other
and you pump up and down, working the
pistons inside to push the water out.
But you can only pump for five minutes
before you're too exhausted
and you need to swap with somebody else.
I'm not surprised.
I felt exhausted just standing there.
(Jane) To encourage people walking past
to help pump the fire engine,
the insurance brigades would either
take kegs of beer with them to a fire,
or they would take beer tokens
with them,
so you can see an example
of a beer token.
You would be given it
once you'd helped pump,
and then you could go to
your local public house
and exchange it for a drink.
And they did that because,
with kegs of beer at a fire,
people were more interested in
drinking the beer
than pumping the fire engine.
Did they have lots of
drunken volunteers?
They could have done, yes,
there was the potential.
Sometimes they would
take cash with them to a fire,
but in the end, the pumping tokens
seemed to work the best.
So, what else can you show me?
(Jane) This is an example of
a steam fire engine.
So we moved from the manual pumps
to using steam,
mainly when we had a public service.
(Michael)
That would be under Captain ShavW
It would, indeed, yeah.
He was the chief officer that
really wanted the new technology.
He also introduced a new uniform
into the fire brigade.
So, he introduced a woollen tunic,
and this is a replica of a tunic
worn at the time.
So you can get an idea of
how heavy it would've been
and what the fire fighters had to wear
when they went into an incident.
It is very, very heavy.
I imagine if it was soaked with water,
it would be quite impractical.
Yeah. I mean, the water helped
to protect them when it was wet,
but they also made sure that
it didn't have hems,
so it could run off the jacket
to try and keep it a bit lighter.
In addition, they also introduced
new helmets into the brigade.
So, again, this is a replica, but it
gives you an idea of the brass helmets
that would have been worn at the time.
Take me to my hose.
I'm keen to find out how things
have changed since Massey Shaw's day.
Southwark is also where
the brigade trains new recruits.
Assistant Commissioner Danni Cotton
assures me that beer tokens
no longer feature in the curriculum.
At what stage of their development
are these trainee fire fighters now
About eight weeks now, so they're about
halfway through their basic training,
which lasts 17 weeks.
(Michael)
What's the exercise we're watching now
(Danni) It's demonstrating their ability
to use hoses combined with ladders,
so it's a simulation of a fire
in a three-storey building.
- Do you remember your training?
- Oh, vividly.
It took place here in 1988.
It was quite different.
It involved a lot of marching,
a lot of saluting,
a lot more shiny shoes
and shouting and running.
But it was a lot more basic.
But now the fire fighting role
is so much more complicated.
- Why?
- Well, technology advances, mainly.
Cars, for instance, were very basic,
if you went to cut a car up, you could
cut it anywhere. It didn't matter.
Now cars have got so many different
systems in them to protect us,
air bags and things,
that you need the training for that.
Then you've got things like
terrorist threats, chemicals.
(Michael) You're no longer
squirting hoses yourself?
Sadly not.
I did that for a number of years.
I point at people
and tell them to squirt hoses.
(Michael) What's the proportion of women
in the London Fire Brigade?
Still a relatively low number.
We've got nearly 350 women
out of nearly 6,000 fire fighters.
(Michael) There's no reason a woman
couldn't fight a fire as well as a man?
Absolutely not.
It's the best job in the world.
I would recommend it to anyone.
I've loved every minute of my 24 years.
In an area where old London meets new,
I'm heading back towards the river
through Borough Market,
whose traders have sold food
and supplies since the 11th century,
to my final destination of the day.
The George Inn also has a long past,
which historian Pete Brown
has investigated.
- Pete, hello.
- Hello.
- Great to see you.
- And you.
My Bradshaws Guide to London says,
"The old inns in the Borough
with their wide rambling staircases
and wooden galleries round the inn yards
are pleasant reminiscences
of ancient days of
coach and wagon traffic."
Absolutely, yeah
I'm amazed to find it so brilliantly
preserved here at the George.
(Pete) It's an amazing survivor
from a previous age.
Borough High Street used to be
the main thoroughfare into London
from the southeast and the continent.
London Bridge, up the road, was the only
bridge across the Thames until 1750.
It was a huge bottleneck,
everything came here, had to stay here.
So these inns cropped up all down
the street, there were 20 at one time.
And this is the last survivor.
It's the railways that killed off
places like this.
Anything in the way of that railway line
just disappeared, was obliterated.
And when you look at maps of Southwark
from before and after,
it's like a child with a pen came in
and scribbled these lines across it,
completely transforming
the geography of the place.
How do you account for the
unique survival of The George?
Partly, it's because the Great
North Railway Company bought it,
demolished a lot of it
and kept some of it for office space,
and partly it's because, at that time,
the landlady was this lady Agnes Murray,
this formidable woman.
She basically appropriated the mythology
of all of Southwark's coaching inns
and son of centred it here.
So, on this side, for example,
stood The White Han.
The White Han played a pivotal role in
Dickens's first novel Pickwick Papers.
It's where Mr Pickwick meets Sam Weller.
And Agnes Murray basically said,
"Oh, no, that happened here."
"Dickens said The White Han,
but he meant The George."
She would show people the bedroom
where this meeting supposedly took place
and the table where Dickens
supposedly sat
and built up this mythology
around the place.
And does the pub still have
a warm hearth and warm beer?
It's got a warm hearth
and pleasantly cool beer.
Let's go in.
With an early start tomorrow,
it's just one for the road.
- Well, Pete, cheers.
- Cheers.
- What a delightful way to end the day.
- Absolutely.
I'm up too early to catch
the Jubilee tube line
or the Docklands Light Railway
to Canary Wharf
because to get the full flavour of
my next destination,
Billingsgate Fish Market,
requires a pre-dawn start.
My Bradshaws Guide says,
"Billingsgate, situated chiefly at
the back of that cluster of buildings
by the Custom House, has been,
since the days of William III,
the most famous fish market in Europe."
In Bradshaws day,
the fish used to arrive by train.
Now they come mainly by lorry,
and the market has been
relocated to Canary Wharf.
But here at five in the morning,
it has lost none of its bustle.
And the change of location
has made Billingsgate no less famous.
Billingsgate became synonymous with fish
when a 1699 Act of Parliament made it
"a free and open market
for all sorts of fish whatsoever."
Originally situated on the river
adjacent to London Bridge,
the market was supplied by boat,
but the coming of the railways
revolutionised the fishing industry,
and as it satisfied the new demand
for affordable fresh product,
ports like Grimsby boomed.
Billingsgate customers are still
buying the freshest fish possible
at a price that suits them.
Excuse me? I see you buying fish
this early in the morning.
Are you in the business,
or are you buying it for yourself?
- No, it's for my personal use.
- Do you do that a lot?
Yes, very often. It's good value.
Come down here at 5am
and buy your fish?
Absolutely. Very good value.
Are you looking for
anything special in the fish line?
I tend to look for sea bream,
which is extremely good value.
Salmon, as well.
(Michael) How do you cook
your sea bream?
First of all, I prepare the sauce,
and then put the sea bream on top,
and then cook it for about
five, ten minutes, just steam it.
- It sounds absolutely fantastic.
- Beautiful. Caribbean style.
You enjoy that. Mouth watering.
Thank you.
Most orders placed here are wholesale.
At busy times, the larger firms can sell
up to two tons of fish each morning.
Mark Morris works for the market's
longest established family business,
and he's offered to show me the basics.
Has your family
been in the business long?
We're the fourth generation.
We go back to the early 1900s
when our great-grandfather
founded the business.
We bring our fish in from
all over the UK, all over Europe.
We've got pollock and coley there.
And mackerel. Beautiful mackerel there.
Have a little feel of that.
- Feel the pinch on that.
- Oh, beautiful fish.
And if you turn him upside down,
open up his gills,
you'll see the lovely, thick,
rich red blood colour in there.
That's what we're looking for.
Bright-eyed, nice and firm.
Lovely hake here.
We pick it up by the eyes because,
as you see,
the teeth are absolutely razor sharp.
We don't want to get our fingers
caught in there.
Thumb and forefinger, Michael.
So, thumb in one eye.
Forefinger in the other.
And lift straight up.
There we go, that's a nice safe way
of picking up a hake.
So I'm avoiding the sharp teeth, I'm
avoiding the sharpness round the gills.
And it's a rather yucky feeling,
sticking your fingers
in the eyes of a hake.
Having got a handle on his fish,
I'm set to work.
Michael, I need two hake, please.
Let's get them boxed up. Man wants
his fish today, not the weekend.
- (Michael laughs)
- Give me a headless cod now, please.
- Headless cod?
- One of those large headless cod.
- 3.88 of headless cod!
- Thank you.
Two salmon fillets as well, please.
No, no, no. Fillets, Michael.
Michael, the fillets, please, sir.
Fillets, thank you.
Yes, of course, fillets.
I do apologise.
New boy on the firm today.
(Michael) Oh, it's got to go on
the weighing machine first.
- 3.46 of salmon fillets!
- Thank you, Michael.
We'll make a salesman
out of you yet, sir.
OK. Lovely. Thank you very much.
Yeah, sorry about the delay.
- Thank you. Bye-bye.
- (Michael laughs)
Lovely, Michael. Great job.
Well done, sir. Thank you very much.
Oh, dear.
I don't think I could get used to this.
What I could gel used lo
is travelling on Old Father Thames.
I'm heading east to Abbey Wood,
and my route takes me past one of the
most famous of all London landmarks.
Bradshaws London guide says,
"Greenwich presents a striking
appearance from the river,
its hospital forming one of the most
prominent attractions of the place."
I've always loved Greenwich.
Its wonderful architecture,
its spacious buildings,
its association with one of my heroes,
Horatio Nelson.
And now that the Cutty Sark
has been restored, it is complete again.
I marvel at the river's wonderful views
of London landmarks, old and new,
but one should always remember
that the river is a potent force
to be reckoned with.
In Bradshaws day,
and indeed, until quite recently,
the Thames posed
a mighty danger of flooding.
And the erection of the Thames Barrier
has much reduced that risk.
In Bradshaws day, there was
another peril from the Thames as well.
The water was filthy.
The final destination
on this leg of my journey
lies six miles further downstream
at Abbey Wood.
The Crossness Pumping Station was
opened in 1865 as an essential element
of one of the largest
engineering projects ever undertaken
anywhere in the world.
Author Stephen Halliday
should be able to tell me more.
- Stephen, hello.
- Hello.
I've just travelled here on the river
and it was very nice,
but I believe it was not always
that pleasant on the Thames?
Indeed. The sewage of 2.5 million people
was flowing into the river Thames
and, of course, the Thames is
a tidal river, so it never went away.
Why hadn't that happened before?
Because until about 1800,
if you wanted to spend a penny,
you would go into
the basement of your home,
you would do what you had to do
in a cesspit,
which would be emptied at intervals
by night soil men,
who caned it away
and sold it to farmers.
And what happened after 1800?
The importation of guano
from South America,
solidified bird droppings,
gave a better form of fertiliser.
But the real killer was
the introduction of the water closet.
When you flushed,
what you sent round the S bend
was a very small quantity of potential
fertiliser and a huge volume of water.
So the cesspits filled up ten
or 20 times as quickly with liquid,
which people didn't want to buy,
and which leaked.
And they leaked into surrounding
water courses, wells,
sources of drinking water,
and dysentery, cholera and typhoid
started to spread throughout London.
That's the so-called Great Stink?
Indeed. In the summer of 1858,
you would not have wanted to be
on the river at all.
After the 1853 cholera outbreak
had claimed over 10,000 lives
and the hot summer of 1858
created the Great Stink,
action was finally taken.
As chief engineer to London's
Metropolitan Board of Works,
Joseph Bazalgette oversaw
the building of 82 miles of main sewers
under the streets of London,
which intercepted existing sewers and
dispatched the capital's human waste
out to sea via two steam-powered
pumping stations, like Crossness.
It's currently undergoing restoration.
It's absolutely glorious. It's as highly
decorated as the House of Commons.
(Stephen) Yes, for a sewage pumping
station, they didn't stint, did they?
What a fantastic restoration.
Hello, I'm Michael.
I'm Mike Jones.
So, when was the pumping station
restored?
Well, we're still restoring it,
but I suppose the trust
really started around 1988.
It was, in fact, scheduled for
demolition for quite a while,
and wasn't demolished
because the engines are so large.
So it's very fortunate it's still here.
I think people will be amazed,
overwhelmed
that the Victorians decorated
a pumping station like this.
I think it's a reflection of the
Victorian pride in what they were doing.
(Michael) And I believe
one of the engines actually works?
(Mike) That's true. Prince Consort
has been in steam since 2003,
and if you'd like to, you can start it.
(Michael) I would love to.
It would be a privilege.
Crossness has four
gigantic steam engines...
each boasting 47-ton beams...
and 52-ton flywheels.
We blow the whistle before we stall
the engine. Give it a long blast.
(whistle blows)
Open this valve here.
My Bradshaw's Guide is right,
the best way to see London is by boat.
From the Tate Gallery
past the Houses of Parliament
to Billingsgate Fish Market,
the Thames was London's
highway to the world.
But when, during the Great Stink,
it began to carry
more sewage than exports,
those magnificent Victorians
engineered a solution.
On the grand scale, as usual.
On the next Keg of my journey,
I'll discover how
derelict Victorian London
is being rejuvenated
to its former glory, ..
(man) This is to be called
Granary Square,
and will be bigger than
Trafalgar Square.
Amazing.
I'll put in a shift
at a Cambridgeshire brick factory
that helped to rebuild
post-war London...
- Would you like a go?
- Always one for a challenge.
and I'll meet a brick-built
immigrant community.
(all sing "Nessun Dorma")