Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 4, Episode 9 - London King's Cross to Peterborough - 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
Bradshaw's Britain remains.
I'm now more than halfway through
a journey that began in Portsmouth
and which has given me time to explore
my home city of London.
On this leg,
I'll be continuing that exploration.
Today, I'll discover
how derelict Victorian London
is being rejuvenated, ..
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. ..
Would you like to
come and have a go?
Always one for a challenge.
And I'll meet
a brick-built immigrant community.
(they sing “Nessun Dorma”)
Using my Bradshaws Guide, I began
on the Hampshire coast in Portsmouth,
travelled up through Surrey
and on to London,
and I'll soon push northeast
to Cambridgeshire,
completing my journey at Grimsby
in Lincolnshire.
The fourth leg of my journey
starts in King's Cross,
heads north to Alexandra Palace,
on to Knebworth, in to Bedfordshire
and ends in Peterborough.
The Victorian railways made their
biggest architectural impact
in our city centres, with the erection
of vast termini, cathedrals of steam.
Today, thanks to an enormous
rebuilding programme,
they are returning
to their Victorian exuberance,
revealing again architectural details
pointed out in my Bradshaw's Guide.
Built by the Great Northern Railway
and named in homage to King George IV,
central London's King's Cross opened
in 1852.
Today, ifs a busy London terminus
with over 40 million passengers
passing through it each year.
And after decades of neglect,
the station is finally being restored
to its beautiful grandeur.
This station is, to me, a wonder,
and it was to George Bradshaw, too.
"King's Cross presents
a most imposing appearance."
"In the facade, the two main arches
mark the end of the arrival
and departure platforms and each has
a span of no less than 72ft."
"On reaching the platform,
the traveller cannot fail to admire
the size and character of the station,
the semi-spherical roof,
the immense area covered in."
And thanks to the recent refurbishment
of King's Cross, we are seeing it today
as no one has seen it since
Queen Victoria went to her grave.
Affectionately dubbed The Great Station,
King's Cross was designed
in an Italianate style
by architect Lewis Cubitt.
Now the station and the 67 acres
of previously derelict land
and buildings behind it are undergoing
one of the largest urban regenerations
in Europe.
I'm meeting Roger Mann of
the redevelopment team
at the Grade II listed Granary Complex.
At the height of
the Victorian industrial boom,
it was part of a goods interchange,
and now forms a new campus
for the Central Saint Martins College
of Arts & Design.
This is a fantastic space.
The railway history is written on the
wall. It's been left intact, hasn't it'?
(Roger) it has. There was a great debate
about sandblasting this building,
but I think the right decision
was made.
Originally,
this was built purely for goods
and a passenger was something
not necessarily thought of.
So it was always a bit of a by-product.
(Carmichael) Because the money
was in freight?
(Roger) Exactly so.
What sons of goods
were being moved through here?
(Roger) Potatoes and coal, together with
fish and then lots of other goods.
(Carmichael) Fantastic.
The redevelopment of King's Cross
isn't confined to its interior.
The exterior is being transformed, too.
I had no idea that this vast space
existed. What was it?
This was a canal basin.
The canal itself, just over there,
came into the site all the way to
the granary building
and underneath. In fact, there were
two openings under the main building
and one on either end of the shed.
(Carmichael) The barges could pass
under the building?
(Roger) Under the building
and disgorged of their product
- or, in fact, took load on.
- (Michael) What will this space be now
(Roger) This is to be called
Granary Square.
We'll have a number of fountains
playing,
probably with music from time to time
and will be bigger than
Trafalgar Square.
Amazing.
The station's original roof, modelled on
the Russian Tsar's riding school,
was the largest in the world,
spanning 105 by 800ft.
And the new WOO-ton steel and glass
dome covering the refurbished concourse
is the centrepiece of architect
John McAsiar's vision for King's Cross.
John. If you seek his monument,
look about you.
- Exactly.
- Congratulations, it's magnificent.
You've chosen to make
this sweeping roof.
Are you making reference here
to Victorian architecture?
(John) We are. We are inspired by
the original architecture,
the original train shed roof,
and we've tried to interpret that
and I think people genuinely enjoy
the quality of the space
and understand the references
that we've made.
I've noticed, for example,
that the passenger sheds,
the glazing has all been redone, light
is now pouring on to the platforms.
That didn't happen for many years.
All of the old polychromatic coverings
have been removed,
we've reinstated glass.
We've put photovoltaics on the top so
there's energy produced now, so, yes,
they're re-presented and I think,
as you'll agree, a fantastic light
is streaming in to the train shed
for the first time in about 50 years.
If George Bradshaw were writing today
and he came here,
would he write with such admiration
about your spans and arches?
I think he'd see the connection we made
between Victorian and 21st-century
architecture and engineering
and I hope he would respond well to it.
My next stop, like King's Cross,
is another piece of iconic
Victorian architecture,
built with its own railway station,
looming over the railway tracks.
A palace named after
the Princess of Wales.
But it wasn't built for
the Princess's pleasure,
but for the pleasure of the public.
Alexandra Palace.
Five miles north of King's Cross, in
1873, The People's Palace opened
as a centre of recreation
for Victorian Londoners.
But after just 16 days,
Alexandra Palace was destroyed by fire.
Two years later, a new palace,
covering seven acres, opened.
In 1936, the first public television
pictures were transmitted from here
and then in 1980, the palace was
severely fire damaged again.
I'm hoping that current Chief Executive,
Duncan Wilson,
will tell me how it's recovered.
- Duncan, hello.
- Hello.
So, I take it from the architecture
that this was a railway station.
This was the booking hall
of the railway station,
which lay between the hall
and Alexandra Palace itself.
So when Alexandra Palace
was built in 1873,
it already had its railway station?
Indeed, it was part of the whole concept
to get people up here in massive numbers
to enjoy this enormous palace
of entertainment.
And did the railway succeed
in sucking people in?
It did, there were 94,000 people arrived
on the Whit Monday after it opened,
although they did arrive rather late,
as there was a derailment
just outside King's Cross.
Alexandra Palace's entertainment spaces
include its Palm Court,
ice rink and, the largest of all,
its Great Hall.
This is absolutely extraordinary,
isn't it?
So what did they build
this vast space for?
It was built for, amongst other things,
organ concerts for audiences
of ten to 15 thousand,
choral concerts, orchestral concerts,
massive events.
It could accommodate
nearly 2,000 performers.
What impression do you get of
what entertained the Victorians?
An amazing range of things
by modern standards.
I think, in a way, it was the
combination of the wildlife documentary
and the an history programme
all presented as an exhibition
to the public, or a series of them,
so we had exhibitions of
goat and rabbit breeding,
a Moorish bazaar and a thousand monkeys
exhibited in the Palm Court,
and they even brought elephants here
by train,
which were led out through
the front of the building to the circus.
- On the trunk line?
- On the trunk line, yes.
(Carmichael) What plans do you have
for all this in the future?
We do operate the Great and West halls
as a successful concert venue,
but there's a lot we can do more
with Alexandra Palace,
if we can get the money to invest in it.
It's heartening that, like King's Cross,
another great Victorian edifice
is highly valued today.
From the current
Alexandra Palace station,
I am catching my next train north,
out of the capital.
I've left London well behind me now,
and my train is swishing through
Hertfordshire.
For my last stop of the day,
I have taken a tip from my Bradshaw's,
which says that in the vicinity
is Knebworth Hall,
"the fine seat of
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton".
Bulwer-Lytton? That rings a bell.
An author, I think, but I don't think
I have ever read anything by him.
The name Knebworth might currently be
synonymous with its rock festival,
but it's been home to the Lytton family
since 1490,
and in the 19th century,
to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton,
author and Member of Parliament.
I'm meeting descendant,
Henry Lytton-Cobbold.
(Henry) Hi, Michael.
- Henry, lovely to see you.
- Very pleased you popped by.
- A fine seat, as my Bradshaw's says.
- Thank you.
- I don't know much about Bulwer-Lytton.
- There's lots to tell you.
(Henry) Let me show you round.
Let me show you his influence.
(Carmichael) So, we have the most hideous
and scary creatures here.
(Henry) Warding off evil spirits, which
they still do to this day, I trust.
(Carmichael) Does that tell us something
about Bulwer-Lytton's mind?
It tells us a lot about his mind.
I think...
Everywhere you'll see bats on barrels.
Bats on barrels is a play on
the word "Lytton",
the old English word for a bat being
"lit", and for a barrel being "ton".
So, everywhere you see bats on barrels.
(Carmichael) Some of these gargoyles
seem to have a thirst.
Their very long tongues are hanging out.
(Henry laughs)
English Heritage,
which insisted everything go back
exactly the way it was,
when we were able to restore these,
did allow us to shorten the tongues just
a little bit, just for decency's sake.
But great fun to restore them back up
to their original position,
up above the library bay window here.
Having found out about Bulwer-Lytton's
taste in exterior decor,
I now want to discover
more of the man himself.
(Henry) He was perhaps best known
for his historical novels.
This is his collection of
medieval Armour,
which still has dents in it where
spears and musket shell has hit it.
Here we are in Bulwer-Lytton's study,
where he wrote
his enormous volume of work.
(Carmichael)
What was his reputation at the time?
(Henry) He was the best-selling novelist
in Britain in the 1830s,
until the young whippersnapper Charles
Dickens came along and usurped him.
Of course, they were great friends,
and they went on to work together.
Poor Lytton became very much
a grand old man of literature
for the mid 19th-century
authors and poets.
(Carmichael)
Would those authors come down?
Yes, Dickens would bring his chums down,
his actor friends,
for great weekend parties,
and perform in the hall downstairs.
- This is his rather splendid library.
- (Michael) Wonderful.
Literally built from scratch,
a Victorian gentleman's library.
Wonderful.
(Henry) It's funny to think,
right from the start of his career,
but even quite late into his career,
he was writing for money.
He spent a lot of money on this
when the railway was being built.
He relied too heavily
on making money out of that,
and ended up having to write the novel
Harold to help pay the solicitors' bills
that he'd run up,
trying to fight for his fair share
for having the railway
go right the way through his estate.
In the 1840s, like so many
other landowners across these islands,
Edward Bulwer-Lytton had to decide
whether he would allow the railways
to traverse his land, and if he did,
how much he would accept from them
for the privilege.
So, here we have
his estate at that time.
You can see how the railway
literally seared it in two.
It really brings home what landowners
had to sacrifice in those days,
if the railway passed through.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the first
writer to begin a novel with the words,
"It was a dark and stormy night."
He also gave us the phrase,
"The pen is mightier than the sword",
and the expression,
"The great unwashed".
Which, after the long day that I've had,
is rather the way I'm feeling now.
We off to a local hostelry,
and early to bed.
Rejuvenated, and set for
the next leg of my journey,
ifs less than a half-hour trip on the
King's Cross to Peterborough mainline.
I'm now in Bedfordshire,
and my Bradshaw's tells me
some of the finest vegetables are
produced here for the London market.
They must benefit from all this rain.
My next stop is Biggleswade, and
Bradshaw's tells me that it was formerly
one of the most extensive corn markets
in England,
and that's the clue I'm going to pursue,
because in my view, you don't get
a corn market without corn.
In Bradshaws day,
mills in this area were abundant.
And in the 1850s, Biggleswade was also
the first town in Bedfordshire
to have a main line station.
We come to one of the last
working mills in the county
to meet Bill Jordan,
whose family has for generations pushed
forward the technology of milling.
- Hello, Bill.
- Welcome.
(Michael) Thank you so much.
This is a gorgeous mill. How old is it?
(Bill) This was built in 1896,
so it was a model mill in its day.
Had there been mills here before?
Yes, there's been a mill here
since the Domesday Book, 1086,
because this was a great
grain-growing area.
Yes, my Bradshaw's Guide refers to
the corn markets of Biggleswade
being amongst the most important
in the country.
(Bill) It was a real bread basket area.
400 mills alone in Bedfordshire,
and the great thing here, the River Ivel
is a tributary of the Ouse,
so there was always
reasonably good water here.
We're wearing hard hats.
What are you doing with this mill?
(Bill) It's all about showing people
how milling is done,
how we use water power to drive
the mill, so sustainable power.
So this is a great example of an old
Victorian roller mill driven by water.
When this mill opened,
was it advanced for its time?
(Bill) This was the last word. The whole
thing about flour milling was survival.
Those 400 mills came crashing down to
just one mill, which was this one,
only a few years ago,
and the whole thing about milling was
to try and use technology to just get
a step ahead of your competition.
Looking at this machinery,
what should I notice about it?
Well, you weren't paying much for
your power, because we're working on
a four-foot drop in the River Ivel
to actually drive this turbine, which
develops something like 28 horsepower.
So it was a clever piece of kit.
- Have you got it in working order?
- Absolutely in working order.
This will be one of the finest examples,
of a Victorian roller mill still in use.
You have to take your hat off
to these Victorian engineers, don't you?
You do. This has been working for over
110 years, very little maintenance.
A few separate teeth occasionally,
when there was a breakdown.
But absolutely. All that power,
28 horsepower, just run off the river.
Very clever.
Bill's not merely an enthusiast
for old mills.
In the 1970s, he and his brother
saw a new future in breakfast cereals.
They swapped granary for granola,
traded in wheat for oats,
left flour milling behind,
and created their mum-million
pound brand, Jordan's Cereal.
Paul Bell is a shift manager
at their factory.
Paul, this is breakfast cereals
on a industrial scale.
This whole thing is an oven.
It is indeed, 62 metres of it, yes.
This oven can do any cereal you like,
can it?
Yes, essentially. We can do 13, 14
different types of base product.
Give me some idea of your output.
(Paul) We produce, on average,
1,500 pallets of finished goods a week,
which is about 135,000 cases.
(Michael) How many boxes of cereal
is that? You multiply by what?
By six, as a rule.
So that's quite some undertaking.
The technology that gets over
800,000 boxes of cereal per week
cooked, bagged, boxed, packed
and distributed is a long step forward
from the water-powered mills of
the company's Victorian history.
(Paul) What we've got here,
flat-pack canons,
and every time the sensor sees a bag
on the belt, it'll pull the carton down,
push it into shape.
As we walk along the process,
we can watch the pushers
push the bags into the boxes.
They're then folded and glued
and sealed,
and fed down to the next process.
After going through a check weigher,
which is obviously a legal requirement
for our 500g declarations.
From the bread basket of Bedfordshire,
I'm destined now for Cambridgeshire,
the county of my old university
and for which,
unlike "Bradshaw's", /have an affinity.
My Bradshaw's can be pretty opinionated.
Under the entry for Peterborough, where
I'll be changing trains, it writes,
"The country is flat
and uninteresting in winter
and when the floods are up,
the roads are almost impassable."
It sounds as if some unfortunate
personal experience lies behind that.
I find the eastern plain rather
more charming than Bradshaw's did.
Peterborough Station serves
all four points of the compass,
and four million passengers a year.
(announcement)
Train just arrived at platform five,
Whittlesey is an additional stop
today for this service.
(Michael) I'm taking the branch line
east to Whittlesey.
Relying on the constituents of
what “Bradshaws” dismissed
as its boggy ground,
since the 1880s
Peterborough and its surrounds
have built a prosperity based on the
manufacture of a construction product
that most of us take for granted.
Bricks.
In the late 19th
and early 20th centuries,
so much of our capital city
was built with these,
that the product became known
simply as London Brick.
I'm in Whittlesey to meet David Weeks,
whose company bought the original
London Brick Company in the 1980s.
So this wonderful stuff is clay, is it?
(David) This is the heart
of the whole process.
It's called Lower Oxford Clay,
and, interestingly, when the brickworks
first started in Peterborough,
they used the very soft clay on the top,
and a guy called James Craig,
who set up the first brickworks,
discovered this much harder clay
underneath,
purely by chance as they dug
further and further.
And there's a rich seam that goes from
Oxford all the way up to Yorkshire
and all these brickworks
were sited along the seam of clay.
With its high carbon content,
Lower Oxford Clay had a unique property:
it was combustible,
so less fuel was needed to fire
the bricks in the production process.
In the late 19th century,
this industry was able to save energy,
and to make use of a raw material
that was both natural and plentiful.
There's been quarrying around this pan
of Peterborough for over 100 years now.
This is the last working clay quarry,
and when this is finished
it vi/ill be the end of an era,
because the market for these bricks
is gradually tailing off.
Although they're hard-wearing
and durable,
they don't have the insulation
properties of a modern brick.
By the 1930s,
the market for London bricks was huge...
and most of
the Peterborough brickyards
had their own railway sidings to
transport their finished products.
David wants to show me how the very
finest London bricks are produced.
(Carmichael)
So, tell me about this process here.
(David) Well, at the back you can see
what we call the green bricks,
which are just the natural clay
as it's come out
after the bricks have been pressed.
This is one of the kiln chambers.
They've been put into the kiln chamber
ready to be fired
and these guys are now bricking it up
with old reject bricks
and they will then seal it with a render
and then gradually the fire will work
its way round into this chamber
and fire these bricks and move on to
the next chamber.
How long will your green bricks
stay there?
(David) They'll be in the kiln
for about five days.
To ensure that the enormous kiln
is working to maximum capacity,
ifs been given handy portholes
to add fuel.
Oh, wow, that is a brilliant sight,
isn't it'?
Those are glowing, glowing bricks,
are they'?
(David) Yep, a thousand degrees.
(Carmichael) Oh, yes,
so that's quite nice on a cold day.
(David) The process starts,
as they approach the fire,
they gradually dry out, the temperature
rises up to a thousand degrees,
when they're fired properly and then
there's a process when they cool down
and the whole cycle takes about 12 days
and the fire moves around the kiln.
The bricks are static all the time
and the fire tracks its way around
and we load the green bricks in
ahead of the fire
and then take out the fired bricks
behind the fire.
It's a continuous process.
Once fired and cooled,
even in today's mechanised world,
London bricks are packed
the old-fashioned way, by hand.
Oh, dear boy, would you like to
come and have a go?
(Carmichael laughs)
(Carmichael) Always one for a challenge!
What do I have to do?
Just pick two bricks up like that
and put them on there.
Just make sure that they're...
That's it.
Mind your fingers, because they bite.
They bite, do they?
The other thing is to go at speed,
isn't it? Do you do this all day, Reg?
- All day, yes.
- Goodness. Do you do any other jobs?
No, not really, no.
We have done 'em, but, like,
this is our main job, this is.
(Carmichael) So, makes you pretty tough?
Yeah, it's hard work.
It hurts at the end of the day, plus
we just come back off holidays, so...
- So you're a bit out of practice?
- Stiff, yeah, at the minute, yeah.
Many thousands have put in shifts
at London Brick,
some of them
from surprising backgrounds.
After the Second World War,
Britain's cities had to be rebuilt,
and the demand for bricks soared.
The London Brick Company employed
more than 3,000 prisoners of war.
But after they went home
in the early 1950s,
London Brick began a recruitment drive
in southern Italy.
As a result, Peterborough has a thriving
Italian ex-pat community.
- Anyone connected with the brickworks?
- (woman) These two.
In 1955, we come from the same place
in Italy.
- Did you know each other?
- Yes, I go to school with him.
- No!
- Yeah.
- Signora, when did you come to England?
- (woman) 1952.
Now, you didn't come to work
in a brick factory?
No, darling, I just come for my love,
my husband.
- And what did he do?
- Work in the London Brick Company.
(they sing “Nessun Dorma”)
What better way to end a journey
than to be immersed in a vibrant
community built brick by brick?
The story of the Italian brick makers
reminds me that, despite
the industrialisation of Bradshaw’s era,
most people continued to be
manual labourers.
These tracks were laid by beef and brawn
and in the fields,
the wheat was gathered
largely without the use of machines.
In this era of mechanisation,
it's as well to remember those who lived
by the sweat of their brow.
On the next Keg of my journey,
I see how Lincolnshire farmers utilised
rails to improve their harvests, ..
That was fun!
/ visit one of Britain's most
ancient and impressive cathedrals. ..
The tower is like fingers of
honey-coloured stone
against the blue sky.
Absolutely breathtaking.
And I look to the future
of rail freight.
It gives me the most enormous pleasure
to be able to name this locomotive
Immingham 100.
(applause)
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
Bradshaw's Britain remains.
I'm now more than halfway through
a journey that began in Portsmouth
and which has given me time to explore
my home city of London.
On this leg,
I'll be continuing that exploration.
Today, I'll discover
how derelict Victorian London
is being rejuvenated, ..
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. ..
Would you like to
come and have a go?
Always one for a challenge.
And I'll meet
a brick-built immigrant community.
(they sing “Nessun Dorma”)
Using my Bradshaws Guide, I began
on the Hampshire coast in Portsmouth,
travelled up through Surrey
and on to London,
and I'll soon push northeast
to Cambridgeshire,
completing my journey at Grimsby
in Lincolnshire.
The fourth leg of my journey
starts in King's Cross,
heads north to Alexandra Palace,
on to Knebworth, in to Bedfordshire
and ends in Peterborough.
The Victorian railways made their
biggest architectural impact
in our city centres, with the erection
of vast termini, cathedrals of steam.
Today, thanks to an enormous
rebuilding programme,
they are returning
to their Victorian exuberance,
revealing again architectural details
pointed out in my Bradshaw's Guide.
Built by the Great Northern Railway
and named in homage to King George IV,
central London's King's Cross opened
in 1852.
Today, ifs a busy London terminus
with over 40 million passengers
passing through it each year.
And after decades of neglect,
the station is finally being restored
to its beautiful grandeur.
This station is, to me, a wonder,
and it was to George Bradshaw, too.
"King's Cross presents
a most imposing appearance."
"In the facade, the two main arches
mark the end of the arrival
and departure platforms and each has
a span of no less than 72ft."
"On reaching the platform,
the traveller cannot fail to admire
the size and character of the station,
the semi-spherical roof,
the immense area covered in."
And thanks to the recent refurbishment
of King's Cross, we are seeing it today
as no one has seen it since
Queen Victoria went to her grave.
Affectionately dubbed The Great Station,
King's Cross was designed
in an Italianate style
by architect Lewis Cubitt.
Now the station and the 67 acres
of previously derelict land
and buildings behind it are undergoing
one of the largest urban regenerations
in Europe.
I'm meeting Roger Mann of
the redevelopment team
at the Grade II listed Granary Complex.
At the height of
the Victorian industrial boom,
it was part of a goods interchange,
and now forms a new campus
for the Central Saint Martins College
of Arts & Design.
This is a fantastic space.
The railway history is written on the
wall. It's been left intact, hasn't it'?
(Roger) it has. There was a great debate
about sandblasting this building,
but I think the right decision
was made.
Originally,
this was built purely for goods
and a passenger was something
not necessarily thought of.
So it was always a bit of a by-product.
(Carmichael) Because the money
was in freight?
(Roger) Exactly so.
What sons of goods
were being moved through here?
(Roger) Potatoes and coal, together with
fish and then lots of other goods.
(Carmichael) Fantastic.
The redevelopment of King's Cross
isn't confined to its interior.
The exterior is being transformed, too.
I had no idea that this vast space
existed. What was it?
This was a canal basin.
The canal itself, just over there,
came into the site all the way to
the granary building
and underneath. In fact, there were
two openings under the main building
and one on either end of the shed.
(Carmichael) The barges could pass
under the building?
(Roger) Under the building
and disgorged of their product
- or, in fact, took load on.
- (Michael) What will this space be now
(Roger) This is to be called
Granary Square.
We'll have a number of fountains
playing,
probably with music from time to time
and will be bigger than
Trafalgar Square.
Amazing.
The station's original roof, modelled on
the Russian Tsar's riding school,
was the largest in the world,
spanning 105 by 800ft.
And the new WOO-ton steel and glass
dome covering the refurbished concourse
is the centrepiece of architect
John McAsiar's vision for King's Cross.
John. If you seek his monument,
look about you.
- Exactly.
- Congratulations, it's magnificent.
You've chosen to make
this sweeping roof.
Are you making reference here
to Victorian architecture?
(John) We are. We are inspired by
the original architecture,
the original train shed roof,
and we've tried to interpret that
and I think people genuinely enjoy
the quality of the space
and understand the references
that we've made.
I've noticed, for example,
that the passenger sheds,
the glazing has all been redone, light
is now pouring on to the platforms.
That didn't happen for many years.
All of the old polychromatic coverings
have been removed,
we've reinstated glass.
We've put photovoltaics on the top so
there's energy produced now, so, yes,
they're re-presented and I think,
as you'll agree, a fantastic light
is streaming in to the train shed
for the first time in about 50 years.
If George Bradshaw were writing today
and he came here,
would he write with such admiration
about your spans and arches?
I think he'd see the connection we made
between Victorian and 21st-century
architecture and engineering
and I hope he would respond well to it.
My next stop, like King's Cross,
is another piece of iconic
Victorian architecture,
built with its own railway station,
looming over the railway tracks.
A palace named after
the Princess of Wales.
But it wasn't built for
the Princess's pleasure,
but for the pleasure of the public.
Alexandra Palace.
Five miles north of King's Cross, in
1873, The People's Palace opened
as a centre of recreation
for Victorian Londoners.
But after just 16 days,
Alexandra Palace was destroyed by fire.
Two years later, a new palace,
covering seven acres, opened.
In 1936, the first public television
pictures were transmitted from here
and then in 1980, the palace was
severely fire damaged again.
I'm hoping that current Chief Executive,
Duncan Wilson,
will tell me how it's recovered.
- Duncan, hello.
- Hello.
So, I take it from the architecture
that this was a railway station.
This was the booking hall
of the railway station,
which lay between the hall
and Alexandra Palace itself.
So when Alexandra Palace
was built in 1873,
it already had its railway station?
Indeed, it was part of the whole concept
to get people up here in massive numbers
to enjoy this enormous palace
of entertainment.
And did the railway succeed
in sucking people in?
It did, there were 94,000 people arrived
on the Whit Monday after it opened,
although they did arrive rather late,
as there was a derailment
just outside King's Cross.
Alexandra Palace's entertainment spaces
include its Palm Court,
ice rink and, the largest of all,
its Great Hall.
This is absolutely extraordinary,
isn't it?
So what did they build
this vast space for?
It was built for, amongst other things,
organ concerts for audiences
of ten to 15 thousand,
choral concerts, orchestral concerts,
massive events.
It could accommodate
nearly 2,000 performers.
What impression do you get of
what entertained the Victorians?
An amazing range of things
by modern standards.
I think, in a way, it was the
combination of the wildlife documentary
and the an history programme
all presented as an exhibition
to the public, or a series of them,
so we had exhibitions of
goat and rabbit breeding,
a Moorish bazaar and a thousand monkeys
exhibited in the Palm Court,
and they even brought elephants here
by train,
which were led out through
the front of the building to the circus.
- On the trunk line?
- On the trunk line, yes.
(Carmichael) What plans do you have
for all this in the future?
We do operate the Great and West halls
as a successful concert venue,
but there's a lot we can do more
with Alexandra Palace,
if we can get the money to invest in it.
It's heartening that, like King's Cross,
another great Victorian edifice
is highly valued today.
From the current
Alexandra Palace station,
I am catching my next train north,
out of the capital.
I've left London well behind me now,
and my train is swishing through
Hertfordshire.
For my last stop of the day,
I have taken a tip from my Bradshaw's,
which says that in the vicinity
is Knebworth Hall,
"the fine seat of
Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton".
Bulwer-Lytton? That rings a bell.
An author, I think, but I don't think
I have ever read anything by him.
The name Knebworth might currently be
synonymous with its rock festival,
but it's been home to the Lytton family
since 1490,
and in the 19th century,
to Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton,
author and Member of Parliament.
I'm meeting descendant,
Henry Lytton-Cobbold.
(Henry) Hi, Michael.
- Henry, lovely to see you.
- Very pleased you popped by.
- A fine seat, as my Bradshaw's says.
- Thank you.
- I don't know much about Bulwer-Lytton.
- There's lots to tell you.
(Henry) Let me show you round.
Let me show you his influence.
(Carmichael) So, we have the most hideous
and scary creatures here.
(Henry) Warding off evil spirits, which
they still do to this day, I trust.
(Carmichael) Does that tell us something
about Bulwer-Lytton's mind?
It tells us a lot about his mind.
I think...
Everywhere you'll see bats on barrels.
Bats on barrels is a play on
the word "Lytton",
the old English word for a bat being
"lit", and for a barrel being "ton".
So, everywhere you see bats on barrels.
(Carmichael) Some of these gargoyles
seem to have a thirst.
Their very long tongues are hanging out.
(Henry laughs)
English Heritage,
which insisted everything go back
exactly the way it was,
when we were able to restore these,
did allow us to shorten the tongues just
a little bit, just for decency's sake.
But great fun to restore them back up
to their original position,
up above the library bay window here.
Having found out about Bulwer-Lytton's
taste in exterior decor,
I now want to discover
more of the man himself.
(Henry) He was perhaps best known
for his historical novels.
This is his collection of
medieval Armour,
which still has dents in it where
spears and musket shell has hit it.
Here we are in Bulwer-Lytton's study,
where he wrote
his enormous volume of work.
(Carmichael)
What was his reputation at the time?
(Henry) He was the best-selling novelist
in Britain in the 1830s,
until the young whippersnapper Charles
Dickens came along and usurped him.
Of course, they were great friends,
and they went on to work together.
Poor Lytton became very much
a grand old man of literature
for the mid 19th-century
authors and poets.
(Carmichael)
Would those authors come down?
Yes, Dickens would bring his chums down,
his actor friends,
for great weekend parties,
and perform in the hall downstairs.
- This is his rather splendid library.
- (Michael) Wonderful.
Literally built from scratch,
a Victorian gentleman's library.
Wonderful.
(Henry) It's funny to think,
right from the start of his career,
but even quite late into his career,
he was writing for money.
He spent a lot of money on this
when the railway was being built.
He relied too heavily
on making money out of that,
and ended up having to write the novel
Harold to help pay the solicitors' bills
that he'd run up,
trying to fight for his fair share
for having the railway
go right the way through his estate.
In the 1840s, like so many
other landowners across these islands,
Edward Bulwer-Lytton had to decide
whether he would allow the railways
to traverse his land, and if he did,
how much he would accept from them
for the privilege.
So, here we have
his estate at that time.
You can see how the railway
literally seared it in two.
It really brings home what landowners
had to sacrifice in those days,
if the railway passed through.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the first
writer to begin a novel with the words,
"It was a dark and stormy night."
He also gave us the phrase,
"The pen is mightier than the sword",
and the expression,
"The great unwashed".
Which, after the long day that I've had,
is rather the way I'm feeling now.
We off to a local hostelry,
and early to bed.
Rejuvenated, and set for
the next leg of my journey,
ifs less than a half-hour trip on the
King's Cross to Peterborough mainline.
I'm now in Bedfordshire,
and my Bradshaw's tells me
some of the finest vegetables are
produced here for the London market.
They must benefit from all this rain.
My next stop is Biggleswade, and
Bradshaw's tells me that it was formerly
one of the most extensive corn markets
in England,
and that's the clue I'm going to pursue,
because in my view, you don't get
a corn market without corn.
In Bradshaws day,
mills in this area were abundant.
And in the 1850s, Biggleswade was also
the first town in Bedfordshire
to have a main line station.
We come to one of the last
working mills in the county
to meet Bill Jordan,
whose family has for generations pushed
forward the technology of milling.
- Hello, Bill.
- Welcome.
(Michael) Thank you so much.
This is a gorgeous mill. How old is it?
(Bill) This was built in 1896,
so it was a model mill in its day.
Had there been mills here before?
Yes, there's been a mill here
since the Domesday Book, 1086,
because this was a great
grain-growing area.
Yes, my Bradshaw's Guide refers to
the corn markets of Biggleswade
being amongst the most important
in the country.
(Bill) It was a real bread basket area.
400 mills alone in Bedfordshire,
and the great thing here, the River Ivel
is a tributary of the Ouse,
so there was always
reasonably good water here.
We're wearing hard hats.
What are you doing with this mill?
(Bill) It's all about showing people
how milling is done,
how we use water power to drive
the mill, so sustainable power.
So this is a great example of an old
Victorian roller mill driven by water.
When this mill opened,
was it advanced for its time?
(Bill) This was the last word. The whole
thing about flour milling was survival.
Those 400 mills came crashing down to
just one mill, which was this one,
only a few years ago,
and the whole thing about milling was
to try and use technology to just get
a step ahead of your competition.
Looking at this machinery,
what should I notice about it?
Well, you weren't paying much for
your power, because we're working on
a four-foot drop in the River Ivel
to actually drive this turbine, which
develops something like 28 horsepower.
So it was a clever piece of kit.
- Have you got it in working order?
- Absolutely in working order.
This will be one of the finest examples,
of a Victorian roller mill still in use.
You have to take your hat off
to these Victorian engineers, don't you?
You do. This has been working for over
110 years, very little maintenance.
A few separate teeth occasionally,
when there was a breakdown.
But absolutely. All that power,
28 horsepower, just run off the river.
Very clever.
Bill's not merely an enthusiast
for old mills.
In the 1970s, he and his brother
saw a new future in breakfast cereals.
They swapped granary for granola,
traded in wheat for oats,
left flour milling behind,
and created their mum-million
pound brand, Jordan's Cereal.
Paul Bell is a shift manager
at their factory.
Paul, this is breakfast cereals
on a industrial scale.
This whole thing is an oven.
It is indeed, 62 metres of it, yes.
This oven can do any cereal you like,
can it?
Yes, essentially. We can do 13, 14
different types of base product.
Give me some idea of your output.
(Paul) We produce, on average,
1,500 pallets of finished goods a week,
which is about 135,000 cases.
(Michael) How many boxes of cereal
is that? You multiply by what?
By six, as a rule.
So that's quite some undertaking.
The technology that gets over
800,000 boxes of cereal per week
cooked, bagged, boxed, packed
and distributed is a long step forward
from the water-powered mills of
the company's Victorian history.
(Paul) What we've got here,
flat-pack canons,
and every time the sensor sees a bag
on the belt, it'll pull the carton down,
push it into shape.
As we walk along the process,
we can watch the pushers
push the bags into the boxes.
They're then folded and glued
and sealed,
and fed down to the next process.
After going through a check weigher,
which is obviously a legal requirement
for our 500g declarations.
From the bread basket of Bedfordshire,
I'm destined now for Cambridgeshire,
the county of my old university
and for which,
unlike "Bradshaw's", /have an affinity.
My Bradshaw's can be pretty opinionated.
Under the entry for Peterborough, where
I'll be changing trains, it writes,
"The country is flat
and uninteresting in winter
and when the floods are up,
the roads are almost impassable."
It sounds as if some unfortunate
personal experience lies behind that.
I find the eastern plain rather
more charming than Bradshaw's did.
Peterborough Station serves
all four points of the compass,
and four million passengers a year.
(announcement)
Train just arrived at platform five,
Whittlesey is an additional stop
today for this service.
(Michael) I'm taking the branch line
east to Whittlesey.
Relying on the constituents of
what “Bradshaws” dismissed
as its boggy ground,
since the 1880s
Peterborough and its surrounds
have built a prosperity based on the
manufacture of a construction product
that most of us take for granted.
Bricks.
In the late 19th
and early 20th centuries,
so much of our capital city
was built with these,
that the product became known
simply as London Brick.
I'm in Whittlesey to meet David Weeks,
whose company bought the original
London Brick Company in the 1980s.
So this wonderful stuff is clay, is it?
(David) This is the heart
of the whole process.
It's called Lower Oxford Clay,
and, interestingly, when the brickworks
first started in Peterborough,
they used the very soft clay on the top,
and a guy called James Craig,
who set up the first brickworks,
discovered this much harder clay
underneath,
purely by chance as they dug
further and further.
And there's a rich seam that goes from
Oxford all the way up to Yorkshire
and all these brickworks
were sited along the seam of clay.
With its high carbon content,
Lower Oxford Clay had a unique property:
it was combustible,
so less fuel was needed to fire
the bricks in the production process.
In the late 19th century,
this industry was able to save energy,
and to make use of a raw material
that was both natural and plentiful.
There's been quarrying around this pan
of Peterborough for over 100 years now.
This is the last working clay quarry,
and when this is finished
it vi/ill be the end of an era,
because the market for these bricks
is gradually tailing off.
Although they're hard-wearing
and durable,
they don't have the insulation
properties of a modern brick.
By the 1930s,
the market for London bricks was huge...
and most of
the Peterborough brickyards
had their own railway sidings to
transport their finished products.
David wants to show me how the very
finest London bricks are produced.
(Carmichael)
So, tell me about this process here.
(David) Well, at the back you can see
what we call the green bricks,
which are just the natural clay
as it's come out
after the bricks have been pressed.
This is one of the kiln chambers.
They've been put into the kiln chamber
ready to be fired
and these guys are now bricking it up
with old reject bricks
and they will then seal it with a render
and then gradually the fire will work
its way round into this chamber
and fire these bricks and move on to
the next chamber.
How long will your green bricks
stay there?
(David) They'll be in the kiln
for about five days.
To ensure that the enormous kiln
is working to maximum capacity,
ifs been given handy portholes
to add fuel.
Oh, wow, that is a brilliant sight,
isn't it'?
Those are glowing, glowing bricks,
are they'?
(David) Yep, a thousand degrees.
(Carmichael) Oh, yes,
so that's quite nice on a cold day.
(David) The process starts,
as they approach the fire,
they gradually dry out, the temperature
rises up to a thousand degrees,
when they're fired properly and then
there's a process when they cool down
and the whole cycle takes about 12 days
and the fire moves around the kiln.
The bricks are static all the time
and the fire tracks its way around
and we load the green bricks in
ahead of the fire
and then take out the fired bricks
behind the fire.
It's a continuous process.
Once fired and cooled,
even in today's mechanised world,
London bricks are packed
the old-fashioned way, by hand.
Oh, dear boy, would you like to
come and have a go?
(Carmichael laughs)
(Carmichael) Always one for a challenge!
What do I have to do?
Just pick two bricks up like that
and put them on there.
Just make sure that they're...
That's it.
Mind your fingers, because they bite.
They bite, do they?
The other thing is to go at speed,
isn't it? Do you do this all day, Reg?
- All day, yes.
- Goodness. Do you do any other jobs?
No, not really, no.
We have done 'em, but, like,
this is our main job, this is.
(Carmichael) So, makes you pretty tough?
Yeah, it's hard work.
It hurts at the end of the day, plus
we just come back off holidays, so...
- So you're a bit out of practice?
- Stiff, yeah, at the minute, yeah.
Many thousands have put in shifts
at London Brick,
some of them
from surprising backgrounds.
After the Second World War,
Britain's cities had to be rebuilt,
and the demand for bricks soared.
The London Brick Company employed
more than 3,000 prisoners of war.
But after they went home
in the early 1950s,
London Brick began a recruitment drive
in southern Italy.
As a result, Peterborough has a thriving
Italian ex-pat community.
- Anyone connected with the brickworks?
- (woman) These two.
In 1955, we come from the same place
in Italy.
- Did you know each other?
- Yes, I go to school with him.
- No!
- Yeah.
- Signora, when did you come to England?
- (woman) 1952.
Now, you didn't come to work
in a brick factory?
No, darling, I just come for my love,
my husband.
- And what did he do?
- Work in the London Brick Company.
(they sing “Nessun Dorma”)
What better way to end a journey
than to be immersed in a vibrant
community built brick by brick?
The story of the Italian brick makers
reminds me that, despite
the industrialisation of Bradshaw’s era,
most people continued to be
manual labourers.
These tracks were laid by beef and brawn
and in the fields,
the wheat was gathered
largely without the use of machines.
In this era of mechanisation,
it's as well to remember those who lived
by the sweat of their brow.
On the next Keg of my journey,
I see how Lincolnshire farmers utilised
rails to improve their harvests, ..
That was fun!
/ visit one of Britain's most
ancient and impressive cathedrals. ..
The tower is like fingers of
honey-coloured stone
against the blue sky.
Absolutely breathtaking.
And I look to the future
of rail freight.
It gives me the most enormous pleasure
to be able to name this locomotive
Immingham 100.
(applause)