Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 5, Episode 13 - Wokingham to Bradford-on-Avon - full transcript
In 1840, one man
transformed travel in Britain.
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 go,
what to see and where to stay.
And now, 170 years later,
I'm aboard for a series of rail
adventures across the United Kingdom
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain
remains.
I'm continuing my journey from the fresh
sea air breezes of England's south coast
towards the industrial heartland
of the West Midlands.
I'm travelling now on a line northwards
that helped to give life to the commuter
towns to the west of London,
and on this leg of my journey
I shall move from suburban Surrey
into rural Wiltshire.
On today's leg,
I create headlines in Reading,"
So you new hen me back oi your flung.
- Like that.
- No, with the hairy side.
Oh, with the hairy side.
“Discover a Tudor entrepreneur
in Newbury...
Victorian historians used to label this
as England's first factory,
mainly because
of the scale of production.
And test a bicycle
with Victorian origins.
A lovely smooth ride over the cobbles.
- Thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
Bye!
Starting on the south coast,
my journey took in Hampshire
and now heads Northwest to Newbury,
onward to Bristol and an engineering
feat under the Severn,
and then via the Cotswolds
To finish in Wolverhampton
in the West Midlands.
Today's leg begins in Wokingham,
calls at Reading,
heads west to Newbury,
takes a note in Trowbridge
and ends in Bradford on Avon.
My first stop will be Wokingham.
Bradshaw's reports that,
"The railways have given
considerable impetus to trade here
and house property has become valuable.“
"Also, a new church is being built
by J Waller Esquire,
proprietor of The Times."
Well, whatever the impact
that the trains had on house prices,
they had an even bigger one
on newspapers.
Known in the middle ages
for its bell foundry,
Wokingham first received trains
in 1849
and they were used to transport
bricks manufactured in the town.
The station's footbridge was built
in 1886 using old rails and sleepers
and replaced a level crossing where
there had been a number of accidents.
I've alighted here to learn more about
the town's most influential Victorian.
In 1185, John Walter
founded a newspaper,
which three years later
he named "The Times".
His grandson was an innovator in print.
I'm hoping to learn more
about John Walter III's philanthropy
and his impact
on the newspaper industry
from the Senior Typography Lecturer
at Reading University, Martin Andrews.
Bradshaw's mentions a J Walter Esquire,
proprietor of The Times,
and mentions
that he built a church here.
Would this lovely church be it?
(Martin) ll is indeed.
He also built a school
and the vicarage
that went with the church.
He was a benefactor in many ways.
He was very good to the local people.
My Bradshaw's is from the 1860s.
Was that an important time
in the development of newspapers?
(Martin) It was, particularly in '61
when the stamp duty on paper
got repealed,
which meant there was much more
opportunity to increase circulation.
And there was a huge demand
for increase in circulation
because of the improvement
of literacy, education
and also leisure time.
The railways was an opportunity.
It was captured time.
This was all a huge new market
for the newspapers.
That of course demanded
new technology,
new machines that could
go faster and quicker,
but to answer some of those questions
I think we need to go to Reading
to actually have a look at some
of the presses that Walter developed.
As the railways flourished,
J Walter III wanted his daily print run
to keep pace with a circulation boom,
which was being fuelled
in part by rail travel.
Before we get to Reading University
to find out how
“The Times“ was modernised,
Martin has more
on the periodicals oi the day.
In the 1840s, WHSmith opened
the first kiosk on a railway station
selling literature for leisure,
for recreation, for enjoyment.
It's a bit like the magazines
that we have today with human interest.
One famous one was Tit-Bits,
and here is an amazing strap line
which talks about
"£400 insurance money has been paid".
So such was the fear of the possibility
of a railway accident
that you could get free insurance
with your Til-Bits?
Indeed you could.
(Michael) So clearly, this newspaper
was aimed at the commuter.
Well, if you'll excuse me,
between here and Reading
I'm going to look for some titbits.
(tannoy) Now arriving at Reading,
our final destination.
Martin wants to show me
how the proprietor of "The Times“
stole a march on his competitors.
What did J Waller Ill, mentioned
in Bradshaw, what did he achieve?
The Times was developing so rapidly.
They needed to get quicker and speedier
and more efficient.
So instead of just having
a circular cylinder to print from,
the idea of having a rotary press
where everything works on cylinders,
working automatically,
was the way they cracked it.
From the beginning of the 19th century
they had been finding ways
oi duplicating pages of type
by a system called stereotyping, which
was taking a sheet of papier mâché.
You lay this piece of papier mâché
on top of the type
and then you pick up this amazing brush.
Now, this is not a giant's toothbrush
or a back scratcher.
This is a flong brush.
And so somebody in the industry
had a job of a flong beater,
and I give you that privilege.
So you now beat the back of your flong.
- Like that.
- No, with the hairy side.
Oh, with the hairy side.
And that is pushing the papier mâché
into the type.
And when you can pull that off,
we have a perfect impression
of every single part of the type,
all the detail,
and then you could cast
that page of type as a complete cylinder
which looks like this.
Now, that means we can now have
fully rotary systems.
- That is the breakthrough?
- That's the breakthrough.
(Martin) By 1869, they were
working in The Times.
This is really the way
that presses were going to develop.
This is the beginning of the modern
printing press for newspapers.
This is too big
for everyday jabbing printing.
Before I continue my journey,
Martin wants me to experience
the rather simpler press
that a Victorian jabbing printer
would have used,
while wearing his printer's hat.
It's made out of a sheet
of newspaper, as you can see.
I am a man of letters.
(Martin) So, here we have some ink.
We're now going to roll this up.
So, here we go.
We've got a nice even set of ink now.
- (Michael) Let me have a go at that.
- You need to take over.
I can feel it sticking there.
It's lovely stuff, isn't it?
Now I think we're ready
to apply that to the type.
So if we come over here,
you can ink up the form
that we prepared for you earlier.
Right. That looks perfect.
Beautifully even and ready to print.
The press we're going to use today is
in fact an iron press made in the 1860s,
the time of Waller Ill.
Take the paper. Place it with confidence
on top of the type.
Now you can lower the tympan
that protects the type.
Press that handle down
in a rotary action.
It'll push the bed
underneath the platum, as we call it.
That's perfect.
Now, grab the handle and pull it towards
you and you will have made a print,
in true traditional style.
Now, roll it out again.
Don't forget, you've got to do this
250 times an hour.
If you now peel the paper off,
hopefully we've got a nice souvenir
of your day in the department.
And I have to say, for a beginner,
that is perfect.
- It's a lovely souvenir. Thank you.
- A pleasure.
Reading Station is being transformed.
The most enormous extension has been
built in striking modern architecture,
but in all that's going on here, somehow
the old clock lower has been preserved.
This new bridge, 110 metres long,
is just part of the rebuilding
of Reading Station.
They've also put in new platforms
and new lines to ease congestion.
There's going to be electrification
of the line from London to south Wales
and shortly they'll be building
a flyover, again to ease congestion.
Reading has been given a station
on an international scale.
I'm on the old Great Western Railway
and my next stop is Newbury.
Bradshaw's tells me that the town was
"formerly celebrated
for its extensive manufactories
of woollen cloth,
especially when Jack of Newbury
led his company of stout tailors,
all proper men,
to the famous battle of Flodden Field...
That's an interesting swatch of history,
and in Newbury I'll pick up the thread.
Once an important
and thriving textile town,
Newbury was connected by waterway
to Reading in the 18th century.
I'm meeting local historian
David Peacock at a church
built by the most successful
cloth producer of Tudor times,
John Winchcombe,
also known as Jack of Newbury,
who manufactured textiles
in unprecedented volumes.
Jack of Newbury, important enough
to make his way into my Bradshaw's.
Who was he?
He was a cloth producer
producing a vast amount of cloth.
Most of the cloth went from here
up to London,
from London exported to the continent,
and from there went throughout Europe,
into Hungary, round to Venice
and even as far as the Middle East.
Wow.
In those days, we knew how to export.
I'm intrigued by this reference
in Bradshaw's.
"He led his company of
stout tailors, all proper men,
to the famous battle of Flodden Field."
This is the wrong battle, basically,
that Bradshaw has.
They went to the siege of Boulogne
in the 1540s.
Was this usual, that a businessman
took a troop of his workers off to war?
It was not unusual for the gentry
to provide some of the army.
It was unusual for a businessman,
for a clothier,
but particularly for John Winchcombe.
The scale of this... He wasn't
just taking five or ten men to war.
He was leading 100 or 150 men to war.
Jack used fulling mills
along the River Kennet
and, legend has it,
his punts-industrial cloth empire
included 7.00 looms
in his town-centre property,
producing three-quarters of Newbury's
considerable textile output
in Tudor times.
It was a massive establishment.
He was producing cloth
on an industrial scale
long before the Industrial Revolution.
(Michael) I thought factories
originated in the late 18th century.
Would we be right
to think of this as a factory?
(David) Victorian historians
used to label this
as England's first factory,
mainly because of the scale
of production that was going on here.
He was producing
over 6,000 cloths a year.
And a cloth was what?
A cloth would be 17 or 18 yards long,
woven by one man,
so the width of a one-man loom.
It stretched all the way
from the department store,
right the way across to the gable end
at the corner here,
and back further towards what was
then the marsh, Newbury Marsh.
David's brought me to the town hall,
where a portrait of this Tudor
captain of industry still hangs.
So how should we remember
Jack of Newbury?
(David) He was tremendously important
in England's economic history
at a time which is usually remembered
for the six wives of Henry VIII
and really relatively little else.
What does he mean to you personally,
David?
I feel that he was a major figure
in English history,
a tremendously important contributor
to the development of this country,
and he ought not have been written
out of the history of the country.
Well, at least he's remembered
in Bradshaw's.
Alter a long day, I'm ready to feel
the soil fabric of my pillow.
This is the busy Bath road,
and long before the railways,
Newbury had
almost innumerable coaching inns.
The Angel, The Bear, The Cross Keys,
The George and Pelican,
all sewing the landed gentry
on their way to fashionable Bath
to take the waters.
But I've decided to stay
at The Hare and Hounds.
- Good evening.
- Good evening, sir.
- A splendid coaching inn.
- Thank you very much.
(Michael)
Just before I turn in, could I have
a pint of your finest
west Berkshire ale?
There we go. You'll enjoy that.
Thank you.
That has the makings of a sound sleep.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Set for the day ahead,
I'm continuing my journey along
the old Great Western Railway
toward Westbury, where I shall
change trains and head north.
My next destination is Trowbridge,
which Bradshaw's tells me
has a population of 9,626
and is situated on the River Ware.
It's one of the largest clothing towns
in the west of England.
The church is large
and highly decorated,
Which makes it sound a bit like
a stout and gallant military officer.
Anyway, I will go there and make notes.
Wiltshire's county town of Trowbridge
is mentioned as far back
as “The Domesday Book“
and its most celebrated resident
was another man oi letters.
His name was Isaac Pitman.
I'm hoping that Trowbridge Museum
curator Clare Lyall knows more.
- Hello, Clare.
- Hello, Michael.
A large and decorated church,
as promised by my Bradshaw's,
but why have you asked to meet here?
Well, the inventor of shorthand,
Sir Isaac Pitman,
Trowbridge's most famous son, was
actually educated in the grounds here.
What led him, then,
to devise a system of shorthand?
(Clare) He saw that there was a need
for key events in history and society
to be disseminated
very quickly and effectively.
Hence he came up
with the Pitman Stenograph system.
I think of shorthand now
of being a secretarial device,
but I'm getting the impression that
Isaac Pitman had broader uses for it.
That was the key. He saw it
as a crucial communication tool
and he ensured that it received
the wide notoriety that it did
by publicising it and marketing it
incredibly effectively.
He went on lecture tours, so he was
very good at raising the profile of it
and ensuring that people saw it
as a very useful communication tool.
Isaac Pitman was
the son of a manual worker.
In 1831, he published
“Stenographic Sound Hand“,
a classification of language
into basic abbreviations
which allowed men quickly to record
important events,
and later revolutionised
the role of women in the workplace.
If you had the shorthand qualification
it gave you that extra kudos,
that extra status,
and it meant you could justify
a higher salary.
So in terms of that,
I think it's had a real impact
on enabling women
to be independent financially
from quite a relatively young age.
What's the legacy?
I think the fact that Pitman Shorthand
is still being learnt today,
176 years after Pitman was born,
that's quite an achievement.
Clara's introducing me to Anne Bishop,
a retired council secretary,
who started learning Pitman Shorthand
when she was just 13.
Hello, Anne. The system worked for you?
You found it was effective?
- Yes, very much so.
- How many words do you do a minute?
Al County Hall, to become
a senior secretary you needed 120.
And was that sufficient
for everything you needed to do?
The news on the television is
mainly read at about that speed
and I used to use that as a guide.
Did you ever have
anyone really unreasonable
who spoke or dictated much faster?
- Well, you'd ask them to slow down.
- (both laugh)
Anne, would you like to demonstrate
your skills?
If I hand Bradshaw over to Clare,
she can read something to us.
You can put it down with
pinpoint accuracy in your shorthand
and I'll struggle along in my longhand.
"Trowbridge. This town is
the largest in the county,
with the exception of Salisbury."
"It has a population of 9,626
and is situated on the River Ware."
So this is what I got. Erm...
"Trowbridge. This is the largest..."
I missed out quite a lot.
- You did.
- What have you got?
"Trowbridge. This town is
the largest in the county,
with the exception of Salisbury."
"It has a population of 9,626
and is situated on the River Ware."
(Clare) That's brilliant.
- I missed out about 50%, didn't I?
- Probably, yes. Yes.
Well done, Anne, and well done, Pitman.
Thank you.
Bradford on Avon next.
Bradshaw says,
"'A town that standeth by cloth making, '
said Leyland three centuries ago,
and the same may be said of it now."
That's a reference to John Leyland
who catalogued much of England
for Henry VIII.
"The Avon is crossed by two bridges,
one very ancient one
with a chapel over one of the piers."
I wonder why there's a place of worship
over the river.
I'm in suspense.
The company funding Bradford on Avon's
original line went bust
and it was a decade
before tracks were laid
through the town's Victorian station,
but it looks well-looked after today.
- Hello, gentlemen.
- Hello, Michael. Nice to see you.
Very good to see you. Hello.
You do a beautiful job.
The station looks lovely.
- All volunteers, are you?
- Yes, that's right.
So what's your planting plan here?
What do you do around the year?
We don't have a great plan. It just
evolves as we go along, week by week.
We don't profess to be professionals
at it. We just put it in and it works.
Where are you getting your plants from?
Many, many sources.
We get many donations of plants.
Ladies turn up and say, "Can you put
this in?" "What is it?" "I don't know."
In it goes. We've even got
some strawberries across there.
That's our treat for the summer,
if they grow.
Will that be for the workers,
or will you hand them out to passengers?
- Oh, no, workers.
- (all laugh)
(Michael) Thanks very much. Bye-bye.
Having seen a station as flowery
as a church on a wedding day,
I'm meeting local historian
Margaret Dobson
to hear about the chapel on the bridge.
Margaret, Bradshaw's refers
to an ancient bridge across the Avon.
How old is it?
(Margaret)
Probably 13th or 14th century.
Bradshaw's talks about a chapel
on one of the piers.
- That would be the chapel?
- No, this would not be the chapel.
There was a medieval chapel, but by
Bradshaw's day, it was a blind house,
a new building which went up, many of
them in this area, in the 18th century.
- What was a blind house?
- Well, a blind house was a lock-up.
You put people in that
if they were misbehaving,
quite probably drunk and disorderly
and they couldn't get home,
so you shoved them in there.
The whole town is so pretty,
and the weather vane on the lock-up
is beautiful.
We think that's a 16th-century fish.
It's been there a very long time.
If somebody was put in there
for the night,
they were “under the fish
and over the water...
- That expression survives today.
- Ii does indeed.
Not that many people are
locked up in it these days.
Though you might be.
(both laugh)
Hopeful that Margaret won't leave me
under the fish and over the water,
I'm keen to have a look inside.
Oh, this is pretty grim.
Well, actually it's a great improvement
on what it was up till about 1826
when it was simply one large cell.
And the man who was kept in here in 1757
wrote an indignant letter afterwards,
saying that he just had a stone
to sit on and straw on the floor.
And so what did
these "great improvements" consist of?
Well, making it into two separate cells.
And of course you do have a bed here
and, even more modern,
you have a lavatory which discharges,
of course, straight into the river.
Well, let's face it.
The bed is not exactly highly sprung
and the lavatory
of course lacks a flush.
For 1821,
I should think this was a delight.
(both laugh)
Surprisingly, tranquil Bradford on Avon
was the birthplace of the Victorian
vulcanised rubber industry,
and, by the look of the family pile,
it brought Shaun Moulton's forebear
a great fortune.
Shaun, what a marvellous house.
- Hello, Michael. How do you do?
- Gorgeous.
So, what's the story of your family
and rubber and Bradford on Avon?
It's a long story, but a very quick way
of explaining it would be to say,
1848, Stephen Moulton
came back from America
with a licence from Charles Goodyear
to vulcanise rubber,
to stop it from being brittle
in the winter, in the cold,
and sticky in summer, in the heat.
It was Charles Goodyear, back in 1839,
who found a way, by adding sulphur.
He gave that licence to Stephen Moulton
who sailed back to England with it
to try and find a backer.
These early pioneers, these Victorians,
what opportunities
did they see for rubber?
(Shaun) It was the Crimean War.
Waterproof capes and blankets,
ground sheets, tents, et cetera.
But after that it was very much
the locomotive industry.
Springs, buffers, hoses, you name it.
It was a vast business.
Moulton's vulcanised rubber
could be useful beyond the railways.
Great engineers like Isambard Kingdom
Brunei saw wider potential.
This is a fascinating letter from Brunei
to Stephen Moulton, 1859,
requiring a step for his mast
aboard the Great Eastern.
You can see from his lovely diagram
that what he's trying to do is enable
the mast to actually move on the deck
so they don't get snapped off in
heavy weather. It's signed beautifully.
This is a real treasure, isn't it?
These are little Brunei sketches.
Yeah. He's actually seen
the possibilities
for the application of rubber.
In 1956, Shaun's great uncle, Dr Alex
Moulton, sold the rubber company
and shortly after began lo manufacture
luxury handmade small-wheeled bicycles
which are fitted
with rubber suspension systems.
- Here's Joel, one of our apprentices.
- Nice to meet you.
Who's learnt how to mould
here in the factory.
(Michael) What component
is being made here?
(Shaun) The four painted parts
are all filled with rubber,
giving the suspension
of the front wheel.
So, Joel, what is it
that you have to do here?
My task here is to take
the vulcanised rubber
and to press it in the press under heat
and 18 tons of pressure
and form the end product,
which is our flexitour piece.
(Michael) OK, where do we start?
So, if I give you those...
I'm trusting you
that these are heatproof.
- They are, to an extent, yes.
- (Both chuckle)
- Do we start with that piece?
- We do, yes.
- Pop it in there?
- Yep.
There we go.
We take the wooden wedge and just tap it
down into the base of the mould.
- This is high tech.
- Ii is.
Shaun, this is a highly manual process.
I can imagine
Victorians doing similar things.
(Shaun) Our customers love the fact
that we're making these by hand.
(Michael) Don't apply pressure
while my fingers are in there.
So now I'm going to apply pressure
and heat?
(Joel) Yes, that's correct.
(Michael) And now I sit back
and wait for 15 minutes?
Yeah, 15 minutes of curing time
and then it's ready to come out.
What is so special
about this suspension?
I think you should try it, Michael,
and see.
So, what will I notice as I go along?
When you come down
through the archway over those cobbles,
you'll feel totally isolated.
(chuckles) Here I go.
Whoa!
Yeah, a lovely smooth ride
over the cobbles.
- Thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
Bye!
The Victorian age witnessed
a revolution in communications.
Men like J Walter
developed mass-circulation,
mass-production newspapers,
while Isaac Pitman gave his name
to a faster way oi recording speech.
But the most remarkable advance
in communications
was the growth of the railways,
and the shorthand for timetables
and guidebooks was Bradshaw's.
Next time, I discover the origins
of Victorian photography...
Talbot made the first photographic
negative, a shot of this window.
Wow. That is a feeling of history.
I visit Britain's longest rail tunnel
and its worrying water feature...
(Michael) Torrents of water.
That is unbelievable.
“And I receive Bristol Zoo's
seal oi approval.
OK, if you just want
to raise your right hand...
And your left hand.
(Michael cheers) Well done!
transformed travel in Britain.
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 go,
what to see and where to stay.
And now, 170 years later,
I'm aboard for a series of rail
adventures across the United Kingdom
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain
remains.
I'm continuing my journey from the fresh
sea air breezes of England's south coast
towards the industrial heartland
of the West Midlands.
I'm travelling now on a line northwards
that helped to give life to the commuter
towns to the west of London,
and on this leg of my journey
I shall move from suburban Surrey
into rural Wiltshire.
On today's leg,
I create headlines in Reading,"
So you new hen me back oi your flung.
- Like that.
- No, with the hairy side.
Oh, with the hairy side.
“Discover a Tudor entrepreneur
in Newbury...
Victorian historians used to label this
as England's first factory,
mainly because
of the scale of production.
And test a bicycle
with Victorian origins.
A lovely smooth ride over the cobbles.
- Thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
Bye!
Starting on the south coast,
my journey took in Hampshire
and now heads Northwest to Newbury,
onward to Bristol and an engineering
feat under the Severn,
and then via the Cotswolds
To finish in Wolverhampton
in the West Midlands.
Today's leg begins in Wokingham,
calls at Reading,
heads west to Newbury,
takes a note in Trowbridge
and ends in Bradford on Avon.
My first stop will be Wokingham.
Bradshaw's reports that,
"The railways have given
considerable impetus to trade here
and house property has become valuable.“
"Also, a new church is being built
by J Waller Esquire,
proprietor of The Times."
Well, whatever the impact
that the trains had on house prices,
they had an even bigger one
on newspapers.
Known in the middle ages
for its bell foundry,
Wokingham first received trains
in 1849
and they were used to transport
bricks manufactured in the town.
The station's footbridge was built
in 1886 using old rails and sleepers
and replaced a level crossing where
there had been a number of accidents.
I've alighted here to learn more about
the town's most influential Victorian.
In 1185, John Walter
founded a newspaper,
which three years later
he named "The Times".
His grandson was an innovator in print.
I'm hoping to learn more
about John Walter III's philanthropy
and his impact
on the newspaper industry
from the Senior Typography Lecturer
at Reading University, Martin Andrews.
Bradshaw's mentions a J Walter Esquire,
proprietor of The Times,
and mentions
that he built a church here.
Would this lovely church be it?
(Martin) ll is indeed.
He also built a school
and the vicarage
that went with the church.
He was a benefactor in many ways.
He was very good to the local people.
My Bradshaw's is from the 1860s.
Was that an important time
in the development of newspapers?
(Martin) It was, particularly in '61
when the stamp duty on paper
got repealed,
which meant there was much more
opportunity to increase circulation.
And there was a huge demand
for increase in circulation
because of the improvement
of literacy, education
and also leisure time.
The railways was an opportunity.
It was captured time.
This was all a huge new market
for the newspapers.
That of course demanded
new technology,
new machines that could
go faster and quicker,
but to answer some of those questions
I think we need to go to Reading
to actually have a look at some
of the presses that Walter developed.
As the railways flourished,
J Walter III wanted his daily print run
to keep pace with a circulation boom,
which was being fuelled
in part by rail travel.
Before we get to Reading University
to find out how
“The Times“ was modernised,
Martin has more
on the periodicals oi the day.
In the 1840s, WHSmith opened
the first kiosk on a railway station
selling literature for leisure,
for recreation, for enjoyment.
It's a bit like the magazines
that we have today with human interest.
One famous one was Tit-Bits,
and here is an amazing strap line
which talks about
"£400 insurance money has been paid".
So such was the fear of the possibility
of a railway accident
that you could get free insurance
with your Til-Bits?
Indeed you could.
(Michael) So clearly, this newspaper
was aimed at the commuter.
Well, if you'll excuse me,
between here and Reading
I'm going to look for some titbits.
(tannoy) Now arriving at Reading,
our final destination.
Martin wants to show me
how the proprietor of "The Times“
stole a march on his competitors.
What did J Waller Ill, mentioned
in Bradshaw, what did he achieve?
The Times was developing so rapidly.
They needed to get quicker and speedier
and more efficient.
So instead of just having
a circular cylinder to print from,
the idea of having a rotary press
where everything works on cylinders,
working automatically,
was the way they cracked it.
From the beginning of the 19th century
they had been finding ways
oi duplicating pages of type
by a system called stereotyping, which
was taking a sheet of papier mâché.
You lay this piece of papier mâché
on top of the type
and then you pick up this amazing brush.
Now, this is not a giant's toothbrush
or a back scratcher.
This is a flong brush.
And so somebody in the industry
had a job of a flong beater,
and I give you that privilege.
So you now beat the back of your flong.
- Like that.
- No, with the hairy side.
Oh, with the hairy side.
And that is pushing the papier mâché
into the type.
And when you can pull that off,
we have a perfect impression
of every single part of the type,
all the detail,
and then you could cast
that page of type as a complete cylinder
which looks like this.
Now, that means we can now have
fully rotary systems.
- That is the breakthrough?
- That's the breakthrough.
(Martin) By 1869, they were
working in The Times.
This is really the way
that presses were going to develop.
This is the beginning of the modern
printing press for newspapers.
This is too big
for everyday jabbing printing.
Before I continue my journey,
Martin wants me to experience
the rather simpler press
that a Victorian jabbing printer
would have used,
while wearing his printer's hat.
It's made out of a sheet
of newspaper, as you can see.
I am a man of letters.
(Martin) So, here we have some ink.
We're now going to roll this up.
So, here we go.
We've got a nice even set of ink now.
- (Michael) Let me have a go at that.
- You need to take over.
I can feel it sticking there.
It's lovely stuff, isn't it?
Now I think we're ready
to apply that to the type.
So if we come over here,
you can ink up the form
that we prepared for you earlier.
Right. That looks perfect.
Beautifully even and ready to print.
The press we're going to use today is
in fact an iron press made in the 1860s,
the time of Waller Ill.
Take the paper. Place it with confidence
on top of the type.
Now you can lower the tympan
that protects the type.
Press that handle down
in a rotary action.
It'll push the bed
underneath the platum, as we call it.
That's perfect.
Now, grab the handle and pull it towards
you and you will have made a print,
in true traditional style.
Now, roll it out again.
Don't forget, you've got to do this
250 times an hour.
If you now peel the paper off,
hopefully we've got a nice souvenir
of your day in the department.
And I have to say, for a beginner,
that is perfect.
- It's a lovely souvenir. Thank you.
- A pleasure.
Reading Station is being transformed.
The most enormous extension has been
built in striking modern architecture,
but in all that's going on here, somehow
the old clock lower has been preserved.
This new bridge, 110 metres long,
is just part of the rebuilding
of Reading Station.
They've also put in new platforms
and new lines to ease congestion.
There's going to be electrification
of the line from London to south Wales
and shortly they'll be building
a flyover, again to ease congestion.
Reading has been given a station
on an international scale.
I'm on the old Great Western Railway
and my next stop is Newbury.
Bradshaw's tells me that the town was
"formerly celebrated
for its extensive manufactories
of woollen cloth,
especially when Jack of Newbury
led his company of stout tailors,
all proper men,
to the famous battle of Flodden Field...
That's an interesting swatch of history,
and in Newbury I'll pick up the thread.
Once an important
and thriving textile town,
Newbury was connected by waterway
to Reading in the 18th century.
I'm meeting local historian
David Peacock at a church
built by the most successful
cloth producer of Tudor times,
John Winchcombe,
also known as Jack of Newbury,
who manufactured textiles
in unprecedented volumes.
Jack of Newbury, important enough
to make his way into my Bradshaw's.
Who was he?
He was a cloth producer
producing a vast amount of cloth.
Most of the cloth went from here
up to London,
from London exported to the continent,
and from there went throughout Europe,
into Hungary, round to Venice
and even as far as the Middle East.
Wow.
In those days, we knew how to export.
I'm intrigued by this reference
in Bradshaw's.
"He led his company of
stout tailors, all proper men,
to the famous battle of Flodden Field."
This is the wrong battle, basically,
that Bradshaw has.
They went to the siege of Boulogne
in the 1540s.
Was this usual, that a businessman
took a troop of his workers off to war?
It was not unusual for the gentry
to provide some of the army.
It was unusual for a businessman,
for a clothier,
but particularly for John Winchcombe.
The scale of this... He wasn't
just taking five or ten men to war.
He was leading 100 or 150 men to war.
Jack used fulling mills
along the River Kennet
and, legend has it,
his punts-industrial cloth empire
included 7.00 looms
in his town-centre property,
producing three-quarters of Newbury's
considerable textile output
in Tudor times.
It was a massive establishment.
He was producing cloth
on an industrial scale
long before the Industrial Revolution.
(Michael) I thought factories
originated in the late 18th century.
Would we be right
to think of this as a factory?
(David) Victorian historians
used to label this
as England's first factory,
mainly because of the scale
of production that was going on here.
He was producing
over 6,000 cloths a year.
And a cloth was what?
A cloth would be 17 or 18 yards long,
woven by one man,
so the width of a one-man loom.
It stretched all the way
from the department store,
right the way across to the gable end
at the corner here,
and back further towards what was
then the marsh, Newbury Marsh.
David's brought me to the town hall,
where a portrait of this Tudor
captain of industry still hangs.
So how should we remember
Jack of Newbury?
(David) He was tremendously important
in England's economic history
at a time which is usually remembered
for the six wives of Henry VIII
and really relatively little else.
What does he mean to you personally,
David?
I feel that he was a major figure
in English history,
a tremendously important contributor
to the development of this country,
and he ought not have been written
out of the history of the country.
Well, at least he's remembered
in Bradshaw's.
Alter a long day, I'm ready to feel
the soil fabric of my pillow.
This is the busy Bath road,
and long before the railways,
Newbury had
almost innumerable coaching inns.
The Angel, The Bear, The Cross Keys,
The George and Pelican,
all sewing the landed gentry
on their way to fashionable Bath
to take the waters.
But I've decided to stay
at The Hare and Hounds.
- Good evening.
- Good evening, sir.
- A splendid coaching inn.
- Thank you very much.
(Michael)
Just before I turn in, could I have
a pint of your finest
west Berkshire ale?
There we go. You'll enjoy that.
Thank you.
That has the makings of a sound sleep.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Set for the day ahead,
I'm continuing my journey along
the old Great Western Railway
toward Westbury, where I shall
change trains and head north.
My next destination is Trowbridge,
which Bradshaw's tells me
has a population of 9,626
and is situated on the River Ware.
It's one of the largest clothing towns
in the west of England.
The church is large
and highly decorated,
Which makes it sound a bit like
a stout and gallant military officer.
Anyway, I will go there and make notes.
Wiltshire's county town of Trowbridge
is mentioned as far back
as “The Domesday Book“
and its most celebrated resident
was another man oi letters.
His name was Isaac Pitman.
I'm hoping that Trowbridge Museum
curator Clare Lyall knows more.
- Hello, Clare.
- Hello, Michael.
A large and decorated church,
as promised by my Bradshaw's,
but why have you asked to meet here?
Well, the inventor of shorthand,
Sir Isaac Pitman,
Trowbridge's most famous son, was
actually educated in the grounds here.
What led him, then,
to devise a system of shorthand?
(Clare) He saw that there was a need
for key events in history and society
to be disseminated
very quickly and effectively.
Hence he came up
with the Pitman Stenograph system.
I think of shorthand now
of being a secretarial device,
but I'm getting the impression that
Isaac Pitman had broader uses for it.
That was the key. He saw it
as a crucial communication tool
and he ensured that it received
the wide notoriety that it did
by publicising it and marketing it
incredibly effectively.
He went on lecture tours, so he was
very good at raising the profile of it
and ensuring that people saw it
as a very useful communication tool.
Isaac Pitman was
the son of a manual worker.
In 1831, he published
“Stenographic Sound Hand“,
a classification of language
into basic abbreviations
which allowed men quickly to record
important events,
and later revolutionised
the role of women in the workplace.
If you had the shorthand qualification
it gave you that extra kudos,
that extra status,
and it meant you could justify
a higher salary.
So in terms of that,
I think it's had a real impact
on enabling women
to be independent financially
from quite a relatively young age.
What's the legacy?
I think the fact that Pitman Shorthand
is still being learnt today,
176 years after Pitman was born,
that's quite an achievement.
Clara's introducing me to Anne Bishop,
a retired council secretary,
who started learning Pitman Shorthand
when she was just 13.
Hello, Anne. The system worked for you?
You found it was effective?
- Yes, very much so.
- How many words do you do a minute?
Al County Hall, to become
a senior secretary you needed 120.
And was that sufficient
for everything you needed to do?
The news on the television is
mainly read at about that speed
and I used to use that as a guide.
Did you ever have
anyone really unreasonable
who spoke or dictated much faster?
- Well, you'd ask them to slow down.
- (both laugh)
Anne, would you like to demonstrate
your skills?
If I hand Bradshaw over to Clare,
she can read something to us.
You can put it down with
pinpoint accuracy in your shorthand
and I'll struggle along in my longhand.
"Trowbridge. This town is
the largest in the county,
with the exception of Salisbury."
"It has a population of 9,626
and is situated on the River Ware."
So this is what I got. Erm...
"Trowbridge. This is the largest..."
I missed out quite a lot.
- You did.
- What have you got?
"Trowbridge. This town is
the largest in the county,
with the exception of Salisbury."
"It has a population of 9,626
and is situated on the River Ware."
(Clare) That's brilliant.
- I missed out about 50%, didn't I?
- Probably, yes. Yes.
Well done, Anne, and well done, Pitman.
Thank you.
Bradford on Avon next.
Bradshaw says,
"'A town that standeth by cloth making, '
said Leyland three centuries ago,
and the same may be said of it now."
That's a reference to John Leyland
who catalogued much of England
for Henry VIII.
"The Avon is crossed by two bridges,
one very ancient one
with a chapel over one of the piers."
I wonder why there's a place of worship
over the river.
I'm in suspense.
The company funding Bradford on Avon's
original line went bust
and it was a decade
before tracks were laid
through the town's Victorian station,
but it looks well-looked after today.
- Hello, gentlemen.
- Hello, Michael. Nice to see you.
Very good to see you. Hello.
You do a beautiful job.
The station looks lovely.
- All volunteers, are you?
- Yes, that's right.
So what's your planting plan here?
What do you do around the year?
We don't have a great plan. It just
evolves as we go along, week by week.
We don't profess to be professionals
at it. We just put it in and it works.
Where are you getting your plants from?
Many, many sources.
We get many donations of plants.
Ladies turn up and say, "Can you put
this in?" "What is it?" "I don't know."
In it goes. We've even got
some strawberries across there.
That's our treat for the summer,
if they grow.
Will that be for the workers,
or will you hand them out to passengers?
- Oh, no, workers.
- (all laugh)
(Michael) Thanks very much. Bye-bye.
Having seen a station as flowery
as a church on a wedding day,
I'm meeting local historian
Margaret Dobson
to hear about the chapel on the bridge.
Margaret, Bradshaw's refers
to an ancient bridge across the Avon.
How old is it?
(Margaret)
Probably 13th or 14th century.
Bradshaw's talks about a chapel
on one of the piers.
- That would be the chapel?
- No, this would not be the chapel.
There was a medieval chapel, but by
Bradshaw's day, it was a blind house,
a new building which went up, many of
them in this area, in the 18th century.
- What was a blind house?
- Well, a blind house was a lock-up.
You put people in that
if they were misbehaving,
quite probably drunk and disorderly
and they couldn't get home,
so you shoved them in there.
The whole town is so pretty,
and the weather vane on the lock-up
is beautiful.
We think that's a 16th-century fish.
It's been there a very long time.
If somebody was put in there
for the night,
they were “under the fish
and over the water...
- That expression survives today.
- Ii does indeed.
Not that many people are
locked up in it these days.
Though you might be.
(both laugh)
Hopeful that Margaret won't leave me
under the fish and over the water,
I'm keen to have a look inside.
Oh, this is pretty grim.
Well, actually it's a great improvement
on what it was up till about 1826
when it was simply one large cell.
And the man who was kept in here in 1757
wrote an indignant letter afterwards,
saying that he just had a stone
to sit on and straw on the floor.
And so what did
these "great improvements" consist of?
Well, making it into two separate cells.
And of course you do have a bed here
and, even more modern,
you have a lavatory which discharges,
of course, straight into the river.
Well, let's face it.
The bed is not exactly highly sprung
and the lavatory
of course lacks a flush.
For 1821,
I should think this was a delight.
(both laugh)
Surprisingly, tranquil Bradford on Avon
was the birthplace of the Victorian
vulcanised rubber industry,
and, by the look of the family pile,
it brought Shaun Moulton's forebear
a great fortune.
Shaun, what a marvellous house.
- Hello, Michael. How do you do?
- Gorgeous.
So, what's the story of your family
and rubber and Bradford on Avon?
It's a long story, but a very quick way
of explaining it would be to say,
1848, Stephen Moulton
came back from America
with a licence from Charles Goodyear
to vulcanise rubber,
to stop it from being brittle
in the winter, in the cold,
and sticky in summer, in the heat.
It was Charles Goodyear, back in 1839,
who found a way, by adding sulphur.
He gave that licence to Stephen Moulton
who sailed back to England with it
to try and find a backer.
These early pioneers, these Victorians,
what opportunities
did they see for rubber?
(Shaun) It was the Crimean War.
Waterproof capes and blankets,
ground sheets, tents, et cetera.
But after that it was very much
the locomotive industry.
Springs, buffers, hoses, you name it.
It was a vast business.
Moulton's vulcanised rubber
could be useful beyond the railways.
Great engineers like Isambard Kingdom
Brunei saw wider potential.
This is a fascinating letter from Brunei
to Stephen Moulton, 1859,
requiring a step for his mast
aboard the Great Eastern.
You can see from his lovely diagram
that what he's trying to do is enable
the mast to actually move on the deck
so they don't get snapped off in
heavy weather. It's signed beautifully.
This is a real treasure, isn't it?
These are little Brunei sketches.
Yeah. He's actually seen
the possibilities
for the application of rubber.
In 1956, Shaun's great uncle, Dr Alex
Moulton, sold the rubber company
and shortly after began lo manufacture
luxury handmade small-wheeled bicycles
which are fitted
with rubber suspension systems.
- Here's Joel, one of our apprentices.
- Nice to meet you.
Who's learnt how to mould
here in the factory.
(Michael) What component
is being made here?
(Shaun) The four painted parts
are all filled with rubber,
giving the suspension
of the front wheel.
So, Joel, what is it
that you have to do here?
My task here is to take
the vulcanised rubber
and to press it in the press under heat
and 18 tons of pressure
and form the end product,
which is our flexitour piece.
(Michael) OK, where do we start?
So, if I give you those...
I'm trusting you
that these are heatproof.
- They are, to an extent, yes.
- (Both chuckle)
- Do we start with that piece?
- We do, yes.
- Pop it in there?
- Yep.
There we go.
We take the wooden wedge and just tap it
down into the base of the mould.
- This is high tech.
- Ii is.
Shaun, this is a highly manual process.
I can imagine
Victorians doing similar things.
(Shaun) Our customers love the fact
that we're making these by hand.
(Michael) Don't apply pressure
while my fingers are in there.
So now I'm going to apply pressure
and heat?
(Joel) Yes, that's correct.
(Michael) And now I sit back
and wait for 15 minutes?
Yeah, 15 minutes of curing time
and then it's ready to come out.
What is so special
about this suspension?
I think you should try it, Michael,
and see.
So, what will I notice as I go along?
When you come down
through the archway over those cobbles,
you'll feel totally isolated.
(chuckles) Here I go.
Whoa!
Yeah, a lovely smooth ride
over the cobbles.
- Thank you very much.
- You're welcome.
Bye!
The Victorian age witnessed
a revolution in communications.
Men like J Walter
developed mass-circulation,
mass-production newspapers,
while Isaac Pitman gave his name
to a faster way oi recording speech.
But the most remarkable advance
in communications
was the growth of the railways,
and the shorthand for timetables
and guidebooks was Bradshaw's.
Next time, I discover the origins
of Victorian photography...
Talbot made the first photographic
negative, a shot of this window.
Wow. That is a feeling of history.
I visit Britain's longest rail tunnel
and its worrying water feature...
(Michael) Torrents of water.
That is unbelievable.
“And I receive Bristol Zoo's
seal oi approval.
OK, if you just want
to raise your right hand...
And your left hand.
(Michael cheers) Well done!