Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 5, Episode 16 - Norwich to Brandon - 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 embarked on a new railway journey
from one cathedral city to another,
from Norwich to Chichester.
But even using
my High Victorian guidebook,
this journey will be more secular
than ecclesiastical.
Not so much heavenly, as earthy.
On this leg, I'll hang out with
a notorious Victorian criminal...
This is a replica
of James Rush's death mask.
It does show very, very clearly where
the rope has cut directly into his neck.
Isn't that grim?
“Meet a polecat who's just a nipper...
Ooh!
(both laugh)
“and chip away at an age-old craft.
- Could you make a flint out of that?
- Yeah, perfect.
Let's see how you did.
My journey begins in Norwich
and continues south-west into Suffolk.
From Ipswich I'll head south
to Chelmsford,
and travel across the Thames, through
the Medway towns, to Dover.
After making my way back through Kent,
my journey will take me
along the Sussex coast
and end in the cathedral city
of Chichester.
This East Anglian leg begins
in the ancient city of Norwich,
burrows south-west,
deep into Thetford's rabbit warrens,
before turning Northwest lo finish
in the flinty countryside of Brandon.
My first stop will be Norwich,
which Bradshaw's tells me is
"an old cathedral town
and the capital of Norfolk,
agreeably situated
on the banks of the Wensum".
"The prospect of the city
is imposing and beautiful."
Until the arrival of the railways
in the 1840s,
the city depended on its river for
communication with the outside world,
and even now it has that feeling
of being the end of the line,
for worse and better.
Today I'm greeted
by this grand terminus built in 1886,
but when the railways first arrived
in the city in 1844,
the station was far more modest,
providing only a single-track line
to the coast.
The rest of the country remained
inaccessible by train
until the completion
of this impressive swing bridge
over the River Wensum in 1845.
The line was extended down to London,
opening the door to trade
and to fashionable tourists
from the capital.
The first stop recommended
in my "Bradshaw's Guide"
is a marvel of medieval architecture.
Bradshaw's comments that,
"The lofty spire of Norwich Cathedral
gives it the air of great magnificence."
Lofty, yes, at 315 feel.
Begun shortly after the Norman conquest,
completed within a century.
Imagine how important Norwich
must have been in those days,
that they built here a structure
the like of which
most people had never seen.
Built on the lucrative wool trade,
Norwich was so important
in medieval limes
that it ranked
as England's second city.
It remains East Anglia's largest city.
I'll start my visit by testing locals
on one of the city's
most famous daughters.
She's immortalised
in every purse and wallet.
Excuse me! I'm not trying to bribe you.
I've got a five-pound note here.
I wonder if you know who that is?
- She is Elizabeth Fry.
- Well done!
- Hello there!
- Hello.
Who's this
on the back of the five-pound note?
- (man) It's Elizabeth Fry.
- And what's she doing here?
Well, I imagine she's in...
What was the name of that prison
in London where she went to?
- New...
- Newgate! That's it!
Well, I had to help you a bit, so I'll
give you nine and a half out often.
- Thank you.
- Bye-bye now.
- Pleasant to meet you.
- Thank you. Bye.
Born in Norwich in 1780
to a wealthy Quaker family,
Elizabeth Fry moved to London aged 20.
There she visited
the notorious Newgate Prison
and encountered
cruel, squalid conditions,
particularly among women prisoners
and their newborn babies.
Elizabeth Fry became formidable
in the movement for prison reform,
and extraordinarily influential
for a woman of her day.
Indeed, it's a former prison
I'm going to visit next.
Originally a royal palace
built for William the Conqueror,
it was used as a jail
from the 14th until the 19th century.
"The great Norman keep
and the barbican bridge
are incorporated with the county jail
built in 1818 for 200 prisoners."
So elegant. I'm guessing that only
the cream of the criminal fraternity
did their porridge here.
Nowadays,
the castle is run as a museum.
I'm meeting Annie Perry,
who knows more about its dark past.
- Annie.
- Hello, Michael.
Bradshaw's talks
about parts of the castle
being incorporated
in the county jail in 1818,
but I suspect there have been dungeons
here long before that.
There are parts of the castle,
the original castle keep,
that we used as prison cells
and dungeons
many hundreds of years before that.
(Michael) What sort of conditions
in Victorian times
were the prisoners living in?
(Annie) Well, you have John Howard,
who's considered one of the very early,
if not the first prison reformer,
visiting all of the jails and prisons
in England in the 1770s.
He comes to Norwich Castle
on a number of occasions
and reports that there are
really quite bad conditions here.
Campaigners like John Howard
and Elizabeth Fry
championed the redesign of prisons.
Their work achieved a gradual change
in attitude towards prisoners
in the late-18th
and early-19th centuries,
balancing punishment
with rehabilitation.
And what kind of a prison
does that give us?
The prison is based
on a design called a radial jail.
There's a central area,
which would be the governor's house,
which would also include the chapel
and the school room,
and then different cells radiating out
around the edges as well
with exercise yards in between.
They're looking to have individual cells
for prisoners,
to be able to separate
particular categories of prisoners
and to be able to separate
male and female prisoners.
Interestingly, people would commit petty
offences to actually get put into prison
because the conditions in the workhouses
were actually worse.
As part of the restructuring
of the jail,
a new courthouse was built
at the base of the castle mound,
linked directly to the prison
by an internal tunnel.
So, Michael, I've brought you here
to our restored courtroom.
Judge behind us, dock just there,
I imagine?
Yes. The dock is just up here.
The judge's seat, which is
being restored at the moment,
will be here behind us.
One of the most notorious trials
brought a local tenant farmer,
James Blomfield Rush,
into the dock in April 1849.
It was a Victorian melodrama,
a sensation, reported widely
in the newspapers at the time.
The public gallery up here
was absolutely packed.
The judge, Justice Baron Rolfe,
actually sold tickets
so people could get a front-row seal.
- (Michael) Accused of?
- A double murder.
He was supposed to have sneaked
into a building called Stanfield Hall
and shot and killed a father and son
who he owed money to.
After conducting
his own protracted defence,
Rush was eventually found guilty
and sentenced to hang.
Until 1868,
hangings were conducted in public .
And they were popular.
Was the hanging a notorious event?
Extra trains were put on to bring people
from Great Yarmouth and London.
Possibly as many as 20,000 people
actually witnessed the execution,
which would take place very publicly
at the bottom of the bridge.
What a lovely day out. Bring a picnic!
Well, if you wanted to pay for a picnic,
you could go to the Bell Hotel.
And if you rented the very top rooms
you got an excellent view,
across the crowds, of the execution
and you could actually pay
for a room and supper.
The hotels were not alone
in capitalising
on the public's gory fascination.
Staffordshire Potteries
produced collectable figurines
of the main characters
in the Rush murders,
to take home
and display on your mantelpiece.
(Michael) It's quite puzzling.
The Victorians, who have this interest
in the connection
between mental health and criminality,
who are prison reformers,
are nonetheless so ghoulish!
It is that real sense of macabre.
This fascination with the sinister
is borne out
by a collection hidden
in the castle's dungeon.
Well, it's horribly damp and dank
and thoroughly creepy down here.
Well, we are in the dungeons, Michael.
And this is what I wanted you to see.
This is a replica
of James's Rush's death mask.
Wow.
Prisoners' death masks were user!
To study the contours
of the criminal cranium.
Known as phrenology,
this practice examined the lumps
and bumps on the surface of the head
in the belief that they could reveal
distinctive criminal shapes.
Sometimes a phrenologist could be
summoned before a wedding
to check the head of a fiance
for signs of had character.
In James Rush's case,
they would be very interested
in this area behind here.
This is your destructiveness area,
your aggressive nature.
And his was said, in his report,
to be most pronounced.
I don't want to be political,
but he seems to be left-leaning.
That would be after the execution.
You are left suspended for one hour
to make sure there's no chance
of you being revived or resuscitated.
And this mask does show
very, very clearly
where the rope has cut
directly into his neck.
(Michael) Isn't that grim?
Phrenology has long since been
discredited and is now obsolete.
The legacy oi prison reformers like
Elizabeth Fry has been longer lasting.
While Norwich prison was improved,
in an area at the foot
of the old Norman castle
another group was penned in.
"The cattle market,
one of the largest out of London,
is held on a piece of ground to the
south of the castle," says Bradshaw's.
It's not there any more.
It's been moved. I'd better hoof it.
Norfolk has always been
rich farming country.
Indeed, the considerable wealth
of medieval Norwich
came from the wool trade
and the livestock market has always
been important to the city's economy.
Originally situated in the city centre,
it moved to a more spacious plot
two miles away in the 1960s.
It's one of the few livestock markets
in Britain today.
David Ball knows more.
- Welcome to Norwich livestock market.
- Thank you.
My Bradshaw's tells me that Norfolk
is the biggest agricultural area,
and talks about Norwich as being one
of the largest markets outside London.
I assume there's been a market here
since time immemorial. ls that right?
(David) This one's been here
for 50 years.
(Michael) The previous site of the
market made use of the trains, did it?
(David) Without a doubt, especially
to take the stock away from market.
It was the collection centre
for a big area of Norfolk,
but then people came
from all over the country.
A lot of people came from London
and places like that
and into that part of the world
for the meat, to take the meat away,
because it was still commutable,
where they could do the journey
and slaughter them the next day.
(Michael) Do you think Victorian animal
husbandry was quite good, actually?
(David) I think it was,
because it was on a much smaller scale,
and more personal.
That's what I think makes
a huge difference.
Things have changed so much
that a townie like me might ask,
why do you still need a market?
Why do you need people to come to
a single place to buy sheep and cattle?
Because it gives them an opportunity
to know where they've come from,
how they're bred, what they're Ted on
and everything that goes with it.
The present market's
fortnightly cattle auctions
draw scores of famers and traders
from all over the region.
Hundreds of cattle and calves
change hands,
with prime beasts selling
for thousands of pounds.
I'm taking up my position next to Inca!
Calf and cattle salesman Roger Long.
- (Michael) You want the tiny calves?
- The smaller calves.
Something we can take home
and produce into beef.
112,114."
As the auction gets underway,
I've got little time
to watch and learn the minute
bidding gestures or the experts
before Roger lets me loose
to buy on his behalf.
126, Hamish...
I'm hoping that a subtle twitch
of the "Bradshaw's"
will be enough to seal the deal.
(David) Five, ten, fifteen, twenty.
Come on, Michael, one more. 325...
Selling on my left. 325.
Michael Portillo! 325.
That was absolutely thrilling!
My little gestures managed
to get me a beautiful calf.
Ten, 12, 14...
I'd love to stay and perfect my bidding
technique, but I have a train to catch.
I've retraced my steps
to Norwich Station
and I'm heading 30 miles west
on the main fine across East Anglia.
Next slop, Thetford.
My guidebook tells me that it was
"the ancient capital of East Anglia,
situated on the junction
of the rivers Ouse and Thet".
After a long day,
I'm going to rest my head there
in a house that was once thought
fit for a monarch.
Situated a few miles
from Thetford Station,
local landmark Lynford Hall
was commissioned in 1857
by Stephen Lyne-Stephens,
a millionaire banker
considered the richest commoner
in England at the time.
Not long after his death in 1060,
it was put up for sale
and its lavish splendour came
to the attention oi Queen Victoria.
James Parry oi the Breckland Society
will tell me more.
- James.
- Michael, hello.
I find you in semi-regal splendour.
What exactly is the connection between
Lynford Hall and the royal family?
Queen Victoria was becoming
increasingly concerned
by the behaviour of her son,
the Prince of Wales.
There'd already been several scandals.
He was turning into a serial philanderer
and she and Prince Albert decided
that they had to try and get
some stability into his life.
And they thought that
by buying a country estate
they could perhaps have
a little bit more control over him,
keep him there a little bit,
spend more family time together.
Located on one oi the best
shooting estates in East Anglia,
Lynford Hall was a serious contender
for royal ownership.
A state-of-the-art,
newly-built country estate,
it had 50 bedrooms with plumbed water
and modern lighting thanks
to a pipe from a private gasworks.
It offered a mere 0,000 acres.
Nearby Sandringham had 20,000,
and was bought instead.
It has remained a royal retreat
ever since.
This could have been the place
where the royal family were sitting down
for Christmas lunch
rather than Sandringham.
But instead, you and I can celebrate
midsummer at Lynford Hall.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
After a restful night,
I'm striking out further into
Thetford's surrounding countryside.
My "Bradshaw's" notes that,
“The country consists of a sandy soil
and ls peculiarly salubrious
and pleasant In nature.“
Such terrain isn't ideal for farming,
but it is favoured by a particular
breed of burrowing creature.
Anne Mason of the Breckland Society
will tell me
how the landscape of the Brecks
was ideal for a form
of animal husbandry.
- Hello.
- Hello.
(Michael)
So what exactly is this building?
(Anne) It's known
as Thetford Warren Lodge
and it was inhabited
by a rabbit warrener.
It's the symbol
of a 600-year-old industry of warrening
which once dominated
this area of East Anglia.
And why is it built
to look like a castle?
(Anne) It was built primarily
as a defence against poachers,
because rabbits were highly-prized
luxury items in the middle ages.
It was the job of a medieval warrener
to nurture, protect and trap rabbits.
He was in effect a rabbit farmer.
Why were rabbits so valuable then?
Because they were a source of fresh meat
in the winter
and also because their fur was used
for robes and cloaks.
We know that Henry VII had a nightshirt
that was lined with black rabbit fur.
When did the rabbit business
reach its peak, do you think?
Oh. It was actually linked
lo the railways.
Once the railway came to Thetford
in 1846,
it provided very quick and easy
transport up to London.
And of course the meat could be then
transported very freshly.
It was actually sold
at Leadenhall Market
and it was really in response
to growing demand
from centres of population
such as London,
which had expanded
so much in the 19th century.
On this warren of Thetford,
from the 1850s onwards,
the average annual cull
was 28,800 rabbits.
Rabbit meat became so popular
that Mrs Boston's famous Victorian
“Book of Household Management"
provided more than 20 recipes
for its preparation.
And the demand for rabbit fur
in Victorian England
was met by two large factories
employing 200 people in nearby Brandon.
It was a significant source
of employment,
with much of the community involved
in processing thousands of rabbit skins
for the fur and {eh-making industries.
So extensive and regular
was that rabbit trade
that the early morning trains
going up to London, carrying rabbits,
were known locally as bunny trains.
In the trade's heyday
in the mid-19th century,
bunny trains transported 00,000
carcasses a year to the London markets
where they were sold
by the hundredweight.
If you had your warren
near a train station,
farming rabbits was
a lucrative business.
With the passing of the Ground Game Act
in the 1880s,
anyone was allowed lo hunt wild rabbits
and the industry went
into steady decline.
- Has it died out completely?
- Not entirely, no.
And in fact I think it's seen a revival.
With so much emphasis on using local
produce and naturally produced produce,
I think we are seeing
more people eating rabbit meat.
The bunny trains and the rabbit
fur trade have long since gone,
but a few warreners survive.
With lean, healthy and sustainable
rabbit meat back on the menu,
there's a business in bunnies again.
Andy Simpson continues the tradition
of the warrener.
He learned his trade from his father
and is passing it on to his son Tim.
This ancient form of animal husbandry
is important for another reason:
conservation of the natural environment
and pest control.
What would happen if you were
not controlling the rabbit population?
They'd destroy the countryside
for cattle farmers and sheep farmers.
The rabbits are undermining the ground
because they're tunnelling all the time.
The hole that you see,
it's a bit like an iceberg.
The hole is the lip of it.
The warren is expansive underneath.
Many years ago,
this park would have been full of cattle
and sheep and the estate ponies.
They daren't put them in here now.
The cattle and ponies would break their
legs walking over the rabbit warrens.
Now, I've been ignoring until now
your box of tricks.
We've got a few little noses
coming out of there.
Yeah. I've got a selection of these.
Molly's my main working bitch.
This is a cross
between a ferret and a polecat.
She won't bile.
- (Michael) Are you sure?
- Yeah.
You are a sweet creature.
Where this one was
a domesticated ferret,
these are captured wild polecats.
That's a little boy one.
Mm-hmm. Do they go rabbiting yet?
- Not yet, no.
- Ooh!
(both laugh)
(Michael) Got me!
You've got a claim to fame.
You bit a politician.
With the two pesky polecats
back in their cage,
it's time for me lo hop back
to Thetford Station
where I'm going to board
my next train, Northwest to Brandon.
This train is going to take me
out of Norfolk,
over the border into Suffolk
and the town of Brandon.
Bradshaw's tells me
that this place formerly supplied
the government with gun flints.
Enough to spark anybody's interest.
Immediately I can see
how important flint is to this area.
Even the buildings here
are faced with the stone.
This place is blessed with some
of the best quality flint in Britain
and flint was key to
the local economy for a very long lime.
I've come to Grime's Graves,
an ancient flint mine
just outside Brandon.
I'd like to find out how old
the area's flint business is
from archaeologist Dave Field.
- Hello, Dave.
- Hello, Michael. Pleased to meet you.
My Bradshaw's tells me that Brandon
supplied gunflints to the government.
- Tell me about that.
- Yes, that's very true.
And particularly during
the Napoleonic Wars.
An enormous quantity of gunflints
were shipped out.
There are stories of something like
a million per month at one lime.
There was a particularly good seam
of flint here.
Jet black, very few imperfections.
Exceedingly good sparkability.
Sparking properties were
of primary importance for musketry,
particularly for military purposes.
You can imagine,
at the Battle of Waterloo,
you wouldn't want your musket
to misfire too many times.
Was it ever possible
to mass-produce gunflints?
No, this was a cottage industry.
The Brandon knappers had
a five or six-year apprenticeship
before they could be set loose
and set up their own business.
We're in an area which bears
the scars of human activity,
but I assume this is nothing to do
with the Napoleonic era, is it?
No, no, no, this is all prehistoric.
The Neolithic miners got here
long before the gunflint miners.
It seems that flint knapping is a skill
that's as old as the hills.
This site has new been dated
to over 4,000 years ago.
Grime's Graves contains traces
of 400 Neolithic mineshafts
and is one of the most important
prehistoric sites in Britain.
What was Neolithic man using it for?
They were using it
for a variety of things.
It's reckoned that enough flint
was extracted from here
in the Neolithic period to make
something like eight million stone axes.
Enormous quantities were shipped out.
Much more so in the Neolithic period
than in the gunflint era.
I'm going to take a closer look.
You gel a real sense of descending
into the bowels of the earth, don't you?
The greenery peters out, the rock begins
and the temperature falls.
It does indeed.
It's pretty constant down here.
And it's a real labyrinth.
All these little galleries interconnect.
Theoretically you could work your way
across the site underground.
You can see the hollows here
where a large nodule has been extracted.
The idea of course was to extract every
available piece of good black flint
that you could do
without the roof falling in.
So how did these Neolithic mines come to
light, if that's the right expression?
Well, it was following the period
of publication
oi Darwin's Origin oi Species.
There was a new feeling
of inquiry about.
It was during that period that Canon
William Greenwell came to the site
and he dug one of the shafts
and found that it went down
something like 12 metres.
He found this seam of black flint.
It was quite clear then
what was going on,
that they were actually mining
this material in prehistory.
And he used some
of the gunflint miners from Brandon
to help him in that excavation.
So the gunflint miners had a big hand
in the discovery
of the prehistoric mining.
Well, I'd like to find out more
about flint knapping,
but for that I must return
to the surface.
Yes, let's do.
The flint knapping workshops
that were so busy in Brandon
in the early-19th century are no more,
but today, some enthusiasts
have revived the craft.
Will Lord provides traditional! flints
for flintlock guns
used by historical re-enactment groups
across the globe.
- Hello, Will.
- Hello, Michael.
- Nice to meet you.
- Good to see you.
I had no idea that flint
would be such a big rock.
Yeah, we're really lucky.
We've got some of the best geology
of flint in Britain around here.
What is it that you are trying to make?
What's the end product?
- (Will) This is the final product.
- Ll has to be very precise?
I notice not only that it's very square,
but you've shaved off
one side of it here.
(Will) Yeah.
That chamfer is really important.
It doesn't want to be loo weak
at the end of its journey.
First a suitable stone
has to be selected
and quartered into a workable sire.
(Michael) oh!
- (laughs) That's a surprise.
- Look at that.
We have made
an excellent choice in stone.
- Look at this pure black silica.
- Isn't that absolutely glorious?
Then a workable-sized flake
has to be created
and Will is letting me have a bash.
- Just lean it in a little bit.
- Oh, damn.
It's all good.
Just touch it on the flint...
- Perfect.
- Could you make a flint out of that?
Yeah. That's great.
Only now can the flake be honed to the
correct shape and she for a gunflint.
- Got a bit of a shape there.
- You have.
But it doesn't really... let's face it.
(Will) No, look. You've got a really
good serviceable gunflint there.
- Well done.
- Thank you.
I'm no expert yet,
but I'm glad that I've had a go
at man's oldest profession.
When Norwich acquired
its cathedral and castle
it was one of this country's
most important cities,
using the river and the sea
to export wool to the continent.
When railways became
the main mode of transport,
Norfolk was left somewhat isolated
from the capital, London.
In such tranquility, rabbit warrening
and flint knapping could survive,
unaffected by the Industrial Revolution
transforming the rest of Britain.
On the next leg, I experience
19th-century
cutting-edge technology,"
And there it goes.
And a Victorian would recognise that
because it was made in the same way.
I shell out for sea food
near Mersea Island...
So this is the sort of oyster that, once
cleaned up, could appear on my plate?
It certainly is.
And I'm tainted in an Essex orchard.
That's where the phrase
"caught red-handed" comes from.
The indelible stain of crime.
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 embarked on a new railway journey
from one cathedral city to another,
from Norwich to Chichester.
But even using
my High Victorian guidebook,
this journey will be more secular
than ecclesiastical.
Not so much heavenly, as earthy.
On this leg, I'll hang out with
a notorious Victorian criminal...
This is a replica
of James Rush's death mask.
It does show very, very clearly where
the rope has cut directly into his neck.
Isn't that grim?
“Meet a polecat who's just a nipper...
Ooh!
(both laugh)
“and chip away at an age-old craft.
- Could you make a flint out of that?
- Yeah, perfect.
Let's see how you did.
My journey begins in Norwich
and continues south-west into Suffolk.
From Ipswich I'll head south
to Chelmsford,
and travel across the Thames, through
the Medway towns, to Dover.
After making my way back through Kent,
my journey will take me
along the Sussex coast
and end in the cathedral city
of Chichester.
This East Anglian leg begins
in the ancient city of Norwich,
burrows south-west,
deep into Thetford's rabbit warrens,
before turning Northwest lo finish
in the flinty countryside of Brandon.
My first stop will be Norwich,
which Bradshaw's tells me is
"an old cathedral town
and the capital of Norfolk,
agreeably situated
on the banks of the Wensum".
"The prospect of the city
is imposing and beautiful."
Until the arrival of the railways
in the 1840s,
the city depended on its river for
communication with the outside world,
and even now it has that feeling
of being the end of the line,
for worse and better.
Today I'm greeted
by this grand terminus built in 1886,
but when the railways first arrived
in the city in 1844,
the station was far more modest,
providing only a single-track line
to the coast.
The rest of the country remained
inaccessible by train
until the completion
of this impressive swing bridge
over the River Wensum in 1845.
The line was extended down to London,
opening the door to trade
and to fashionable tourists
from the capital.
The first stop recommended
in my "Bradshaw's Guide"
is a marvel of medieval architecture.
Bradshaw's comments that,
"The lofty spire of Norwich Cathedral
gives it the air of great magnificence."
Lofty, yes, at 315 feel.
Begun shortly after the Norman conquest,
completed within a century.
Imagine how important Norwich
must have been in those days,
that they built here a structure
the like of which
most people had never seen.
Built on the lucrative wool trade,
Norwich was so important
in medieval limes
that it ranked
as England's second city.
It remains East Anglia's largest city.
I'll start my visit by testing locals
on one of the city's
most famous daughters.
She's immortalised
in every purse and wallet.
Excuse me! I'm not trying to bribe you.
I've got a five-pound note here.
I wonder if you know who that is?
- She is Elizabeth Fry.
- Well done!
- Hello there!
- Hello.
Who's this
on the back of the five-pound note?
- (man) It's Elizabeth Fry.
- And what's she doing here?
Well, I imagine she's in...
What was the name of that prison
in London where she went to?
- New...
- Newgate! That's it!
Well, I had to help you a bit, so I'll
give you nine and a half out often.
- Thank you.
- Bye-bye now.
- Pleasant to meet you.
- Thank you. Bye.
Born in Norwich in 1780
to a wealthy Quaker family,
Elizabeth Fry moved to London aged 20.
There she visited
the notorious Newgate Prison
and encountered
cruel, squalid conditions,
particularly among women prisoners
and their newborn babies.
Elizabeth Fry became formidable
in the movement for prison reform,
and extraordinarily influential
for a woman of her day.
Indeed, it's a former prison
I'm going to visit next.
Originally a royal palace
built for William the Conqueror,
it was used as a jail
from the 14th until the 19th century.
"The great Norman keep
and the barbican bridge
are incorporated with the county jail
built in 1818 for 200 prisoners."
So elegant. I'm guessing that only
the cream of the criminal fraternity
did their porridge here.
Nowadays,
the castle is run as a museum.
I'm meeting Annie Perry,
who knows more about its dark past.
- Annie.
- Hello, Michael.
Bradshaw's talks
about parts of the castle
being incorporated
in the county jail in 1818,
but I suspect there have been dungeons
here long before that.
There are parts of the castle,
the original castle keep,
that we used as prison cells
and dungeons
many hundreds of years before that.
(Michael) What sort of conditions
in Victorian times
were the prisoners living in?
(Annie) Well, you have John Howard,
who's considered one of the very early,
if not the first prison reformer,
visiting all of the jails and prisons
in England in the 1770s.
He comes to Norwich Castle
on a number of occasions
and reports that there are
really quite bad conditions here.
Campaigners like John Howard
and Elizabeth Fry
championed the redesign of prisons.
Their work achieved a gradual change
in attitude towards prisoners
in the late-18th
and early-19th centuries,
balancing punishment
with rehabilitation.
And what kind of a prison
does that give us?
The prison is based
on a design called a radial jail.
There's a central area,
which would be the governor's house,
which would also include the chapel
and the school room,
and then different cells radiating out
around the edges as well
with exercise yards in between.
They're looking to have individual cells
for prisoners,
to be able to separate
particular categories of prisoners
and to be able to separate
male and female prisoners.
Interestingly, people would commit petty
offences to actually get put into prison
because the conditions in the workhouses
were actually worse.
As part of the restructuring
of the jail,
a new courthouse was built
at the base of the castle mound,
linked directly to the prison
by an internal tunnel.
So, Michael, I've brought you here
to our restored courtroom.
Judge behind us, dock just there,
I imagine?
Yes. The dock is just up here.
The judge's seat, which is
being restored at the moment,
will be here behind us.
One of the most notorious trials
brought a local tenant farmer,
James Blomfield Rush,
into the dock in April 1849.
It was a Victorian melodrama,
a sensation, reported widely
in the newspapers at the time.
The public gallery up here
was absolutely packed.
The judge, Justice Baron Rolfe,
actually sold tickets
so people could get a front-row seal.
- (Michael) Accused of?
- A double murder.
He was supposed to have sneaked
into a building called Stanfield Hall
and shot and killed a father and son
who he owed money to.
After conducting
his own protracted defence,
Rush was eventually found guilty
and sentenced to hang.
Until 1868,
hangings were conducted in public .
And they were popular.
Was the hanging a notorious event?
Extra trains were put on to bring people
from Great Yarmouth and London.
Possibly as many as 20,000 people
actually witnessed the execution,
which would take place very publicly
at the bottom of the bridge.
What a lovely day out. Bring a picnic!
Well, if you wanted to pay for a picnic,
you could go to the Bell Hotel.
And if you rented the very top rooms
you got an excellent view,
across the crowds, of the execution
and you could actually pay
for a room and supper.
The hotels were not alone
in capitalising
on the public's gory fascination.
Staffordshire Potteries
produced collectable figurines
of the main characters
in the Rush murders,
to take home
and display on your mantelpiece.
(Michael) It's quite puzzling.
The Victorians, who have this interest
in the connection
between mental health and criminality,
who are prison reformers,
are nonetheless so ghoulish!
It is that real sense of macabre.
This fascination with the sinister
is borne out
by a collection hidden
in the castle's dungeon.
Well, it's horribly damp and dank
and thoroughly creepy down here.
Well, we are in the dungeons, Michael.
And this is what I wanted you to see.
This is a replica
of James's Rush's death mask.
Wow.
Prisoners' death masks were user!
To study the contours
of the criminal cranium.
Known as phrenology,
this practice examined the lumps
and bumps on the surface of the head
in the belief that they could reveal
distinctive criminal shapes.
Sometimes a phrenologist could be
summoned before a wedding
to check the head of a fiance
for signs of had character.
In James Rush's case,
they would be very interested
in this area behind here.
This is your destructiveness area,
your aggressive nature.
And his was said, in his report,
to be most pronounced.
I don't want to be political,
but he seems to be left-leaning.
That would be after the execution.
You are left suspended for one hour
to make sure there's no chance
of you being revived or resuscitated.
And this mask does show
very, very clearly
where the rope has cut
directly into his neck.
(Michael) Isn't that grim?
Phrenology has long since been
discredited and is now obsolete.
The legacy oi prison reformers like
Elizabeth Fry has been longer lasting.
While Norwich prison was improved,
in an area at the foot
of the old Norman castle
another group was penned in.
"The cattle market,
one of the largest out of London,
is held on a piece of ground to the
south of the castle," says Bradshaw's.
It's not there any more.
It's been moved. I'd better hoof it.
Norfolk has always been
rich farming country.
Indeed, the considerable wealth
of medieval Norwich
came from the wool trade
and the livestock market has always
been important to the city's economy.
Originally situated in the city centre,
it moved to a more spacious plot
two miles away in the 1960s.
It's one of the few livestock markets
in Britain today.
David Ball knows more.
- Welcome to Norwich livestock market.
- Thank you.
My Bradshaw's tells me that Norfolk
is the biggest agricultural area,
and talks about Norwich as being one
of the largest markets outside London.
I assume there's been a market here
since time immemorial. ls that right?
(David) This one's been here
for 50 years.
(Michael) The previous site of the
market made use of the trains, did it?
(David) Without a doubt, especially
to take the stock away from market.
It was the collection centre
for a big area of Norfolk,
but then people came
from all over the country.
A lot of people came from London
and places like that
and into that part of the world
for the meat, to take the meat away,
because it was still commutable,
where they could do the journey
and slaughter them the next day.
(Michael) Do you think Victorian animal
husbandry was quite good, actually?
(David) I think it was,
because it was on a much smaller scale,
and more personal.
That's what I think makes
a huge difference.
Things have changed so much
that a townie like me might ask,
why do you still need a market?
Why do you need people to come to
a single place to buy sheep and cattle?
Because it gives them an opportunity
to know where they've come from,
how they're bred, what they're Ted on
and everything that goes with it.
The present market's
fortnightly cattle auctions
draw scores of famers and traders
from all over the region.
Hundreds of cattle and calves
change hands,
with prime beasts selling
for thousands of pounds.
I'm taking up my position next to Inca!
Calf and cattle salesman Roger Long.
- (Michael) You want the tiny calves?
- The smaller calves.
Something we can take home
and produce into beef.
112,114."
As the auction gets underway,
I've got little time
to watch and learn the minute
bidding gestures or the experts
before Roger lets me loose
to buy on his behalf.
126, Hamish...
I'm hoping that a subtle twitch
of the "Bradshaw's"
will be enough to seal the deal.
(David) Five, ten, fifteen, twenty.
Come on, Michael, one more. 325...
Selling on my left. 325.
Michael Portillo! 325.
That was absolutely thrilling!
My little gestures managed
to get me a beautiful calf.
Ten, 12, 14...
I'd love to stay and perfect my bidding
technique, but I have a train to catch.
I've retraced my steps
to Norwich Station
and I'm heading 30 miles west
on the main fine across East Anglia.
Next slop, Thetford.
My guidebook tells me that it was
"the ancient capital of East Anglia,
situated on the junction
of the rivers Ouse and Thet".
After a long day,
I'm going to rest my head there
in a house that was once thought
fit for a monarch.
Situated a few miles
from Thetford Station,
local landmark Lynford Hall
was commissioned in 1857
by Stephen Lyne-Stephens,
a millionaire banker
considered the richest commoner
in England at the time.
Not long after his death in 1060,
it was put up for sale
and its lavish splendour came
to the attention oi Queen Victoria.
James Parry oi the Breckland Society
will tell me more.
- James.
- Michael, hello.
I find you in semi-regal splendour.
What exactly is the connection between
Lynford Hall and the royal family?
Queen Victoria was becoming
increasingly concerned
by the behaviour of her son,
the Prince of Wales.
There'd already been several scandals.
He was turning into a serial philanderer
and she and Prince Albert decided
that they had to try and get
some stability into his life.
And they thought that
by buying a country estate
they could perhaps have
a little bit more control over him,
keep him there a little bit,
spend more family time together.
Located on one oi the best
shooting estates in East Anglia,
Lynford Hall was a serious contender
for royal ownership.
A state-of-the-art,
newly-built country estate,
it had 50 bedrooms with plumbed water
and modern lighting thanks
to a pipe from a private gasworks.
It offered a mere 0,000 acres.
Nearby Sandringham had 20,000,
and was bought instead.
It has remained a royal retreat
ever since.
This could have been the place
where the royal family were sitting down
for Christmas lunch
rather than Sandringham.
But instead, you and I can celebrate
midsummer at Lynford Hall.
- Cheers.
- Cheers.
After a restful night,
I'm striking out further into
Thetford's surrounding countryside.
My "Bradshaw's" notes that,
“The country consists of a sandy soil
and ls peculiarly salubrious
and pleasant In nature.“
Such terrain isn't ideal for farming,
but it is favoured by a particular
breed of burrowing creature.
Anne Mason of the Breckland Society
will tell me
how the landscape of the Brecks
was ideal for a form
of animal husbandry.
- Hello.
- Hello.
(Michael)
So what exactly is this building?
(Anne) It's known
as Thetford Warren Lodge
and it was inhabited
by a rabbit warrener.
It's the symbol
of a 600-year-old industry of warrening
which once dominated
this area of East Anglia.
And why is it built
to look like a castle?
(Anne) It was built primarily
as a defence against poachers,
because rabbits were highly-prized
luxury items in the middle ages.
It was the job of a medieval warrener
to nurture, protect and trap rabbits.
He was in effect a rabbit farmer.
Why were rabbits so valuable then?
Because they were a source of fresh meat
in the winter
and also because their fur was used
for robes and cloaks.
We know that Henry VII had a nightshirt
that was lined with black rabbit fur.
When did the rabbit business
reach its peak, do you think?
Oh. It was actually linked
lo the railways.
Once the railway came to Thetford
in 1846,
it provided very quick and easy
transport up to London.
And of course the meat could be then
transported very freshly.
It was actually sold
at Leadenhall Market
and it was really in response
to growing demand
from centres of population
such as London,
which had expanded
so much in the 19th century.
On this warren of Thetford,
from the 1850s onwards,
the average annual cull
was 28,800 rabbits.
Rabbit meat became so popular
that Mrs Boston's famous Victorian
“Book of Household Management"
provided more than 20 recipes
for its preparation.
And the demand for rabbit fur
in Victorian England
was met by two large factories
employing 200 people in nearby Brandon.
It was a significant source
of employment,
with much of the community involved
in processing thousands of rabbit skins
for the fur and {eh-making industries.
So extensive and regular
was that rabbit trade
that the early morning trains
going up to London, carrying rabbits,
were known locally as bunny trains.
In the trade's heyday
in the mid-19th century,
bunny trains transported 00,000
carcasses a year to the London markets
where they were sold
by the hundredweight.
If you had your warren
near a train station,
farming rabbits was
a lucrative business.
With the passing of the Ground Game Act
in the 1880s,
anyone was allowed lo hunt wild rabbits
and the industry went
into steady decline.
- Has it died out completely?
- Not entirely, no.
And in fact I think it's seen a revival.
With so much emphasis on using local
produce and naturally produced produce,
I think we are seeing
more people eating rabbit meat.
The bunny trains and the rabbit
fur trade have long since gone,
but a few warreners survive.
With lean, healthy and sustainable
rabbit meat back on the menu,
there's a business in bunnies again.
Andy Simpson continues the tradition
of the warrener.
He learned his trade from his father
and is passing it on to his son Tim.
This ancient form of animal husbandry
is important for another reason:
conservation of the natural environment
and pest control.
What would happen if you were
not controlling the rabbit population?
They'd destroy the countryside
for cattle farmers and sheep farmers.
The rabbits are undermining the ground
because they're tunnelling all the time.
The hole that you see,
it's a bit like an iceberg.
The hole is the lip of it.
The warren is expansive underneath.
Many years ago,
this park would have been full of cattle
and sheep and the estate ponies.
They daren't put them in here now.
The cattle and ponies would break their
legs walking over the rabbit warrens.
Now, I've been ignoring until now
your box of tricks.
We've got a few little noses
coming out of there.
Yeah. I've got a selection of these.
Molly's my main working bitch.
This is a cross
between a ferret and a polecat.
She won't bile.
- (Michael) Are you sure?
- Yeah.
You are a sweet creature.
Where this one was
a domesticated ferret,
these are captured wild polecats.
That's a little boy one.
Mm-hmm. Do they go rabbiting yet?
- Not yet, no.
- Ooh!
(both laugh)
(Michael) Got me!
You've got a claim to fame.
You bit a politician.
With the two pesky polecats
back in their cage,
it's time for me lo hop back
to Thetford Station
where I'm going to board
my next train, Northwest to Brandon.
This train is going to take me
out of Norfolk,
over the border into Suffolk
and the town of Brandon.
Bradshaw's tells me
that this place formerly supplied
the government with gun flints.
Enough to spark anybody's interest.
Immediately I can see
how important flint is to this area.
Even the buildings here
are faced with the stone.
This place is blessed with some
of the best quality flint in Britain
and flint was key to
the local economy for a very long lime.
I've come to Grime's Graves,
an ancient flint mine
just outside Brandon.
I'd like to find out how old
the area's flint business is
from archaeologist Dave Field.
- Hello, Dave.
- Hello, Michael. Pleased to meet you.
My Bradshaw's tells me that Brandon
supplied gunflints to the government.
- Tell me about that.
- Yes, that's very true.
And particularly during
the Napoleonic Wars.
An enormous quantity of gunflints
were shipped out.
There are stories of something like
a million per month at one lime.
There was a particularly good seam
of flint here.
Jet black, very few imperfections.
Exceedingly good sparkability.
Sparking properties were
of primary importance for musketry,
particularly for military purposes.
You can imagine,
at the Battle of Waterloo,
you wouldn't want your musket
to misfire too many times.
Was it ever possible
to mass-produce gunflints?
No, this was a cottage industry.
The Brandon knappers had
a five or six-year apprenticeship
before they could be set loose
and set up their own business.
We're in an area which bears
the scars of human activity,
but I assume this is nothing to do
with the Napoleonic era, is it?
No, no, no, this is all prehistoric.
The Neolithic miners got here
long before the gunflint miners.
It seems that flint knapping is a skill
that's as old as the hills.
This site has new been dated
to over 4,000 years ago.
Grime's Graves contains traces
of 400 Neolithic mineshafts
and is one of the most important
prehistoric sites in Britain.
What was Neolithic man using it for?
They were using it
for a variety of things.
It's reckoned that enough flint
was extracted from here
in the Neolithic period to make
something like eight million stone axes.
Enormous quantities were shipped out.
Much more so in the Neolithic period
than in the gunflint era.
I'm going to take a closer look.
You gel a real sense of descending
into the bowels of the earth, don't you?
The greenery peters out, the rock begins
and the temperature falls.
It does indeed.
It's pretty constant down here.
And it's a real labyrinth.
All these little galleries interconnect.
Theoretically you could work your way
across the site underground.
You can see the hollows here
where a large nodule has been extracted.
The idea of course was to extract every
available piece of good black flint
that you could do
without the roof falling in.
So how did these Neolithic mines come to
light, if that's the right expression?
Well, it was following the period
of publication
oi Darwin's Origin oi Species.
There was a new feeling
of inquiry about.
It was during that period that Canon
William Greenwell came to the site
and he dug one of the shafts
and found that it went down
something like 12 metres.
He found this seam of black flint.
It was quite clear then
what was going on,
that they were actually mining
this material in prehistory.
And he used some
of the gunflint miners from Brandon
to help him in that excavation.
So the gunflint miners had a big hand
in the discovery
of the prehistoric mining.
Well, I'd like to find out more
about flint knapping,
but for that I must return
to the surface.
Yes, let's do.
The flint knapping workshops
that were so busy in Brandon
in the early-19th century are no more,
but today, some enthusiasts
have revived the craft.
Will Lord provides traditional! flints
for flintlock guns
used by historical re-enactment groups
across the globe.
- Hello, Will.
- Hello, Michael.
- Nice to meet you.
- Good to see you.
I had no idea that flint
would be such a big rock.
Yeah, we're really lucky.
We've got some of the best geology
of flint in Britain around here.
What is it that you are trying to make?
What's the end product?
- (Will) This is the final product.
- Ll has to be very precise?
I notice not only that it's very square,
but you've shaved off
one side of it here.
(Will) Yeah.
That chamfer is really important.
It doesn't want to be loo weak
at the end of its journey.
First a suitable stone
has to be selected
and quartered into a workable sire.
(Michael) oh!
- (laughs) That's a surprise.
- Look at that.
We have made
an excellent choice in stone.
- Look at this pure black silica.
- Isn't that absolutely glorious?
Then a workable-sized flake
has to be created
and Will is letting me have a bash.
- Just lean it in a little bit.
- Oh, damn.
It's all good.
Just touch it on the flint...
- Perfect.
- Could you make a flint out of that?
Yeah. That's great.
Only now can the flake be honed to the
correct shape and she for a gunflint.
- Got a bit of a shape there.
- You have.
But it doesn't really... let's face it.
(Will) No, look. You've got a really
good serviceable gunflint there.
- Well done.
- Thank you.
I'm no expert yet,
but I'm glad that I've had a go
at man's oldest profession.
When Norwich acquired
its cathedral and castle
it was one of this country's
most important cities,
using the river and the sea
to export wool to the continent.
When railways became
the main mode of transport,
Norfolk was left somewhat isolated
from the capital, London.
In such tranquility, rabbit warrening
and flint knapping could survive,
unaffected by the Industrial Revolution
transforming the rest of Britain.
On the next leg, I experience
19th-century
cutting-edge technology,"
And there it goes.
And a Victorian would recognise that
because it was made in the same way.
I shell out for sea food
near Mersea Island...
So this is the sort of oyster that, once
cleaned up, could appear on my plate?
It certainly is.
And I'm tainted in an Essex orchard.
That's where the phrase
"caught red-handed" comes from.
The indelible stain of crime.