Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 5, Episode 4 - Haworth to Huddersfield - 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.
My journey around northern England
has taken me from the great mill towns
of Lancashire
to the grandiose scenery
of the Yorkshire moors.
The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway;
opened in 1867,
closed to passengers in 1962,
gloriously reopened in 1968
and running steam.
On this leg, I learn how Victorians
marketed confectionery...
"On Saturday last, you were eating
Mackintosh's toffee at our expense."
"Next Saturday pay us another visit
and eat it at your own expense."
- That's brilliant.
- A very unusual way of advertising.
...I get a tailor-made fining...
Most people have got one shoulder
lower than the other, and you have.
Where I've been writing over the years.
- All them cheques.
- (laughs)
...and I help to revive
a cinematic railway legend.
Oakworth! Oakworth Station!
- (all cheer)
- Oakworth!
My journey began in Manchester,
headed west to Port Sunlight,
took the sea air in Southport,
traversed Lancashire toward Bradford,
and now goes south
to steely South Yorkshire
ending in Derbyshire,
where the father of the railways,
George Stephenson, lies buried.
Today's Yorkist chapter
begins in Haworth,
goes to the cinema in Oakworth,
invests in Bradford,
moves stickily south to Halifax,
weaving its way finally
to Huddersfield.
This landscape looks benign in sun,
but lashed by wind and rain,
it made the setting for a dark tale
oi passion. Wuthering Heights.
That and another love story, Jane Eyre,
are amongst my favourite novels
and they were written by sisters
in a family of gifted siblings.
Yes, this is Brontë country.
I'm heading to Haworth
atop a hill in the Worth Valley
where novels of passion and genius
were created
by three brilliant sisters.
I want to know what inspired them
and whether the railway
prayed any role in their lives.
I'm meeting Professor Ann Sumner
of the Brontë Society
at the parsonage provided
tor their father, the local curate.
- Hello, Ann.
- Hello, Michael. Welcome to Haworth.
Thank you very much indeed. Who were
this extraordinary family of Brontës?
Well, the Brontë sisters
wrote some of the greatest novels
that we have in English literature
of the 19th century.
Of course, Charlotte wrote
Jane Eyre published in 1847,
Emily wrote Wuthering Heights
in the same year,
and Anne Brontë, perhaps the least known
of the three sisters,
she bought out Agnes Grey
and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
- What were their circumstances?
- Well, they were not a wealthy family.
Very sadly, the mother died just
18 months after arriving here in 1821
and the sisters went out as governesses
or as teachers
and when they came back
to write their famous novels,
they drew on that experience of life
as well.
Before, there had been Jane Austen,
but was it still quite rare
to have a woman novelist?
It was unusual and pretty early on,
there was some rumour in London
that actually this was only one man
writing the novels.
So the two sisters, Charlotte and Anne,
walked to Keighley,
by this time, the railways were at
Keighley, five miles in a thunderstorm.
They were whisked down
overnight to London,
and revealed themselves
to the publisher the next morning
who was surprised
lo find that they really were women.
“Jane Eyre" was an instant success.
Charlotte spent some
of her newfound wealth
buying shares in an industry
which already played a part
in the lives of the sisters.
She and her siblings had inherited money
from their Aunt Branwell,
£1,400, which had been
divided between them,
and they had invested in the railway.
They actually had, initially,
a very good income from the railways
and now she writes to her publisher,
George Smith, she writes,
“The little railway properly
I possessed,
scarcely any portion of it
can with security be calculated on."
This was areal boom-and-bust
set of stocks, wasn't it?
This was like the dot-com bubble
of the early 21st century.
The railways were tremendously exciting.
They were transforming
the Brontës' lives.
Charlotte herself travelled
for the first time in 1839.
She went on holiday to Bridlington.
Her sisters used the train
and, indeed, when Anne died,
it was very sad.
Anne wanted to get to Scarborough.
She'd been there as a governess.
She wanted to see the sea again.
She thought that would make her well.
Sadly, just after she arrived
in Scarborough, she did actually die.
So the trains were really important
to the sisters.
And, in fact, Branwell, their brother,
was very interested in the railways
and he actually worked for the railways,
as well.
Branwell Brontë was the fourth child
and the only boy
of the six Brontë siblings.
Partial to a drink
and rumoured to take opium,
he was an aspiring portrait painter
and poet
whose short but colourful life ended
when he died of bronchitis
aged just 31.
So how was it that Branwell
became a railwayman?
His portraiture business was failing,
so Branwell took his own initiative
and applied for a role as a clerk
at Sowerby Bridge.
Here we actually have
a notebook given to him
so that he could keep
a very close eye
on what kind of goods trains came
through and note the details down.
Most of it is around doodles.
Very good caricatures here
of the men he's working with.
A lovely caricature of himself with his
glasses on, he was very short-sighted,
with his pointy nose. And then
this list of his favourite poets
and there's some lovely drafts
of poems in this book, as well.
With his eye on the artistic,
Branwell's railway career
hit the buffers
when his station's accounts
failed to tally, and he was sacked.
(Michael) So these are by Branwell,
are they?
Yes, they are.
Branwell actually set up practice
and worked for over a year in Bradford,
but wasn't financially successful.
This has been areal eye opener for me.
I had no idea
that there was a railwayman Brontë,
the forgotten sibling,
and a man of some talent.
(blows whistle)
Resuming my steam journey,
I'm heading north towards Oakworth.
There's another literary connection
with this railway.
A lady who was a child at the time
oi my Bradshaw's guide. E Nesbit.
She wrote a book which became a film
with which the British people
are still in love.
Yes, it's The Railway Children.
Shot on location at Oakworth in 1970,
the film, directed by Lionel Jeffries,
tells Nesbit's Edwardian story
of the adventures of three siblings.
Roberta, Peter and Phyllis move
to live next to a Yorkshire railway
after their father is falsely accused
of spying for the Russians
and imprisoned.
Former Members of Parliament
Ann Cryer and her late husband Bob,
who were Keighley and Worth Valley
Railway committee members,
played a pivotal part in securing this
line's starring role in the production.
- (Ann) Nice to see you.
- Good to see you.
What was your involvement and the
involvement of your husband Bob?
On a particular day, the end of '69,
I took a phone call on behalf
of the railway and this voice said,
"My name is Bob Lynn
and I'm a friend of Lionel Jeffries
and we want to make a film
on your railway."
That was the beginning of it.
It was just so exciting,
it was absolutely wonderful.
Bob had to organise the engines,
which way they were going to go,
where they were going to be,
and sometimes very early in the morning,
an engine would have to go down
to Shipley triangle to turn round
so it was going in the other direction.
So he was responsible for all that.
And did you actually get
sucked into the making of the film?
Yes, we did. My son and daughter,
John and Jane, and myself,
we became extras.
Lionel Jeffries was kind enough
to give them a close shot in the film.
That was how kind he was,
not to mention the fact that
Lionel Jeffries also chose
to keep the name Oakworth,
whereas in the book it's Meadowvale.
It's been an absolute godsend to this
railway the fact that Oakworth was used.
Today is Oakworth's annual
Railway Children celebration,
when locals and members of the railway
re-enact scenes from the film.
- Hello.
- Hello.
May I congratulate you on your costumes?
You look absolutely wonderful.
- What are you playing today?
- Roberta.
- Phyllis.
- And Peter.
(Michael) Which scenes are you playing?
The petticoat scene
where we stop the train.
We come out of the station
and jump off the platform,
run down the side of the grass
and stop at the end,
wait for the train to come
and wave the petticoats and shout stop.
Hopefully with train will slop.
- Are you involved?
- Yes.
- You haven't got a petticoat.
- No.
- We'll lend you one.
- Have fun. Bye-bye.
- Hello.
- Hello there.
Are you taking part
in the recreation today?
- I'm playing Mr Perks.
- Perks.
I was hoping to play a pan myself.
ls there anything that I can do?
You can take my role for the next train.
That would be fantastic,
but I don't exactly look the part, do I?
That's alright. I can kit you out.
That's alright.
- How's that looking?
- That looks alright.
- You can use my blazer.
- That's really kind of you.
- No problem.
- Thank you very much.
- What do I have to do?
- When the train arrives, you shout,
"Oakworth. Oakworth Station."
This tells the passengers
as the train arrives where they are.
Thank you.
I must go and practise my line.
(train whistle)
Oakworth. Oakworth Station.
Oakworth. Oakworth Station.
- (all cheer)
- Oakworth. Oakworth Station.
Oakworth!
Still awaiting my firs! cal!
from a casting agent,
I'm taking the steam service
to Keighley
then changing onto a Northern Rail
service heading south-east.
My next stop will be Bradford.
Bradshaw's tells me that it's
the "great seat of the worsted trade,
finely placed among the Yorkshire hills
where three valleys meet".
I'm going there to find out how
we became a nation of home owners
because the names of Yorkshire towns,
Bradford, Bingley, Halifax,
make me think of building societies.
Bradford is yet another northern town
transformed by the steam-powered mills
of the Industrial Revolution.
Wealth poured in, but whilst
the council built an opulent town hall
many of Bradford's workers
lived in abject squalor.
Some put their faith
in self-improvement,
in particular by saving
with the building society.
Liz McIvor is Curator of Social History
at Bradford Museum in Eccleshill,
northeast of the city centre.
What were housing conditions like
in a place like Bradford
in the early part of the 19th century?
Basically, very old buildings
that were tenemented
lo take a whole family in one room.
Very, very poor access to facilities.
(Michael) What did they do
for sanitation?
(Liz) Mostly a couple of streets
might have a middenhead
which was literally a hole in the ground
emptied by night soil men regularly.
But the problem with that
is that the private landlords
were supposed to arrange that
and a lot of them were very unscrupulous
and didn't, so you would have build-up,
and basically the pits
would become too full
so cellar dwellings at the bottom
would fill with sewage.
And what opportunity did working
men and women have to save
to buy a place of their own?
Al the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, not very much.
Some better-off workers
who might earn that little bit more
might have just a little bit of cash
to put aside in savings.
So what was the principle
of these building societies?
The basic idea of a building society
that makes it different from a bank
is that all the people that invest
in the building society
are basically like the shareholders.
They all get some profit, they all get
a return on their investment,
whereas a bank
is a private limited company
where the shareholders
make all the profits.
The first building society,
formed in Birmingham in 1775,
was a "terminating" society
which closed when all its members
had been housed in the property
for which they'd jointly paid.
The 1836 Building Societies Act
made it easier to form the permanent
building societies that we know today
and by 1800 there were almost 3,000.
These back-to-back houses
were some of the first to be built
by a building society in Bradford.
So welcome to Number 25 Gaythorne Row.
So obviously, this is a huge improvement
on insanitary and crowded conditions.
Still quite tight, I must say.
What sort of a family would live here?
(Liz) People would happily
have lived here with six children.
Yes, it is very cramped.
It's one room at the bottom,
one room at the top,
but you have your own outside toilet.
That's a massive improvement.
- And where is the bathroom?
- There isn't a bathroom, unfortunately.
There's a tin bath on the wall
on a hook
which you would bring in front of
the fire and have your weekly bath.
So what stratum of society
would be living in a house like this?
(Liz) It would be a skilled worker
or an artisan worker.
I'm going to show you an object.
This is a penny saving bank.
It looks like a book but it's actually
got a hole in the back
for a penny or small coins to go into.
Then the idea was
once you'd filled it up,
you could take it to your building
society officer, he has the key,
he unlocks it to put it
into your savings account.
The building society movement
allowed for the first time
working people to think about saving
and think about improving your life.
It's been a long day. Hoping for
the luxury of an inside bathroom,
I'm heading back to the city centre.
As so often, Bradshaw's provides
the clue for my overnight slay.
Bradford, it says, is where
"three rail branch lines meet,
the Lancashire and Yorkshire,
the Great Northern,
and the Midland main line."
The Midland built a flagship hotel here
and this opulently tiled corridor
led directly from the platform
to the elegance within.
Opened in 1890, the hotel was designed
with Renaissance grandeur.
Today's general manager
is Gary Peacock.
It is a magnificent hotel.
It must have superb history.
Absolutely. It was a significant part
of the Victorian heritage of the city.
(Michael) I suppose,
in the 19th century,
great people were staying here.
(Gary) The politicians,
the celebrities,
the actors, the actresses of the day
from all over the world.
(Michael) Are there any stories
around the hotel that I should know?
Probably the most significant
is the death,
right here at the foot
of the main staircase,
of Sir Henry Irving,
the famous Victorian actor.
He felt a bit ill on stage,
came back from the Theatre Royal
having played Becket,
was put into a chair,
and unfortunately he died
at the foot of the main staircase.
Prophetically, the last words
he ever uttered on stage were,
"Into thy hands, 0 Lord,
into thy hands."
Thankful for an uneventful night,
I'm heading to Bradford Interchange
from where I'm travelling south-west.
Bradshaw's tells me
that four centuries ago,
my next slop, Halifax,
had but 13 houses,
"but the spirit of commercial enterprise
has recently manifested itself
by the rapid growth of the town".
One enterprise filled the streets of the
town with the sweet smell of success.
The Piece Hal! in Halifax
is the sole survivor
of the great 18th-century cloth markets
of northern England.
During the 19th century,
textiles were industrialised,
forcing domestic cloth workers
to find jobs elsewhere.
The enterprising John Mackintosh
turned in toffee.
Alex Hutchinson is
the Mackintosh company archivist.
- Hello, Alex.
- Hello.
You have a lovely railway station.
Why are we meeting just here?
Although this building
says Halifax Flour Society,
right here is where the Mackintosh
family of Halifax made their toffee.
(Michael) How did it all start?
Well, Violet Taylor,
who later became Violet Mackintosh,
who was born in 1866, got an
apprenticeship in a confectioner's shop
where she learned how to make a new type
of toffee. She invented it.
Until that point, all English toffee was
brittle, hard butterscotch tough stuff
and there was runny American caramel.
She worked out how to blend the two
and make a chewy toffee.
She married a nice chap
called John Mackintosh.
She and her husband,
instead of having a honeymoon,
bought a little pastry cook shop
where she sold it.
Suddenly it really took off.
Within a couple of years,
they had to open a factory.
They were selling it nationwide
and internationally.
It was such an accessible purchase
for working people.
It was bringing confectionery
to Everyman.
The factory is next to the railway.
That leads me to hope
there's a railway connection.
Mackintosh's needed to be near
the railway so that ingredients
could come in by train, and they could
send out finished goods the same way.
Methodist teetotallers,
the Mackintosh family legacy
is certainly something to chew over.
(man) Bring home Quality Street,
and you'll be a prince in her eyes.
(Michael) Their most famous
boxed confectionery assortment,
currently exported to 70 countries,
was created and first manufactured
in this factory.
Their product was affordable
for the working man,
but it was still a luxury product,
not an essential.
To entice new consumers, the first week
they gave their product away for tree.
The following week, they put in this ad.
"On Saturday last, you were eating
Mackintosh's toffee at our expense."
"Next Saturday pay us another visit
and eat it at your own expense."
- That's brilliant.
- A very unusual way of advertising.
What else did they do
to market the product?
We have an advertisement here.
Mackintosh's are telling boys and girls
everywhere on their holidays
to write the words "Mackintosh's toffee"
in the sand.
If they're seen by someone from
the factory, they'll be given a prize.
There must have been
thousands of children
writing "Mackintosh's toffee"
everywhere you go.
Absolutely brilliant. What kind of
people were they, the Mackintoshes?
John, I think, was what we would
call now a bit of a workaholic.
- He really lived for the business.
- And she?
She loved wearing ermine
and looking glamorous.
Once she'd invented this new toffee,
she was more than happy
for John to take all the credit,
call himself the Toffee King
and she look the back seat
and enjoyed life.
The company,
acquired by Nestle' in 1988,
produces billions of toffees every year
at its Halifax factory.
There is absolutely an unmistakable
smell of toffee, isn't there?
And this here is our toffee machine.
It's making toffee
to exactly the same recipe
that Violet would have been using.
That is a toffeeholic's dream, isn't it?
I'm tempted to linger
and gorge myself on toffee,
but I must continue my journey south
to this leg's final destination.
Huddersfield is my next stop.
Bradshaw's tells me
it's the “seat of the woollen trade
in the West Riding of Yorkshire...
"Woollens, fancy valentias,
shawls,
are the staple articles
of manufacture
besides corduroy",
which I am wearing at the moment.
Huddersfield
had a reputation for quality.
I wonder whether it has it still.
As the town industrialised,
the merchants who traded in it
and the Ramsden family
who owned most of it,
decided that Huddersfield should retain
the long-established reputation
for upmarket clam.
The nee-classical railway station,
completed in 1850,
was clearly the result
of burning civic pride.
I've never been to Huddersfield before
and I am overwhelmed.
This square is beautiful and, above all,
the railway station is one of the best
I've seen in Britain.
I believe someone once described it
as a stately home
with trains passing through it.
And sadly, with his back
to this architectural gem,
my childhood hero, Prime Minister
and Huddersfield boy Harold Wilson.
Wilson famously described 1960s Britain
as being forged in
“the white heat of technology...
He could have been speaking
of his home town a century before,
for in Victorian Huddersfield,
new designs oi looms and processes
produced the very finest cloth.
Established in 1003,
Taylor & Lodge makes luxury fabric
for suits that can cost up to £25,000.
For more than a century,
generations of skilled craftsmen
have toiled on the original looms
still operated by pattern weavers
like Brendan Crowther.
- Hello.
- Hello. Hiya.
What son of cloth is this?
This here, this is a two and two twill,
this. It's a worsted.
A worsted. And, well,
I suppose you've got warp and weft.
How does all that work?
Well, this is your warp,
these go through here,
and your weft is sent across
by the shuttles.
Now that is a good old-fashioned
methodology, isn't it?
May we actually see the thing in action?
(Brendan) I don't see why not.
(Michael) Now we see the pattern
building up.
That is mesmerising.
Brendan, I often see machines
and I have no idea what's going on,
but this one, I suppose
because it's quite an old technology,
it's perfectly clear
how that is working.
Real Victorian engineering.
With 83 tailors in Huddersfield
in Bradshaw's day,
it would be remiss not to meet one
while I'm here.
I'm visiting Jon Fairweather
at Carl Stuart.
Very good to see you.
I've often had suits made
and tailors tend lo be very polite,
almost flattering.
If you assess me as a customer,
what are you really thinking?
Firstly, you've got to make
the customer relax
because you don't want to be stood
shoulders out, stomach in.
Most people have got one shoulder
lower than the other, and you have.
- This one, right?
- Correct.
That's where I've been writing
over the years.
- All them cheques.
- (laughs)
- We can make you look normal.
- OK.
So you've measured me up, let's say,
and I've chosen my cloth.
- Right.
- What do you do next?
We put all the figurations
down on the cutting sheet
and it's all adjusted
from the block patterns.
(Michael)
You're doing that just by eye now?
So how many years has it taken you
to learn those tricks?
I've been doing it 50 years. It used
to be a seven-year apprenticeship
to be a tailor and cutter
when I started.
And it's only five years for a brain
surgeon. We should be on a level.
(Michael) Anything different
about what you're doing
and what your Victorian predecessors
would've done?
In the bespoke trade doing this,
it would be exactly the same.
So we've now made our adjustments here.
What do you do next?
Right. When the whole suit
is chalked in, then you start cutting.
- You can have a go.
- Thank you.
Stan at that end around, if you wish.
(Michael)
This says "Made in Huddersfield".
Is that still an important cachet?
(Jon) Oh, yeah.
Made in England, definitely.
Made in Huddersfield
is cream on the top.
- Where does that go, then?
- That's the front.
That's your button,
where your button is, that's your lapel.
- Where does this bit go?
- That's the other side.
You cut everything on the double.
Two fronts, two backs, two sleeves.
- How do I look?
- Amazing.
I've been thinking
how many more great novels
the Brontë sisters might have written
had they not died aged 29, 30 and 38.
Tuberculosis stalked
19th-century Britain
and cholera killed many in their prime,
including George Bradshaw.
Fortunately,
later in Queen Victoria's reign,
engineers and reformers made progress
with sanitation and public health.
On the next leg of my journey,
I'm given a Victorian music lesson...
(blows)
(parps tunelessly)
- (all cheer)
- Wow.
...I learn of a watery tragedy
in the Peak District...
The final death toll was about 81,
of whom half were children.
“And I make a splash in Derbyshire.
Whoa! I never produced
as big an impact as that!
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.
My journey around northern England
has taken me from the great mill towns
of Lancashire
to the grandiose scenery
of the Yorkshire moors.
The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway;
opened in 1867,
closed to passengers in 1962,
gloriously reopened in 1968
and running steam.
On this leg, I learn how Victorians
marketed confectionery...
"On Saturday last, you were eating
Mackintosh's toffee at our expense."
"Next Saturday pay us another visit
and eat it at your own expense."
- That's brilliant.
- A very unusual way of advertising.
...I get a tailor-made fining...
Most people have got one shoulder
lower than the other, and you have.
Where I've been writing over the years.
- All them cheques.
- (laughs)
...and I help to revive
a cinematic railway legend.
Oakworth! Oakworth Station!
- (all cheer)
- Oakworth!
My journey began in Manchester,
headed west to Port Sunlight,
took the sea air in Southport,
traversed Lancashire toward Bradford,
and now goes south
to steely South Yorkshire
ending in Derbyshire,
where the father of the railways,
George Stephenson, lies buried.
Today's Yorkist chapter
begins in Haworth,
goes to the cinema in Oakworth,
invests in Bradford,
moves stickily south to Halifax,
weaving its way finally
to Huddersfield.
This landscape looks benign in sun,
but lashed by wind and rain,
it made the setting for a dark tale
oi passion. Wuthering Heights.
That and another love story, Jane Eyre,
are amongst my favourite novels
and they were written by sisters
in a family of gifted siblings.
Yes, this is Brontë country.
I'm heading to Haworth
atop a hill in the Worth Valley
where novels of passion and genius
were created
by three brilliant sisters.
I want to know what inspired them
and whether the railway
prayed any role in their lives.
I'm meeting Professor Ann Sumner
of the Brontë Society
at the parsonage provided
tor their father, the local curate.
- Hello, Ann.
- Hello, Michael. Welcome to Haworth.
Thank you very much indeed. Who were
this extraordinary family of Brontës?
Well, the Brontë sisters
wrote some of the greatest novels
that we have in English literature
of the 19th century.
Of course, Charlotte wrote
Jane Eyre published in 1847,
Emily wrote Wuthering Heights
in the same year,
and Anne Brontë, perhaps the least known
of the three sisters,
she bought out Agnes Grey
and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
- What were their circumstances?
- Well, they were not a wealthy family.
Very sadly, the mother died just
18 months after arriving here in 1821
and the sisters went out as governesses
or as teachers
and when they came back
to write their famous novels,
they drew on that experience of life
as well.
Before, there had been Jane Austen,
but was it still quite rare
to have a woman novelist?
It was unusual and pretty early on,
there was some rumour in London
that actually this was only one man
writing the novels.
So the two sisters, Charlotte and Anne,
walked to Keighley,
by this time, the railways were at
Keighley, five miles in a thunderstorm.
They were whisked down
overnight to London,
and revealed themselves
to the publisher the next morning
who was surprised
lo find that they really were women.
“Jane Eyre" was an instant success.
Charlotte spent some
of her newfound wealth
buying shares in an industry
which already played a part
in the lives of the sisters.
She and her siblings had inherited money
from their Aunt Branwell,
£1,400, which had been
divided between them,
and they had invested in the railway.
They actually had, initially,
a very good income from the railways
and now she writes to her publisher,
George Smith, she writes,
“The little railway properly
I possessed,
scarcely any portion of it
can with security be calculated on."
This was areal boom-and-bust
set of stocks, wasn't it?
This was like the dot-com bubble
of the early 21st century.
The railways were tremendously exciting.
They were transforming
the Brontës' lives.
Charlotte herself travelled
for the first time in 1839.
She went on holiday to Bridlington.
Her sisters used the train
and, indeed, when Anne died,
it was very sad.
Anne wanted to get to Scarborough.
She'd been there as a governess.
She wanted to see the sea again.
She thought that would make her well.
Sadly, just after she arrived
in Scarborough, she did actually die.
So the trains were really important
to the sisters.
And, in fact, Branwell, their brother,
was very interested in the railways
and he actually worked for the railways,
as well.
Branwell Brontë was the fourth child
and the only boy
of the six Brontë siblings.
Partial to a drink
and rumoured to take opium,
he was an aspiring portrait painter
and poet
whose short but colourful life ended
when he died of bronchitis
aged just 31.
So how was it that Branwell
became a railwayman?
His portraiture business was failing,
so Branwell took his own initiative
and applied for a role as a clerk
at Sowerby Bridge.
Here we actually have
a notebook given to him
so that he could keep
a very close eye
on what kind of goods trains came
through and note the details down.
Most of it is around doodles.
Very good caricatures here
of the men he's working with.
A lovely caricature of himself with his
glasses on, he was very short-sighted,
with his pointy nose. And then
this list of his favourite poets
and there's some lovely drafts
of poems in this book, as well.
With his eye on the artistic,
Branwell's railway career
hit the buffers
when his station's accounts
failed to tally, and he was sacked.
(Michael) So these are by Branwell,
are they?
Yes, they are.
Branwell actually set up practice
and worked for over a year in Bradford,
but wasn't financially successful.
This has been areal eye opener for me.
I had no idea
that there was a railwayman Brontë,
the forgotten sibling,
and a man of some talent.
(blows whistle)
Resuming my steam journey,
I'm heading north towards Oakworth.
There's another literary connection
with this railway.
A lady who was a child at the time
oi my Bradshaw's guide. E Nesbit.
She wrote a book which became a film
with which the British people
are still in love.
Yes, it's The Railway Children.
Shot on location at Oakworth in 1970,
the film, directed by Lionel Jeffries,
tells Nesbit's Edwardian story
of the adventures of three siblings.
Roberta, Peter and Phyllis move
to live next to a Yorkshire railway
after their father is falsely accused
of spying for the Russians
and imprisoned.
Former Members of Parliament
Ann Cryer and her late husband Bob,
who were Keighley and Worth Valley
Railway committee members,
played a pivotal part in securing this
line's starring role in the production.
- (Ann) Nice to see you.
- Good to see you.
What was your involvement and the
involvement of your husband Bob?
On a particular day, the end of '69,
I took a phone call on behalf
of the railway and this voice said,
"My name is Bob Lynn
and I'm a friend of Lionel Jeffries
and we want to make a film
on your railway."
That was the beginning of it.
It was just so exciting,
it was absolutely wonderful.
Bob had to organise the engines,
which way they were going to go,
where they were going to be,
and sometimes very early in the morning,
an engine would have to go down
to Shipley triangle to turn round
so it was going in the other direction.
So he was responsible for all that.
And did you actually get
sucked into the making of the film?
Yes, we did. My son and daughter,
John and Jane, and myself,
we became extras.
Lionel Jeffries was kind enough
to give them a close shot in the film.
That was how kind he was,
not to mention the fact that
Lionel Jeffries also chose
to keep the name Oakworth,
whereas in the book it's Meadowvale.
It's been an absolute godsend to this
railway the fact that Oakworth was used.
Today is Oakworth's annual
Railway Children celebration,
when locals and members of the railway
re-enact scenes from the film.
- Hello.
- Hello.
May I congratulate you on your costumes?
You look absolutely wonderful.
- What are you playing today?
- Roberta.
- Phyllis.
- And Peter.
(Michael) Which scenes are you playing?
The petticoat scene
where we stop the train.
We come out of the station
and jump off the platform,
run down the side of the grass
and stop at the end,
wait for the train to come
and wave the petticoats and shout stop.
Hopefully with train will slop.
- Are you involved?
- Yes.
- You haven't got a petticoat.
- No.
- We'll lend you one.
- Have fun. Bye-bye.
- Hello.
- Hello there.
Are you taking part
in the recreation today?
- I'm playing Mr Perks.
- Perks.
I was hoping to play a pan myself.
ls there anything that I can do?
You can take my role for the next train.
That would be fantastic,
but I don't exactly look the part, do I?
That's alright. I can kit you out.
That's alright.
- How's that looking?
- That looks alright.
- You can use my blazer.
- That's really kind of you.
- No problem.
- Thank you very much.
- What do I have to do?
- When the train arrives, you shout,
"Oakworth. Oakworth Station."
This tells the passengers
as the train arrives where they are.
Thank you.
I must go and practise my line.
(train whistle)
Oakworth. Oakworth Station.
Oakworth. Oakworth Station.
- (all cheer)
- Oakworth. Oakworth Station.
Oakworth!
Still awaiting my firs! cal!
from a casting agent,
I'm taking the steam service
to Keighley
then changing onto a Northern Rail
service heading south-east.
My next stop will be Bradford.
Bradshaw's tells me that it's
the "great seat of the worsted trade,
finely placed among the Yorkshire hills
where three valleys meet".
I'm going there to find out how
we became a nation of home owners
because the names of Yorkshire towns,
Bradford, Bingley, Halifax,
make me think of building societies.
Bradford is yet another northern town
transformed by the steam-powered mills
of the Industrial Revolution.
Wealth poured in, but whilst
the council built an opulent town hall
many of Bradford's workers
lived in abject squalor.
Some put their faith
in self-improvement,
in particular by saving
with the building society.
Liz McIvor is Curator of Social History
at Bradford Museum in Eccleshill,
northeast of the city centre.
What were housing conditions like
in a place like Bradford
in the early part of the 19th century?
Basically, very old buildings
that were tenemented
lo take a whole family in one room.
Very, very poor access to facilities.
(Michael) What did they do
for sanitation?
(Liz) Mostly a couple of streets
might have a middenhead
which was literally a hole in the ground
emptied by night soil men regularly.
But the problem with that
is that the private landlords
were supposed to arrange that
and a lot of them were very unscrupulous
and didn't, so you would have build-up,
and basically the pits
would become too full
so cellar dwellings at the bottom
would fill with sewage.
And what opportunity did working
men and women have to save
to buy a place of their own?
Al the beginning of the Industrial
Revolution, not very much.
Some better-off workers
who might earn that little bit more
might have just a little bit of cash
to put aside in savings.
So what was the principle
of these building societies?
The basic idea of a building society
that makes it different from a bank
is that all the people that invest
in the building society
are basically like the shareholders.
They all get some profit, they all get
a return on their investment,
whereas a bank
is a private limited company
where the shareholders
make all the profits.
The first building society,
formed in Birmingham in 1775,
was a "terminating" society
which closed when all its members
had been housed in the property
for which they'd jointly paid.
The 1836 Building Societies Act
made it easier to form the permanent
building societies that we know today
and by 1800 there were almost 3,000.
These back-to-back houses
were some of the first to be built
by a building society in Bradford.
So welcome to Number 25 Gaythorne Row.
So obviously, this is a huge improvement
on insanitary and crowded conditions.
Still quite tight, I must say.
What sort of a family would live here?
(Liz) People would happily
have lived here with six children.
Yes, it is very cramped.
It's one room at the bottom,
one room at the top,
but you have your own outside toilet.
That's a massive improvement.
- And where is the bathroom?
- There isn't a bathroom, unfortunately.
There's a tin bath on the wall
on a hook
which you would bring in front of
the fire and have your weekly bath.
So what stratum of society
would be living in a house like this?
(Liz) It would be a skilled worker
or an artisan worker.
I'm going to show you an object.
This is a penny saving bank.
It looks like a book but it's actually
got a hole in the back
for a penny or small coins to go into.
Then the idea was
once you'd filled it up,
you could take it to your building
society officer, he has the key,
he unlocks it to put it
into your savings account.
The building society movement
allowed for the first time
working people to think about saving
and think about improving your life.
It's been a long day. Hoping for
the luxury of an inside bathroom,
I'm heading back to the city centre.
As so often, Bradshaw's provides
the clue for my overnight slay.
Bradford, it says, is where
"three rail branch lines meet,
the Lancashire and Yorkshire,
the Great Northern,
and the Midland main line."
The Midland built a flagship hotel here
and this opulently tiled corridor
led directly from the platform
to the elegance within.
Opened in 1890, the hotel was designed
with Renaissance grandeur.
Today's general manager
is Gary Peacock.
It is a magnificent hotel.
It must have superb history.
Absolutely. It was a significant part
of the Victorian heritage of the city.
(Michael) I suppose,
in the 19th century,
great people were staying here.
(Gary) The politicians,
the celebrities,
the actors, the actresses of the day
from all over the world.
(Michael) Are there any stories
around the hotel that I should know?
Probably the most significant
is the death,
right here at the foot
of the main staircase,
of Sir Henry Irving,
the famous Victorian actor.
He felt a bit ill on stage,
came back from the Theatre Royal
having played Becket,
was put into a chair,
and unfortunately he died
at the foot of the main staircase.
Prophetically, the last words
he ever uttered on stage were,
"Into thy hands, 0 Lord,
into thy hands."
Thankful for an uneventful night,
I'm heading to Bradford Interchange
from where I'm travelling south-west.
Bradshaw's tells me
that four centuries ago,
my next slop, Halifax,
had but 13 houses,
"but the spirit of commercial enterprise
has recently manifested itself
by the rapid growth of the town".
One enterprise filled the streets of the
town with the sweet smell of success.
The Piece Hal! in Halifax
is the sole survivor
of the great 18th-century cloth markets
of northern England.
During the 19th century,
textiles were industrialised,
forcing domestic cloth workers
to find jobs elsewhere.
The enterprising John Mackintosh
turned in toffee.
Alex Hutchinson is
the Mackintosh company archivist.
- Hello, Alex.
- Hello.
You have a lovely railway station.
Why are we meeting just here?
Although this building
says Halifax Flour Society,
right here is where the Mackintosh
family of Halifax made their toffee.
(Michael) How did it all start?
Well, Violet Taylor,
who later became Violet Mackintosh,
who was born in 1866, got an
apprenticeship in a confectioner's shop
where she learned how to make a new type
of toffee. She invented it.
Until that point, all English toffee was
brittle, hard butterscotch tough stuff
and there was runny American caramel.
She worked out how to blend the two
and make a chewy toffee.
She married a nice chap
called John Mackintosh.
She and her husband,
instead of having a honeymoon,
bought a little pastry cook shop
where she sold it.
Suddenly it really took off.
Within a couple of years,
they had to open a factory.
They were selling it nationwide
and internationally.
It was such an accessible purchase
for working people.
It was bringing confectionery
to Everyman.
The factory is next to the railway.
That leads me to hope
there's a railway connection.
Mackintosh's needed to be near
the railway so that ingredients
could come in by train, and they could
send out finished goods the same way.
Methodist teetotallers,
the Mackintosh family legacy
is certainly something to chew over.
(man) Bring home Quality Street,
and you'll be a prince in her eyes.
(Michael) Their most famous
boxed confectionery assortment,
currently exported to 70 countries,
was created and first manufactured
in this factory.
Their product was affordable
for the working man,
but it was still a luxury product,
not an essential.
To entice new consumers, the first week
they gave their product away for tree.
The following week, they put in this ad.
"On Saturday last, you were eating
Mackintosh's toffee at our expense."
"Next Saturday pay us another visit
and eat it at your own expense."
- That's brilliant.
- A very unusual way of advertising.
What else did they do
to market the product?
We have an advertisement here.
Mackintosh's are telling boys and girls
everywhere on their holidays
to write the words "Mackintosh's toffee"
in the sand.
If they're seen by someone from
the factory, they'll be given a prize.
There must have been
thousands of children
writing "Mackintosh's toffee"
everywhere you go.
Absolutely brilliant. What kind of
people were they, the Mackintoshes?
John, I think, was what we would
call now a bit of a workaholic.
- He really lived for the business.
- And she?
She loved wearing ermine
and looking glamorous.
Once she'd invented this new toffee,
she was more than happy
for John to take all the credit,
call himself the Toffee King
and she look the back seat
and enjoyed life.
The company,
acquired by Nestle' in 1988,
produces billions of toffees every year
at its Halifax factory.
There is absolutely an unmistakable
smell of toffee, isn't there?
And this here is our toffee machine.
It's making toffee
to exactly the same recipe
that Violet would have been using.
That is a toffeeholic's dream, isn't it?
I'm tempted to linger
and gorge myself on toffee,
but I must continue my journey south
to this leg's final destination.
Huddersfield is my next stop.
Bradshaw's tells me
it's the “seat of the woollen trade
in the West Riding of Yorkshire...
"Woollens, fancy valentias,
shawls,
are the staple articles
of manufacture
besides corduroy",
which I am wearing at the moment.
Huddersfield
had a reputation for quality.
I wonder whether it has it still.
As the town industrialised,
the merchants who traded in it
and the Ramsden family
who owned most of it,
decided that Huddersfield should retain
the long-established reputation
for upmarket clam.
The nee-classical railway station,
completed in 1850,
was clearly the result
of burning civic pride.
I've never been to Huddersfield before
and I am overwhelmed.
This square is beautiful and, above all,
the railway station is one of the best
I've seen in Britain.
I believe someone once described it
as a stately home
with trains passing through it.
And sadly, with his back
to this architectural gem,
my childhood hero, Prime Minister
and Huddersfield boy Harold Wilson.
Wilson famously described 1960s Britain
as being forged in
“the white heat of technology...
He could have been speaking
of his home town a century before,
for in Victorian Huddersfield,
new designs oi looms and processes
produced the very finest cloth.
Established in 1003,
Taylor & Lodge makes luxury fabric
for suits that can cost up to £25,000.
For more than a century,
generations of skilled craftsmen
have toiled on the original looms
still operated by pattern weavers
like Brendan Crowther.
- Hello.
- Hello. Hiya.
What son of cloth is this?
This here, this is a two and two twill,
this. It's a worsted.
A worsted. And, well,
I suppose you've got warp and weft.
How does all that work?
Well, this is your warp,
these go through here,
and your weft is sent across
by the shuttles.
Now that is a good old-fashioned
methodology, isn't it?
May we actually see the thing in action?
(Brendan) I don't see why not.
(Michael) Now we see the pattern
building up.
That is mesmerising.
Brendan, I often see machines
and I have no idea what's going on,
but this one, I suppose
because it's quite an old technology,
it's perfectly clear
how that is working.
Real Victorian engineering.
With 83 tailors in Huddersfield
in Bradshaw's day,
it would be remiss not to meet one
while I'm here.
I'm visiting Jon Fairweather
at Carl Stuart.
Very good to see you.
I've often had suits made
and tailors tend lo be very polite,
almost flattering.
If you assess me as a customer,
what are you really thinking?
Firstly, you've got to make
the customer relax
because you don't want to be stood
shoulders out, stomach in.
Most people have got one shoulder
lower than the other, and you have.
- This one, right?
- Correct.
That's where I've been writing
over the years.
- All them cheques.
- (laughs)
- We can make you look normal.
- OK.
So you've measured me up, let's say,
and I've chosen my cloth.
- Right.
- What do you do next?
We put all the figurations
down on the cutting sheet
and it's all adjusted
from the block patterns.
(Michael)
You're doing that just by eye now?
So how many years has it taken you
to learn those tricks?
I've been doing it 50 years. It used
to be a seven-year apprenticeship
to be a tailor and cutter
when I started.
And it's only five years for a brain
surgeon. We should be on a level.
(Michael) Anything different
about what you're doing
and what your Victorian predecessors
would've done?
In the bespoke trade doing this,
it would be exactly the same.
So we've now made our adjustments here.
What do you do next?
Right. When the whole suit
is chalked in, then you start cutting.
- You can have a go.
- Thank you.
Stan at that end around, if you wish.
(Michael)
This says "Made in Huddersfield".
Is that still an important cachet?
(Jon) Oh, yeah.
Made in England, definitely.
Made in Huddersfield
is cream on the top.
- Where does that go, then?
- That's the front.
That's your button,
where your button is, that's your lapel.
- Where does this bit go?
- That's the other side.
You cut everything on the double.
Two fronts, two backs, two sleeves.
- How do I look?
- Amazing.
I've been thinking
how many more great novels
the Brontë sisters might have written
had they not died aged 29, 30 and 38.
Tuberculosis stalked
19th-century Britain
and cholera killed many in their prime,
including George Bradshaw.
Fortunately,
later in Queen Victoria's reign,
engineers and reformers made progress
with sanitation and public health.
On the next leg of my journey,
I'm given a Victorian music lesson...
(blows)
(parps tunelessly)
- (all cheer)
- Wow.
...I learn of a watery tragedy
in the Peak District...
The final death toll was about 81,
of whom half were children.
“And I make a splash in Derbyshire.
Whoa! I never produced
as big an impact as that!