Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 5, Episode 5 - Honley to Chesterfield - 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 now on the last leg of a journey
that began
in a Victorian Manchester slum
and will end at a stately home.
Today I'll find out about a duke
who changed his garden
and about the son of an illiterate
collier worker who changed the world.
On this last leg,
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!
My journey began in Manchester,
headed west to Merseyside,
felt the sea breeze in Southport,
crossed Lancashire
towards Bradford and Huddersfield,
and will finally head
to steely South Yorkshire
to end in Derbyshire,
where the rather of the railway,
George Stephenson, is buried.
Today's leg tunes into Honley,
surges into Holmfirth,
takes a break in Sheffield,
and ends in the elegant surrounds
of Chesterfield.
My first stop will be Honley.
Bradshaw's tells me, "This place
is the centre of the woollen trade,
and has a population of 4,626."
Such wool towns
had a strong sense of community,
and such communities make music.
To reach the musical mill town
of Henley,
my train crosses the magnificent
Victorian Lockwood Viaduct.
The houses in Honley cluster on
the slopes of the Holme River Valley,
peeking up above each other, facing
each other across narrow alleyways,
the washing spread across the street.
You gel the impression
of a wool community
set apart by its geography
and closely knit.
The brass bands of such small towns
are a powerful metaphor
for the harmonious communities
that grew up in response
to industrialisation.
The invention oi the piston-valve
made the notes on brass instruments
more uniform and easier to play,
and mass production
made them more affordable.
By 1860, there were
over 750 brass bands in England.
Often sponsored by a local employer,
they were attached to collieries,
foundries and textile mills.
Places like Honley still have them.
Peter Marsha“ is a local historian.
- Peter, hello.
- Good morning, welcome.
- What a lovely village.
- Thank you. We like it very much.
How did bands get going
in villages like Honley?
(Peter) People needed a way
to entertain themselves
in the few hours that they had
when they weren't working in the mills
or weaving and spinning.
(Michael) What was the music for,
as it were?
Methodism was quite strong
in this valley.
John Wesley preached here in the 1180s,
and they needed music
to accompany themselves
both in the chapels and outside,
because they had famous sings
where they would sing in the open air,
Easter time, Whitsunday and so forth.
And the band playing became
quite competitive, didn't it?
Yes, it did.
Honley was able to travel by train
to a number of the competitions
across the North,
including the British Open Championship
which was held in Belle Vue
in Manchester.
And in 1884,
they became the British champions.
(brass band plays "The Floral Dance")
- Hello, Honley Band. How are you all?
- (all) Hello.
- Who's been with the band the longest?
- I have.
- When did you join the band?
- 1975. They turned me down in 1952.
Being a female, they said they'd
only got big instruments like this one
and that was no good for a girl.
Did it take them 23 years
to change their minds?
(woman) Yeah.
Wow. You, sir, at the back,
how long have you been in the band?
- I have been in the band two years.
- (Michael) And what's your instrument?
The drums.
(Michael) I kind of guessed that.
Give me a twirl.
(drum roll)
You've been playing
for longer than two years.
I've been playing for five years.
And you, sir, you're in plain clothes,
but are you an old bandsman?
Yes, I've been involved with this band
for 60 years.
60 years. Were you born here in Henley?
- Yes, I was.
- What made you join the band?
A man called Arnold Boothe,
he said, "Would you like to join?"
And he said those magic words
that make it difficult
for a Yorkshire lad to refuse.
- He said, "And it will all be free."
- (both laugh)
What could I do?
Can I tell you about a memory?
I think it tells you about maybe
the dedication to banding.
On 18th May, 1959, I got married.
It was Whit Monday, the busiest day of
the year in the brass-band calendar,
and after the ceremony,
we went to my new wife's mother,
and then I said goodbye to the guests,
and along with the best man
and the groomsmen,
we went and joined
our brass-band colleagues.
I think she made a decision that day
that it was,
"It you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'
And she's been a brass-band enthusiast
ever since.
Now, if I were to play,
what would be the instrument
that would, I don't know, suit me?
To suit you? Well, I think a big lad
like you would suit a euphonium.
That fits you like a glove.
Now then, doesn't he look smart, eh?
- Do I look the part?
- (all agree)
Yeah. Don't think
I'm going to sound it, somehow. Right.
To play on the instrument,
you need to vibrate air,
because that's what makes sound.
And the best way to do that is to buzz.
(both make buzzing sound)
That's right, and at the same time,
press on your tummy.
Make your tummy hard.
(blows)
(parps tunelessly)
- (all cheer)
- Wow!
I'm very sorry to have insulted
your ears with that noise.
Can we now hear some real music, please?
Maestro.
(brass band plays "The Floral Dance")
What a glorious sound.
Now I believe I'm in Yorkshire.
Staying in Yorkshire,
I'm continuing my journey south-east
on a branch fine towards Sheffield.
I'll shortly be entering
the Thurstonland Tunnel
where reputedly, a Victorian film-maker
made a film called Kiss in the Tunnel.
In 1899, pioneer Victorian film maker
James Bamforth
directed “The Kiss in the Tunnel",
an early example of narrative editing,
using three shots to tell the story of
a furtive moment of passenger passion
on a train in Thurstonland Tunnel.
No such luck for me.
My next stop will be Stocksmoor.
I'm interested by this reference
in Bradshaw's,
"Holmfirth, where the Ribble
and Diglee Brooks join,
was dreadfully ravaged in 1852
by the bursting of the Bilberry Darn.
Despite the general excellence
of Victorian engineering,
there were disasters,
and this one was apparently appalling.
Holmfirth Station
was closed to passengers in 1959,
so I shah have to make
my own way there from Stocksmoor.
Now surrounded by reservoirs,
Holmfirth is celebrated
as the location
for "Last of the Summer Wine".
By contrast, in Victorian times,
the village was notorious.
Bradshaw's remarks that the valley
is "six miles long
and only 100 yards broad at the widest,
and the immense volume of water
set free in this narrow gutter
carried away 100 lives with houses
and mills and other property."
"The bridge was entirely destroyed,
and only the bare walls
of the church left."
And standing here seeing how the town
is wedged into the crevasse,
I begin to imagine that horrific
wall of water advancing upon its people.
In 1852, Bilberry Dam burst,
and an unforgiving torrent
swept through Holmfirth.
I'm meeting local historian
David Cockman at the rebuilt dam.
Was the Victorian Bilberry Dam
in this position?
Near enough, I think.
We are standing almost at the spot
where, at 1 am on 5th February, 1852,
this collapsed with a pop, with a bang.
80 million gallons, 400,000 tons,
swept down the valley towards Holmfirth.
(Michael) Had there been
an engineering failure?
This was a Victorian structure,
wasn't it?
(David) Very much so, Michael.
Coming out of this hillside,
there was a spring.
It was described as being
as big as a man's arm.
And the water came down,
flowed down through into the valley,
where they wanted to build
the retaining wall.
They should have put this spring
into some kind of culvert or conduit
leading it away.
But they built the dam wall
on top of the flowing spring,
and of course, gradually,
over the years,
this water ale away
at the base of the dam,
weakening it all the time until
it began to leak, and it just gave way.
It was one of the most serious
civilian disasters of Victorian England.
(Michael) 300 foot across
and 70 foot at its deepest,
the reservoir's 86 million gallons
of water weighed 300,000 tons.
The water rushed
three and a half miles down the valley,
reaching the village
in around 15 minutes.
And it was going so fast
that even people who ran ahead
to try to warn the citizens
that something was about to happen,
they were overtaken by the water.
Now, in one of these houses there lived
a weaver called Joseph Halliwell
with his family,
a wife and five children.
The water rose in his house
almost up to the second floor.
He managed to get up to the second floor
into his weaving room, shout for help,
and he was heard by his neighbours
who lived above him in the lop house,
and they hacked a hole in the floor
and dragged him to safety.
But unfortunately his wife
and the five children were drowned.
- (Michael) Appalling.
- Yes.
Up the valley,
it had wrecked at least three mills,
and it had uprooted boilers
weighing 15, 20 tons
and the whole centre of Holmfirth
was hit by a battering ram.
The final death toll was about 81,
of whom half were children.
Most I think were caught asleep in
their beds and drowned in their sleep.
Was there Victorian ghoulishness?
I think so.
On the Sunday after the flood,
the railway reported that 16,000 tickets
were collected at Holmfirth Station.
In the fortnight or so after that,
the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway
reported that they were selling
9,000 tickets a day for people
to come to Holmfirth to view it.
I'm sure it was just disaster tourism,
basically ghoulishness,
to come and walk through
the rubble here.
I can't think what else it would be.
I'm heading back to Stocksmoor
to travel to Sheffield
where I shah break my journey.
Looking forward to the day ahead,
I'm taking an East Midlands service
south.
My next stop will be Chesterfield,
which, like so many places,
is associated by Bradshaw's with coal,
and there I want to look
at the career of one of my heroes.
A man who did so much
to convert coal to steam to locomotion,
and who made all of this possible:
Mr George Stephenson.
George Stephenson, perfector
of locomotives, builder of railways,
whose inventions included new sons
of rail and bridge and a miner's lamp.
Endlessly inventive,
but illiterate until he was 18,
a man who dragged himself up
by his boot straps,
the sort that I admire.
Having been born to a poor family
near Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
George Stephenson came to Chesterfield
for the last ten years of his life.
Passionate about machines,
back in 1804,
George had walked to Scotland
in order to work with steam engines.
A decade later, Stephenson's
first locomotive, the Blucher,
hauled coal wagons along a wagon way,
and in 187.5,
Stephenson's Locomotion No.1,
seen here on its centenary,
ran between Stockton and Darlington,
the first public railway on earth.
To learn more of this hero,
I'm visiting Chesterfield
Borough Council Museum,
adjacent to the town's
famous crooked spire,
to meet curator Anne-Marie Knowles
by a Stephenson family portrait.
There's George centre stage
in this rather strange-looking outfit,
which is what he used to wear
as a younger man.
I mean, we're used to seeing George
in the frock coal
looking very Victorian and grand,
but here, he is a much humbler man
when he was the engine-wright
at Killingworth Colliery.
So this is a picture that says
quite a lot about George's life.
The lady who's standing at the back
with the churn on her head,
this is Mabel Carr
who was George's mother.
And standing next to her is her husband,
George's father.
Then we've got George's first wife with
a child who actually died in infancy,
and then we have George's second wife
who's seated here in front of George.
And is George clutching
the miner's lamp that he invented?
(Anne-Marie) He most certainly is.
(Michael) There was some controversy
about this, wasn't there?
Because he invented a miner's
safety lamp and Davy invented one,
and there was a bit of argy-bargy
about whether there had been some
piracy of copyright, wasn't there?
Yes, certainly, and Davy
actually accused George Stephenson
of stealing the idea from him,
and Stephenson went to a lot of trouble
to prove that he'd actually developed
the miner's lamp prior to Davy.
I've heard it said
that miners in the Northeast
used the George Stephenson miner's lamp.
Miners elsewhere
tended to use the Davy lamp.
- That's right, yes, they did.
- I've even heard it said that
that is why people from the Northeast
are called Geordies.
Well, I don't think anybody
is very sure about that,
but certainly the lamp
was referred to as the Geordie lamp
because it was made by Geordie George.
One oi George's lesser-known inventions
grew from his passion for gardening.
OK, so here it is, one of the famous
cucumber straightening tubes
that was developed by George Stevenson.
Well... (laughs)
That looks like
a fairly simple glass tube.
What's so special about it?
Well, when the fruit is very small,
it's inserted at this end of the tube,
and then it grows straight down the tube
rather than curling as it grows,
because this was always the problem
before modern hybrids,
that cucumbers had this tendency
to curl, and so that's how he did it.
And it actually became
a standard piece of kit
for all Victorian kitchen gardeners.
Since George Stephenson
took such care to straighten cucumbers,
I wonder why
he didn't apply his attention
to the twisted spire of Chesterfield.
That's a very good question.
I have absolutely no idea.
Anne-Marie has brought me
to Chesterfield's Holy Trinity Church
where George Stephenson is buried.
So, no Westminster Abbey
for George Stephenson.
(Anne-Marie) No.
Why was he buried
in this church particularly?
(Anne-Marie) Holy Trinity
was the church that his wife attended,
and she loo is buried here.
Is that the only memorial
to George Stephenson in this church?
No, actually, it isn't.
If you look above,
you can see that there is a
rather magnificent stained-glass window,
which was donated to the church
by Robert Stephenson
in memory of his father.
And if you look carefully,
you can actually see
the "S" for Stephenson quite clearly.
It's very touching
that it was given by the son.
Robert and George Stephenson
are comparable geniuses,
but George Stephenson began
without the benefit of any education.
Bradshaw's devotes a lot of space
to Chatsworth,
which ii describes as "the splendid seat
of the Duke of Devonshire,
ten miles from Chesterfield Station".
Since there's no station closer, for
once, I'm going to have to take a taxi.
Hello.
Having begun my journey
investigating the squalid existence
of Manchester's
19th-century mill workers,
I'm concluding ii at the other end
oi the Victorian social spectrum.
Home to the Duke and Duchess
of Devonshire,
Chatsworth has been passed down through
16 generations oi the Cavendish family.
Its architecture and collection of art
have developed over 500 years.
Bradshaw's has led me to this point.
It says, "The best view of the house
is from a point near the bridge
and Queen Mary's bower,
where the old hunting lower
is seen on the hill'.
And yes, this is a fantastic vista.
One of the finest houses ever built,
magnificent and beautiful.
The first duke completed
this baroque palace in 1707.
It stands in the wilds of Derbyshire,
and glows in its warm
buff-coloured stone.
In the 19th century,
the sixth duke built the north wing
and a sculpture gallery.
He added priceless works
to the family's already glorious
collection of great masters.
Today, it's curated by Matthew Hirst.
- Matthew, hello.
- Hello, Michael.
My Bradshaw's
is from the middle 1860s.
What recent changes
would there have been to the house
just before the guide was written?
Well, quite substantial changes
actually,
because in the 19th century,
the sixth duke of Devonshire,
the Bachelor Duke as we call him,
kept the baroque house but built
an enormous wing to the north
really for two reasons.
He was a great art collector
and a great bibliophile,
so he needed space
for his ever-growing library,
his new collection of sculpture.
He was a man of
many different interests,
and was very much at the apex
of the social scene of that time.
He entertained Princess Victoria
in 1832,
and then she came back again in 1846,
so there's a constant scene of sort of
high society and lavish entertaining.
Bradshaw's tells me that "the house
may be seen daily from 11 to five".
"Parties are let in by turns."
"Apply early if you want to save time.“
So apparently, even by the middle 19th
century, this was a magnet for tourists.
(Matthew) Definitely.
With the arrival of the railways,
that was made considerably easier.
By 1849, in the summer,
we were getting 80,000 visitors a year,
which, you know, is staggering
when you think about what that means
in the 19th century.
Was this superb dining room
created by the sixth duke?
It was. This was finished in 1832,
just in time
for Princess Victoria's visit,
and she dined at this table
for the first time in adult company.
And this is the room that the sixth duke
referred to as being like
"dining in a great treasure chest",
and I think you can see that
with the vaults,
as if it were about to be opened
like a lid.
Magnificent barrel ceiling.
As we“ as portraits by old masters
like Thomas Gainsborough,
Chatsworth's art collection includes
the exceptional sculpture gallery,
augmented by the sixth duke's
acquisition of pieces
by the 19th-century Venetian sculptor
Antonio Canova.
This sculpture gallery
really is beautiful, isn't it?
Bradshaw's says,
"It's extremely rich in original works,
casts, busts, marble tables."
"Amongst others are Napoleon's mother,
Madame Mere, as she was called,
and Canon's large bust of Napoleon."
We know that the sixth duke
was very passionate about Canova's work,
so much so
that the giant bust of Napoleon,
when Canova died, the sixth duke
was so desperate to acquire it
that he immediately started
to organise its acquisition.
Napoleon looking
almost like a Roman emperor.
The sixth duke
also paid close attention
to the grounds of the house.
In 187.6, the work or a young gardener
near his property in Chiswick
impressed the Duke of Devonshire,
and he appointed Joseph Paxton
head gardener at Chatsworth
at the age of 23.
As soon as you set foot
outside Chatsworth,
it becomes clear that the house
is just one of two wonders,
the other being the gardens.
Bradshaw's tells me of
the work of Sir Joseph Paxton,
the late duke's celebrated gardener,
and I suspect that these wonderful
glass houses are just part of his work.
The present incumbent oi Patton's post
is Head of Gardens and Landscape,
Steve Porter.
What kind of man was Joseph Paxton?
He was an amazing guy.
Amazingly driven.
The story of his first day here
just describes it perfectly.
He caught the coach
from London to Chesterfield,
arriving at 4:30 in the morning.
He then walked the 12 miles
to Chatsworth,
climbing over the garden wall
to look around the garden
and see exactly what he was taking on,
before coming back to the main house
to have breakfast with the housekeeper.
He also met the housekeeper's niece
who he fell in love with,
and she fell in love with him,
and they got married a year later.
That is an amazing story.
So, was the transformation of the garden
as thorough as the transformation
of the house under the sixth duke?
Absolutely. Paxton really laid out
the garden as you see it today.
So most of the paths,
most of the features,
certainly the glass houses
are all from that period,
so a very important time for the garden.
Paxton achieved fame
when his grand Crystal Palace
in London's Hyde Park
housed the Great Exhibition oi 1851.
It took 2,000 men eight months to build
the innovative design
in glass and cast iron,
and it was based upon
his grand conservatory at Chatsworth.
So, Steve, it was here that
the grand conservatory stood.
Bradshaw's says it was 300 foot long
and 65 foot high.
It must have been astonishing.
(Steve) It was the biggest free-standing
glass house in the world at the time.
1836, so before the Palm House at Sew
and those sorts of buildings.
He'd been playing with
smaller glass houses,
trying out different glazing
and construction,
and designed this amazing spectacle
full of exotic plants
that most people hadn't seen before.
I can't help noticing
it's not here any more.
Sadly not, no. During the
First World War, it fell into disrepair.
It was a constant case of painting it
as well,
and so sadly, in 1920,
it was actually blown up.
(laughs) Leaving us with a maze.
Now, in a moment
you're going to need this.
(laughs) What for?
This is the key to Paxton's greatest
engineering feat at Chatsworth,
the Emperor Fountain, designed
for a visit by Tsar Nicholas I.
When they turned it on in the early
1840s, it went up to 296 feet high,
which was the tallest
gravity fed fountain in the world.
Unfortunately, Tsar Nicholas I
never made it to Chatsworth
so he never saw the fountain
that they created for him.
We just need to locate this.
(Michael) This is the biggest key
I've ever turned.
Whoa!
For all my years in politics, I never
produced as big an impact as that!
No journey could be longer
than from the Victorian Manchester slum
where I began
to the grandeur of Chatsworth
where I end.
Victorian society was characterised
by extremes of poverty and wealth,
but also by social mobility.
The self-made man
could win as much respect as a duke,
and there was no finer example of that
than George Stephenson,
the father of the railways.
On my next adventure,
I discover an underground warehouse
that once served the empire,“...
So this was for the storage of beer,
was it?
It's an amazing labyrinth.
It goes on and on and on.
...I hear about
the millionaire eccentric
whose home was an exotic museum...
He would be seen driving around
with his tour zebras?
Both here
and also in Piccadilly in London.
...and I visit the line where
the railway's age of innocence ended.
Quite a big gang, 15 guys,
formed a human chain down this abutment
and passed the mailbags down.
2.6 million in 120 mailbags.
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 now on the last leg of a journey
that began
in a Victorian Manchester slum
and will end at a stately home.
Today I'll find out about a duke
who changed his garden
and about the son of an illiterate
collier worker who changed the world.
On this last leg,
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!
My journey began in Manchester,
headed west to Merseyside,
felt the sea breeze in Southport,
crossed Lancashire
towards Bradford and Huddersfield,
and will finally head
to steely South Yorkshire
to end in Derbyshire,
where the rather of the railway,
George Stephenson, is buried.
Today's leg tunes into Honley,
surges into Holmfirth,
takes a break in Sheffield,
and ends in the elegant surrounds
of Chesterfield.
My first stop will be Honley.
Bradshaw's tells me, "This place
is the centre of the woollen trade,
and has a population of 4,626."
Such wool towns
had a strong sense of community,
and such communities make music.
To reach the musical mill town
of Henley,
my train crosses the magnificent
Victorian Lockwood Viaduct.
The houses in Honley cluster on
the slopes of the Holme River Valley,
peeking up above each other, facing
each other across narrow alleyways,
the washing spread across the street.
You gel the impression
of a wool community
set apart by its geography
and closely knit.
The brass bands of such small towns
are a powerful metaphor
for the harmonious communities
that grew up in response
to industrialisation.
The invention oi the piston-valve
made the notes on brass instruments
more uniform and easier to play,
and mass production
made them more affordable.
By 1860, there were
over 750 brass bands in England.
Often sponsored by a local employer,
they were attached to collieries,
foundries and textile mills.
Places like Honley still have them.
Peter Marsha“ is a local historian.
- Peter, hello.
- Good morning, welcome.
- What a lovely village.
- Thank you. We like it very much.
How did bands get going
in villages like Honley?
(Peter) People needed a way
to entertain themselves
in the few hours that they had
when they weren't working in the mills
or weaving and spinning.
(Michael) What was the music for,
as it were?
Methodism was quite strong
in this valley.
John Wesley preached here in the 1180s,
and they needed music
to accompany themselves
both in the chapels and outside,
because they had famous sings
where they would sing in the open air,
Easter time, Whitsunday and so forth.
And the band playing became
quite competitive, didn't it?
Yes, it did.
Honley was able to travel by train
to a number of the competitions
across the North,
including the British Open Championship
which was held in Belle Vue
in Manchester.
And in 1884,
they became the British champions.
(brass band plays "The Floral Dance")
- Hello, Honley Band. How are you all?
- (all) Hello.
- Who's been with the band the longest?
- I have.
- When did you join the band?
- 1975. They turned me down in 1952.
Being a female, they said they'd
only got big instruments like this one
and that was no good for a girl.
Did it take them 23 years
to change their minds?
(woman) Yeah.
Wow. You, sir, at the back,
how long have you been in the band?
- I have been in the band two years.
- (Michael) And what's your instrument?
The drums.
(Michael) I kind of guessed that.
Give me a twirl.
(drum roll)
You've been playing
for longer than two years.
I've been playing for five years.
And you, sir, you're in plain clothes,
but are you an old bandsman?
Yes, I've been involved with this band
for 60 years.
60 years. Were you born here in Henley?
- Yes, I was.
- What made you join the band?
A man called Arnold Boothe,
he said, "Would you like to join?"
And he said those magic words
that make it difficult
for a Yorkshire lad to refuse.
- He said, "And it will all be free."
- (both laugh)
What could I do?
Can I tell you about a memory?
I think it tells you about maybe
the dedication to banding.
On 18th May, 1959, I got married.
It was Whit Monday, the busiest day of
the year in the brass-band calendar,
and after the ceremony,
we went to my new wife's mother,
and then I said goodbye to the guests,
and along with the best man
and the groomsmen,
we went and joined
our brass-band colleagues.
I think she made a decision that day
that it was,
"It you can't beat 'em, join 'em.'
And she's been a brass-band enthusiast
ever since.
Now, if I were to play,
what would be the instrument
that would, I don't know, suit me?
To suit you? Well, I think a big lad
like you would suit a euphonium.
That fits you like a glove.
Now then, doesn't he look smart, eh?
- Do I look the part?
- (all agree)
Yeah. Don't think
I'm going to sound it, somehow. Right.
To play on the instrument,
you need to vibrate air,
because that's what makes sound.
And the best way to do that is to buzz.
(both make buzzing sound)
That's right, and at the same time,
press on your tummy.
Make your tummy hard.
(blows)
(parps tunelessly)
- (all cheer)
- Wow!
I'm very sorry to have insulted
your ears with that noise.
Can we now hear some real music, please?
Maestro.
(brass band plays "The Floral Dance")
What a glorious sound.
Now I believe I'm in Yorkshire.
Staying in Yorkshire,
I'm continuing my journey south-east
on a branch fine towards Sheffield.
I'll shortly be entering
the Thurstonland Tunnel
where reputedly, a Victorian film-maker
made a film called Kiss in the Tunnel.
In 1899, pioneer Victorian film maker
James Bamforth
directed “The Kiss in the Tunnel",
an early example of narrative editing,
using three shots to tell the story of
a furtive moment of passenger passion
on a train in Thurstonland Tunnel.
No such luck for me.
My next stop will be Stocksmoor.
I'm interested by this reference
in Bradshaw's,
"Holmfirth, where the Ribble
and Diglee Brooks join,
was dreadfully ravaged in 1852
by the bursting of the Bilberry Darn.
Despite the general excellence
of Victorian engineering,
there were disasters,
and this one was apparently appalling.
Holmfirth Station
was closed to passengers in 1959,
so I shah have to make
my own way there from Stocksmoor.
Now surrounded by reservoirs,
Holmfirth is celebrated
as the location
for "Last of the Summer Wine".
By contrast, in Victorian times,
the village was notorious.
Bradshaw's remarks that the valley
is "six miles long
and only 100 yards broad at the widest,
and the immense volume of water
set free in this narrow gutter
carried away 100 lives with houses
and mills and other property."
"The bridge was entirely destroyed,
and only the bare walls
of the church left."
And standing here seeing how the town
is wedged into the crevasse,
I begin to imagine that horrific
wall of water advancing upon its people.
In 1852, Bilberry Dam burst,
and an unforgiving torrent
swept through Holmfirth.
I'm meeting local historian
David Cockman at the rebuilt dam.
Was the Victorian Bilberry Dam
in this position?
Near enough, I think.
We are standing almost at the spot
where, at 1 am on 5th February, 1852,
this collapsed with a pop, with a bang.
80 million gallons, 400,000 tons,
swept down the valley towards Holmfirth.
(Michael) Had there been
an engineering failure?
This was a Victorian structure,
wasn't it?
(David) Very much so, Michael.
Coming out of this hillside,
there was a spring.
It was described as being
as big as a man's arm.
And the water came down,
flowed down through into the valley,
where they wanted to build
the retaining wall.
They should have put this spring
into some kind of culvert or conduit
leading it away.
But they built the dam wall
on top of the flowing spring,
and of course, gradually,
over the years,
this water ale away
at the base of the dam,
weakening it all the time until
it began to leak, and it just gave way.
It was one of the most serious
civilian disasters of Victorian England.
(Michael) 300 foot across
and 70 foot at its deepest,
the reservoir's 86 million gallons
of water weighed 300,000 tons.
The water rushed
three and a half miles down the valley,
reaching the village
in around 15 minutes.
And it was going so fast
that even people who ran ahead
to try to warn the citizens
that something was about to happen,
they were overtaken by the water.
Now, in one of these houses there lived
a weaver called Joseph Halliwell
with his family,
a wife and five children.
The water rose in his house
almost up to the second floor.
He managed to get up to the second floor
into his weaving room, shout for help,
and he was heard by his neighbours
who lived above him in the lop house,
and they hacked a hole in the floor
and dragged him to safety.
But unfortunately his wife
and the five children were drowned.
- (Michael) Appalling.
- Yes.
Up the valley,
it had wrecked at least three mills,
and it had uprooted boilers
weighing 15, 20 tons
and the whole centre of Holmfirth
was hit by a battering ram.
The final death toll was about 81,
of whom half were children.
Most I think were caught asleep in
their beds and drowned in their sleep.
Was there Victorian ghoulishness?
I think so.
On the Sunday after the flood,
the railway reported that 16,000 tickets
were collected at Holmfirth Station.
In the fortnight or so after that,
the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway
reported that they were selling
9,000 tickets a day for people
to come to Holmfirth to view it.
I'm sure it was just disaster tourism,
basically ghoulishness,
to come and walk through
the rubble here.
I can't think what else it would be.
I'm heading back to Stocksmoor
to travel to Sheffield
where I shah break my journey.
Looking forward to the day ahead,
I'm taking an East Midlands service
south.
My next stop will be Chesterfield,
which, like so many places,
is associated by Bradshaw's with coal,
and there I want to look
at the career of one of my heroes.
A man who did so much
to convert coal to steam to locomotion,
and who made all of this possible:
Mr George Stephenson.
George Stephenson, perfector
of locomotives, builder of railways,
whose inventions included new sons
of rail and bridge and a miner's lamp.
Endlessly inventive,
but illiterate until he was 18,
a man who dragged himself up
by his boot straps,
the sort that I admire.
Having been born to a poor family
near Newcastle-upon-Tyne,
George Stephenson came to Chesterfield
for the last ten years of his life.
Passionate about machines,
back in 1804,
George had walked to Scotland
in order to work with steam engines.
A decade later, Stephenson's
first locomotive, the Blucher,
hauled coal wagons along a wagon way,
and in 187.5,
Stephenson's Locomotion No.1,
seen here on its centenary,
ran between Stockton and Darlington,
the first public railway on earth.
To learn more of this hero,
I'm visiting Chesterfield
Borough Council Museum,
adjacent to the town's
famous crooked spire,
to meet curator Anne-Marie Knowles
by a Stephenson family portrait.
There's George centre stage
in this rather strange-looking outfit,
which is what he used to wear
as a younger man.
I mean, we're used to seeing George
in the frock coal
looking very Victorian and grand,
but here, he is a much humbler man
when he was the engine-wright
at Killingworth Colliery.
So this is a picture that says
quite a lot about George's life.
The lady who's standing at the back
with the churn on her head,
this is Mabel Carr
who was George's mother.
And standing next to her is her husband,
George's father.
Then we've got George's first wife with
a child who actually died in infancy,
and then we have George's second wife
who's seated here in front of George.
And is George clutching
the miner's lamp that he invented?
(Anne-Marie) He most certainly is.
(Michael) There was some controversy
about this, wasn't there?
Because he invented a miner's
safety lamp and Davy invented one,
and there was a bit of argy-bargy
about whether there had been some
piracy of copyright, wasn't there?
Yes, certainly, and Davy
actually accused George Stephenson
of stealing the idea from him,
and Stephenson went to a lot of trouble
to prove that he'd actually developed
the miner's lamp prior to Davy.
I've heard it said
that miners in the Northeast
used the George Stephenson miner's lamp.
Miners elsewhere
tended to use the Davy lamp.
- That's right, yes, they did.
- I've even heard it said that
that is why people from the Northeast
are called Geordies.
Well, I don't think anybody
is very sure about that,
but certainly the lamp
was referred to as the Geordie lamp
because it was made by Geordie George.
One oi George's lesser-known inventions
grew from his passion for gardening.
OK, so here it is, one of the famous
cucumber straightening tubes
that was developed by George Stevenson.
Well... (laughs)
That looks like
a fairly simple glass tube.
What's so special about it?
Well, when the fruit is very small,
it's inserted at this end of the tube,
and then it grows straight down the tube
rather than curling as it grows,
because this was always the problem
before modern hybrids,
that cucumbers had this tendency
to curl, and so that's how he did it.
And it actually became
a standard piece of kit
for all Victorian kitchen gardeners.
Since George Stephenson
took such care to straighten cucumbers,
I wonder why
he didn't apply his attention
to the twisted spire of Chesterfield.
That's a very good question.
I have absolutely no idea.
Anne-Marie has brought me
to Chesterfield's Holy Trinity Church
where George Stephenson is buried.
So, no Westminster Abbey
for George Stephenson.
(Anne-Marie) No.
Why was he buried
in this church particularly?
(Anne-Marie) Holy Trinity
was the church that his wife attended,
and she loo is buried here.
Is that the only memorial
to George Stephenson in this church?
No, actually, it isn't.
If you look above,
you can see that there is a
rather magnificent stained-glass window,
which was donated to the church
by Robert Stephenson
in memory of his father.
And if you look carefully,
you can actually see
the "S" for Stephenson quite clearly.
It's very touching
that it was given by the son.
Robert and George Stephenson
are comparable geniuses,
but George Stephenson began
without the benefit of any education.
Bradshaw's devotes a lot of space
to Chatsworth,
which ii describes as "the splendid seat
of the Duke of Devonshire,
ten miles from Chesterfield Station".
Since there's no station closer, for
once, I'm going to have to take a taxi.
Hello.
Having begun my journey
investigating the squalid existence
of Manchester's
19th-century mill workers,
I'm concluding ii at the other end
oi the Victorian social spectrum.
Home to the Duke and Duchess
of Devonshire,
Chatsworth has been passed down through
16 generations oi the Cavendish family.
Its architecture and collection of art
have developed over 500 years.
Bradshaw's has led me to this point.
It says, "The best view of the house
is from a point near the bridge
and Queen Mary's bower,
where the old hunting lower
is seen on the hill'.
And yes, this is a fantastic vista.
One of the finest houses ever built,
magnificent and beautiful.
The first duke completed
this baroque palace in 1707.
It stands in the wilds of Derbyshire,
and glows in its warm
buff-coloured stone.
In the 19th century,
the sixth duke built the north wing
and a sculpture gallery.
He added priceless works
to the family's already glorious
collection of great masters.
Today, it's curated by Matthew Hirst.
- Matthew, hello.
- Hello, Michael.
My Bradshaw's
is from the middle 1860s.
What recent changes
would there have been to the house
just before the guide was written?
Well, quite substantial changes
actually,
because in the 19th century,
the sixth duke of Devonshire,
the Bachelor Duke as we call him,
kept the baroque house but built
an enormous wing to the north
really for two reasons.
He was a great art collector
and a great bibliophile,
so he needed space
for his ever-growing library,
his new collection of sculpture.
He was a man of
many different interests,
and was very much at the apex
of the social scene of that time.
He entertained Princess Victoria
in 1832,
and then she came back again in 1846,
so there's a constant scene of sort of
high society and lavish entertaining.
Bradshaw's tells me that "the house
may be seen daily from 11 to five".
"Parties are let in by turns."
"Apply early if you want to save time.“
So apparently, even by the middle 19th
century, this was a magnet for tourists.
(Matthew) Definitely.
With the arrival of the railways,
that was made considerably easier.
By 1849, in the summer,
we were getting 80,000 visitors a year,
which, you know, is staggering
when you think about what that means
in the 19th century.
Was this superb dining room
created by the sixth duke?
It was. This was finished in 1832,
just in time
for Princess Victoria's visit,
and she dined at this table
for the first time in adult company.
And this is the room that the sixth duke
referred to as being like
"dining in a great treasure chest",
and I think you can see that
with the vaults,
as if it were about to be opened
like a lid.
Magnificent barrel ceiling.
As we“ as portraits by old masters
like Thomas Gainsborough,
Chatsworth's art collection includes
the exceptional sculpture gallery,
augmented by the sixth duke's
acquisition of pieces
by the 19th-century Venetian sculptor
Antonio Canova.
This sculpture gallery
really is beautiful, isn't it?
Bradshaw's says,
"It's extremely rich in original works,
casts, busts, marble tables."
"Amongst others are Napoleon's mother,
Madame Mere, as she was called,
and Canon's large bust of Napoleon."
We know that the sixth duke
was very passionate about Canova's work,
so much so
that the giant bust of Napoleon,
when Canova died, the sixth duke
was so desperate to acquire it
that he immediately started
to organise its acquisition.
Napoleon looking
almost like a Roman emperor.
The sixth duke
also paid close attention
to the grounds of the house.
In 187.6, the work or a young gardener
near his property in Chiswick
impressed the Duke of Devonshire,
and he appointed Joseph Paxton
head gardener at Chatsworth
at the age of 23.
As soon as you set foot
outside Chatsworth,
it becomes clear that the house
is just one of two wonders,
the other being the gardens.
Bradshaw's tells me of
the work of Sir Joseph Paxton,
the late duke's celebrated gardener,
and I suspect that these wonderful
glass houses are just part of his work.
The present incumbent oi Patton's post
is Head of Gardens and Landscape,
Steve Porter.
What kind of man was Joseph Paxton?
He was an amazing guy.
Amazingly driven.
The story of his first day here
just describes it perfectly.
He caught the coach
from London to Chesterfield,
arriving at 4:30 in the morning.
He then walked the 12 miles
to Chatsworth,
climbing over the garden wall
to look around the garden
and see exactly what he was taking on,
before coming back to the main house
to have breakfast with the housekeeper.
He also met the housekeeper's niece
who he fell in love with,
and she fell in love with him,
and they got married a year later.
That is an amazing story.
So, was the transformation of the garden
as thorough as the transformation
of the house under the sixth duke?
Absolutely. Paxton really laid out
the garden as you see it today.
So most of the paths,
most of the features,
certainly the glass houses
are all from that period,
so a very important time for the garden.
Paxton achieved fame
when his grand Crystal Palace
in London's Hyde Park
housed the Great Exhibition oi 1851.
It took 2,000 men eight months to build
the innovative design
in glass and cast iron,
and it was based upon
his grand conservatory at Chatsworth.
So, Steve, it was here that
the grand conservatory stood.
Bradshaw's says it was 300 foot long
and 65 foot high.
It must have been astonishing.
(Steve) It was the biggest free-standing
glass house in the world at the time.
1836, so before the Palm House at Sew
and those sorts of buildings.
He'd been playing with
smaller glass houses,
trying out different glazing
and construction,
and designed this amazing spectacle
full of exotic plants
that most people hadn't seen before.
I can't help noticing
it's not here any more.
Sadly not, no. During the
First World War, it fell into disrepair.
It was a constant case of painting it
as well,
and so sadly, in 1920,
it was actually blown up.
(laughs) Leaving us with a maze.
Now, in a moment
you're going to need this.
(laughs) What for?
This is the key to Paxton's greatest
engineering feat at Chatsworth,
the Emperor Fountain, designed
for a visit by Tsar Nicholas I.
When they turned it on in the early
1840s, it went up to 296 feet high,
which was the tallest
gravity fed fountain in the world.
Unfortunately, Tsar Nicholas I
never made it to Chatsworth
so he never saw the fountain
that they created for him.
We just need to locate this.
(Michael) This is the biggest key
I've ever turned.
Whoa!
For all my years in politics, I never
produced as big an impact as that!
No journey could be longer
than from the Victorian Manchester slum
where I began
to the grandeur of Chatsworth
where I end.
Victorian society was characterised
by extremes of poverty and wealth,
but also by social mobility.
The self-made man
could win as much respect as a duke,
and there was no finer example of that
than George Stephenson,
the father of the railways.
On my next adventure,
I discover an underground warehouse
that once served the empire,“...
So this was for the storage of beer,
was it?
It's an amazing labyrinth.
It goes on and on and on.
...I hear about
the millionaire eccentric
whose home was an exotic museum...
He would be seen driving around
with his tour zebras?
Both here
and also in Piccadilly in London.
...and I visit the line where
the railway's age of innocence ended.
Quite a big gang, 15 guys,
formed a human chain down this abutment
and passed the mailbags down.
2.6 million in 120 mailbags.