Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 6, Episode 13 - Hessle to York - full transcript
[OPENING THEME MUSIC]
For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw
was a household name.
At a time when railways were new, Bradshaw's
guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks.
I'm using a Bradshaw's guide to understand
how trains transformed Britain...
its landscape, its industry,
society and leisure time.
As I crisscross the country, 150 years later, it
helps me to discover the Britain of today.
I'm in the historic county of East Yorkshire,
continuing my journey towards Lindisfarne.
Building a bridge or tunnel across the mighty
Humber Estuary defied even Victorian engineers.
But on this part of my journey, I hope to learn about
19th-century figures of religious conviction...
who toiled to tear down injustices and
to construct the rights of man.
My journey started in a significant centre
of the Industrial Revolution.
Continued on to Nottinghamshire and
wended its Way to Wakefield.
It will now bear east to skirt a vast
estuary, and turn back inland...
to be tempted in Yorkshire's
county town.
Then it will head up the coast, to the
industrial cities of the north...
to end on Northumberland's
Holy Island.
Today's leg begins in Hessle, on the
north bank of the Humber...
makes a short hop to Hull; learns the
tale of a bandit in Beverley...
then takes in the sea air at Scarborough
and finishes with the sweet treats of York.
On this stretch, I step inside a record-
breaking feat of engineering.
Douglas, you people have built a bridge on an
extraordinary scale. This is a massive chamber!
Learn of the conditions endured by
a prisoner of conscience.
The soldiers stole his bread and his water. He
was treated something like ah animal in a zoo.
And brew up a Quaker-approved
Victorian cuppa.
Well... it looks as appetising as mud!
Bradshaw's tells me that "The River
Humber, the main estuary"...
"into which the Ouse and
the Yorkshire streams"...
"with the Trent flow, is here two
miles broad and widens"...
"to five or six miles before it
joins the sea."
"The eastern portion of this elevated
district commands a magnificent view"...
"of that vast estuary."
I wonder why it was that the Victorians,
who conquered the Dee,
the Firth of Forth and the Severn...
were unable to master
the Humber.
Covering an area of over seventy-
five thousand acres...
this is a tidal estuary on
an epic scale.
For the Victorians it formed a barrier to
effective trade and communication...
and they campaigned hard to have
something done about it.
But it Wasn't until over a
hundred years later, in 1973...
that construction began on the extraordinary
structure that was finally to span...
the Plumber's huge expanse.
I'm hopping out at Hessle, which is a small
town on the north bank of the estuary...
and the closest stop to the
magnificent bridge.
With a dramatic view of it at the Water's edge,
I'm joining regional historian Richard Clarke.
Now, if I know my Victorians, they must have
been itching to build a crossing...
either a bridge or a tunnel -
across the Humber!
There were schemes being talked about from
the railway mania age of the 1840s onwards.
And so, by the late 19th century, the idea
was to build a cantilever bridge...
on the principle of the Forth Bridge,
a rail bridge...
but the cantilever bridge would have needed
a lot of pillars into the bed of the estuary.
And, of course, we have to remember that the time
We're talking about, a hundred years ago or so...
this estuary would have had many, many more
craft on it, crisscrossing out to the North Sea...
and so these pillars were always perceived
to be a potential hazard to navigation.
- Now, evidently you did eventually get a bridge!
- Yes.
How did that come about?
Once you had the Golden Gate Bridge,
in San Francisco...
and examples like that of a very wide-
span suspension bridge...
it was realised that it was physically possible to
bridge the Humber, Without having all these pillars.
By the time work began oh the long-awaited
bridge, in the early 1970s..
The ascendancy of the car had put paid to Victorian
dreams of a bridge for both railway and road.
In 1981, when finally opened
by Queen Elizabeth ll...
it was the longest single-span suspension
bridge in the world...
and remained so for seventeen years, until
surpassed by the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan.
Douglas Strachen spent seven years as resident
engineer during the bridge's construction.
And today he's giving me the privilege of
accessing parts that very few get to see.
Douglas, I take it from the noise that We're
underneath the traffic crossing the bridge.
Yes. We're in the box girders.
There are a hundred and twenty-four
of these boxes...
and so you can walk from anchorage to
anchorage, through this tunnel of steel boxes.
The anchorages, at either end of
the suspension bridge...
secure vast cables, slung between the two
towers, to support the load-bearing deck below.
Although the Victorians did build suspension
bridges, like Brunel's at Clifton...
they didn't have the technology
to span the daunting...
Distance between the banks
of the Humber.
Later ingenuity unravelled
the solution.
Tell me about cable spinning, which is the
essence of this technology.
We're taking thousands of wires, five millimeters
in diameter, across the river back and forward...
and building up fifteen thousand parallel Wires
- and then compacting them into one round cable.
To see these cable-spun Wires close up, Douglas
is taking me to the anchorage on the north bank...
constructed from a staggering one hundred
and sixty thousand tons of concrete.
Douglas, you people built a bridge on an
extraordinary scale. This is a massive chamber.
And, if I understand it, these are the Wires that
support the bridge arriving at their anchorage.
Yes, and you can see behind me
Where the round cable is then...
split up into the strands that I've
been talking about earlier.
And these wires, What sort
of weight are they?
Well, the cables themselves are about
fifteen thousand tons of wire...
and it's seventy thousand kilometres
in length.
That's about one and a halftimes
around the World.
And so What is the innovation
since Victorian times?
I suppose it's the stronger materials, and
using the wires, are a major step forward.
And so cable-spinning was the technology
that enabled 20th-century engineers...
to do What Victorians had not
been able to achieve.
Exactly.
Continuing my journey, I'm going to make a
short trip further east along the Humber...
by re-boarding the train
at Hessle.
My next stop is
Kingston-upon-Hull.
Now, Bradshaw's says that it's "on the Yorkshire side
of the Humber, in a very flat and uninviting spot."
"But, it is admirably fitted
for trade."
To our national disgrace, well into the 19th century,
part of British trade involved a triangle...
that carried rum and sugar from the
Caribbean to Europe...
brandy and guns from
Europe to Africa...
and cargoes of slaves from Africa
to the Caribbean.
Situated twenty-five miles from the North Sea,
where the River Hull meets the Humber...
Kingston-upon-Hull, from the 12th century, grew
as a significant trading and sea-faring hub.
I love the station at
Kingston-upon-Hull...
with its massive spans
of glass.
It's the end of the line, and the station has
a Way of saying to you...
"Why would you Want to go any
further, anyway?"
One man with firmly rooted local loyalties
was William Wilberforce...
fervent social reformer and perhaps the
city's most famous son.
"The African slave trade is contrary to the
principles of justice, humanity and sound policy."
So begins the Act of Parliament carried by
William Wilberforce, in 1807.
And here stands his column.
Which, according to Bradshaw's,
"was erected on the 1st August
1834 - the day of Negro emancipation."
"Wilberforce was born in Hull,
and died in 1833."
"But hot 'til he had the happiness of knowing that
the great work of his useful life was achieved."
The abolition of the slave trade, and then of
slavery itself, was the work of many decades.
And I'm here in Hull to meet an old colleague,
who well understands the tribulations...
of fighting a reluctant Parliament.
Born here in 1759, to a Wealthy merchant family,
Wilberforce was just twenty when he entered politics.
His childhood home was opened as
a museum in 1906.
And that's Where I'm meeting one of his
successors as a Hull MP, Alan Johnson...
who also happens to be a regular onscreen
political sparring partner of mine.
- Alan.
- Michael.
- Good to see you.
- Welcome to Hull.
Thank you very much!
And here we are...
- with the great man.
- Yes, with the great man, himself.
Is he a hero of yours?
He is! And he's a hero to the city.
The reason that not a single...
slave was traded through the port of
Hull was because of Wilberforce.
He is probably the greatest person
ever born in this city.
Now, the abolition of the slave trade
was a long old process...
so Wilberforce had to show a lot
of commitment to it.
Yes, and from a very young age.
Everyone was against opposition to
the slave trade, virtually.
It was a crucial part of the British economy...
so it was like trying to abolish the
automotive industry today.
I read that at the height of the slave trade it
was eighty percent of Britain's foreign earnings.
And that's What Wilberforce was
fighting against.
You know, we all like to have done
something - made a difference.
Wilberforce, above any other person sitting
oh the back benches of Parliament...
over these hundreds of years, can
truly say he did that.
I think he had a moment of
conversion, didn't he?
He did. He was a bit of a lad, was William.
He liked his drinking, he liked his gambling...
and then had this moment of conversion when
he decided that he would dedicate his life...
to greater, more Christian,
more moral purposes.
And he did that for the rest of his life - and brought
all the different religions together in this city.
For thirty years before Queen Victoria
ascended the throne...
the Royal Navy patrolled
the Atlantic...
stopping any ships suspected of What
Parliament had decreed "an illegal trade".
Does the spirit of Wilberforce live on in
Kingston-upon-Hull today?
It does! We have the
Wilberforce Institute...
which is probably the world's leading
expert in modern-day slavery.
Desmond Tutu is its patron and
one of its founders.
And Hull is in the lead in monitoring and
trying to do something about...
modern-day slavery, because there are still
twenty, twenty-six million people being traded...
for slavery, for prostitution, children being traded
for mining all kinds of dangerous substances.
It still goes on to this day.
Might William Wilberforce be dismayed that
two hundred years after his achievement...
we're discussing slavery again'?!
He would be dismayed, but it doesn't detract
one iota from his great achievement.
But, we need the spirit of Wilberforce to
re-awaken - to actually deal with modern slavery.
And I think if we do that,
we do the great man justice.
After a long but very inspiring day, I'm getting
back on the train at the beautiful Hull station...
to find a handy place to rest...
by wending my Way north,
through the Yorkshire Wolds.
My next stop, Beverley, has, according
to my guidebook...
"a noble minster, built on a spot Where
Saint John of Beverley was buried"...
"whose standard was carried by King Edward I in his
invasion of Scotland, to encourage his soldiers."
Those men "stood and delivered" - the command,
given in a different context, by highwaymen!
Intriguingly, the establishment Where I'm planning
to rest my head for the night...
has a connection to those
infamous outlaws.
This former coaching inn played host to one
particularly notorious 18th-century bandit.
I'm meeting up with manager
Mark Kubra to find out more.
Well, the Beverley Arms is the only place in
my Bradshaw's guide that's recommended.
So here I am!
But I think it has a story to do with
highwaymen, doesn't it?
Yes, I believe Dick Turpin stayed
here at the hotel...
and apparently checked in under an alias
of the name "Mr Palmer".
During the course of his stay there was an
altercation with the landlord...
due to the landlord's cockerel making all these
noises in the early hours of the morning.
At which point our "Mr Palmer" turns around
and shoots the landlord's cockerel.
So the landlord gets the constabulary involved,
who come and promptly arrest our "Mr Palmer".
"Mr Palmer", While sat in
the Beverley jails...
decides he'll write to his brother and ask for
a sixpence, to be able to get him out of prison.
Unfortunately, the postmaster is his
headmaster from school.
Recognises his handwriting...
then gets in touch with the Beverley
Constabulary, and says...
"You've not arrested a Mr Palmer, you've
actually arrested THE Dick Turpin."
So when they did realise that they had the famous
highwayman, Dick Turpin, What was his fate?
Well, at that point I think the magistrates
got together and said...
"you know What, we'll get a much bigger
audience if we send him to York."
And that's where they eventually hung him and did
all the ghastly things they heeded to do to him.
Well, I hope it's not the fate of everyone who
hangs out at the Beverly Arms!
[MARK LAUGHS]
I hope not, no!
Well, after a thankfully uneventful night, Without
even so much as a cockerel to interrupt my sleep...
I've just enough time before I
depart on my journey...
to take in the town's most
famous landmark.
According to my guidebook, "Beverley Minster
is three hundred and thirty-three feet long."
And I can well believe it!
On this trip I have seen some superb
ecclesiastical buildings.
And it's a reminder that for most of the
last two thousand years...
religion mattered to us much more
than anything else.
To reach my first destination of the day...
I'm continuing north from Beverley,
and heading for the coast.
I'll be leaving the train at Scarborough,
about which Bradshaw's is enthusiastic.
"Its situation is extremely beautiful and romantic,
being on the recess of a fine, open bay."
"And the town consists of several spacious streets
of handsome, Well-built houses"...
"rising in successive tiers from the shore
in the form of an amphitheatre."
But I'm going there to hear about one
who was a prisoner of conscience.
And who might be forgiven, therefore, for hot
having very happy memories of Scarborough.
Tickets and passes, please.
- Thank you very much, love.
- There you go.
I'm oh my way to Scarborough. Does
Scarborough still attract a lot of holidaymakers?
Yes. We go up into Scarborough for
day trips and everything.
- Were they carrying picnic baskets?
- Yeah, everything!
We're always busy. It's always nice to see all
the kids all being energetic and excited.
When they're coming back they're
great 'cos they're tired!
And they're just quiet oh the train, and it's
great. Going there, they're loud!
The immense popularity of this buoyant
beach-side town really took hold in 1845...
when the Scarborough to York
railway opened...
and brought with it waves
of Victorian tourists.
One of the attractions they flocked to was
the town's evocative 12th-century castle.
Built by a succession of medieval kings, this
royal fortress endured countless attacks.
In the middle of the 17th century it
served briefly as a prison.
And it's that period of the castle's
history that interests me.
What a Wonderful view!
Bradshaw's tells me that "Scarborough
Castle crowns a precipitous rock...
about three hundred feet
above the waters."
"As this old, feudal stronghold looks down
upon the sea at one side"...
"it has the town of Scarborough
stretched below it."
In 1666, George Fox, founder of the Society
of Friends, was imprisoned in the castle.
And so here we find the beauty of nature and the
ugliness of the conflicts of man, in the name of God.
Born in 1624, George Fox had a radical
approach to Christianity...
that gained him popularity and
persecution in equal measure.
Society of Friends members, known as Quakers,
relied on conscience as the basis of morality...
and believed in the equality of
men and women.
Many of the slave trade abolitionists, who joined
William Wilberforces campaign, were Quakers.
So was George Bradshaw.
So I can imagine that this Scarborough site
would have been significant for him.
Rachel Holland is an historic
property steward...
who I'm hoping will offer more details on how
George Fox came to incarcerated here.
What, as far as you know,
was his crime?
As far as I'm aware, his main crime was refusing
to swear an oath of allegiance to Charles ll.
At this point We've just finished the
Civil War, Cromwell's just died.
And we now have the Restoration,
Charles ll is now in power.
But this is a time when religion and politics
are very closely intertwined.
So for George Fox to be refusing to
swear allegiance to the king...
and refusing to swear any allegiance to any sort of
physical church, it was seen as very subversive.
What was Fox's objection to
swearing an oath?
Basically, he says in his diaries that
"any hypocrite can swear an oath".
He says that "loyalty is proven
by deeds, not by Words".
And at that time, when everybody's
already sworn one oath...
saying that they would uphold
Cromwell's rule...
then to turn around and say no, actually
We're going to swear an oath to Charles...
I can see Where George Fox
is coming from.
Their unconventional views enraged the
religious and political establishment.
And between 1662 and 1670, as many as six
thousand Quakers found themselves in jail.
Fox's spell at Scarborough Castle was just one
of eight prison sentences that he endured.
Rachel, I'm trying to imagine the conditions
of Fox's imprisonment.
Bradshaw's tells me that Fox speaks of three
different rooms that he successively occupied.
"One of them faced the sea."
"And laying much open, the wind drove
in the rain forcibly"...
"so that water came over his head and
ran about the room"...
"so that he was fain to skim it up
with a platter".
Terrible conditions!
Very terrible conditions. I believe, as well, that
that was the last room he was held in.
Which many sources believe to be Cockhill
Tower, which he called "Purgatory".
Prolonged exposure to the elements caused
Fox's fingers to swell to double their size.
And his health suffered greatly -
but his faith never faltered.
In 1666 he was released from Scarborough
Castle, and by the time of his death in 1691...
the Quaker movement had more than
fifty thousand followers.
How was he treated by those who
were given charge of him?
It was atrocious. The soldiers stole
his bread and his water.
But worse was the fact that he was treated
something like an animal in a zoo.
They gawked at him,
he says in his diaries.
And they tried to convert him back to
the standard faith at the time...
but it seems that he converted more
of them than they did of him.
I'd never thought of sixteen months in
Scarborough as the ultimate test of faith.
My time here is measured in minutes,
because I have a train to catch...
taking me west to the final destination
of today's journey...
which also has a
Quaker connection.
[GUARDS WHISTLE]
My next stop is What Bradshaw's calls
the "ancient capital of York"...
"and seat of the Primate of England. Situated at
the junction of the Three Ridings of Yorkshire"...
"oh the River Ouse. Boots, shoes, combs and
confectionery are the chief articles made here."
The men of chocolate, Joseph Rowntree, who
was a Quaker like George Bradshaw...
and Joseph Terry have left sweet
memories in York.
Its prime position on the
Rivers Ouse and Foss...
gave York easy access to imported goods,
including sugar and cocoa beans.
While the fertile Vale of York provided many other
essential confectionery ingredients.
When York also became a railway hub, in the
19th century, it had the perfect recipe...
for a lucrative sweet-making
industry.
I'm here to meet Alex Hutchinson,
historian and archivist for one of the
companies that took full advantage.
Here we are surveying the vast estate that was
Rowntrees. How did this enormous business begin?
Well, in 1862, Henry Isaac Rowntree took
over a local cocoa business...
and he didn't do a very good job. His
brother, Joseph, came to help him...
and he turned it from a drinking-cocoa business
into the huge sweet factory we know today.
That drinking cocoa, What was it like?
Was it a good product?
Their first cocoa would have been quite
unpalatable. It was seen as a health food.
They were using very, very primitive
manufacturing methods.
So it would have been quite
astringent and gritty.
Quakers are strongly associated with
chocolate-making. Why?
In 1816 we passed a law, the
Food and Drugs Act...
which prevented people from putting anything
poisonous or hazardous into food.
Before that you could put in
anything you liked.
And so people tended to trust Quakers
if they were buying food.
And with chocolate you would sometimes get
unscrupulous chocolate-makers adding wax or paint.
But a Quaker? Never!
At its peak, Rowntrees employed
fourteen thousand people.
As Quakers given to philanthropy and social
reform, they built a public library...
a park and theatre for their Workers.
And also created a model village, providing
affordable and decent homes...
as an alternative to
inner-city slums.
Known as New Earswick, the village was built
to include plenty of green space...
its own village hall - but no pub.
And it remains dry to this day.
There were three things that the
Rowntrees really objected to...
which they called
"concrete forms of sin"...
and that was alcoholism,
priestcraft, and Toryism.
- Ah! In ascending order!
- Yes.
When the entrepreneurial Joseph stepped
in to help his brother...
he set about expanding and modernising
the company's output.
He developed a range of chocolate products,
and his master-stroke was hiring a Frenchman...
to make fruit pastilles.
A trade dominated by
the French.
Today, in the factory's development kitchen,
I'm going back to Where it all began...
So we have the cocoa beans, which are roasted
and ground down into cocoa bits.
By helping Head Confectioner Vicky Geal to try
to replicate that original 1860s cocoa recipe.
Start grinding.
I'm just grinding these down - trying to get
them into a powder, am I?
Yep.
This takes quite a lot of
effort, doesn't it?
It does - it's very labour-intensive, which is why
We're glad now that We've got the machinery...
to be able to do this instead
of doing it by hand.
You didn't tell me that!
Right! Oh!
What we need to do now is add
your Icelandic moss.
Icelandic moss?!
Why would you add moss?
In the 1860s the Rowntrees added a kind
of lichen, called Icelandic moss...
to their cocoa, to improve the health
benefits - also to absorb the fat.
Uh. Eurgh!
Bitter aftertaste!
For teetotal Quakers like the Rowntrees, cocoa was
a wholesome alternative to the alcoholic drinks...
which they blamed for many of society's ills.
Well, it looks as appetising
as mud!
How does it taste?
It's full Of... bits!
But I don't know? You know, if you were a
Victorian, then it would have been new...
You'd probably be Willing to pay for that.
If you thought it was doing
you some good.
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, it tastes bad enough that
you would think it was doing you some good!
Finishing today's journey with a nourishing
Victorian elixir seems rather fitting.
Even if it was a little lumpy
and bitter!
During the course of my travels
with Bradshaw's...
I've discovered now much we owe the
Victorians for our physical environment.
Our railway network, our sewers - even
our Parliament in London.
But we also inherited many
of their values.
By degrees, they built our
Parliamentary democracy...
abolished slavery and child labour,
universalised education...
hugely enlarging the rights of man.
The rights of women, however...
in particular the right to vote... were
left over to be dealt with in the 20th century.
Next time, I'll feel the heat of a
Victorian furnace.
Look at that - a nice little
flambe for us!
Learn how investigative journalism
was born.
He built the devil up, and then just
like any good newspaper man...
he took great delight in
knocking the devil down.
And hear how a remarkable Bible
survived down the centuries.
- It's quite the large book to lose, actually.
- It certainly is!
[END THEME]
For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw
was a household name.
At a time when railways were new, Bradshaw's
guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks.
I'm using a Bradshaw's guide to understand
how trains transformed Britain...
its landscape, its industry,
society and leisure time.
As I crisscross the country, 150 years later, it
helps me to discover the Britain of today.
I'm in the historic county of East Yorkshire,
continuing my journey towards Lindisfarne.
Building a bridge or tunnel across the mighty
Humber Estuary defied even Victorian engineers.
But on this part of my journey, I hope to learn about
19th-century figures of religious conviction...
who toiled to tear down injustices and
to construct the rights of man.
My journey started in a significant centre
of the Industrial Revolution.
Continued on to Nottinghamshire and
wended its Way to Wakefield.
It will now bear east to skirt a vast
estuary, and turn back inland...
to be tempted in Yorkshire's
county town.
Then it will head up the coast, to the
industrial cities of the north...
to end on Northumberland's
Holy Island.
Today's leg begins in Hessle, on the
north bank of the Humber...
makes a short hop to Hull; learns the
tale of a bandit in Beverley...
then takes in the sea air at Scarborough
and finishes with the sweet treats of York.
On this stretch, I step inside a record-
breaking feat of engineering.
Douglas, you people have built a bridge on an
extraordinary scale. This is a massive chamber!
Learn of the conditions endured by
a prisoner of conscience.
The soldiers stole his bread and his water. He
was treated something like ah animal in a zoo.
And brew up a Quaker-approved
Victorian cuppa.
Well... it looks as appetising as mud!
Bradshaw's tells me that "The River
Humber, the main estuary"...
"into which the Ouse and
the Yorkshire streams"...
"with the Trent flow, is here two
miles broad and widens"...
"to five or six miles before it
joins the sea."
"The eastern portion of this elevated
district commands a magnificent view"...
"of that vast estuary."
I wonder why it was that the Victorians,
who conquered the Dee,
the Firth of Forth and the Severn...
were unable to master
the Humber.
Covering an area of over seventy-
five thousand acres...
this is a tidal estuary on
an epic scale.
For the Victorians it formed a barrier to
effective trade and communication...
and they campaigned hard to have
something done about it.
But it Wasn't until over a
hundred years later, in 1973...
that construction began on the extraordinary
structure that was finally to span...
the Plumber's huge expanse.
I'm hopping out at Hessle, which is a small
town on the north bank of the estuary...
and the closest stop to the
magnificent bridge.
With a dramatic view of it at the Water's edge,
I'm joining regional historian Richard Clarke.
Now, if I know my Victorians, they must have
been itching to build a crossing...
either a bridge or a tunnel -
across the Humber!
There were schemes being talked about from
the railway mania age of the 1840s onwards.
And so, by the late 19th century, the idea
was to build a cantilever bridge...
on the principle of the Forth Bridge,
a rail bridge...
but the cantilever bridge would have needed
a lot of pillars into the bed of the estuary.
And, of course, we have to remember that the time
We're talking about, a hundred years ago or so...
this estuary would have had many, many more
craft on it, crisscrossing out to the North Sea...
and so these pillars were always perceived
to be a potential hazard to navigation.
- Now, evidently you did eventually get a bridge!
- Yes.
How did that come about?
Once you had the Golden Gate Bridge,
in San Francisco...
and examples like that of a very wide-
span suspension bridge...
it was realised that it was physically possible to
bridge the Humber, Without having all these pillars.
By the time work began oh the long-awaited
bridge, in the early 1970s..
The ascendancy of the car had put paid to Victorian
dreams of a bridge for both railway and road.
In 1981, when finally opened
by Queen Elizabeth ll...
it was the longest single-span suspension
bridge in the world...
and remained so for seventeen years, until
surpassed by the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan.
Douglas Strachen spent seven years as resident
engineer during the bridge's construction.
And today he's giving me the privilege of
accessing parts that very few get to see.
Douglas, I take it from the noise that We're
underneath the traffic crossing the bridge.
Yes. We're in the box girders.
There are a hundred and twenty-four
of these boxes...
and so you can walk from anchorage to
anchorage, through this tunnel of steel boxes.
The anchorages, at either end of
the suspension bridge...
secure vast cables, slung between the two
towers, to support the load-bearing deck below.
Although the Victorians did build suspension
bridges, like Brunel's at Clifton...
they didn't have the technology
to span the daunting...
Distance between the banks
of the Humber.
Later ingenuity unravelled
the solution.
Tell me about cable spinning, which is the
essence of this technology.
We're taking thousands of wires, five millimeters
in diameter, across the river back and forward...
and building up fifteen thousand parallel Wires
- and then compacting them into one round cable.
To see these cable-spun Wires close up, Douglas
is taking me to the anchorage on the north bank...
constructed from a staggering one hundred
and sixty thousand tons of concrete.
Douglas, you people built a bridge on an
extraordinary scale. This is a massive chamber.
And, if I understand it, these are the Wires that
support the bridge arriving at their anchorage.
Yes, and you can see behind me
Where the round cable is then...
split up into the strands that I've
been talking about earlier.
And these wires, What sort
of weight are they?
Well, the cables themselves are about
fifteen thousand tons of wire...
and it's seventy thousand kilometres
in length.
That's about one and a halftimes
around the World.
And so What is the innovation
since Victorian times?
I suppose it's the stronger materials, and
using the wires, are a major step forward.
And so cable-spinning was the technology
that enabled 20th-century engineers...
to do What Victorians had not
been able to achieve.
Exactly.
Continuing my journey, I'm going to make a
short trip further east along the Humber...
by re-boarding the train
at Hessle.
My next stop is
Kingston-upon-Hull.
Now, Bradshaw's says that it's "on the Yorkshire side
of the Humber, in a very flat and uninviting spot."
"But, it is admirably fitted
for trade."
To our national disgrace, well into the 19th century,
part of British trade involved a triangle...
that carried rum and sugar from the
Caribbean to Europe...
brandy and guns from
Europe to Africa...
and cargoes of slaves from Africa
to the Caribbean.
Situated twenty-five miles from the North Sea,
where the River Hull meets the Humber...
Kingston-upon-Hull, from the 12th century, grew
as a significant trading and sea-faring hub.
I love the station at
Kingston-upon-Hull...
with its massive spans
of glass.
It's the end of the line, and the station has
a Way of saying to you...
"Why would you Want to go any
further, anyway?"
One man with firmly rooted local loyalties
was William Wilberforce...
fervent social reformer and perhaps the
city's most famous son.
"The African slave trade is contrary to the
principles of justice, humanity and sound policy."
So begins the Act of Parliament carried by
William Wilberforce, in 1807.
And here stands his column.
Which, according to Bradshaw's,
"was erected on the 1st August
1834 - the day of Negro emancipation."
"Wilberforce was born in Hull,
and died in 1833."
"But hot 'til he had the happiness of knowing that
the great work of his useful life was achieved."
The abolition of the slave trade, and then of
slavery itself, was the work of many decades.
And I'm here in Hull to meet an old colleague,
who well understands the tribulations...
of fighting a reluctant Parliament.
Born here in 1759, to a Wealthy merchant family,
Wilberforce was just twenty when he entered politics.
His childhood home was opened as
a museum in 1906.
And that's Where I'm meeting one of his
successors as a Hull MP, Alan Johnson...
who also happens to be a regular onscreen
political sparring partner of mine.
- Alan.
- Michael.
- Good to see you.
- Welcome to Hull.
Thank you very much!
And here we are...
- with the great man.
- Yes, with the great man, himself.
Is he a hero of yours?
He is! And he's a hero to the city.
The reason that not a single...
slave was traded through the port of
Hull was because of Wilberforce.
He is probably the greatest person
ever born in this city.
Now, the abolition of the slave trade
was a long old process...
so Wilberforce had to show a lot
of commitment to it.
Yes, and from a very young age.
Everyone was against opposition to
the slave trade, virtually.
It was a crucial part of the British economy...
so it was like trying to abolish the
automotive industry today.
I read that at the height of the slave trade it
was eighty percent of Britain's foreign earnings.
And that's What Wilberforce was
fighting against.
You know, we all like to have done
something - made a difference.
Wilberforce, above any other person sitting
oh the back benches of Parliament...
over these hundreds of years, can
truly say he did that.
I think he had a moment of
conversion, didn't he?
He did. He was a bit of a lad, was William.
He liked his drinking, he liked his gambling...
and then had this moment of conversion when
he decided that he would dedicate his life...
to greater, more Christian,
more moral purposes.
And he did that for the rest of his life - and brought
all the different religions together in this city.
For thirty years before Queen Victoria
ascended the throne...
the Royal Navy patrolled
the Atlantic...
stopping any ships suspected of What
Parliament had decreed "an illegal trade".
Does the spirit of Wilberforce live on in
Kingston-upon-Hull today?
It does! We have the
Wilberforce Institute...
which is probably the world's leading
expert in modern-day slavery.
Desmond Tutu is its patron and
one of its founders.
And Hull is in the lead in monitoring and
trying to do something about...
modern-day slavery, because there are still
twenty, twenty-six million people being traded...
for slavery, for prostitution, children being traded
for mining all kinds of dangerous substances.
It still goes on to this day.
Might William Wilberforce be dismayed that
two hundred years after his achievement...
we're discussing slavery again'?!
He would be dismayed, but it doesn't detract
one iota from his great achievement.
But, we need the spirit of Wilberforce to
re-awaken - to actually deal with modern slavery.
And I think if we do that,
we do the great man justice.
After a long but very inspiring day, I'm getting
back on the train at the beautiful Hull station...
to find a handy place to rest...
by wending my Way north,
through the Yorkshire Wolds.
My next stop, Beverley, has, according
to my guidebook...
"a noble minster, built on a spot Where
Saint John of Beverley was buried"...
"whose standard was carried by King Edward I in his
invasion of Scotland, to encourage his soldiers."
Those men "stood and delivered" - the command,
given in a different context, by highwaymen!
Intriguingly, the establishment Where I'm planning
to rest my head for the night...
has a connection to those
infamous outlaws.
This former coaching inn played host to one
particularly notorious 18th-century bandit.
I'm meeting up with manager
Mark Kubra to find out more.
Well, the Beverley Arms is the only place in
my Bradshaw's guide that's recommended.
So here I am!
But I think it has a story to do with
highwaymen, doesn't it?
Yes, I believe Dick Turpin stayed
here at the hotel...
and apparently checked in under an alias
of the name "Mr Palmer".
During the course of his stay there was an
altercation with the landlord...
due to the landlord's cockerel making all these
noises in the early hours of the morning.
At which point our "Mr Palmer" turns around
and shoots the landlord's cockerel.
So the landlord gets the constabulary involved,
who come and promptly arrest our "Mr Palmer".
"Mr Palmer", While sat in
the Beverley jails...
decides he'll write to his brother and ask for
a sixpence, to be able to get him out of prison.
Unfortunately, the postmaster is his
headmaster from school.
Recognises his handwriting...
then gets in touch with the Beverley
Constabulary, and says...
"You've not arrested a Mr Palmer, you've
actually arrested THE Dick Turpin."
So when they did realise that they had the famous
highwayman, Dick Turpin, What was his fate?
Well, at that point I think the magistrates
got together and said...
"you know What, we'll get a much bigger
audience if we send him to York."
And that's where they eventually hung him and did
all the ghastly things they heeded to do to him.
Well, I hope it's not the fate of everyone who
hangs out at the Beverly Arms!
[MARK LAUGHS]
I hope not, no!
Well, after a thankfully uneventful night, Without
even so much as a cockerel to interrupt my sleep...
I've just enough time before I
depart on my journey...
to take in the town's most
famous landmark.
According to my guidebook, "Beverley Minster
is three hundred and thirty-three feet long."
And I can well believe it!
On this trip I have seen some superb
ecclesiastical buildings.
And it's a reminder that for most of the
last two thousand years...
religion mattered to us much more
than anything else.
To reach my first destination of the day...
I'm continuing north from Beverley,
and heading for the coast.
I'll be leaving the train at Scarborough,
about which Bradshaw's is enthusiastic.
"Its situation is extremely beautiful and romantic,
being on the recess of a fine, open bay."
"And the town consists of several spacious streets
of handsome, Well-built houses"...
"rising in successive tiers from the shore
in the form of an amphitheatre."
But I'm going there to hear about one
who was a prisoner of conscience.
And who might be forgiven, therefore, for hot
having very happy memories of Scarborough.
Tickets and passes, please.
- Thank you very much, love.
- There you go.
I'm oh my way to Scarborough. Does
Scarborough still attract a lot of holidaymakers?
Yes. We go up into Scarborough for
day trips and everything.
- Were they carrying picnic baskets?
- Yeah, everything!
We're always busy. It's always nice to see all
the kids all being energetic and excited.
When they're coming back they're
great 'cos they're tired!
And they're just quiet oh the train, and it's
great. Going there, they're loud!
The immense popularity of this buoyant
beach-side town really took hold in 1845...
when the Scarborough to York
railway opened...
and brought with it waves
of Victorian tourists.
One of the attractions they flocked to was
the town's evocative 12th-century castle.
Built by a succession of medieval kings, this
royal fortress endured countless attacks.
In the middle of the 17th century it
served briefly as a prison.
And it's that period of the castle's
history that interests me.
What a Wonderful view!
Bradshaw's tells me that "Scarborough
Castle crowns a precipitous rock...
about three hundred feet
above the waters."
"As this old, feudal stronghold looks down
upon the sea at one side"...
"it has the town of Scarborough
stretched below it."
In 1666, George Fox, founder of the Society
of Friends, was imprisoned in the castle.
And so here we find the beauty of nature and the
ugliness of the conflicts of man, in the name of God.
Born in 1624, George Fox had a radical
approach to Christianity...
that gained him popularity and
persecution in equal measure.
Society of Friends members, known as Quakers,
relied on conscience as the basis of morality...
and believed in the equality of
men and women.
Many of the slave trade abolitionists, who joined
William Wilberforces campaign, were Quakers.
So was George Bradshaw.
So I can imagine that this Scarborough site
would have been significant for him.
Rachel Holland is an historic
property steward...
who I'm hoping will offer more details on how
George Fox came to incarcerated here.
What, as far as you know,
was his crime?
As far as I'm aware, his main crime was refusing
to swear an oath of allegiance to Charles ll.
At this point We've just finished the
Civil War, Cromwell's just died.
And we now have the Restoration,
Charles ll is now in power.
But this is a time when religion and politics
are very closely intertwined.
So for George Fox to be refusing to
swear allegiance to the king...
and refusing to swear any allegiance to any sort of
physical church, it was seen as very subversive.
What was Fox's objection to
swearing an oath?
Basically, he says in his diaries that
"any hypocrite can swear an oath".
He says that "loyalty is proven
by deeds, not by Words".
And at that time, when everybody's
already sworn one oath...
saying that they would uphold
Cromwell's rule...
then to turn around and say no, actually
We're going to swear an oath to Charles...
I can see Where George Fox
is coming from.
Their unconventional views enraged the
religious and political establishment.
And between 1662 and 1670, as many as six
thousand Quakers found themselves in jail.
Fox's spell at Scarborough Castle was just one
of eight prison sentences that he endured.
Rachel, I'm trying to imagine the conditions
of Fox's imprisonment.
Bradshaw's tells me that Fox speaks of three
different rooms that he successively occupied.
"One of them faced the sea."
"And laying much open, the wind drove
in the rain forcibly"...
"so that water came over his head and
ran about the room"...
"so that he was fain to skim it up
with a platter".
Terrible conditions!
Very terrible conditions. I believe, as well, that
that was the last room he was held in.
Which many sources believe to be Cockhill
Tower, which he called "Purgatory".
Prolonged exposure to the elements caused
Fox's fingers to swell to double their size.
And his health suffered greatly -
but his faith never faltered.
In 1666 he was released from Scarborough
Castle, and by the time of his death in 1691...
the Quaker movement had more than
fifty thousand followers.
How was he treated by those who
were given charge of him?
It was atrocious. The soldiers stole
his bread and his water.
But worse was the fact that he was treated
something like an animal in a zoo.
They gawked at him,
he says in his diaries.
And they tried to convert him back to
the standard faith at the time...
but it seems that he converted more
of them than they did of him.
I'd never thought of sixteen months in
Scarborough as the ultimate test of faith.
My time here is measured in minutes,
because I have a train to catch...
taking me west to the final destination
of today's journey...
which also has a
Quaker connection.
[GUARDS WHISTLE]
My next stop is What Bradshaw's calls
the "ancient capital of York"...
"and seat of the Primate of England. Situated at
the junction of the Three Ridings of Yorkshire"...
"oh the River Ouse. Boots, shoes, combs and
confectionery are the chief articles made here."
The men of chocolate, Joseph Rowntree, who
was a Quaker like George Bradshaw...
and Joseph Terry have left sweet
memories in York.
Its prime position on the
Rivers Ouse and Foss...
gave York easy access to imported goods,
including sugar and cocoa beans.
While the fertile Vale of York provided many other
essential confectionery ingredients.
When York also became a railway hub, in the
19th century, it had the perfect recipe...
for a lucrative sweet-making
industry.
I'm here to meet Alex Hutchinson,
historian and archivist for one of the
companies that took full advantage.
Here we are surveying the vast estate that was
Rowntrees. How did this enormous business begin?
Well, in 1862, Henry Isaac Rowntree took
over a local cocoa business...
and he didn't do a very good job. His
brother, Joseph, came to help him...
and he turned it from a drinking-cocoa business
into the huge sweet factory we know today.
That drinking cocoa, What was it like?
Was it a good product?
Their first cocoa would have been quite
unpalatable. It was seen as a health food.
They were using very, very primitive
manufacturing methods.
So it would have been quite
astringent and gritty.
Quakers are strongly associated with
chocolate-making. Why?
In 1816 we passed a law, the
Food and Drugs Act...
which prevented people from putting anything
poisonous or hazardous into food.
Before that you could put in
anything you liked.
And so people tended to trust Quakers
if they were buying food.
And with chocolate you would sometimes get
unscrupulous chocolate-makers adding wax or paint.
But a Quaker? Never!
At its peak, Rowntrees employed
fourteen thousand people.
As Quakers given to philanthropy and social
reform, they built a public library...
a park and theatre for their Workers.
And also created a model village, providing
affordable and decent homes...
as an alternative to
inner-city slums.
Known as New Earswick, the village was built
to include plenty of green space...
its own village hall - but no pub.
And it remains dry to this day.
There were three things that the
Rowntrees really objected to...
which they called
"concrete forms of sin"...
and that was alcoholism,
priestcraft, and Toryism.
- Ah! In ascending order!
- Yes.
When the entrepreneurial Joseph stepped
in to help his brother...
he set about expanding and modernising
the company's output.
He developed a range of chocolate products,
and his master-stroke was hiring a Frenchman...
to make fruit pastilles.
A trade dominated by
the French.
Today, in the factory's development kitchen,
I'm going back to Where it all began...
So we have the cocoa beans, which are roasted
and ground down into cocoa bits.
By helping Head Confectioner Vicky Geal to try
to replicate that original 1860s cocoa recipe.
Start grinding.
I'm just grinding these down - trying to get
them into a powder, am I?
Yep.
This takes quite a lot of
effort, doesn't it?
It does - it's very labour-intensive, which is why
We're glad now that We've got the machinery...
to be able to do this instead
of doing it by hand.
You didn't tell me that!
Right! Oh!
What we need to do now is add
your Icelandic moss.
Icelandic moss?!
Why would you add moss?
In the 1860s the Rowntrees added a kind
of lichen, called Icelandic moss...
to their cocoa, to improve the health
benefits - also to absorb the fat.
Uh. Eurgh!
Bitter aftertaste!
For teetotal Quakers like the Rowntrees, cocoa was
a wholesome alternative to the alcoholic drinks...
which they blamed for many of society's ills.
Well, it looks as appetising
as mud!
How does it taste?
It's full Of... bits!
But I don't know? You know, if you were a
Victorian, then it would have been new...
You'd probably be Willing to pay for that.
If you thought it was doing
you some good.
Oh, yeah. Well, I mean, it tastes bad enough that
you would think it was doing you some good!
Finishing today's journey with a nourishing
Victorian elixir seems rather fitting.
Even if it was a little lumpy
and bitter!
During the course of my travels
with Bradshaw's...
I've discovered now much we owe the
Victorians for our physical environment.
Our railway network, our sewers - even
our Parliament in London.
But we also inherited many
of their values.
By degrees, they built our
Parliamentary democracy...
abolished slavery and child labour,
universalised education...
hugely enlarging the rights of man.
The rights of women, however...
in particular the right to vote... were
left over to be dealt with in the 20th century.
Next time, I'll feel the heat of a
Victorian furnace.
Look at that - a nice little
flambe for us!
Learn how investigative journalism
was born.
He built the devil up, and then just
like any good newspaper man...
he took great delight in
knocking the devil down.
And hear how a remarkable Bible
survived down the centuries.
- It's quite the large book to lose, actually.
- It certainly is!
[END THEME]