Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 6, Episode 14 - Middlesbrough to Hexham - 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 arias-cross the country
a hundred and fifty years later...
it helps me to discover
the Britain of today.
My journey has brought me to
England's North East.
The great rivers Tees and Tyne, and
plentiful supplies of coal and iron...
made the North East a leader in the
world's first industrial revolution.
Centuries before that, the
region had led in piety...
rather than productivity - in a world of
monasteries rather than manufactories.
Following my guidebook...
all this week, my journey has taken
me up the backbone of England.
From Derbyshire and the industrial
East Midlands, I headed north...
into the rugged Pennine hills,
before travelling east...
to historic Yorkshire.
Now I'm heading up the coast to the
industrial conurbations of the north.
My journey will end on the holy
island of Lindisfarne.
On today's leg, I start in the industrial
powerhouse of Middlesborough...
before heading to the spiritual
home of the railway.
Continuing north, up the coast,
I'll then travel inland to Hexham...
where the North and
South Tyne rivers meet.
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 for centuries.
It's quite a large book to
lose, actually.
It certainly is!
My first stop will be Middlesbrough.
Bradshaw's tells me "it
contains excellent docks."
"A town which was founded
only in 1831
The impact of the port...
of coal, of iron and
of railways.
“Converted it rapidly into a
major conurbation.
- You're getting off at Middlesbrough?
- I am, yes.
Do you know the town Well?
Fairly well, actually, yes.
I run a manufacturing factory
there, so...
Ah. What are you manufacturing
these days?
Hydraulic engineering systems.
So manufacturing goes on
on Teeside?
It does. It does. It had
a fairly depressed time...
a few years ago, but
it's picking up.
It's picking up.
The area's got a lot of heritage of
knowledge in the marine sector.
So there's ah awful lot of good
engineers that we use in the factory.
That's very good. So,
traditions continue.
They certainly do.
[TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT]
"We will shortly be arriving at Middlesbrough..."
"where this train terminates."
My visit to Middlesbrough gets
off to the best possible start...
with a very beautiful station.
The ticket office is a Gothic
fantasy, with its...
“hammer beams, built in the
style of a baronial hall.
Middlesbrough was a hamlet on
the Tees until the 1830s.
That changed when Quaker
Joseph Pease...
extended the Stockton and
Darlington railway to the town...
to exploit the greatest
coal district in the World.
His railways served the North East
collieries, and linked them to the port.
I'm meeting Middlesbrough
historian Tosh Warwick...
to find out more.
Tosh, this is an extraordinary
landscape...
and vista, really, of Middlesbrough -
past and present.
We're here at
Middlesbrough Dock.
This was the hub of Middlesbrough's
industrial activity.
This is Where the early coal town
developed and then expanded...
with the iron and steel
industries later on.
Take me through What I'm
looking at here.
We're looking at Temenos - the
new structure there...
which is a recent installation.
Behind me we also have the landmark
Tees Transporter Bridge.
The tower - What did that
used to contain?
The clock tower was actually an operating
mechanism with hydraulic gates...
for the actual
Middlesbrough Dock.
Bolckow Vaughan ironworks...
the proprietors, did not Want
their workers clock-watching...
so it has only has three faces and
not facing the River Tees.
I'm very struck that
Bradshaw's tells me...
that the town was only
founded in 1831...
so the rate of growth
was phenomenal.
It was unheard of. Middlesbrough
was the Victorian boom town.
From a population of
just 25 in 1801...
we reached a population of
7,000 by 1851...
and exceeding 100,000
by the turn of the century.
The dock today is placid
and deserted.
But What was it like
in its heyday?
We would have been surrounded by
cranes. There would have been coal...
iron and steel being shipped
around the World.
It would've been a
hub of activity.
It was so much so that Middlesbrough
was hailed as the "Ironopolis".
German iron expert Henry Bolckow
masterminded its rapid growth...
to 140 foundries.
He exploited the huge deposits
of iron stone...
from the Cleveland Hills, and
transported it to the town.
The Railways played
an absolutely major role.
Every single ironworks...
every single major infrastructure
in Middlesbrough...
was underpinned by
the railways.
I personally know someone from
Middlesbrough who's very proud...
to go off to Sydney and climb
Sydney Harbour Bridge...
built by Dorman Long. And on
the steelwork there...
it has "Dorman Long,
Middlesbrough".
Vestiges of the city's proud
ironworking past remain.
I'm visiting William Lane Ltd, one of the
last cast-iron foundries in the city.
Here they produce
everything by hand...
and some of their biggest customers
are Britain's heritage railways.
They've made replacement parts...
for the North Yorkshire
Moors Railway...
and for the iconic
Flying Scotsman.
I'm meeting Stuart Duffey...
who's going to show me
how to cast iron.
- Are you new to the business?
- I am not, no.
I've been part of the fixings
since 1977...
so I've been here quite
some time.
You must have been very
young then!
- Started when I was fifteen.
- An apprentice?
As an apprentice.
We're going to make a part for a
steam engine: a carrot valve.
Like a tap, it's used to inject Water
into the engine's boiler.
Now, tell me this; if I did
this with ordinary sand..?
- Yes?
- The sand would be all...
you know, it would just
be crumbly?
It WOULD be crumbly.
Yes - so, What have you done
to the sand?
Well, it's a fine silica sand...
but We've added
a sodium silicate to it.
- Right...
- And We've mixed it...
and then you get something
you can work with.
Now, this is a rammer.
You need to do this twice.
Compacting the sand round
the pattern, really.
- So, up and down...
- Mmm hmm.
Very good.
Ah, that's very satisfying Work!
You could be our oldest apprentice!
[LAUGHTER]
Thinking of all my old enemies as I do this!
[LAUGHTER]
It may look like I'm making a pie...
but, in fact, it's the mould for
the hot molten metal.
Well, look at that!
So you're putting carbon dioxide
in there.
What's that doing?
Well, it's having a chemical reaction
with the sodium silicate.
- And that will make?
- That will harden it.
Harden it.
Well, that's really hardened up!
Hopefully...
Oh, What a beautiful mould.
To stop the sand from collapsing...
I need to coat the inside with
a special oily seal.
- Good!
- And there we go!
That is burning on now.
There are a lot of similarities to
cooking here, aren't there?
Look at that - a nice little
flambe for us!
Then there's a process that's
best left to the experts.
That metal looks very hot, and I
have a train to catch...
Will I ever see the product of What
I've been doing today?
If it was that urgent, Michael, we could
probably knock that out Within the hour.
- Would you?
- And I think you would catch your train.
But my train's going quicker
than that.
- Can you show me What I've done?
- I'll show you What you've done.
Ah!
Oh, isn't that delightful!
And that, ladies and gentlemen...
is Portillo's carrot valve!
Or, at least, one that was
made earlier.
Indeed, my train does await-
and I must press on.
[SQUEAL OF BRAKES]
I've joined the train at Middlesbrough
and I'm heading west.
My next stop is Darlington...
which, Bradshaw's tells me, is
"a market town in Durham"...
"on the river Skern, over which
there is a handsome bridge"...
"with a population engaged in the
cotton, flax and worsted mills."
"foundries, and glass Works."
With the coming of the railways,
Darlington found itself...
well-connected to two capitals:
London and Edinburgh.
A significant advantage at the dawning
of the Victorian age of information.
Before the 19th century,
most people in Britain...
lived a rural village life.
Quite suddenly, they could
travel long distances fast...
send letters overnight...
or commit urgent messages
to the telegraph.
And one of the biggest beneficiaries
of new technologies like these...
was the newspaper industry.
I'm meeting Chris Lloyd...
the deputy editor of the
Northern Echo, founded in 1870.
I'm thinking that Darlington was not a
bad place to found a newspaper...
because you could sell it in
Edinburgh and London?
That's right. It was at the
hub of the railway network.
Darlington is the birthplace
of the railways...
the Stockton and Darlington
Railway of 1825, from Which...
a network of railways sprang out.
And so you could buy the newspaper
at ten o'clock in the morning...
in London and in Edinburgh.
The paper in those days boasted that it
was the first truly national newspaper...
because all the
London-printed newspapers...
had to come up past Darlington
to reach Scotland.
Perhaps the paper's greatest success was
achieved under its second editor...
William Stead, who started at
the Northern Echo in 1871.
He was just 22 years old. He'd been
writing various hi-faluting articles...
from Where he worked on
the quayside in Newcastle...
sending them off to newspapers
across the north of England...
trying to get them published.
He got a couple published here...
and the proprietor liked
him so much...
that he Went up and
offered him the job.
And Stead had never been
to Darlington before in his life.
He'd never been in a
newspaper office in his life.
And he only knew one person down
here in distant Darlington, who was...
a congregational minister,
just like his father.
So he wrote to him - and I've got
the letter here.
It's April 1871.
We can tell that his mind
was made up.
He asks, "Where should I lodge?"
"What sort of house should I be in?"
But, really, his mind is made up,
because he says in the letter...
"What a glorious opportunity of
attacking the devil the job is."
And for Stead, any
establishment figure...
any outrage, was a devil - and
he built the devil up...
and then, just like any good
newspaper man...
he took great delight in
knocking the devil down.
I'm keen to find out about Stead's
work as an investigative journalist.
So, this is the Northern Echo's
library, here.
All our picture files, and all our
bound files of the archives.
And this one is from 1873.
And this is him at his
pomp, really.
He is creating an absolute sensation
here in March 1873.
It's about a mass murderess...
Mary Anne Cotton, who lives
down the road from here.
And she'd murdered about 21
of her friends, lovers, husbands...
anybody who she could kill...
and get her hands on their
life-assurance policies.
Stead was instrumental in convincing
the police to investigate the deaths...
for which Mary Cotton was
eventually hanged.
He was best known for his crusade
against child prostitution.
He campaigns vigorously to get the
age of consent raised...
to protect young children who are
being put to work in the brothels.
And it's a hugely
successful campaign...
with hundreds of thousands of people
turning out to support him...
to demand the Government do something
to stop this abuse of children.
Stead became so zealous in his
determination to get to the truth...
that he resorted to some very
unorthodox methods.
During the campaign he has
bought a 13-year old girl...
from her mother for £5.
He puts her to work in a brothel
in Regent Street.
- He puts her to Work?
- He puts her to work...
in a brothel in Regent Street,
and he writes a story...
about him being the girl's
first customer.
Then he had taken this
young girl to Paris...
where he had either held
her hostage, or kept her safe...
depending on your point of view...
whilst this maelstrom of outrage
burst out in London.
Stead was sentenced to three
months in prison...
but remained proud of the
consequences of his campaign.
Due to doing this, it created
such a sensation...
the whole of London
was inflamed...
and the government rushed through the
first Child Protection Act in the World.
Just a minute. Let me go
and have a look.
Chris has one final file
to show me.
This is Where we keep our
pre-computer packets of people.
National celebrities and otherwise.
Dead people are up at the
top, up there...
but you are still alive...!
- Oh, no...
- "Portillo, Michael".
What a cornucopia
of embarrassment it is!
Oh. Looking a bit stern!
What a young person you are!
My life flashes before me...
and I see my
obituary photograph!
That's enough talk of death!
I feel full of beans to
see Darlington...
in such a summery and
festive mood.
My overnight stop is
near Sunderland...
so I'm catching a Northern Rail train to
Newcastle, and changing there.
At the time of my Bradshaw's...
Roker was becoming a
tourist destination.
And the genteel
Victorian holidaymaker...
wasn't in the habit
of packing light.
It Wasn't unusual to
take a servant...
courier bags, Waist bags...
handbags, holdalls - even
a travelling bath.
I'm meeting local archivist
Norman Kirkland...
to fathom out why the Victorians Went
all hot for the cold North Sea.
- Michael, pleased to meet you.
- Good evening.
Um... I'm slightly confused.
Bradshaw's tells me about the
development of a new commercial dock.
On the other hand, I'm seeing a Victorian
resort. So which one was it, really?
In 1835/1836, Roker
was industrial.
It was the docks and
nothing else.
After the dock,
we got the resort.
The North Dock was built by the
great Victorian engineer...
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
The Dock Company accepted his
plan for a deep harbour...
at an estimated cost
of £30,000.
It opened on the
1st November 1837...
and the excavated spoil was used to build
the Victorian resort of "Roker-on-Sea".
That slope was built by the
Victorians, was it?
That's right. That slope was actually
put in by the landowner...
Hedworth Williamson, and We've now got
Wonderful access to the beach.
When the tourists got here, What
was there for them to do?
The major thing were
the beach huts.
They're basically huts on wheels,
sheds on wheels.
And the ladies would be brought
down to the Waterfront...
they'd go down the steps and
straight into the water.
Nobody would see them.
Half an hour in the water...
then back into the huts, and they'd
be taken by horse and cart...
back to the hotel.
What else?
Well, the main thing here,
really, was the spa.
They called it a "spa" - but it was
actually sea water.
They would pump sea Water up
to the hotel...
using big steam-driven pumps...
and the gentlemen would spend
one and sixpence...
and you could spend all day in one of
these Wonderful sea-water pumps.
Norman's making it sound
almost good enough to try...
but, for me, the warmth of my bed for
the night is more tempting.
Today I'm leaving Roker, and
travelling to Jarrow on Tyneside.
I've headed back to
Sunderland Station...
but, unlike Victorian travellers, I can
make use of Tyneside's Metro.
With sixty stations, it's one of the UK's most
extensive urban railway networks.
Bradshaw's promises me that in the
vicinity of Jarrow I'll find the remains...
of the monastery of which the
Venerable Bede was a monk.
He was venerated for his
studious habits...
which made him the father
of English history.
In the 19th century, Jarrow was
rapidly growing...
into one of the country's largest
shipbuilding centres.
But back in the seventh century...
Jarrow's focus was its monastery.
Founded in AD681, it's Where Bede
wrote his famous book...
"The Ecclesiastical History of
the English People".
I'm meeting Bede expert
Matt Storey.
Do we know much about who
this Bede was?
We don't know very much about
Bede himself.
All we know is from a short
autobiographical statement...
at the end of his
"Ecclesiastical History"...
which says he entered the
monastery at the age of seven...
to be educated and put under the charge
of the abbot, Benedict - and then of Ceolfrith.
He's our earliest written contemporary
source for the Romans, even...
the coming of the Angles, Saxons,
and the Jutes...
and for early
Anglo-Saxon England.
Was "England" the name used
for the country then?
No, it Wasn't. "England" didn't come for
another three centuries or so.
Bede was writing about
the "English people"...
a term, we think, that he coined to describe
a number of different cultures...
living in Britain at the time.
Researching and writing these books would
have been hugely time-consuming.
The scribing and illustration
used natural dyes on calfskin.
How did he collect sources
for this history?
We know that he had access
to a vast library...
because Bede is a very
good historian.
He cites the work that he
has access to.
He also had correspondence with
other monks in other monasteries...
which he used as the
basis for his work.
Bede rarely left the
monastery...
but his pious studies and reflective mind
opened a Window on Heaven and Earth.
Bede was writing about the fact that the
Earth was a sphere at a time when...
commonly, people thought that
the world was flat.
He was writing about
the fact that...
it was the Moon that controlled the
Earth and the tides when, again...
this was known, but
it Wasn't common belief.
The Victorian Church regonised
Bede's greatness...
and Jarrow became
a destination for pilgrims.
On the 1200th anniversary of
Bede's death, in 1935...
50,000 Catholics came to pay
homage to the Saint...
in ceremonies led by the Archbishops of
Westminster and Liverpool.
In the monastery's museum, there's a bible
that still attracts the devout.
It's called the
Codex Amiatinus...
and three copies were commissioned
by this monastery's Abbot Ceolfrith.
This is the earliest surviving copy
of the complete Bible in Latin.
Ceolfrith, towards the
end of his life...
set out to give this copy of
the Bible to the Pope.
Unfortunately, along the way, Ceolfrith
died - in Langres in Burgundy.
And, at that point, we seem to lose
the history of this remarkable bible.
It's quite a large book to
lose, actually.
It certainly is!
Fortunately, that bible resurfaced.
It's now in a library in Florence.
I'm privileged to have a glimpse
of this reproduction.
After changing from the Tyneside Metro
to the railway at Newcastle...
I'm heading for the final stop
on today's journey.
[TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT]
"We are now approaching Hexham."
Hexham is a picturesque
Roman market town.
The Newcastle and Carlisle
Railway Company...
brought the 63-mile long Tyne Valley
line to Hexham in 1838.
I've come to visit a famous
ginger-beer emporium.
And I've been brought to this
unlikely little alley!
And, I must say, in all of my railway journeys,
this must be the narrowest business...
that I've ever visited.
More than a hundred years ago, the
business began by chance.
When Thomas Fentiman
made a loan...
he was given, as security, a prized
recipe for ginger beer.
I'm meeting Eldon Robson,
Fentiman's great-grandson...
and the present-day owner.
I must say, I'm slightly amazed...
that you can be in the ginger-beer
business in such tiny premises!
I came through this tiny
crevice to get here.
Yeah.
Well, this is the office -
Hexham, Northumberland.
What we produce here are the flavours,
which are highly concentrated.
We do everything under complete,
sort of, secrecy...
and then we send this concentrated
flavour down to the brewers...
and they brew the full liquid for us,
and label and bottle them...
and then ship them off.
Why do you think Victorians would
have enjoyed ginger beer?
Well, ginger beer goes
back a long time.
The ginger spice was brought in either
from the Caribbean or China.
Many, many years ago, when ginger beer
was first made, it Went through...
a fermentation process, which ours
does now - the same process.
And this process was like a purification
of Water in those days.
And, I suppose, to a certain degree,
there's a big belief...
that these drinks had
health-giving properties.
By the 1840s, sales of ginger
beer were rocketing...
thanks to the growing
temperance movement.
Ginger beer was seen as a good
alternative to the "demon drink".
Portable ginger "fountains", often
very beautifully made...
started springing up
in the streets.
And in the north of England...
there were more than 1,000
ginger-beer trade names.
Big business, indeed.
In those days it would take about a
week to make the product.
Once you'd taken the stopper
off the stone jar...
you had about three days to drink it, otherwise
the second fermentation would start.
These days we carbonate, we
pasteurise the product...
so we now give it a good shelf life of
18 months - so the product will last.
And, unlike the old stone jars that
used to blow up on hot summer days...
that doesn't happen
anymore!
Today, Eldon's team works with
other flavours besides ginger.
Our starting point is elder-flowers
- which are collected locally.
- Aha!
- And here we go.
- They are fragrant, indeed.
- Very much so.
[COUGHING]
A bit... a bit pungent, as Well!
This is a very traditional process...
which would have been done
in Victorian days.
By taking these flowers, mixing them with
some sugar and lemon juice and water...
and then just letting
them infuse.
- They go all the Way in?
- All the Way in, yep.
And then give them a
stir around.
You only need about 20 flower heads
to make a gallon of cordial.
And, once again, I'm the
Willing guinea pig.
Bubbles bursting on the tongue.
Very strong taste of elderflower...
I think you're most of
the Way there!
A million Victorian housewives
can't be wrong.
Indeed.
Let's see What the discerning palates of
the Hexham Bowls Club make of it.
Have a little sample of that.
- This is very pleasant.
- Yeah? What is it?
What do you think it is?
Juniper berry?
Juniper berry? That's an
interesting guess.
- It's not pineapple?
- No - it's elderflower.
Elder-flower.
- Have you ever drunk elderflower before?
- Not knowingly.
Not knowingly!
[LAUGHTER]
And I was hoping to
bowl them over...
Time to head back to Newcastle's Central
Station to continue my journey.
William Stead's mass-circulation
Northern Echo shocked...
swung elections, and got
laws changed.
Within hours, his lurid prose was causing
sensations in Edinburgh and London.
By contrast, the Monks of St Paul's toiled for
years to produce a single copy of a Latin bible.
But Whereas Stead's newspapers
were tomorrow's chip paper...
the bibles handed down from Bede's
world are still influential today.
Next time, I explore the earliest surviving
Water-powered swing bridge.
We have no brakes - so
it's a guessing game!
I'm humbled by the courage of
a Victorian heroine.
All of this in the tumultuous sea
and wind and rain.
Absolutely.
And I learn about the science
of lime-burning.
The temperatures anything between 12 and 1500
degrees centigrade at this level.
[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 arias-cross the country
a hundred and fifty years later...
it helps me to discover
the Britain of today.
My journey has brought me to
England's North East.
The great rivers Tees and Tyne, and
plentiful supplies of coal and iron...
made the North East a leader in the
world's first industrial revolution.
Centuries before that, the
region had led in piety...
rather than productivity - in a world of
monasteries rather than manufactories.
Following my guidebook...
all this week, my journey has taken
me up the backbone of England.
From Derbyshire and the industrial
East Midlands, I headed north...
into the rugged Pennine hills,
before travelling east...
to historic Yorkshire.
Now I'm heading up the coast to the
industrial conurbations of the north.
My journey will end on the holy
island of Lindisfarne.
On today's leg, I start in the industrial
powerhouse of Middlesborough...
before heading to the spiritual
home of the railway.
Continuing north, up the coast,
I'll then travel inland to Hexham...
where the North and
South Tyne rivers meet.
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 for centuries.
It's quite a large book to
lose, actually.
It certainly is!
My first stop will be Middlesbrough.
Bradshaw's tells me "it
contains excellent docks."
"A town which was founded
only in 1831
The impact of the port...
of coal, of iron and
of railways.
“Converted it rapidly into a
major conurbation.
- You're getting off at Middlesbrough?
- I am, yes.
Do you know the town Well?
Fairly well, actually, yes.
I run a manufacturing factory
there, so...
Ah. What are you manufacturing
these days?
Hydraulic engineering systems.
So manufacturing goes on
on Teeside?
It does. It does. It had
a fairly depressed time...
a few years ago, but
it's picking up.
It's picking up.
The area's got a lot of heritage of
knowledge in the marine sector.
So there's ah awful lot of good
engineers that we use in the factory.
That's very good. So,
traditions continue.
They certainly do.
[TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT]
"We will shortly be arriving at Middlesbrough..."
"where this train terminates."
My visit to Middlesbrough gets
off to the best possible start...
with a very beautiful station.
The ticket office is a Gothic
fantasy, with its...
“hammer beams, built in the
style of a baronial hall.
Middlesbrough was a hamlet on
the Tees until the 1830s.
That changed when Quaker
Joseph Pease...
extended the Stockton and
Darlington railway to the town...
to exploit the greatest
coal district in the World.
His railways served the North East
collieries, and linked them to the port.
I'm meeting Middlesbrough
historian Tosh Warwick...
to find out more.
Tosh, this is an extraordinary
landscape...
and vista, really, of Middlesbrough -
past and present.
We're here at
Middlesbrough Dock.
This was the hub of Middlesbrough's
industrial activity.
This is Where the early coal town
developed and then expanded...
with the iron and steel
industries later on.
Take me through What I'm
looking at here.
We're looking at Temenos - the
new structure there...
which is a recent installation.
Behind me we also have the landmark
Tees Transporter Bridge.
The tower - What did that
used to contain?
The clock tower was actually an operating
mechanism with hydraulic gates...
for the actual
Middlesbrough Dock.
Bolckow Vaughan ironworks...
the proprietors, did not Want
their workers clock-watching...
so it has only has three faces and
not facing the River Tees.
I'm very struck that
Bradshaw's tells me...
that the town was only
founded in 1831...
so the rate of growth
was phenomenal.
It was unheard of. Middlesbrough
was the Victorian boom town.
From a population of
just 25 in 1801...
we reached a population of
7,000 by 1851...
and exceeding 100,000
by the turn of the century.
The dock today is placid
and deserted.
But What was it like
in its heyday?
We would have been surrounded by
cranes. There would have been coal...
iron and steel being shipped
around the World.
It would've been a
hub of activity.
It was so much so that Middlesbrough
was hailed as the "Ironopolis".
German iron expert Henry Bolckow
masterminded its rapid growth...
to 140 foundries.
He exploited the huge deposits
of iron stone...
from the Cleveland Hills, and
transported it to the town.
The Railways played
an absolutely major role.
Every single ironworks...
every single major infrastructure
in Middlesbrough...
was underpinned by
the railways.
I personally know someone from
Middlesbrough who's very proud...
to go off to Sydney and climb
Sydney Harbour Bridge...
built by Dorman Long. And on
the steelwork there...
it has "Dorman Long,
Middlesbrough".
Vestiges of the city's proud
ironworking past remain.
I'm visiting William Lane Ltd, one of the
last cast-iron foundries in the city.
Here they produce
everything by hand...
and some of their biggest customers
are Britain's heritage railways.
They've made replacement parts...
for the North Yorkshire
Moors Railway...
and for the iconic
Flying Scotsman.
I'm meeting Stuart Duffey...
who's going to show me
how to cast iron.
- Are you new to the business?
- I am not, no.
I've been part of the fixings
since 1977...
so I've been here quite
some time.
You must have been very
young then!
- Started when I was fifteen.
- An apprentice?
As an apprentice.
We're going to make a part for a
steam engine: a carrot valve.
Like a tap, it's used to inject Water
into the engine's boiler.
Now, tell me this; if I did
this with ordinary sand..?
- Yes?
- The sand would be all...
you know, it would just
be crumbly?
It WOULD be crumbly.
Yes - so, What have you done
to the sand?
Well, it's a fine silica sand...
but We've added
a sodium silicate to it.
- Right...
- And We've mixed it...
and then you get something
you can work with.
Now, this is a rammer.
You need to do this twice.
Compacting the sand round
the pattern, really.
- So, up and down...
- Mmm hmm.
Very good.
Ah, that's very satisfying Work!
You could be our oldest apprentice!
[LAUGHTER]
Thinking of all my old enemies as I do this!
[LAUGHTER]
It may look like I'm making a pie...
but, in fact, it's the mould for
the hot molten metal.
Well, look at that!
So you're putting carbon dioxide
in there.
What's that doing?
Well, it's having a chemical reaction
with the sodium silicate.
- And that will make?
- That will harden it.
Harden it.
Well, that's really hardened up!
Hopefully...
Oh, What a beautiful mould.
To stop the sand from collapsing...
I need to coat the inside with
a special oily seal.
- Good!
- And there we go!
That is burning on now.
There are a lot of similarities to
cooking here, aren't there?
Look at that - a nice little
flambe for us!
Then there's a process that's
best left to the experts.
That metal looks very hot, and I
have a train to catch...
Will I ever see the product of What
I've been doing today?
If it was that urgent, Michael, we could
probably knock that out Within the hour.
- Would you?
- And I think you would catch your train.
But my train's going quicker
than that.
- Can you show me What I've done?
- I'll show you What you've done.
Ah!
Oh, isn't that delightful!
And that, ladies and gentlemen...
is Portillo's carrot valve!
Or, at least, one that was
made earlier.
Indeed, my train does await-
and I must press on.
[SQUEAL OF BRAKES]
I've joined the train at Middlesbrough
and I'm heading west.
My next stop is Darlington...
which, Bradshaw's tells me, is
"a market town in Durham"...
"on the river Skern, over which
there is a handsome bridge"...
"with a population engaged in the
cotton, flax and worsted mills."
"foundries, and glass Works."
With the coming of the railways,
Darlington found itself...
well-connected to two capitals:
London and Edinburgh.
A significant advantage at the dawning
of the Victorian age of information.
Before the 19th century,
most people in Britain...
lived a rural village life.
Quite suddenly, they could
travel long distances fast...
send letters overnight...
or commit urgent messages
to the telegraph.
And one of the biggest beneficiaries
of new technologies like these...
was the newspaper industry.
I'm meeting Chris Lloyd...
the deputy editor of the
Northern Echo, founded in 1870.
I'm thinking that Darlington was not a
bad place to found a newspaper...
because you could sell it in
Edinburgh and London?
That's right. It was at the
hub of the railway network.
Darlington is the birthplace
of the railways...
the Stockton and Darlington
Railway of 1825, from Which...
a network of railways sprang out.
And so you could buy the newspaper
at ten o'clock in the morning...
in London and in Edinburgh.
The paper in those days boasted that it
was the first truly national newspaper...
because all the
London-printed newspapers...
had to come up past Darlington
to reach Scotland.
Perhaps the paper's greatest success was
achieved under its second editor...
William Stead, who started at
the Northern Echo in 1871.
He was just 22 years old. He'd been
writing various hi-faluting articles...
from Where he worked on
the quayside in Newcastle...
sending them off to newspapers
across the north of England...
trying to get them published.
He got a couple published here...
and the proprietor liked
him so much...
that he Went up and
offered him the job.
And Stead had never been
to Darlington before in his life.
He'd never been in a
newspaper office in his life.
And he only knew one person down
here in distant Darlington, who was...
a congregational minister,
just like his father.
So he wrote to him - and I've got
the letter here.
It's April 1871.
We can tell that his mind
was made up.
He asks, "Where should I lodge?"
"What sort of house should I be in?"
But, really, his mind is made up,
because he says in the letter...
"What a glorious opportunity of
attacking the devil the job is."
And for Stead, any
establishment figure...
any outrage, was a devil - and
he built the devil up...
and then, just like any good
newspaper man...
he took great delight in
knocking the devil down.
I'm keen to find out about Stead's
work as an investigative journalist.
So, this is the Northern Echo's
library, here.
All our picture files, and all our
bound files of the archives.
And this one is from 1873.
And this is him at his
pomp, really.
He is creating an absolute sensation
here in March 1873.
It's about a mass murderess...
Mary Anne Cotton, who lives
down the road from here.
And she'd murdered about 21
of her friends, lovers, husbands...
anybody who she could kill...
and get her hands on their
life-assurance policies.
Stead was instrumental in convincing
the police to investigate the deaths...
for which Mary Cotton was
eventually hanged.
He was best known for his crusade
against child prostitution.
He campaigns vigorously to get the
age of consent raised...
to protect young children who are
being put to work in the brothels.
And it's a hugely
successful campaign...
with hundreds of thousands of people
turning out to support him...
to demand the Government do something
to stop this abuse of children.
Stead became so zealous in his
determination to get to the truth...
that he resorted to some very
unorthodox methods.
During the campaign he has
bought a 13-year old girl...
from her mother for £5.
He puts her to work in a brothel
in Regent Street.
- He puts her to Work?
- He puts her to work...
in a brothel in Regent Street,
and he writes a story...
about him being the girl's
first customer.
Then he had taken this
young girl to Paris...
where he had either held
her hostage, or kept her safe...
depending on your point of view...
whilst this maelstrom of outrage
burst out in London.
Stead was sentenced to three
months in prison...
but remained proud of the
consequences of his campaign.
Due to doing this, it created
such a sensation...
the whole of London
was inflamed...
and the government rushed through the
first Child Protection Act in the World.
Just a minute. Let me go
and have a look.
Chris has one final file
to show me.
This is Where we keep our
pre-computer packets of people.
National celebrities and otherwise.
Dead people are up at the
top, up there...
but you are still alive...!
- Oh, no...
- "Portillo, Michael".
What a cornucopia
of embarrassment it is!
Oh. Looking a bit stern!
What a young person you are!
My life flashes before me...
and I see my
obituary photograph!
That's enough talk of death!
I feel full of beans to
see Darlington...
in such a summery and
festive mood.
My overnight stop is
near Sunderland...
so I'm catching a Northern Rail train to
Newcastle, and changing there.
At the time of my Bradshaw's...
Roker was becoming a
tourist destination.
And the genteel
Victorian holidaymaker...
wasn't in the habit
of packing light.
It Wasn't unusual to
take a servant...
courier bags, Waist bags...
handbags, holdalls - even
a travelling bath.
I'm meeting local archivist
Norman Kirkland...
to fathom out why the Victorians Went
all hot for the cold North Sea.
- Michael, pleased to meet you.
- Good evening.
Um... I'm slightly confused.
Bradshaw's tells me about the
development of a new commercial dock.
On the other hand, I'm seeing a Victorian
resort. So which one was it, really?
In 1835/1836, Roker
was industrial.
It was the docks and
nothing else.
After the dock,
we got the resort.
The North Dock was built by the
great Victorian engineer...
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
The Dock Company accepted his
plan for a deep harbour...
at an estimated cost
of £30,000.
It opened on the
1st November 1837...
and the excavated spoil was used to build
the Victorian resort of "Roker-on-Sea".
That slope was built by the
Victorians, was it?
That's right. That slope was actually
put in by the landowner...
Hedworth Williamson, and We've now got
Wonderful access to the beach.
When the tourists got here, What
was there for them to do?
The major thing were
the beach huts.
They're basically huts on wheels,
sheds on wheels.
And the ladies would be brought
down to the Waterfront...
they'd go down the steps and
straight into the water.
Nobody would see them.
Half an hour in the water...
then back into the huts, and they'd
be taken by horse and cart...
back to the hotel.
What else?
Well, the main thing here,
really, was the spa.
They called it a "spa" - but it was
actually sea water.
They would pump sea Water up
to the hotel...
using big steam-driven pumps...
and the gentlemen would spend
one and sixpence...
and you could spend all day in one of
these Wonderful sea-water pumps.
Norman's making it sound
almost good enough to try...
but, for me, the warmth of my bed for
the night is more tempting.
Today I'm leaving Roker, and
travelling to Jarrow on Tyneside.
I've headed back to
Sunderland Station...
but, unlike Victorian travellers, I can
make use of Tyneside's Metro.
With sixty stations, it's one of the UK's most
extensive urban railway networks.
Bradshaw's promises me that in the
vicinity of Jarrow I'll find the remains...
of the monastery of which the
Venerable Bede was a monk.
He was venerated for his
studious habits...
which made him the father
of English history.
In the 19th century, Jarrow was
rapidly growing...
into one of the country's largest
shipbuilding centres.
But back in the seventh century...
Jarrow's focus was its monastery.
Founded in AD681, it's Where Bede
wrote his famous book...
"The Ecclesiastical History of
the English People".
I'm meeting Bede expert
Matt Storey.
Do we know much about who
this Bede was?
We don't know very much about
Bede himself.
All we know is from a short
autobiographical statement...
at the end of his
"Ecclesiastical History"...
which says he entered the
monastery at the age of seven...
to be educated and put under the charge
of the abbot, Benedict - and then of Ceolfrith.
He's our earliest written contemporary
source for the Romans, even...
the coming of the Angles, Saxons,
and the Jutes...
and for early
Anglo-Saxon England.
Was "England" the name used
for the country then?
No, it Wasn't. "England" didn't come for
another three centuries or so.
Bede was writing about
the "English people"...
a term, we think, that he coined to describe
a number of different cultures...
living in Britain at the time.
Researching and writing these books would
have been hugely time-consuming.
The scribing and illustration
used natural dyes on calfskin.
How did he collect sources
for this history?
We know that he had access
to a vast library...
because Bede is a very
good historian.
He cites the work that he
has access to.
He also had correspondence with
other monks in other monasteries...
which he used as the
basis for his work.
Bede rarely left the
monastery...
but his pious studies and reflective mind
opened a Window on Heaven and Earth.
Bede was writing about the fact that the
Earth was a sphere at a time when...
commonly, people thought that
the world was flat.
He was writing about
the fact that...
it was the Moon that controlled the
Earth and the tides when, again...
this was known, but
it Wasn't common belief.
The Victorian Church regonised
Bede's greatness...
and Jarrow became
a destination for pilgrims.
On the 1200th anniversary of
Bede's death, in 1935...
50,000 Catholics came to pay
homage to the Saint...
in ceremonies led by the Archbishops of
Westminster and Liverpool.
In the monastery's museum, there's a bible
that still attracts the devout.
It's called the
Codex Amiatinus...
and three copies were commissioned
by this monastery's Abbot Ceolfrith.
This is the earliest surviving copy
of the complete Bible in Latin.
Ceolfrith, towards the
end of his life...
set out to give this copy of
the Bible to the Pope.
Unfortunately, along the way, Ceolfrith
died - in Langres in Burgundy.
And, at that point, we seem to lose
the history of this remarkable bible.
It's quite a large book to
lose, actually.
It certainly is!
Fortunately, that bible resurfaced.
It's now in a library in Florence.
I'm privileged to have a glimpse
of this reproduction.
After changing from the Tyneside Metro
to the railway at Newcastle...
I'm heading for the final stop
on today's journey.
[TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT]
"We are now approaching Hexham."
Hexham is a picturesque
Roman market town.
The Newcastle and Carlisle
Railway Company...
brought the 63-mile long Tyne Valley
line to Hexham in 1838.
I've come to visit a famous
ginger-beer emporium.
And I've been brought to this
unlikely little alley!
And, I must say, in all of my railway journeys,
this must be the narrowest business...
that I've ever visited.
More than a hundred years ago, the
business began by chance.
When Thomas Fentiman
made a loan...
he was given, as security, a prized
recipe for ginger beer.
I'm meeting Eldon Robson,
Fentiman's great-grandson...
and the present-day owner.
I must say, I'm slightly amazed...
that you can be in the ginger-beer
business in such tiny premises!
I came through this tiny
crevice to get here.
Yeah.
Well, this is the office -
Hexham, Northumberland.
What we produce here are the flavours,
which are highly concentrated.
We do everything under complete,
sort of, secrecy...
and then we send this concentrated
flavour down to the brewers...
and they brew the full liquid for us,
and label and bottle them...
and then ship them off.
Why do you think Victorians would
have enjoyed ginger beer?
Well, ginger beer goes
back a long time.
The ginger spice was brought in either
from the Caribbean or China.
Many, many years ago, when ginger beer
was first made, it Went through...
a fermentation process, which ours
does now - the same process.
And this process was like a purification
of Water in those days.
And, I suppose, to a certain degree,
there's a big belief...
that these drinks had
health-giving properties.
By the 1840s, sales of ginger
beer were rocketing...
thanks to the growing
temperance movement.
Ginger beer was seen as a good
alternative to the "demon drink".
Portable ginger "fountains", often
very beautifully made...
started springing up
in the streets.
And in the north of England...
there were more than 1,000
ginger-beer trade names.
Big business, indeed.
In those days it would take about a
week to make the product.
Once you'd taken the stopper
off the stone jar...
you had about three days to drink it, otherwise
the second fermentation would start.
These days we carbonate, we
pasteurise the product...
so we now give it a good shelf life of
18 months - so the product will last.
And, unlike the old stone jars that
used to blow up on hot summer days...
that doesn't happen
anymore!
Today, Eldon's team works with
other flavours besides ginger.
Our starting point is elder-flowers
- which are collected locally.
- Aha!
- And here we go.
- They are fragrant, indeed.
- Very much so.
[COUGHING]
A bit... a bit pungent, as Well!
This is a very traditional process...
which would have been done
in Victorian days.
By taking these flowers, mixing them with
some sugar and lemon juice and water...
and then just letting
them infuse.
- They go all the Way in?
- All the Way in, yep.
And then give them a
stir around.
You only need about 20 flower heads
to make a gallon of cordial.
And, once again, I'm the
Willing guinea pig.
Bubbles bursting on the tongue.
Very strong taste of elderflower...
I think you're most of
the Way there!
A million Victorian housewives
can't be wrong.
Indeed.
Let's see What the discerning palates of
the Hexham Bowls Club make of it.
Have a little sample of that.
- This is very pleasant.
- Yeah? What is it?
What do you think it is?
Juniper berry?
Juniper berry? That's an
interesting guess.
- It's not pineapple?
- No - it's elderflower.
Elder-flower.
- Have you ever drunk elderflower before?
- Not knowingly.
Not knowingly!
[LAUGHTER]
And I was hoping to
bowl them over...
Time to head back to Newcastle's Central
Station to continue my journey.
William Stead's mass-circulation
Northern Echo shocked...
swung elections, and got
laws changed.
Within hours, his lurid prose was causing
sensations in Edinburgh and London.
By contrast, the Monks of St Paul's toiled for
years to produce a single copy of a Latin bible.
But Whereas Stead's newspapers
were tomorrow's chip paper...
the bibles handed down from Bede's
world are still influential today.
Next time, I explore the earliest surviving
Water-powered swing bridge.
We have no brakes - so
it's a guessing game!
I'm humbled by the courage of
a Victorian heroine.
All of this in the tumultuous sea
and wind and rain.
Absolutely.
And I learn about the science
of lime-burning.
The temperatures anything between 12 and 1500
degrees centigrade at this level.
[END THEME]