Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 6, Episode 20 - Oakham to Cambridge - full transcript
[OPENING 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 now concluding a journey that began in
West Wales, and will end in East Anglia.
Today I want to learn about how the
Victorians pioneered moving images...
the forerunners to cinema
and television...
and now a Cambridge graduate developed
the most original theory since the creation.
This week I've travelled from east to
west across Bradshaw's Britain.
I began in Pembrokeshire and moved across
South Wales to Herefordshire...
and on to the Cotswolds.
I pass through Oxford, the city of dreaming
spires, and traverse Bedforshire.
And I will finish at another
academic citadel.
On this leg of my journey my
first stop will be Oakham...
from Where I'll head east,
to handsome Stamford...
then south to Peterborough,
before ending my journey...
at the great university city
of Cambridge.
Today I get to grips with a
Victorian melodrama.
It's a story about a signalman, who gets
the opportunity to either save his son...
or crash a train.
[HORRIFIED GASP]
Hear ghoulish hospital tales.
Something like an amputation would have
taken round about two to three minutes.
Have to work extremely fast!
And learn about the student days
of Charles Darwin.
These are the actual beetles that gave him
so much pleasure, and so much obsession...
when he was an undergraduate.
This is absolutely stunning!
My first stop will be Oakham
in Rutland.
Bradshaw's draws my attention
to “The Shire Hall”...
which “stands Within the ruined walls
of the old castle"...
"founded by the Ferriers family
soon after the Conquest."
"Over the gates are several gilded
horseshoes with the names of noblemen"...
"by Whom they had been given"...
"it being quite an immemorial custom
to ask every peer"...
"who visits the town for one,
or else to pay a fine!”
All this talk of horses, and gifts,
has me quite intrigued.
Oakham is a market town dating
back to Anglo-Saxon times.
At its heart lies a
16th-century "buttercross"...
where butter was traded and
clergymen preached.
Not far from the town is a
traditional blacksmiths...
which now produces ornamental
and architectural ironwork.
It's hot often called upon to produce a
gilded horseshoe, but retains the skill to do so.
I'm meeting the owner,
John Spence.
- Hello John, very good to see you.
- Likewise.
The Bradshaw's guide tells me about
these horseshoes at Shire Hall.
I understand you know a
bit about them.
Yes, I've made a few horseshoes
in my time there.
By the way, how long has your family
business been going, then'?
Well, We've been going as
a business since 1896.
I'm fifth generation - continuous
father to son, father to son.
And how many horseshoes have you
personally made for the castle?
Four horseshoes.
And who were they for?
Well, there was Prince Charles, Princess
Alexandra, and the last one...
was the Duchess of Cornwall,
who was just in recently.
John's company made its first horseshoe
for the Shire Hall in 1981...
in a manner recognisable to
blacksmiths down the ages.
My horseshoe today has been
out outwith a laser.
But that's Where the high-tech stops - the
letters have been welded on...
and will be decorated by hand.
John, that is absolutely lovely. "Great Railway
Journeys 2014", and a fantastic locomotive.
Is this finished?
Yes, well the letters need
painting black.
Well, you've gone to so much trouble,
would you mind if I...
just give you a hand by painting
a couple of these letters?
Have you got any pointers for me,
What should I be doing here?
Don't get too much paint on your brush;
they're quite intricate, and quite small as well.
Quite fiddly.
Let's hope that my paintwork will pass
muster at Oakham Castle's Shire Hall...
one of England's finest examples of late
12th-century domestic architecture.
Mr Leader of
Rutland County Council...
though I am not a peer, sir,
but the most humble commoner...
I have the honour to present a
horseshoe to Oakham Castle.
Thank you so much. Normally it's a member
of the nobility we'd receive this from...
but today We're very happy to receive it from
a member of the nobility of the media!
Thank you very much indeed.
This is the most
extraordinary building.
Tell me, how did this tradition of
the horseshoes begin?
It seems to date right back from
when the hall was built...
by the Norman barons, only a hundred
years after the Norman Conquest.
They were the barons who were
actually in charge of...
shoeing all the horses of
William the Conqueror's army.
And they had this tradition that if
somebody passed across their lands...
and wouldn't pay their tolls, they would
take a horseshoe off of them...
so they couldn't get through.
So it seems to have grown up from this, into
this incredible tradition that We've got here.
The very oldest one that we have is
the 1470 one, from Edward IV...
given during the Wars of the Roses,
an incredible amount of time ago.
And in the middle here, clearly Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth ll. Queen Victoria here?
She is indeed - there's a matching pair of two
horseshoes, oh the left, Queen Victoria's mother...
and the one on the right, Queen Victoria herself
when she was still Princess Alexandrina Victoria.
The hall is very sparsely furnished, but
What are these benches here for?
This is the oldest sewing courtroom in
the country, dating back to 1229.
It is still used, it's used every other
year, we have a visit from a judge.
- What, regular trials?
- Regular trial.
I can imagine that some severe justice has
been dispensed here over the centuries.
Now look, I feel very
embarrassed about this...
because I didn't know there was
such distinguished company...
and I brought my
humble horseshoe.
What will you do with it, have you got
a basement you can put it in?!
Certainly not!
But we do have a spot over there,
which is in a prominent position...
beneath the Duke of Wellington, which we
thought would be appropriate for you.
I'm... overwhelmed.
Thank you.
A distinguished spot,
amongst illustrious company.
An honour indeed!
My journey takes me eastwards towards
Stamford in Lincolnshire.
“Stamford”, says my Bradshaw's, “is pleasantly
situated on the banks of the Welland river."
"It is remarkably picturesque.” So much
so that it's often been used...
as a location for film making.
And I want to understand how the Victorians
whetted our appetite for the movies.
I shall begin around the “many
handsome public edifices"...
"among which we may mention the
theatre and the assembly rooms”.
Stamford today is a prosperous market
town and a magnet for tourists...
who come to appreciate its medieval inns
and handsome Georgian stone buildings.
Jill Collinge is to be my guide.
There are lots of places that were
pretty in Victorian times...
but which are not so
very much today.
Why do you think Stamford
remains so beautiful?
It's because of the railways.
The Great Northern Railway should have
been coming through the town.
There was opposition from the local lord of
the manor, the Marquess of Exeter...
who was very opposed to change.
Earl Fitzwilliam in Peterborough really
encouraged the Great Northern...
to go to Peterborough,
which of course it did.
This caused great trouble amongst the
businessmen of the day in Stamford...
but, nevertheless, because of
these building restrictions...
“Stamford avoided any ravages of
the industrial revolution.
So today you see very much an 18th
and early Victorian town.
And for that very reason it has been chosen
again and again as a location for filming.
George Eliot's novel, "Middlemarch", was filmed by
the BBC here about 18 or so years ago...
and it was a Wonderful backdrop for
the film to take place.
Very little had to be changed
in the town.
And "Pride and Prejudice", the most
recent filming, has been done here.
On two main streets that are used often for
the filming. It was a beautiful backdrop.
That was the 1790s that that was being
filmed in. So We're very lucky.
I'm heading for what were, in the 18th century,
the Assembly Rooms on St George's Square.
And also home to one of England's
earliest provincial theatres.
Today, it's an arts centre.
Richard Rigby knows all about a
very early form of cinema...
which was enormously popular
in Bradshaw's day...
the Magic Lantern.
I quite like to dress extrovertly but
What are you dressed as?
I dress as a showman. I'm a magic lanternist,
and we all put on a bit of a show.
I love the hat particularly. Do you
mind if Wear your spare?
Oh, I'd be delighted, it'll go very
well with your jacket.
Right - I'm ready for the show.
So magic lanternists, they would go from town
to town giving performances, would they?
Yes. They were known as
"Galantee" men.
They'd go all over Europe and they would
project onto any whitewashed Wall...
or just a sheet of muslin.
Of course, it had to be dark, because all
they had as ah illuminant was a candle.
What's the earliest slide
you've got?
Ah! That's this one here.
It's a panorama.
"Christmas dinner at the
big house".
That is slid through the lantern, and
hence the word "slide".
[LAUGHTER]
And that goes right back to about
1640, 1650, that sort of time.
What other sorts of moving image
did they develop?
We've got Mr Pickwick here, and see
if you can get him to skip for me.
[LAUGHTER]
Isn't that lovely?
Marvellous!
Magic Lantern performances became
hugely popular entertainment...
and played an important part in
educating Victorian society.
They were used to tell Bible stories, and
by the Temperance movement...
as well as to demonstrate
scientific principles.
Remember, these were more
important than books...
because most people couldn't read,
but they could understand a picture.
Richard has offered to put on a magic-lantern
show for me today in the old theatre...
opened first in 1768 and
re-opened in 1978.
We've set up a little
Victorian melodrama.
It's a story about a signalman, who
has a most dreadful dilemma.
He gets the opportunity to either
save his son or crash a train.
[MICHAEL GASPS]
Would you like to do the reading
and I'll operate the lantern?
- I would love to.
- Excellent!
"I been in the box from a youngster,
though I'd never felt the strain"...
"of the lives which my right 'and
held, in every passing train."
"That day the missus Went shopping,
took the train to the city."
"So she settled to leave me Johnny,
the boy would be safe with me."
"It was rare 'ard work at Christmas,
with trains from 'ere and yon."
"With a start I thought of Johnny,
and I saw the boy was gone."
“Twas a hundred lives or Johnny's.
Oh, 'eaven! What should I do?"
"On the wind came the Words, 'Your duty!
To that you must always be true.'"
"She'd seen him just as the engine of
the Limited closed my view"...
"and she leapt on the line and saved 'im,
just as the train dashed through."
Happy ending.
Fantastic Victorian melodrama
brought to life on the big screen.
After a good night's sleep I'm
heading back to the station.
I've heard that there's a bookshop that
could be of particular interest to me.
And I can't resist.
Do you deal in antique books about
trains as well as modern books?
Yes, yes we do. That's how
the business started.
I wonder whether there are any
old copies of Bradshaw's here?
Aha!
Bradshaw!
Timetable for November 1896.
I always think a timetable for 1896 is
somewhat limited in its usefulness.
Well, it's not useful for today, but
it is an historical document.
It shows the passenger services
as they were at that time.
Well, let me give you back that very precious
Bradshaw, as I continue my journey with mine.
A great pleasure to
see you. Bye bye.
From Stamford my train will take
me out of Lincolnshire...
south east to Cambridgeshire and
the city of Peterborough.
Bradshaw's is not exactly enticing
about Peterborough.
"The country is flat and uninteresting in winter.
It has but one church besides the cathedral"...
"which is the only object
of interest."
But, more relevantly, it tells me that
Peterborough's on the Great Northern line...
where three or four other
lines strike off.
At this important junction I think it might
be the right place to think about...
the conditions of Victorian
railway Workers.
And in particular, What happened to
them when they were injured...
during the course of
their dangerous work.
With the opening of the line to Peterborough by
the London and Birmingham Railway, in 1845...
the cathedral city
began to expand.
The Great Northern line arrived five
years later, and transformed it...
from a market town to
an industrial centre.
The area became Britain's leading producer
of bricks - clay being plentiful in the area.
Despite Bradshaw's reservations, I think the city
rather grand, with an abundance of stately buildings.
I'm on my Way to one now.
Opened in the centre of town in 1857, the
Peterborough Infirmary was the city's first hospital.
Today the building houses the
city's museum.
But evidence of its former use
has been preserved.
I've come to meet Stuart Orme,
to find out more.
Stuart, this lovely building doesn't
feel like an infirmary.
It has the feel of an elegant
town house.
Well, it was an elegant town house, of course,
before becoming the first hospital in Peterborough.
And you'll have come in through
the front door...
which was the main entrance for
emergency patients, and also...
for men coming into
the hospital.
The back door, just down here at
the bottom of the staircase...
which is now the entrance to
our art gallery...
that was the Women's entrance - so
Victorian values, of course...
men and Women having
separate entrances...
so there's no naughty touching going
on as patients inside the building!
From the outset, the main users of the
hospital were railwaymen injured at work.
So vulnerable were
they to accidents...
that they and their families began ah
early form of health insurance.
They paid a penny a week
into a medical fund.
The injuries suffered by railway
Workers, toiling amid heavy machinery...
all too often resulted in
peremptory amputations.
Upstairs, the hospital's original operating
theatre has been preserved.
Ah!
Absolutely macabre and creepy!
It's chilling to imagine conditions
for patients here.
Although of course, this is
far more sophisticated...
than your railwayman in the 1850s
would have been used to.
This is actually dating to the 1890s and
the beginnings of modern surgery.
Back in the 1850s you would've been treated
in the patients' Waiting room downstairs.
So you imagine people sitting there,
Waiting to see their doctors...
a curtain pulled across the room, and
somebody brought in for an amputation...
on the other side
of the curtain.
Which wouldn't have been
a pleasant prospect...
for either of the people
concerned, I would suspect.
And certainly, for railway Workers,
working in dirty railway yards...
a significant problem is going
to be of infection.
So, therefore, the only solution you've really got
is to actually amputate the limb altogether.
And the operations themselves
would have been very crude.
So with a sort of surgical
knife like this...
being used to sort of sever your
Way through the flesh...
so you could get to the layers
of bone underneath.
Generally speaking, something
like an amputation...
would have taken around about
two to three minutes.
Have to work extremely fast,
and extremely precise...
because you're quite literally worried about
your patients either dying of shock...
or bleeding to death on the operating table
because, of course, they're conscious.
So... once you have got
through the flesh...
then, of course, you move on to
removing the bone underneath.
You've left behind a flap of skin,
behind, which you can fold over...
and hopefully create a
pad for the wound.
During Queen Victoria's reign,
medicine passed many milestones...
as research and
experimentation advanced.
One of the earliest developments, of
course, was the use of anaesthetics...
as a result of which you get the
use of these sorts of things.
Place this over the nose and
mouth of the patient...
and then you can put a few drops of
chloroform on to the outside...
and they're out for the count.
Meaning that you can do much more
sophisticated invasive surgery...
and you don't have to worry about the
patient immediately expiring from shock.
But the biggest concern in medical
practice was the risk of infection.
During the 1860s, Doctor Joseph Lister
began to use carbolic acid...
to disinfect operating theatres.
So What he does is he arranges
Within his surgical procedures...
that there is a sort of
dilute spray...
five percent carbolic, sprayed from
something that looks like...
a kind of brass
garden sprayer...
that sprayed all over the room,
literally saturating...
the patients, the nurses,
the doctors...
everything in carbolic. But at least
it kills the germs.
By the end of the 19th century there is a
realisation that you can go one stage further...
and rather than just killing the germs,
you can try and eradicate them...
and make sure they're not
there in the first place.
Hence now We've got nice white, clean surfaces
with the walls in here. White clean floor.
It makes it much easier to
keep the place clean...
and make sure that there are ho
germs in here in the first place.
How big a change does
it make, then?
Back in the 1830s you probably stood, at best,
a fifty-fifty chance of surviving an operation.
By the 1890s it's about a two-and-a-half
percent death rate.
So it's basically a dramatic
shift in half a century.
So the Victorians preside over the most
enormous advance in surgery?
Absolutely! It's one of those kind of quantum
leap periods in technology, if you like...
in terms of surgery, surgical technique and, of
course, importantly, survival rates thereafter.
It seems that the Victorians established the
principles of theatre practice as we know it today.
The final leg of my journey takes me south east,
to my undergraduate stomping ground.
“The University of Cambridge”, says Bradshaw's,
“is second to no other in Europe"...
"in any single department of literature,
and in mathematics has no rivals”.
I'm on my Way to Christ's College, which
Bradshaw's tells me was founded in 1442...
and has two courts,
one rebuilt by Inigo Jones.
The purpose of the University is to
teach its students to think.
I'm going to Christ's in pursuit of one
who thought back to first principles...
to the very origins of life.
Cambridge is a small and
architecturally beautiful city...
which grew up as an inland
port on the River Cam.
The mix of colleges, churches, bridges and gardens
have made it an attractive and popular place to visit.
Founded in 1209, the university
today has thirty-one colleges.
Charles Darwin came to
Christ's College in 1828.
I want to learn about the author of
"On the Origin of Species".
Most of us know Charles Darwin from the photograph
of him as ah older man with a big, bushy beard.
But the Charles Darwin who had rooms
at Christ's looked like this.
And the intellect that developed the theory
of evolution was nurtured here.
I'm heading to the handsome library, which
holds over 80,000 books and manuscripts...
and serves students, fellows,
researchers and staff.
I believe it also hold records of
Darwin's student days.
- Amelie, hello.
- Hello.
College librarian Amelie Roper has agreed
to show me some items of interest.
So here we have letters documenting his
great passion for beetle collecting.
So here we have a letter to his cousin Fox.
So you can see it begins "My dear Fox"...
and then he's saying "I am dying by inches
from not having anyone to talk to about insects"!
- That's marvellous, isn't it?
- It's lovely, isn't it?
Now a change of handwriting here,
is this someone different?
No, this is still Darwin - but this is some
thirty years later, so this is 1858 how.
And this actually records the time when
his son, William, started at Christ's...
and this is a very
evocative letter.
"I was in old court... middle staircase on right
hand on going into court, up one flight"...
"right-hand door -
and capital rooms they were."
I'm keen to see these
"capital rooms"...
and there I've arranged to meet the curator
of insects, Dr William Foster...
of the University Museum
of Zoology.
- Okay, so here we are.
- Thank you.
Charles Darwin's undergraduate rooms -
and beautifully preserved!
Darwin studied for a Bachelor of
Arts degree at Christ's...
and his interest in natural
sciences began as a hobby.
Rumour had it that initially he Wasn't a
particularly conscientious student...
enjoying the finer things of life,
like hunting and dining.
Where does the story
begin, William?
Well, the story begins with Darwin
being at Cambridge...
and, as you've already heard, his big
passion was collecting beetles.
I mean, nothing else that he did at
Cambridge excited him so much.
These are the actual beetles that
gave him so much pleasure...
and so much obsession, when
he was an undergraduate.
This is absolutely stunning to see so many...
well, hundreds of them in there!
It was very fashionable for
biologists in that period...
to collect things in a kind
of competitive Way.
Beetles are good. Lots of species, easy to
preserve, and people were collecting them.
In 1831, Darwin set sail
aboard HMS Beagle.
During the two-year voyage around the world
he collected thousands of specimens...
among them, Galapagos finches.
Darwin noticed that the songbirds on
different islands in the Galapagos...
while similar, showed variations in size,
beaks and claws from island to island.
He would later conclude that, because the
islands are isolated from each other...
and from the mainland...
the finches on each island had adapted
to local conditions over time.
I think the importance of the Beagle finches
to Darwin's ideas of evolution...
- has been hugely exaggerated.
- Really?
He himself was a little bit unsure about the
identifications of What island they came from...
so he didn't want to erect any kind of false
hypotheses oh the basis of the finches.
It was more that his theory
helped explain the finches...
than the finches helped
explain his theory.
After the Beagle voyage, Darwin spent eight
years studying marine invertebrates.
From 1846 to 1854 he worked on
barnacles, Cirripedia.
By really studying one group...
he began to realise that the boundary
between species was not...
as immutable, and absolute, as
everybody had thought at the time.
This work oh the variation in a species helped
him to formulate his theory of evolution...
incorporated in the famous book that
changed the world's view of life.
I am rather in awe of this object here.
This is the first edition...
of "On the Origin of
Species", 1859.
All things considered, What is the
significance of this book?
I think this book is the most
important book ever written.
After this nothing was ever
the same again.
Human beings were no longer,
could no longer...
consider themselves special, at the
centre of the universe.
We are one species amongst
millions, evolved from them...
and things will evolve from us.
Everything changed after this.
My journey that began in
West Wales ends here.
As we know from our own age, progress
in communications is revolutionary.
In the 19th century it was the
spread of the railways...
and other developments, such as in
photography, as I saw in Swansea.
But nothing is as powerful
as an idea.
At a time when religions of
the Bible were universal...
the theory of a graduate of this
college, Charles Darwin...
shook Bradshaw's world
to its roots.
The scholarship of the Victorians is
their most important legacy.
[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 now concluding a journey that began in
West Wales, and will end in East Anglia.
Today I want to learn about how the
Victorians pioneered moving images...
the forerunners to cinema
and television...
and now a Cambridge graduate developed
the most original theory since the creation.
This week I've travelled from east to
west across Bradshaw's Britain.
I began in Pembrokeshire and moved across
South Wales to Herefordshire...
and on to the Cotswolds.
I pass through Oxford, the city of dreaming
spires, and traverse Bedforshire.
And I will finish at another
academic citadel.
On this leg of my journey my
first stop will be Oakham...
from Where I'll head east,
to handsome Stamford...
then south to Peterborough,
before ending my journey...
at the great university city
of Cambridge.
Today I get to grips with a
Victorian melodrama.
It's a story about a signalman, who gets
the opportunity to either save his son...
or crash a train.
[HORRIFIED GASP]
Hear ghoulish hospital tales.
Something like an amputation would have
taken round about two to three minutes.
Have to work extremely fast!
And learn about the student days
of Charles Darwin.
These are the actual beetles that gave him
so much pleasure, and so much obsession...
when he was an undergraduate.
This is absolutely stunning!
My first stop will be Oakham
in Rutland.
Bradshaw's draws my attention
to “The Shire Hall”...
which “stands Within the ruined walls
of the old castle"...
"founded by the Ferriers family
soon after the Conquest."
"Over the gates are several gilded
horseshoes with the names of noblemen"...
"by Whom they had been given"...
"it being quite an immemorial custom
to ask every peer"...
"who visits the town for one,
or else to pay a fine!”
All this talk of horses, and gifts,
has me quite intrigued.
Oakham is a market town dating
back to Anglo-Saxon times.
At its heart lies a
16th-century "buttercross"...
where butter was traded and
clergymen preached.
Not far from the town is a
traditional blacksmiths...
which now produces ornamental
and architectural ironwork.
It's hot often called upon to produce a
gilded horseshoe, but retains the skill to do so.
I'm meeting the owner,
John Spence.
- Hello John, very good to see you.
- Likewise.
The Bradshaw's guide tells me about
these horseshoes at Shire Hall.
I understand you know a
bit about them.
Yes, I've made a few horseshoes
in my time there.
By the way, how long has your family
business been going, then'?
Well, We've been going as
a business since 1896.
I'm fifth generation - continuous
father to son, father to son.
And how many horseshoes have you
personally made for the castle?
Four horseshoes.
And who were they for?
Well, there was Prince Charles, Princess
Alexandra, and the last one...
was the Duchess of Cornwall,
who was just in recently.
John's company made its first horseshoe
for the Shire Hall in 1981...
in a manner recognisable to
blacksmiths down the ages.
My horseshoe today has been
out outwith a laser.
But that's Where the high-tech stops - the
letters have been welded on...
and will be decorated by hand.
John, that is absolutely lovely. "Great Railway
Journeys 2014", and a fantastic locomotive.
Is this finished?
Yes, well the letters need
painting black.
Well, you've gone to so much trouble,
would you mind if I...
just give you a hand by painting
a couple of these letters?
Have you got any pointers for me,
What should I be doing here?
Don't get too much paint on your brush;
they're quite intricate, and quite small as well.
Quite fiddly.
Let's hope that my paintwork will pass
muster at Oakham Castle's Shire Hall...
one of England's finest examples of late
12th-century domestic architecture.
Mr Leader of
Rutland County Council...
though I am not a peer, sir,
but the most humble commoner...
I have the honour to present a
horseshoe to Oakham Castle.
Thank you so much. Normally it's a member
of the nobility we'd receive this from...
but today We're very happy to receive it from
a member of the nobility of the media!
Thank you very much indeed.
This is the most
extraordinary building.
Tell me, how did this tradition of
the horseshoes begin?
It seems to date right back from
when the hall was built...
by the Norman barons, only a hundred
years after the Norman Conquest.
They were the barons who were
actually in charge of...
shoeing all the horses of
William the Conqueror's army.
And they had this tradition that if
somebody passed across their lands...
and wouldn't pay their tolls, they would
take a horseshoe off of them...
so they couldn't get through.
So it seems to have grown up from this, into
this incredible tradition that We've got here.
The very oldest one that we have is
the 1470 one, from Edward IV...
given during the Wars of the Roses,
an incredible amount of time ago.
And in the middle here, clearly Her Majesty
Queen Elizabeth ll. Queen Victoria here?
She is indeed - there's a matching pair of two
horseshoes, oh the left, Queen Victoria's mother...
and the one on the right, Queen Victoria herself
when she was still Princess Alexandrina Victoria.
The hall is very sparsely furnished, but
What are these benches here for?
This is the oldest sewing courtroom in
the country, dating back to 1229.
It is still used, it's used every other
year, we have a visit from a judge.
- What, regular trials?
- Regular trial.
I can imagine that some severe justice has
been dispensed here over the centuries.
Now look, I feel very
embarrassed about this...
because I didn't know there was
such distinguished company...
and I brought my
humble horseshoe.
What will you do with it, have you got
a basement you can put it in?!
Certainly not!
But we do have a spot over there,
which is in a prominent position...
beneath the Duke of Wellington, which we
thought would be appropriate for you.
I'm... overwhelmed.
Thank you.
A distinguished spot,
amongst illustrious company.
An honour indeed!
My journey takes me eastwards towards
Stamford in Lincolnshire.
“Stamford”, says my Bradshaw's, “is pleasantly
situated on the banks of the Welland river."
"It is remarkably picturesque.” So much
so that it's often been used...
as a location for film making.
And I want to understand how the Victorians
whetted our appetite for the movies.
I shall begin around the “many
handsome public edifices"...
"among which we may mention the
theatre and the assembly rooms”.
Stamford today is a prosperous market
town and a magnet for tourists...
who come to appreciate its medieval inns
and handsome Georgian stone buildings.
Jill Collinge is to be my guide.
There are lots of places that were
pretty in Victorian times...
but which are not so
very much today.
Why do you think Stamford
remains so beautiful?
It's because of the railways.
The Great Northern Railway should have
been coming through the town.
There was opposition from the local lord of
the manor, the Marquess of Exeter...
who was very opposed to change.
Earl Fitzwilliam in Peterborough really
encouraged the Great Northern...
to go to Peterborough,
which of course it did.
This caused great trouble amongst the
businessmen of the day in Stamford...
but, nevertheless, because of
these building restrictions...
“Stamford avoided any ravages of
the industrial revolution.
So today you see very much an 18th
and early Victorian town.
And for that very reason it has been chosen
again and again as a location for filming.
George Eliot's novel, "Middlemarch", was filmed by
the BBC here about 18 or so years ago...
and it was a Wonderful backdrop for
the film to take place.
Very little had to be changed
in the town.
And "Pride and Prejudice", the most
recent filming, has been done here.
On two main streets that are used often for
the filming. It was a beautiful backdrop.
That was the 1790s that that was being
filmed in. So We're very lucky.
I'm heading for what were, in the 18th century,
the Assembly Rooms on St George's Square.
And also home to one of England's
earliest provincial theatres.
Today, it's an arts centre.
Richard Rigby knows all about a
very early form of cinema...
which was enormously popular
in Bradshaw's day...
the Magic Lantern.
I quite like to dress extrovertly but
What are you dressed as?
I dress as a showman. I'm a magic lanternist,
and we all put on a bit of a show.
I love the hat particularly. Do you
mind if Wear your spare?
Oh, I'd be delighted, it'll go very
well with your jacket.
Right - I'm ready for the show.
So magic lanternists, they would go from town
to town giving performances, would they?
Yes. They were known as
"Galantee" men.
They'd go all over Europe and they would
project onto any whitewashed Wall...
or just a sheet of muslin.
Of course, it had to be dark, because all
they had as ah illuminant was a candle.
What's the earliest slide
you've got?
Ah! That's this one here.
It's a panorama.
"Christmas dinner at the
big house".
That is slid through the lantern, and
hence the word "slide".
[LAUGHTER]
And that goes right back to about
1640, 1650, that sort of time.
What other sorts of moving image
did they develop?
We've got Mr Pickwick here, and see
if you can get him to skip for me.
[LAUGHTER]
Isn't that lovely?
Marvellous!
Magic Lantern performances became
hugely popular entertainment...
and played an important part in
educating Victorian society.
They were used to tell Bible stories, and
by the Temperance movement...
as well as to demonstrate
scientific principles.
Remember, these were more
important than books...
because most people couldn't read,
but they could understand a picture.
Richard has offered to put on a magic-lantern
show for me today in the old theatre...
opened first in 1768 and
re-opened in 1978.
We've set up a little
Victorian melodrama.
It's a story about a signalman, who
has a most dreadful dilemma.
He gets the opportunity to either
save his son or crash a train.
[MICHAEL GASPS]
Would you like to do the reading
and I'll operate the lantern?
- I would love to.
- Excellent!
"I been in the box from a youngster,
though I'd never felt the strain"...
"of the lives which my right 'and
held, in every passing train."
"That day the missus Went shopping,
took the train to the city."
"So she settled to leave me Johnny,
the boy would be safe with me."
"It was rare 'ard work at Christmas,
with trains from 'ere and yon."
"With a start I thought of Johnny,
and I saw the boy was gone."
“Twas a hundred lives or Johnny's.
Oh, 'eaven! What should I do?"
"On the wind came the Words, 'Your duty!
To that you must always be true.'"
"She'd seen him just as the engine of
the Limited closed my view"...
"and she leapt on the line and saved 'im,
just as the train dashed through."
Happy ending.
Fantastic Victorian melodrama
brought to life on the big screen.
After a good night's sleep I'm
heading back to the station.
I've heard that there's a bookshop that
could be of particular interest to me.
And I can't resist.
Do you deal in antique books about
trains as well as modern books?
Yes, yes we do. That's how
the business started.
I wonder whether there are any
old copies of Bradshaw's here?
Aha!
Bradshaw!
Timetable for November 1896.
I always think a timetable for 1896 is
somewhat limited in its usefulness.
Well, it's not useful for today, but
it is an historical document.
It shows the passenger services
as they were at that time.
Well, let me give you back that very precious
Bradshaw, as I continue my journey with mine.
A great pleasure to
see you. Bye bye.
From Stamford my train will take
me out of Lincolnshire...
south east to Cambridgeshire and
the city of Peterborough.
Bradshaw's is not exactly enticing
about Peterborough.
"The country is flat and uninteresting in winter.
It has but one church besides the cathedral"...
"which is the only object
of interest."
But, more relevantly, it tells me that
Peterborough's on the Great Northern line...
where three or four other
lines strike off.
At this important junction I think it might
be the right place to think about...
the conditions of Victorian
railway Workers.
And in particular, What happened to
them when they were injured...
during the course of
their dangerous work.
With the opening of the line to Peterborough by
the London and Birmingham Railway, in 1845...
the cathedral city
began to expand.
The Great Northern line arrived five
years later, and transformed it...
from a market town to
an industrial centre.
The area became Britain's leading producer
of bricks - clay being plentiful in the area.
Despite Bradshaw's reservations, I think the city
rather grand, with an abundance of stately buildings.
I'm on my Way to one now.
Opened in the centre of town in 1857, the
Peterborough Infirmary was the city's first hospital.
Today the building houses the
city's museum.
But evidence of its former use
has been preserved.
I've come to meet Stuart Orme,
to find out more.
Stuart, this lovely building doesn't
feel like an infirmary.
It has the feel of an elegant
town house.
Well, it was an elegant town house, of course,
before becoming the first hospital in Peterborough.
And you'll have come in through
the front door...
which was the main entrance for
emergency patients, and also...
for men coming into
the hospital.
The back door, just down here at
the bottom of the staircase...
which is now the entrance to
our art gallery...
that was the Women's entrance - so
Victorian values, of course...
men and Women having
separate entrances...
so there's no naughty touching going
on as patients inside the building!
From the outset, the main users of the
hospital were railwaymen injured at work.
So vulnerable were
they to accidents...
that they and their families began ah
early form of health insurance.
They paid a penny a week
into a medical fund.
The injuries suffered by railway
Workers, toiling amid heavy machinery...
all too often resulted in
peremptory amputations.
Upstairs, the hospital's original operating
theatre has been preserved.
Ah!
Absolutely macabre and creepy!
It's chilling to imagine conditions
for patients here.
Although of course, this is
far more sophisticated...
than your railwayman in the 1850s
would have been used to.
This is actually dating to the 1890s and
the beginnings of modern surgery.
Back in the 1850s you would've been treated
in the patients' Waiting room downstairs.
So you imagine people sitting there,
Waiting to see their doctors...
a curtain pulled across the room, and
somebody brought in for an amputation...
on the other side
of the curtain.
Which wouldn't have been
a pleasant prospect...
for either of the people
concerned, I would suspect.
And certainly, for railway Workers,
working in dirty railway yards...
a significant problem is going
to be of infection.
So, therefore, the only solution you've really got
is to actually amputate the limb altogether.
And the operations themselves
would have been very crude.
So with a sort of surgical
knife like this...
being used to sort of sever your
Way through the flesh...
so you could get to the layers
of bone underneath.
Generally speaking, something
like an amputation...
would have taken around about
two to three minutes.
Have to work extremely fast,
and extremely precise...
because you're quite literally worried about
your patients either dying of shock...
or bleeding to death on the operating table
because, of course, they're conscious.
So... once you have got
through the flesh...
then, of course, you move on to
removing the bone underneath.
You've left behind a flap of skin,
behind, which you can fold over...
and hopefully create a
pad for the wound.
During Queen Victoria's reign,
medicine passed many milestones...
as research and
experimentation advanced.
One of the earliest developments, of
course, was the use of anaesthetics...
as a result of which you get the
use of these sorts of things.
Place this over the nose and
mouth of the patient...
and then you can put a few drops of
chloroform on to the outside...
and they're out for the count.
Meaning that you can do much more
sophisticated invasive surgery...
and you don't have to worry about the
patient immediately expiring from shock.
But the biggest concern in medical
practice was the risk of infection.
During the 1860s, Doctor Joseph Lister
began to use carbolic acid...
to disinfect operating theatres.
So What he does is he arranges
Within his surgical procedures...
that there is a sort of
dilute spray...
five percent carbolic, sprayed from
something that looks like...
a kind of brass
garden sprayer...
that sprayed all over the room,
literally saturating...
the patients, the nurses,
the doctors...
everything in carbolic. But at least
it kills the germs.
By the end of the 19th century there is a
realisation that you can go one stage further...
and rather than just killing the germs,
you can try and eradicate them...
and make sure they're not
there in the first place.
Hence now We've got nice white, clean surfaces
with the walls in here. White clean floor.
It makes it much easier to
keep the place clean...
and make sure that there are ho
germs in here in the first place.
How big a change does
it make, then?
Back in the 1830s you probably stood, at best,
a fifty-fifty chance of surviving an operation.
By the 1890s it's about a two-and-a-half
percent death rate.
So it's basically a dramatic
shift in half a century.
So the Victorians preside over the most
enormous advance in surgery?
Absolutely! It's one of those kind of quantum
leap periods in technology, if you like...
in terms of surgery, surgical technique and, of
course, importantly, survival rates thereafter.
It seems that the Victorians established the
principles of theatre practice as we know it today.
The final leg of my journey takes me south east,
to my undergraduate stomping ground.
“The University of Cambridge”, says Bradshaw's,
“is second to no other in Europe"...
"in any single department of literature,
and in mathematics has no rivals”.
I'm on my Way to Christ's College, which
Bradshaw's tells me was founded in 1442...
and has two courts,
one rebuilt by Inigo Jones.
The purpose of the University is to
teach its students to think.
I'm going to Christ's in pursuit of one
who thought back to first principles...
to the very origins of life.
Cambridge is a small and
architecturally beautiful city...
which grew up as an inland
port on the River Cam.
The mix of colleges, churches, bridges and gardens
have made it an attractive and popular place to visit.
Founded in 1209, the university
today has thirty-one colleges.
Charles Darwin came to
Christ's College in 1828.
I want to learn about the author of
"On the Origin of Species".
Most of us know Charles Darwin from the photograph
of him as ah older man with a big, bushy beard.
But the Charles Darwin who had rooms
at Christ's looked like this.
And the intellect that developed the theory
of evolution was nurtured here.
I'm heading to the handsome library, which
holds over 80,000 books and manuscripts...
and serves students, fellows,
researchers and staff.
I believe it also hold records of
Darwin's student days.
- Amelie, hello.
- Hello.
College librarian Amelie Roper has agreed
to show me some items of interest.
So here we have letters documenting his
great passion for beetle collecting.
So here we have a letter to his cousin Fox.
So you can see it begins "My dear Fox"...
and then he's saying "I am dying by inches
from not having anyone to talk to about insects"!
- That's marvellous, isn't it?
- It's lovely, isn't it?
Now a change of handwriting here,
is this someone different?
No, this is still Darwin - but this is some
thirty years later, so this is 1858 how.
And this actually records the time when
his son, William, started at Christ's...
and this is a very
evocative letter.
"I was in old court... middle staircase on right
hand on going into court, up one flight"...
"right-hand door -
and capital rooms they were."
I'm keen to see these
"capital rooms"...
and there I've arranged to meet the curator
of insects, Dr William Foster...
of the University Museum
of Zoology.
- Okay, so here we are.
- Thank you.
Charles Darwin's undergraduate rooms -
and beautifully preserved!
Darwin studied for a Bachelor of
Arts degree at Christ's...
and his interest in natural
sciences began as a hobby.
Rumour had it that initially he Wasn't a
particularly conscientious student...
enjoying the finer things of life,
like hunting and dining.
Where does the story
begin, William?
Well, the story begins with Darwin
being at Cambridge...
and, as you've already heard, his big
passion was collecting beetles.
I mean, nothing else that he did at
Cambridge excited him so much.
These are the actual beetles that
gave him so much pleasure...
and so much obsession, when
he was an undergraduate.
This is absolutely stunning to see so many...
well, hundreds of them in there!
It was very fashionable for
biologists in that period...
to collect things in a kind
of competitive Way.
Beetles are good. Lots of species, easy to
preserve, and people were collecting them.
In 1831, Darwin set sail
aboard HMS Beagle.
During the two-year voyage around the world
he collected thousands of specimens...
among them, Galapagos finches.
Darwin noticed that the songbirds on
different islands in the Galapagos...
while similar, showed variations in size,
beaks and claws from island to island.
He would later conclude that, because the
islands are isolated from each other...
and from the mainland...
the finches on each island had adapted
to local conditions over time.
I think the importance of the Beagle finches
to Darwin's ideas of evolution...
- has been hugely exaggerated.
- Really?
He himself was a little bit unsure about the
identifications of What island they came from...
so he didn't want to erect any kind of false
hypotheses oh the basis of the finches.
It was more that his theory
helped explain the finches...
than the finches helped
explain his theory.
After the Beagle voyage, Darwin spent eight
years studying marine invertebrates.
From 1846 to 1854 he worked on
barnacles, Cirripedia.
By really studying one group...
he began to realise that the boundary
between species was not...
as immutable, and absolute, as
everybody had thought at the time.
This work oh the variation in a species helped
him to formulate his theory of evolution...
incorporated in the famous book that
changed the world's view of life.
I am rather in awe of this object here.
This is the first edition...
of "On the Origin of
Species", 1859.
All things considered, What is the
significance of this book?
I think this book is the most
important book ever written.
After this nothing was ever
the same again.
Human beings were no longer,
could no longer...
consider themselves special, at the
centre of the universe.
We are one species amongst
millions, evolved from them...
and things will evolve from us.
Everything changed after this.
My journey that began in
West Wales ends here.
As we know from our own age, progress
in communications is revolutionary.
In the 19th century it was the
spread of the railways...
and other developments, such as in
photography, as I saw in Swansea.
But nothing is as powerful
as an idea.
At a time when religions of
the Bible were universal...
the theory of a graduate of this
college, Charles Darwin...
shook Bradshaw's world
to its roots.
The scholarship of the Victorians is
their most important legacy.
[END THEME]