Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 6, Episode 7 - Deptford to West Silverton - 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 industries, society
and leisure time.
As I arias-cross the country,
150 years later...
it helps me to discover
the Britain of today.
I'm undertaking a series of journeys
in and around London.
Which, at the time of my
railway handbook...
was the epicentre of the biggest empire
that the world had ever known.
In the century before my
Bradshaw's guide...
the foundations of Britain's Wealth were
laid by scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs.
London's riches depended upon
the River Thames.
Narrow enough to provide a
highway for the capital...
deep enough to despatch ocean-going
ships, to carry trade...
and project military might
around the globe.
Today I start in the east of the capital, Where the
city's port launched many an imperial adventure.
Starting in Deptford, I'll explore
maritime Greenwich...
before uncovering Britain's military
might at Woolwich Arsenal.
Finally I'll delve beneath the Thames,
surfacing in the Docklands...
which were dramatically expanded
around the time of my guide.
Along the way, I'll visit the celebrated ship that
supplied Victorian Britain with its national drink.
Every journey back from China, she was
bringing six hundred tons of tea.
That was enough tea to make over two
hundred million cups!
Taste a by-product of 19th-
century global trade.
Deliciously warm, as though it had just come
off a hot, sticky toffee pudding.
And learn about the nation's
top award for gallantry.
And, this one... is made from the
barrel you're leaning on.
Really?!
Curiously, the first railway in London
was built a decade...
after the first steam-pulled trains had run
between Stockton and Darlington.
The pioneering line that brought rail
travel to the capital...
was the London and Greenwich railway.
And the first stretch to open, in 1836, linked
Bermondsey with Deptford.
Bradshaw's tells me that "the principal object of
attraction at Deptford is the dockyard..."
which has three building slips and is chiefly
used as a victualling yard..."
the river being crowded
with transports."
This would be the place, then, to meet
every class of society...
from the poorest beggar to the
richest ship-owner.
Built on a remarkable viaduct
comprising sixty million bricks...
the railway transformed the
Deptford landscape.
Meanwhile, beneath its arches,
the advent of the Age...
of Steam heralded
extraordinary social upheaval.
Driven by the Victorian spirit of enquiry...
one man revealed the starkly contrasting
fortunes of Deptford's population.
Historical tour guide, Sean Patterson,
knows his story.
Sean, I'm here in Deptford to talk about
Charles Booth. Who was he?
Charles Booth was a Victorian
businessman and philanthropist.
He'd heard that in the Whitechapel area around a quarter
of families were living below the poverty line.
He thought that was nonsense
- and he decided to...
conduct a survey to see for
himself just how bad it was.
Suspecting that poverty in Whitechapel had been
exaggerated, Booth was shocked to discover...
that a third of households
lived in penury.
He determined to map the
rest of the capital.
How did he conduct this survey?
What was the method?
Well, the method was to Walk
the streets of London.
Ultimately, the whole of What we would call zones
one and two on the travel map now.
A huge area... and to make notes as he Went
about the conditions that people were living in.
In 1899, Booth and his researchers
came to Deptford.
Where they discovered an extraordinary range
of social classes living almost cheek by jowl.
What We've got here is the
seven categories.
As you can see there, the yellow and then going
down to semi-criminal at the bottom!
But, interestingly, here
you see this line of red.
That's the high street which We're
on at the moment.
Well, that's pretty good, that's just
one down from the top.
But look, we just go off the side...
and we go straight down into dark blue
with a line of black along it...
which is almost... well, it is the
opposite end of the scale.
So Booth produces, really, this very
eloquent rainbow of poverty.
- Shall we move on?
- Certainly.
Deptford had long owed its livelihood to the
dockyard, described in my Bradshaw's.
It dated back to Henry VIII's reign and had been
the source of great Wealth over the years.
A very attractive terrace of houses.
From What period?
These houses are from the early
to mid-18th century.
From the Georgian heyday of Deptford, if you
like. These were built for sea captains.
But by the time of Booth's survey, in the
1890s, the river had silted up...
making it difficult for Deptford to compete with
newer docks more suited to modern steam vessels.
Dockers, struggling to find work, were soon also
suffering the consequences of railway expansion.
Where are we now on
your map?
Well, We're in this area here. Which, as you can see,
is dark blue with even some black lines along it.
Very close to the high street, Where we
were earlier - just a few yards away.
But gosh, it's an awful lot
worse just here.
The policeman that Booth is with describes this
as "the worst part of Deptford."
Where this 1930s estate is, there used to
be a street called Addey Street.
And the policeman notes that morning, at 5am,
he Went into a house to arrest a man...
and found father, mother and five
children living in one room.
And this is What is happening in this area
that's been squeezed by...
what We're standing under, which is
Britain's largest listed structure...
the eight hundred or so railway arches
from London Bridge to Greenwich.
By Booth's time the London to Greenwich railway
had been joined by others cries-crossing Deptford.
Seeking land for their lines, the railway
companies had gobbled up cheap housing...
adding to the overcrowding, depicted
so vividly by Booth.
As well as producing his maps, which helped to
change the Way Victorians thought about poverty...
Booth campaigned for an old-age pension -
which was eventually introduced in 1909.
This is really a very Victorian story,
isn't it?
It is the scientific approach. The collection of
evidence, the presentation of a case...
the drawing of conclusions and
the call for action.
Absolutely! And it's Booth's skill that allows him
to take that meticulous, forensic approach.
I'm now continuing my journey on the
driverless Docklands Light Railway...
from Deptford Bridge into the heart
of maritime Greenwich...
which Bradshaw's tells me "presents a
striking appearance from the river."
Soon after the London and Greenwich
railway was built...
daytrippers from the city were coming here to
admire the glorious, historic architecture.
Greenwich has long been associated
with the Royal Navy.
Bradshaw's mentions the
Royal Observatory.
Warships would anchor Within sight, to set their
chronometers to Greenwich Mean Time.
And their sailors might retire to the Royal Naval
Hospital, designed by Sir Christopher Wren.
But I'm drawn today to the town
by a merchant vessel.
A tall ship, whose motto characterised the
spirit of the British Empire at its peak.
"Where there's a will,
there's a way."
Morning. Which Way to the
Cutty Sark, please?
Come with me, please.
If you're walking straight...
and then left, you will see the boat on
your right-hand side.
- It's quite big isn't it? You can't miss it!
- Yeah, it is quite big.
- Have a nice day, thank you.
- Thank you.
Greenwich remains a popular
tourist destination.
The sights pull in two and a half million
visitors per year.
And Victorian Britain's most
familiar trading ship...
is an essential stop on
their itineraries.
Curator Jessica Lewis is showing
me the ropes.
It's a fantastic view from here,
isn't it?
- Looking up at the mast and the spars - is that right?
- Yes, yes, that's right.
The ship had eleven miles of rigging and three
thousand square meters of canvas.
Launched in 1869, Cutty Sark
was built for speed...
to a bold design that combined a
sleek, streamlined hull...
with one of the biggest sail areas
of any ship of her day.
The ship's crew spent half its time
maintaining her - even in high seas.
But Jessica is letting me off with
some light duties.
So What exactly am I
doing with this?
So, it's just a little bit of modern
marine oil...
and you just need to work it into the block.
A little bit, that's it. It goes quite far.
And this is to moisten the wood, to keep it
flexible, so it can carry on doing its job.
Because, what, the sun is blasting
away at this'?
Yes, particularly over here
on the port side.
What kind of puzzles me is why, in 1869,
you would build a sailing ship...
which is Way into the age of
steam, isn't it?
Well, Cutty Sark's owner, John Willis,
was thinking, why Would...
I pay for coal when I can get
wind power for free?
Why would I want to give up some of that valuable
cargo space with engines and the storage of fuel...
when I could just do it all by the
power of the Wind?
Known as "clippers", super-fast
sailing ships like Cutty Sark...
carried one of Victorian Britain's
most prized commodities.
Cutty Sark's cargo of tea was worth over two
hundred and seventy-two thousand pounds then...
and that's about eighteen point five million
pounds in today's money.
So every journey back from China she was
bringing six hundred tons of tea.
That was enough tea to make over
two hundred million cups!
1869 - the year of Cutty Sark's launch - was also
the year the Suez Canal was opened.
It provided steam ships with
a short out to Asia.
But it was impossible to sail through the Canal, so
clippers like Cutty Sark, had to slog around Africa.
Steamships were coming back
from China in sixty days...
and Cutty Sark is only coming back in about a
hundred days, a hundred and nine days.
Cutty Sark's maiden voyage, in 1870, there were
fifty-nine sailing ships loading tea in China that year.
Her last voyage, in 1877,
there were just nine.
With Cutty Sark's tea trade with
China scuppered, in the 1880s
her owner diverted her to
the Australian wool trade.
Her daring captain made the gruelling,
long-distance voyage work in her favour...
charting a course around Cape Horn,
Where Cutty Sark harnessed...
the strongest, and most dangerous,
winds in the World.
Her fastest passage was seventy-three
days, from Sydney to London.
But she was regularly making the fastest passage
of the season by about three or four weeks.
And she became known as the
fastest ship of her day.
Well... I declare this vessel shipshape!
Let's go below.
In 1922 her days as a trading
vessel were over...
and Cutty Sark was eventually put to
rest here in Greenwich, in 1954.
But that Wasn't the end
of her troubles.
In November 2007, an electrical fire broke out at
the start of a six-year project to conserve her.
Luckily a lot of original structure...
half of the hull planks, all of the
masts, the deck-houses had...
all been removed to storage
at the time of the fire.
And so they were saved?!
Absolutely.
And we were very lucky. And the quality of the
original construction withstood the neat of the blaze.
Today, this glorious blade of a clipper, that
once out through the world's oceans...
with its zinc and copper-bottomed hull,
is on view for all of us to enjoy.
And so, in the 21st Century,
We're still able to appreciate...
this extraordinary piece
of Victorian engineering.
Absolutely. This project was about
ensuring Cutty Sark has a future...
a sustainable future, so that future
generations can enjoy the ship.
From a restored relic of
the Victorian docks...
I'm moving on to a more
modern vessel.
The Thames Clipper - part of Transport for
London's network along the River Thames.
Following a special London edition
of Bradshaw's...
I'm heading east, towards ah institution that
provided firepower for the mighty British Empire.
According to Bradshaw's
London guide...
"the government establishments of Woolwich are
acknowledged to be the finest in the world."
"At the Royal Arsenal, the
manufacture of implements...
of Warfare is carried on upon
the most extensive scale."
"Casting the largest pieces of ordnance, for which
steam power has lately been applied."
"The Arsenal contains no less than twenty-four
thousand pieces of ordnance..."
and three million cannon-balls piled
up in huge pyramids."
During the largely peaceful 19th
century, the Victorian...
attitude to war was summed
up in an 1878 song...
"We don't Want to fight, but
by jingo if we do, We've...
got the ships, the men
and the money too!"
In Bradshaw's day, this important military installation
was situated just a few steps from the jetty.
Today, it's the home of the Royal Artillery
Museum, and Paul Evans is my guide.
Paul, why did the Government establish
its arsenal at Woolwich?
It's established here because of
an accident. An accident.
Took place in 1716 in a
gun foundry, over in London.
Gun founding is a really impressive thing.
Molten metal, pouring over it.
It looks fantastic but it's got to be done right.
They Went down one day, and
took a party of MPs With...
them to see it, to show it off,
and their sand was damp.
And there was an explosion.
It killed seventeen of them.
And the powers that be said "You can't do
this in the centre of London."
"This is the centre of the world!"
"You need to go somewhere Where
you've got space to do this."
"Want you close enough to London
that you can come and talk to...
us, but Want you far enough
away to be safe - Woolwich."
By the time of my guidebook, this was the primary
site for ordnance manufacture in the country.
Railways were at its heart.
We are walking down the trackway Where
the Royal Arsenal had its own railway.
It was attached to the main line and it's making
thousands and thousands of tons of material...
so it needs that railway to
be able to move it.
To our left here We've got Crimean War
vintage store rooms and worksheds...
that were state of the art in the
Crimean War. Built specifically...
so you could work in them
twenty-four hours a day.
To the right We've got the brass
foundry building.
So, all of these buildings are making
parts of the whole.
And you put them on the railways,
move it to the dockyards, drop...
them on to the ships, down
the Thames and off to war.
The Crimean conflict of 1854 changed public
perceptions of the military in Britain.
Thanks in part to the new system of telegraph
Wires that had grown up alongside the railways...
this was the first ever media war.
The disastrous charge of the Light
Brigade shocked the nation.
Equipment and clothing shortages - and
outbreaks of cholera and typhoid fever...
contributed to the deaths of
twenty thousand men.
The officer class was vilified in the press,
While the ordinary soldier became a national hero.
But at this time, only high-ranking officers could
be awarded medals for gallantry.
Queen Victoria herself agreed
that this had to change.
One of the consequences of the Crimean War
was people started asking the question...
"What is there, that we give our soldiers,
as the ultimate prize for gallantry?"
And you get the Victoria Cross.
The Victoria Cross. And What actually
is that made of - that medal?
Victoria Cross is made
of gunmetal.
And this one... is made from the
barrel you're leaning on.
Really?!
Absolutely.
And then it was awarded to men from
the Crimean War, was it?
Yes. Originally you had to have survived the
action for which you were put in for it.
If you died, a little line Went in under your
Mentioned in Dispatches saying...
"Would have been awarded the
Victoria Cross, had he lived."
And then Queen Victoria lined up her heroes,
did she, and actually presented these VCs?
Absolutely. And she did more than that. She
designed the majority of the medal as well.
It's very much her personal medal.
I'm continuing my journey from
Woolwich station...
which was first linked to the metropolis
by rail as far back as 1849.
Today, this south-eastern corner of London is
also connected to the capital's heart...
via the Docklands Light Railway.
And soon there'll be a third, much
faster way, to get into town.
Travelling with my Bradshaw's, I've often been
nostalgic for the Victorian railway age...
wondering why we can't do things on the
same scale and with that imagination.
Well, now I've been partly answered,
because they're building Crossrail.
An immense railway undertaking, beginning at
Heathrow and in Berkshire in the West...
passing under the West End,
the City and Canary Wharf...
and popping out into Essex
and Kent in the east.
It is the largest construction
project in Europe.
The recently completed tunnel,
from Woolwich under the...
river to north Woolwich,
isn't yet open to the public.
But there's one locomotive
already running here.
I'm joining construction manager
Barrymore Nicholls, on board.
Ah! First class!
Barrymore, I'm guessing this is not the final
design for the new Crossrail trains?
No. This is the railway we use to help
construct the tunnel.
You make pretty good use of tracks
in the construction process.
Very much so. It's a logistics exercise to keep
the tunnel-boring machine going.
For a year, this locomotive has been hauling tons of
reinforced concrete, used to build the tunnel walls.
But first the gigantic boring machine, quaintly
dubbed "Mary", has to do her bit.
This is us approaching the back of
"Mary" - the tunnelling machine...
that's come all the Way from Plumstead through
the Woolwich box and under the Thames.
It's a little strange to me because We've
have a year of frenetic activity...
and now it's being carved
up to be pulled out.
Oh, you sound quite emotional
about that!
It is Weird.
"Mary's" cutter head is seven metres
in diameter...
while the whole machine is an impressive
one hundred and ten metres long.
Here we are at the build area, it's just
behind the cutter head.
So the backup starts behind.
Everything in front is about digging, everything
behind is about logistics to keep the digging going.
The Way this works is we
build a ring...
the rings are one point six
metres long.
There's eight pieces that go together to
make a ring. They fit together.
They've got bolts and dowels
that fit between them.
And What happens is, we pick them up from the
erector, there's a vacuum pad on the bottom...
that can spin through three hundred and sixty
degrees, place them anywhere in the circle.
We finish the ring, all eight pieces. And then it's
self-supporting - it's like the arch of a bridge.
And how often have you
done that here?
We've done that three thousand, four
hundred and nine times now.
I'm now surfacing on the north side of the
Thames, to see how "Mary" has fared.
So here we see the teeth of the cutter head that's
brought you to the other side of the Thames.
Yep, a bit rusty and battered,
"Mary" did very well.
When Isambard Kingdom Brunei was working
on his father's tunnel under the Thames...
he was swept away by
a torrent of water, and nearly...
lost his life, but you have
come safely under the river.
Until Crossrail is complete, I have to continue my
journey on the Docklands Light Railway.
I'm travelling west along the north
bank of the Thames...
where vast new docks had been constructed
in the mid-19th century.
London was at the heart of a global
empire, and lived by trade.
The pride the Victorians felt is evident, in
an 1870s version of Bradshaw's.
"Docks in the east end of London cannot be omitted in
a summary of the characteristics of the metropolis."
"They are the storehouses of Widest
commerce in the world..."
and their extent and skillful and
economical arrangement..."
"will serve as a suggestive index of the
merchandise brought from all parts of the world."
And from the sticky climes of the
Caribbean, came a delicious...
sticky substance - one of
the joys of my childhood.
Imperial expansion changed
British eating habits...
and the Victorians developed a seemingly
insatiable appetite for hot, sweet tea...
which saw their consumption
of both tea and sugar...
quadruple during the
course of Victoria's reign.
As the sugar industry boomed, in the late
19th century, two rival tycoons...
Henry Tate and Abram Lyle, set up processing
plants here, in the Docklands.
It's said that the two competitors
never actually met...
but, in 1921, more than two decades after both
their deaths, their companies merged.
I'm visiting a legacy of the Victorian sugar
industry, with Gerald Mason.
Ah!
An extraordinary site with all the tins
tumbling down here.
What is the origin of this plant,
on the River Thames?
Well, Abram Lyle was a partner in
a sugar refinery in Scotland...
but he Wanted his own refinery.
So, in 1880, he sent his two sons to London, with a
bank loan of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds...
to find land and build
the refinery.
The factory remains oh the site that they
chose, ideally situated for the docks.
And soon this refinery was producing more
than just sugar for the tea table.
The Lyles were fantastic sugar refiners,
and What they soon realised...
was there was sugar was being lost in the
process, which was costing them money.
These canny Victorian businessmen...
turned What had been a waste product into a
cheap sugar substitute, dubbed "golden syrup".
So very, very quickly the product grew from
a local following around London...
to being a product that sold
all across the UK.
A golden legacy!
The secret recipe of the syrup remains the same,
as does its iconic trademark.
The famous lion that I remember
from my childhood.
It's been just one of the most enduring logos
and trademarks of all time, hasn't it?
Yeah. It's actually the oldest unchanged
brand packaging in the World.
To ensure that this product tastes
just the same as it did in...
Bradshaw's day, the secret
recipe is carefully monitored.
This is Chris.
One of our long-serving employees.
- Hello, Chris.
- Hello, all right?
Long-serving - how long?
Uh... thirty-one years.
Thirty-one years.
And are you in the business of
sampling the product?
Yep, I'm just doing a Brix sample,
and that measures the...
amount of sugar syrup in the
solution as a percentage.
Do you ever just stick your
finger in there and...?
Um... not often, no. Not any more.
A While ago, maybe.
The employees here might
not be tempted...
but before I leave I can't resist a taste,
hot off the production line.
There you go, Michael.
Woah! The tin is warm.
Mmm!
Deliciously warm, as though it had just come
off a hot, sticky toffee pudding.
This factory is one of the docklands' few remaining
links with its trading and industrial past.
The area suffered badly during the Blitz, and the
post-war years ushered in a long period of decline.
More recently, it's been the target
for regeneration.
And one of the latest additions to the landscape,
is the striking Emirates Air Line.
A bird's-eye link between the
Royal Victoria Docks and...
North Greenwich, opened in 2012
for the London Olympics.
In my time, I have crossed the River Thames
by boat, by bridge, by tunnel...
by foot, by car, by bus, by train,
by Underground, by Docklands Light Railway...
but today, for me, I'm
attempting a first.
I'm crossing the river by air line.
A bold piece of engineering, that takes my cabin
soaring to 295 feet above Old Father Thames.
As it grew into the world's
first truly global city, Victorian...
London underwent an
extraordinary metamorphosis.
What I love about my home town is
that it never stops changing.
From the waxing and waning fortunes
of areas like Deptford...
to the new transport projects that will
keep Londoners moving.
A century ago, this was the
West India Dock, covering...
more than fifty acres with
berths for six hundred ships.
Today it is home to more than fourteen million
square feet of commercial floor-space.
We may lament the passing into history of so
much of our shipping and manufacturing...
but if we feel sentimental about
the Victorian age...
we should recall that it was also an epoch
of poverty, squalor and disease.
George Bradshaw could never have dreamt
of Britain's 21st-century wealth.
Next time, I'll experience the Olympic
legacy hands-on.
Oh!
My knowledge will be tested
by a cabbie.
How can you get from Bishopsgate to the
Old Bailey, Without crossing a road?
[MICHAEL LAUGHS]
By hiring a cab with a knowledgeable driver!
And I'll see how London's Victorian infrastructure
is getting a remarkable 21st-century upgrade.
I had no idea that this great
big box was here!
[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 industries, society
and leisure time.
As I arias-cross the country,
150 years later...
it helps me to discover
the Britain of today.
I'm undertaking a series of journeys
in and around London.
Which, at the time of my
railway handbook...
was the epicentre of the biggest empire
that the world had ever known.
In the century before my
Bradshaw's guide...
the foundations of Britain's Wealth were
laid by scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs.
London's riches depended upon
the River Thames.
Narrow enough to provide a
highway for the capital...
deep enough to despatch ocean-going
ships, to carry trade...
and project military might
around the globe.
Today I start in the east of the capital, Where the
city's port launched many an imperial adventure.
Starting in Deptford, I'll explore
maritime Greenwich...
before uncovering Britain's military
might at Woolwich Arsenal.
Finally I'll delve beneath the Thames,
surfacing in the Docklands...
which were dramatically expanded
around the time of my guide.
Along the way, I'll visit the celebrated ship that
supplied Victorian Britain with its national drink.
Every journey back from China, she was
bringing six hundred tons of tea.
That was enough tea to make over two
hundred million cups!
Taste a by-product of 19th-
century global trade.
Deliciously warm, as though it had just come
off a hot, sticky toffee pudding.
And learn about the nation's
top award for gallantry.
And, this one... is made from the
barrel you're leaning on.
Really?!
Curiously, the first railway in London
was built a decade...
after the first steam-pulled trains had run
between Stockton and Darlington.
The pioneering line that brought rail
travel to the capital...
was the London and Greenwich railway.
And the first stretch to open, in 1836, linked
Bermondsey with Deptford.
Bradshaw's tells me that "the principal object of
attraction at Deptford is the dockyard..."
which has three building slips and is chiefly
used as a victualling yard..."
the river being crowded
with transports."
This would be the place, then, to meet
every class of society...
from the poorest beggar to the
richest ship-owner.
Built on a remarkable viaduct
comprising sixty million bricks...
the railway transformed the
Deptford landscape.
Meanwhile, beneath its arches,
the advent of the Age...
of Steam heralded
extraordinary social upheaval.
Driven by the Victorian spirit of enquiry...
one man revealed the starkly contrasting
fortunes of Deptford's population.
Historical tour guide, Sean Patterson,
knows his story.
Sean, I'm here in Deptford to talk about
Charles Booth. Who was he?
Charles Booth was a Victorian
businessman and philanthropist.
He'd heard that in the Whitechapel area around a quarter
of families were living below the poverty line.
He thought that was nonsense
- and he decided to...
conduct a survey to see for
himself just how bad it was.
Suspecting that poverty in Whitechapel had been
exaggerated, Booth was shocked to discover...
that a third of households
lived in penury.
He determined to map the
rest of the capital.
How did he conduct this survey?
What was the method?
Well, the method was to Walk
the streets of London.
Ultimately, the whole of What we would call zones
one and two on the travel map now.
A huge area... and to make notes as he Went
about the conditions that people were living in.
In 1899, Booth and his researchers
came to Deptford.
Where they discovered an extraordinary range
of social classes living almost cheek by jowl.
What We've got here is the
seven categories.
As you can see there, the yellow and then going
down to semi-criminal at the bottom!
But, interestingly, here
you see this line of red.
That's the high street which We're
on at the moment.
Well, that's pretty good, that's just
one down from the top.
But look, we just go off the side...
and we go straight down into dark blue
with a line of black along it...
which is almost... well, it is the
opposite end of the scale.
So Booth produces, really, this very
eloquent rainbow of poverty.
- Shall we move on?
- Certainly.
Deptford had long owed its livelihood to the
dockyard, described in my Bradshaw's.
It dated back to Henry VIII's reign and had been
the source of great Wealth over the years.
A very attractive terrace of houses.
From What period?
These houses are from the early
to mid-18th century.
From the Georgian heyday of Deptford, if you
like. These were built for sea captains.
But by the time of Booth's survey, in the
1890s, the river had silted up...
making it difficult for Deptford to compete with
newer docks more suited to modern steam vessels.
Dockers, struggling to find work, were soon also
suffering the consequences of railway expansion.
Where are we now on
your map?
Well, We're in this area here. Which, as you can see,
is dark blue with even some black lines along it.
Very close to the high street, Where we
were earlier - just a few yards away.
But gosh, it's an awful lot
worse just here.
The policeman that Booth is with describes this
as "the worst part of Deptford."
Where this 1930s estate is, there used to
be a street called Addey Street.
And the policeman notes that morning, at 5am,
he Went into a house to arrest a man...
and found father, mother and five
children living in one room.
And this is What is happening in this area
that's been squeezed by...
what We're standing under, which is
Britain's largest listed structure...
the eight hundred or so railway arches
from London Bridge to Greenwich.
By Booth's time the London to Greenwich railway
had been joined by others cries-crossing Deptford.
Seeking land for their lines, the railway
companies had gobbled up cheap housing...
adding to the overcrowding, depicted
so vividly by Booth.
As well as producing his maps, which helped to
change the Way Victorians thought about poverty...
Booth campaigned for an old-age pension -
which was eventually introduced in 1909.
This is really a very Victorian story,
isn't it?
It is the scientific approach. The collection of
evidence, the presentation of a case...
the drawing of conclusions and
the call for action.
Absolutely! And it's Booth's skill that allows him
to take that meticulous, forensic approach.
I'm now continuing my journey on the
driverless Docklands Light Railway...
from Deptford Bridge into the heart
of maritime Greenwich...
which Bradshaw's tells me "presents a
striking appearance from the river."
Soon after the London and Greenwich
railway was built...
daytrippers from the city were coming here to
admire the glorious, historic architecture.
Greenwich has long been associated
with the Royal Navy.
Bradshaw's mentions the
Royal Observatory.
Warships would anchor Within sight, to set their
chronometers to Greenwich Mean Time.
And their sailors might retire to the Royal Naval
Hospital, designed by Sir Christopher Wren.
But I'm drawn today to the town
by a merchant vessel.
A tall ship, whose motto characterised the
spirit of the British Empire at its peak.
"Where there's a will,
there's a way."
Morning. Which Way to the
Cutty Sark, please?
Come with me, please.
If you're walking straight...
and then left, you will see the boat on
your right-hand side.
- It's quite big isn't it? You can't miss it!
- Yeah, it is quite big.
- Have a nice day, thank you.
- Thank you.
Greenwich remains a popular
tourist destination.
The sights pull in two and a half million
visitors per year.
And Victorian Britain's most
familiar trading ship...
is an essential stop on
their itineraries.
Curator Jessica Lewis is showing
me the ropes.
It's a fantastic view from here,
isn't it?
- Looking up at the mast and the spars - is that right?
- Yes, yes, that's right.
The ship had eleven miles of rigging and three
thousand square meters of canvas.
Launched in 1869, Cutty Sark
was built for speed...
to a bold design that combined a
sleek, streamlined hull...
with one of the biggest sail areas
of any ship of her day.
The ship's crew spent half its time
maintaining her - even in high seas.
But Jessica is letting me off with
some light duties.
So What exactly am I
doing with this?
So, it's just a little bit of modern
marine oil...
and you just need to work it into the block.
A little bit, that's it. It goes quite far.
And this is to moisten the wood, to keep it
flexible, so it can carry on doing its job.
Because, what, the sun is blasting
away at this'?
Yes, particularly over here
on the port side.
What kind of puzzles me is why, in 1869,
you would build a sailing ship...
which is Way into the age of
steam, isn't it?
Well, Cutty Sark's owner, John Willis,
was thinking, why Would...
I pay for coal when I can get
wind power for free?
Why would I want to give up some of that valuable
cargo space with engines and the storage of fuel...
when I could just do it all by the
power of the Wind?
Known as "clippers", super-fast
sailing ships like Cutty Sark...
carried one of Victorian Britain's
most prized commodities.
Cutty Sark's cargo of tea was worth over two
hundred and seventy-two thousand pounds then...
and that's about eighteen point five million
pounds in today's money.
So every journey back from China she was
bringing six hundred tons of tea.
That was enough tea to make over
two hundred million cups!
1869 - the year of Cutty Sark's launch - was also
the year the Suez Canal was opened.
It provided steam ships with
a short out to Asia.
But it was impossible to sail through the Canal, so
clippers like Cutty Sark, had to slog around Africa.
Steamships were coming back
from China in sixty days...
and Cutty Sark is only coming back in about a
hundred days, a hundred and nine days.
Cutty Sark's maiden voyage, in 1870, there were
fifty-nine sailing ships loading tea in China that year.
Her last voyage, in 1877,
there were just nine.
With Cutty Sark's tea trade with
China scuppered, in the 1880s
her owner diverted her to
the Australian wool trade.
Her daring captain made the gruelling,
long-distance voyage work in her favour...
charting a course around Cape Horn,
Where Cutty Sark harnessed...
the strongest, and most dangerous,
winds in the World.
Her fastest passage was seventy-three
days, from Sydney to London.
But she was regularly making the fastest passage
of the season by about three or four weeks.
And she became known as the
fastest ship of her day.
Well... I declare this vessel shipshape!
Let's go below.
In 1922 her days as a trading
vessel were over...
and Cutty Sark was eventually put to
rest here in Greenwich, in 1954.
But that Wasn't the end
of her troubles.
In November 2007, an electrical fire broke out at
the start of a six-year project to conserve her.
Luckily a lot of original structure...
half of the hull planks, all of the
masts, the deck-houses had...
all been removed to storage
at the time of the fire.
And so they were saved?!
Absolutely.
And we were very lucky. And the quality of the
original construction withstood the neat of the blaze.
Today, this glorious blade of a clipper, that
once out through the world's oceans...
with its zinc and copper-bottomed hull,
is on view for all of us to enjoy.
And so, in the 21st Century,
We're still able to appreciate...
this extraordinary piece
of Victorian engineering.
Absolutely. This project was about
ensuring Cutty Sark has a future...
a sustainable future, so that future
generations can enjoy the ship.
From a restored relic of
the Victorian docks...
I'm moving on to a more
modern vessel.
The Thames Clipper - part of Transport for
London's network along the River Thames.
Following a special London edition
of Bradshaw's...
I'm heading east, towards ah institution that
provided firepower for the mighty British Empire.
According to Bradshaw's
London guide...
"the government establishments of Woolwich are
acknowledged to be the finest in the world."
"At the Royal Arsenal, the
manufacture of implements...
of Warfare is carried on upon
the most extensive scale."
"Casting the largest pieces of ordnance, for which
steam power has lately been applied."
"The Arsenal contains no less than twenty-four
thousand pieces of ordnance..."
and three million cannon-balls piled
up in huge pyramids."
During the largely peaceful 19th
century, the Victorian...
attitude to war was summed
up in an 1878 song...
"We don't Want to fight, but
by jingo if we do, We've...
got the ships, the men
and the money too!"
In Bradshaw's day, this important military installation
was situated just a few steps from the jetty.
Today, it's the home of the Royal Artillery
Museum, and Paul Evans is my guide.
Paul, why did the Government establish
its arsenal at Woolwich?
It's established here because of
an accident. An accident.
Took place in 1716 in a
gun foundry, over in London.
Gun founding is a really impressive thing.
Molten metal, pouring over it.
It looks fantastic but it's got to be done right.
They Went down one day, and
took a party of MPs With...
them to see it, to show it off,
and their sand was damp.
And there was an explosion.
It killed seventeen of them.
And the powers that be said "You can't do
this in the centre of London."
"This is the centre of the world!"
"You need to go somewhere Where
you've got space to do this."
"Want you close enough to London
that you can come and talk to...
us, but Want you far enough
away to be safe - Woolwich."
By the time of my guidebook, this was the primary
site for ordnance manufacture in the country.
Railways were at its heart.
We are walking down the trackway Where
the Royal Arsenal had its own railway.
It was attached to the main line and it's making
thousands and thousands of tons of material...
so it needs that railway to
be able to move it.
To our left here We've got Crimean War
vintage store rooms and worksheds...
that were state of the art in the
Crimean War. Built specifically...
so you could work in them
twenty-four hours a day.
To the right We've got the brass
foundry building.
So, all of these buildings are making
parts of the whole.
And you put them on the railways,
move it to the dockyards, drop...
them on to the ships, down
the Thames and off to war.
The Crimean conflict of 1854 changed public
perceptions of the military in Britain.
Thanks in part to the new system of telegraph
Wires that had grown up alongside the railways...
this was the first ever media war.
The disastrous charge of the Light
Brigade shocked the nation.
Equipment and clothing shortages - and
outbreaks of cholera and typhoid fever...
contributed to the deaths of
twenty thousand men.
The officer class was vilified in the press,
While the ordinary soldier became a national hero.
But at this time, only high-ranking officers could
be awarded medals for gallantry.
Queen Victoria herself agreed
that this had to change.
One of the consequences of the Crimean War
was people started asking the question...
"What is there, that we give our soldiers,
as the ultimate prize for gallantry?"
And you get the Victoria Cross.
The Victoria Cross. And What actually
is that made of - that medal?
Victoria Cross is made
of gunmetal.
And this one... is made from the
barrel you're leaning on.
Really?!
Absolutely.
And then it was awarded to men from
the Crimean War, was it?
Yes. Originally you had to have survived the
action for which you were put in for it.
If you died, a little line Went in under your
Mentioned in Dispatches saying...
"Would have been awarded the
Victoria Cross, had he lived."
And then Queen Victoria lined up her heroes,
did she, and actually presented these VCs?
Absolutely. And she did more than that. She
designed the majority of the medal as well.
It's very much her personal medal.
I'm continuing my journey from
Woolwich station...
which was first linked to the metropolis
by rail as far back as 1849.
Today, this south-eastern corner of London is
also connected to the capital's heart...
via the Docklands Light Railway.
And soon there'll be a third, much
faster way, to get into town.
Travelling with my Bradshaw's, I've often been
nostalgic for the Victorian railway age...
wondering why we can't do things on the
same scale and with that imagination.
Well, now I've been partly answered,
because they're building Crossrail.
An immense railway undertaking, beginning at
Heathrow and in Berkshire in the West...
passing under the West End,
the City and Canary Wharf...
and popping out into Essex
and Kent in the east.
It is the largest construction
project in Europe.
The recently completed tunnel,
from Woolwich under the...
river to north Woolwich,
isn't yet open to the public.
But there's one locomotive
already running here.
I'm joining construction manager
Barrymore Nicholls, on board.
Ah! First class!
Barrymore, I'm guessing this is not the final
design for the new Crossrail trains?
No. This is the railway we use to help
construct the tunnel.
You make pretty good use of tracks
in the construction process.
Very much so. It's a logistics exercise to keep
the tunnel-boring machine going.
For a year, this locomotive has been hauling tons of
reinforced concrete, used to build the tunnel walls.
But first the gigantic boring machine, quaintly
dubbed "Mary", has to do her bit.
This is us approaching the back of
"Mary" - the tunnelling machine...
that's come all the Way from Plumstead through
the Woolwich box and under the Thames.
It's a little strange to me because We've
have a year of frenetic activity...
and now it's being carved
up to be pulled out.
Oh, you sound quite emotional
about that!
It is Weird.
"Mary's" cutter head is seven metres
in diameter...
while the whole machine is an impressive
one hundred and ten metres long.
Here we are at the build area, it's just
behind the cutter head.
So the backup starts behind.
Everything in front is about digging, everything
behind is about logistics to keep the digging going.
The Way this works is we
build a ring...
the rings are one point six
metres long.
There's eight pieces that go together to
make a ring. They fit together.
They've got bolts and dowels
that fit between them.
And What happens is, we pick them up from the
erector, there's a vacuum pad on the bottom...
that can spin through three hundred and sixty
degrees, place them anywhere in the circle.
We finish the ring, all eight pieces. And then it's
self-supporting - it's like the arch of a bridge.
And how often have you
done that here?
We've done that three thousand, four
hundred and nine times now.
I'm now surfacing on the north side of the
Thames, to see how "Mary" has fared.
So here we see the teeth of the cutter head that's
brought you to the other side of the Thames.
Yep, a bit rusty and battered,
"Mary" did very well.
When Isambard Kingdom Brunei was working
on his father's tunnel under the Thames...
he was swept away by
a torrent of water, and nearly...
lost his life, but you have
come safely under the river.
Until Crossrail is complete, I have to continue my
journey on the Docklands Light Railway.
I'm travelling west along the north
bank of the Thames...
where vast new docks had been constructed
in the mid-19th century.
London was at the heart of a global
empire, and lived by trade.
The pride the Victorians felt is evident, in
an 1870s version of Bradshaw's.
"Docks in the east end of London cannot be omitted in
a summary of the characteristics of the metropolis."
"They are the storehouses of Widest
commerce in the world..."
and their extent and skillful and
economical arrangement..."
"will serve as a suggestive index of the
merchandise brought from all parts of the world."
And from the sticky climes of the
Caribbean, came a delicious...
sticky substance - one of
the joys of my childhood.
Imperial expansion changed
British eating habits...
and the Victorians developed a seemingly
insatiable appetite for hot, sweet tea...
which saw their consumption
of both tea and sugar...
quadruple during the
course of Victoria's reign.
As the sugar industry boomed, in the late
19th century, two rival tycoons...
Henry Tate and Abram Lyle, set up processing
plants here, in the Docklands.
It's said that the two competitors
never actually met...
but, in 1921, more than two decades after both
their deaths, their companies merged.
I'm visiting a legacy of the Victorian sugar
industry, with Gerald Mason.
Ah!
An extraordinary site with all the tins
tumbling down here.
What is the origin of this plant,
on the River Thames?
Well, Abram Lyle was a partner in
a sugar refinery in Scotland...
but he Wanted his own refinery.
So, in 1880, he sent his two sons to London, with a
bank loan of a hundred and fifty thousand pounds...
to find land and build
the refinery.
The factory remains oh the site that they
chose, ideally situated for the docks.
And soon this refinery was producing more
than just sugar for the tea table.
The Lyles were fantastic sugar refiners,
and What they soon realised...
was there was sugar was being lost in the
process, which was costing them money.
These canny Victorian businessmen...
turned What had been a waste product into a
cheap sugar substitute, dubbed "golden syrup".
So very, very quickly the product grew from
a local following around London...
to being a product that sold
all across the UK.
A golden legacy!
The secret recipe of the syrup remains the same,
as does its iconic trademark.
The famous lion that I remember
from my childhood.
It's been just one of the most enduring logos
and trademarks of all time, hasn't it?
Yeah. It's actually the oldest unchanged
brand packaging in the World.
To ensure that this product tastes
just the same as it did in...
Bradshaw's day, the secret
recipe is carefully monitored.
This is Chris.
One of our long-serving employees.
- Hello, Chris.
- Hello, all right?
Long-serving - how long?
Uh... thirty-one years.
Thirty-one years.
And are you in the business of
sampling the product?
Yep, I'm just doing a Brix sample,
and that measures the...
amount of sugar syrup in the
solution as a percentage.
Do you ever just stick your
finger in there and...?
Um... not often, no. Not any more.
A While ago, maybe.
The employees here might
not be tempted...
but before I leave I can't resist a taste,
hot off the production line.
There you go, Michael.
Woah! The tin is warm.
Mmm!
Deliciously warm, as though it had just come
off a hot, sticky toffee pudding.
This factory is one of the docklands' few remaining
links with its trading and industrial past.
The area suffered badly during the Blitz, and the
post-war years ushered in a long period of decline.
More recently, it's been the target
for regeneration.
And one of the latest additions to the landscape,
is the striking Emirates Air Line.
A bird's-eye link between the
Royal Victoria Docks and...
North Greenwich, opened in 2012
for the London Olympics.
In my time, I have crossed the River Thames
by boat, by bridge, by tunnel...
by foot, by car, by bus, by train,
by Underground, by Docklands Light Railway...
but today, for me, I'm
attempting a first.
I'm crossing the river by air line.
A bold piece of engineering, that takes my cabin
soaring to 295 feet above Old Father Thames.
As it grew into the world's
first truly global city, Victorian...
London underwent an
extraordinary metamorphosis.
What I love about my home town is
that it never stops changing.
From the waxing and waning fortunes
of areas like Deptford...
to the new transport projects that will
keep Londoners moving.
A century ago, this was the
West India Dock, covering...
more than fifty acres with
berths for six hundred ships.
Today it is home to more than fourteen million
square feet of commercial floor-space.
We may lament the passing into history of so
much of our shipping and manufacturing...
but if we feel sentimental about
the Victorian age...
we should recall that it was also an epoch
of poverty, squalor and disease.
George Bradshaw could never have dreamt
of Britain's 21st-century wealth.
Next time, I'll experience the Olympic
legacy hands-on.
Oh!
My knowledge will be tested
by a cabbie.
How can you get from Bishopsgate to the
Old Bailey, Without crossing a road?
[MICHAEL LAUGHS]
By hiring a cab with a knowledgeable driver!
And I'll see how London's Victorian infrastructure
is getting a remarkable 21st-century upgrade.
I had no idea that this great
big box was here!
[END THEME]