Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 6, Episode 8 - Stratford to London Victoria - full transcript
[OPENING THEME MUSIC]
For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw
was a household name.
At a time when railways
were new...
Bradshaw's guidebook inspired
them to take to the tracks.
I'm using a Bradshaw's guide to understand
how trains transformed Britain.
Its landscape...
its industry, society...
and leisure time.
As I arias-cross the country a hundred
and fifty years later...
it helps me to discover
the Britain of today.
I'm nearly halfway through my exploration of the
web of tracks that links up London.
Today, I'm approaching East London on
Britain's first High-Speed line.
Upper- and middle-class Victorians viewed
the East End of London with horror.
Its slums were the scene of
unspeakable depravity...
its dark streets lent themselves to
robbery and murder.
And respectable folk feared revolution, the mob,
and cholera sweeping down the Thames.
I hope to see how the East End was transformed
by railways in the 19th century...
and, again, in the 21st.
Supplementing my usual guidebook with
Bradshaw's special London edition...
I'm following a route from East London's railway hub
at Stratford, towards the centre of the metropolis...
pausing at Temple en route
to Victoria Station.
I'll learn now the Olympic Park sustains a Victorian
ideal of providing leisure space for Londoners.
Oh!
Hear how a lawyer who learnt his trade in
Victorian London went on to change the World.
To this day, every meal served at the Inner Temple
has a vegetarian option in memory of Gandhi.
And meet a modern descendant of the Hackney
cab drivers that Bradshaw would have known.
How can you get from Bishopsgate to the
Old Bailey Without crossing the road?
[LAUGHTER]
By hiring a cab with a
knowledgeable driver!
My Bradshaw's tells me that my first stop
is "an important junction"...
and at the time of my guidebook it was also home
to the Great Eastern Railway's locomotive works.
A few years ago I came here
to Stratford...
to see now one of Victorian London's largest
railway sites was being transformed...
to host the Olympic Games.
Today, I want to see whether tracks laid
at the dawn of the Railway Age...
coped with the crowds
of spectators...
and whether the flame of regeneration still
burns brightly in the East.
The former Olympic Park recently
re-opened to Londoners...
creating a vast new public space
the size of Hyde Park...
studded with contemporary sculptures - including
Anish Kapoor's striking Arcelor Mittal Orbit.
Parks as we now know them were
invented in the 19th century.
Green oases, ringed by elegant homes in the
midst of industrial Britain's smoky cities.
Dr Paul Brickell has been
working to ensure...
that the Olympic Games bequeathed
London a worthy park.
Paul, I was here before the Olympic Games - and
the expectation was that many, many people...
most people - would come by train.
Did it work out that way?
Well, it did - and there were many.
You know, you imagine
the park down below us...
- a quarter of a million / third of a
million people every day.
Plus the tens of thousands of people going
to the shopping centre next door.
Plus the tens of thousands of people
going about their normal business.
And it Worked. The railway
was astonishing.
It's such a connection with the
Victorian period, isn't it?
Because this was the most
extraordinary railway works.
And, of course, you can still see the pattern
of the railways all around.
Yeah. I think they were the biggest
railway engineering yards in Europe.
Stratford Works opened
in 1847...
and were the creation of the so-called
"railway king", George Hudson...
“chairman of the Eastern
Counties Railway.
At the peak of its one hundred and fifteen-year
history, the Works employed...
some six and a half
thousand people.
And, to this day, the whole area is criss-crossed
with railway lines dating back to Victorian times.
One of the big challenges of building the Games
was to Weave this new piece of city...
around all of this hard infrastructure,
this hard railway.
And, I think, to get the beautiful view that
you now see in the midst of all that...
is a tribute to the people who
built the Games.
Another thing that kind of makes me think of Victorian
times is that you have created a park here.
Now, of course, Victorians had to create parks
because their city was growing so fast...
but I suppose it's a While since
London had a new park.
Tell me about yours?
Like those Victorian parks, it is very
much for the local population.
Half the people who come here live around the park,
but also it's a great park for London; for the World.
We're here in the south with the
stadium, the aquatic centre.
The South Park Plaza is a waterside
promenade, tree-lined promenade...
with lots of breakout spaces.
A let's going on in it.
As you get further north you can see the river
winds, you get this sense of river valley...
it's a much quieter park up
there in the north.
It leads then up, of course, to the Hackney
Marshes and the Walthamstow Marshes.
Now, you're a Stratford boy, I think? Now,
the East End was traditionally seen...
as the place of Jack the Ripper,
Fagin from Oliver Twist...
- and then, of course, the terrible bombings...
during World War ll.
Is all of this changing the Way we feel
about the East End of London?
You know, the positive side of that, of course, is that
it was always full of entrepreneurial vim and vigour.
Which has mostly been on the
right side of the law...
and occasionally perhaps not!
The kind of people who are coming here are
people who Want to do new things.
Some of them are old institutions. So, you know,
We're talking to the Victoria & Albeit Museum...
Sadlers Wells, University College London,
about coming to sites here.
So I think that that same spirit is here in East
London. But hopefully more regulated, more legal.
- Stratford on track.
- Yes.
Just as the creators of Victorian
parks sought...
the promoters of the Queen Elizabeth
Olympic Park...
aim to provide space for Londoners
to mingle, relax and exercise.
But no park in Bradshaw's day could
offer Olympic-standard amenities...
like the Copper Box Arena, designed for sports
as diverse as basketball, fencing, and netball.
Get it back, please!
- Hello!
- Hi!
Sorry to interrupt your game!
How does it feel playing it
in an Olympic facility?
It's really, really good! We've been playing
netball here for one season, now.
We've been attracting some really interesting
events While playing in the Copper Box.
It's a really good experience.
And, make my day. Who comes
here to play by train?
Hands up!
Huh?
Do you use the train?
Yes, I do.
It's the perfect Way to travel.
That's the best thing about this location
- is how easy it is to access.
We've attracted a lot of new
players because of it.
Er, well, I guess I'm in
the blue team.
I think so! Let's go. I think you should
have a go with us!
Here we go...!
Yay!
[LAUGHTER]
Oh...
- To me, to me, to me, Michael!
- There we go.
Back to Michael. Let's go!
Don't make it easy for him, girls!
Woooaah. .!!
Having caught my breath, I'm continuing my
journey on the capital's newest rail service...
London Overground.
I'm travelling from Stratford to Hackney Central,
passing straight through the Olympic Park.
Long before Victorian train tracks
wove their Way across the city...
Londoners travelled by carriage.
And its descendant still works
the streets today...
recognised the world over as a
symbol of the British capital.
Hackney Central seems like a good
place to take a Hackney carriage...
which is the official name of a London taxi.
According to Bradshaw's London Guide...
"every driver of a Hackney carriage shall, when
hired, deliver to the hirer a card"...
"whereon is printed the number of the
stamp-office plate fixed to the carriage."
"The utility of this ticket will be readily seen
in the case of loss of luggage."
I must say, I would find it very useful
if that rule still applied.
So handy when you leave your spectacles
in the back of a cab!
Taxi!
Spitalfields, please.
My driver, Howard Taylor, has been
a cabbie for twenty-seven years.
What is the origin of calling a London taxi
a "Hackney carriage"?
There's nothing written in stone, but most people
think it derives from the French term "hacknez"...
which was a horse-drawn
carriage, I believe.
Ah... so not necessarily anything to do
with good old Hackney at all!
How long have Hackney carriages
been around, then?
Over three hundred years now. We were
licensed at the end of the 17th century.
Good heavens!
I Wasn't there at the beginning!
[LAUGHTER]
London taxis are the oldest regulated
transport system in the World.
And their drivers are famed for knowing
the city like the back of their hand.
That's because of the daunting exam that they
have to pass, called "The Knowledge".
How far back does The Knowledge go?
Well before my time. And my
father's before him.
My father was a taxi driver-
that's why I am, in truth.
What did you have to learn?
I had to learn everything Within a six-mile
radius of Charing Cross.
So that was about twenty-five
thousand streets, and...
seventy, eighty, ninety thousand
places of interest.
I reckon I know my city pretty well -
but I'm no match for Howard!
How can you get from Bishopsgate to the
Old Bailey Without crossing the road?
[LAUGHTER]
By hiring a cab with a knowledgeable driver!
With a knowledgeable driver
who'll tell you...
that the City of London has "Streets",
"Alleys", "Hills" and "Places" - but no "Roads".
- Ah...!
- Little bit unfair, I think.
That's a clever one!
In Bradshaw's day, the railways rivalled
the Hackney Cab trade...
and new technology is still
affecting business today.
Nowadays you have these
satnav Johnnies...
"Satnav Johnnies"?!
"private hire vehicles", if that's What you wanna
call them, pull up next to me, totally confused.
And the passenger in the back is
asking me for directions...
'cause the driver's not sure where they're
going and the satnav has really lost them.
So you can't beat The Knowledge!
My Hackney Cab has brought me to a part of town
which at the time of my guidebook...
was the capital's multicultural melting pot.
Thank you!
I'm a few yards from the City of London...
but those who broke off from investing
in the Victorian railway bubble...
and ventured from their counting houses
as far as Spitalfields...
entered a different World.
Here they encountered foreign immigrants.
Your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free.
For hundreds of years, this
area - just outside the old city...
walls - has been home to Wave
upon Wave of immigrants.
Dr Daniel DeHanas has researched
migration in Spitalfields over the years.
Dan, you've really taken me back in time - but
a long way back, way before my Bradshaw's guide?
Absolutely. We've moved into a
Huguenot Weaver's house.
This is probably from around 1720.
And you can see that the Huguenots were masterful
silk weavers. That was their main trade.
But they were forced to leave
Catholic France, because...
they were Calvinists - Protestants who
were being persecuted.
In the late 17th century, following
violent persecution in France...
some fifty thousand Huguenots fled
to Protestant England.
Within the City of London, the textile trade
was tightly controlled by the City's Guilds...
which were largely closed
to foreigners.
So a community of Huguenot Weavers set up
shop here, just outside the city walls...
where they found a ready market
for their beautiful silks.
Overall, the Huguenots were quite a prosperous
group who did very well from their silk trade...
which was really valued by the
upper classes at the time.
Did they face prejudice here?
They certainly did. There's record,
actually, from Parliament...
about a swarm of frogs which
invaded England.
And that is something that's mirrored by other waves
of immigrants that have come to this area, as well.
In the late 18th century, the
opening-up of global trade...
led to the decline of the London
silk-weaving industry...
and the Huguenots gave Way to
Irish immigrants...
escaping the Great Famine of the
1840s and '50s.
They were drawn to Spitalfields by its
abundant employment opportunities...
in the nearby docks, and in the vast
Truman Brewery on Brick Lane.
It's called Brick Lane because this is Where they
would have carted bricks back and forth.
The bricks had to be made outside of the
city walls, and this was actually...
a very, very busy and noxious and
loud and noisy sort of lane.
Then, around the time my guidebook was written,
Spitalfields began to change again...
as Russian and East European Jews
fleeing persecution settled here...
earning the area the nickname
"Little Jerusalem".
And now, as I look around me, We've got
balti houses, We've got curry houses...
so evidently there was another Wave
of immigration after that.
Well, there was. The Bangladeshis are
the Wave since the sixties.
They've really reshaped Brick Lane
as a real curry mile.
But beneath the trappings of
so-called "Banglatown"...
it's possible to glimpse this area's
many-layered past.
Well, it seems that the minaret has
been purpose-built...
but the mosque behind is not,
I think, tailor-made?
That's correct. The building
is from 1743.
And What's remarkable is that it has
been a place of worship for...
all of these successive waves of
immigrants over time.
It was built as a Huguenot chapel. It spent part of its
life as a Wesleyan chapel, and a Methodist chapel.
In the late 1800s this became
the Great Synagogue...
and at that time, there were more than a hundred
thousand Jews living in the East End of London.
And today, this is the Great Mosque.
It's like the archaeology of all the religions
that have been here in Brick Lane.
Anyway, I thank you so much. I'm off to see
if I can have a really spicy evening!
- I hope you do!
- Thank you.
My journey is now taking me
away from the East Encl...
as I travel towards central London
on the District Line.
I'm alighting at Blackfriars...
where Bradshaw's Handbook of 1875 promises
a "new and truly magnificent bridge".
Indeed it is.
But Bradshaw's was referring to the road
bridge, which was new then.
Today we can admire a bridge which arguably
might have excited Bradshaw even more.
Since 1831, when London Bridge
was demolished...
there hadn't been a bridge spanning the
River Thames with buildings on it.
But that's all changed now, with
the new Blackfriars Station...
which spans the river and has entrances on
the North bank and the South bank.
My Bradshaw's Guide loves statistics
about railway stations...
so let me tell you that it's part
of a six and a half billion...
pound refurbishment of the
Thameslink system...
and that this station has four thousand,
four hundred solar panels.
I'm making my way just upriver...
to the so-called "Inner Temple", Where
Victorian lawyers learned their craft.
The Temple. According to Bradshaw's, "formerly
the residence of the Knights Templar"...
that was a medieval Christian military order-
"and now leased by the common-law students."
"There is, in the tranquil retirement
of these buildings"...
"and the garden facing the river, an
appearance of delicious quietness".
And, yet, it was the brief of one of those
students to shake the World.
Much of the Inner Temple was
rebuilt in Bradshaw's day.
But its legal pedigree dates
back to medieval times.
Patrick Maddams is a member of the Inner
Temple, and is showing me around.
Patrick, the Inner and Middle Temple take
their names from the Knights Templar...
but then lawyers came here and
occupied Inns of Court.
What are "Inns of Court"?
Well, Inns of Court were places Where you
would work, Where you would sleep...
where you would eat and drink, and
where you would see friends.
You have a good example of an Inn of Court
here in King's Bench Walk.
It was a single building where, at the basement, you
would have the kitchen and where the servants lived.
On the ground floor you would have the chambers
where the barristers would see their clients.
Above that you would have the rooms
Where the barristers lived.
And right at the top, in the eaves, was where the
student barristers, called "pupils", would live.
By the time of my guidebook, this
quiet corner of London
was becoming a global centre for law, as Britain
exported its legal expertise across the Empire.
Is the opposite happening? Are students
coming from the Empire to here?
It is. It's a two-way trade.
And by the time of the late Victorian era there are
many, many, for example, young Indian barristers...
practising English Law - in India.
Any notable examples?
Well, of course, the most
famous of all is Gandhi.
Mohandas Gandhi would become the leader of the
Indian nationalist movement against British rule.
But his extraordinary career began in Victorian
London, as a young law student.
So here we have, clearly, a bust
of the great man.
Here he is.
And these documents?
Well, these are very important because Gandhi
arrived at the Inner Temple in 1888...
and as every student has to do to this day,
he has to fill in an admission form.
And here we see in his own handwriting,
"I, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi"...
"of 20 Baron's Court Road,
West Kensington"
signing his declaration
that he's a fit and proper person.
Luckily for historians, Gandhi kept a diary
during his three years here.
He took dancing lessons, he played the violin
and he just seemed to be absorbed by...
everything that London had to offer.
And there's a very poignant
final entry in the diary...
when he is on the boat for the first night,
leaving London and going back to India...
And there's a copy of it there, Michael,
if you'd like to have a look at it.
Oh, indeed.
Gandhi's final thoughts on London.
"So much attached was I to London and its
environments, for who would not be."
"London, with its teaching institutions, public
galleries, vegetarian restaurants...
"is a fit place for a student
and a traveller"...
"a trader and a faddist - as a vegetarian
would be called by his opponents."
"Thus, it is not Without regret that
I left dear London."
And this reminds us of one final legacy
that Gandhi gave to the chef here.
Some recipes that his mother
had sent him.
And the chef took kindly on him and
cooked a vegetarian curry.
It soon became very popular and, to this day,
every meal served at the Inner Temple...
has a vegetarian option in
memory of Gandhi.
- This place is full of traditions.
- It certainly is.
After Gandhi qualified as a lawyer in 1891,
he briefly returned to India...
before heading to join an Indian
law firm in South Africa.
Until that point, Gandhi had shown
little interest in politics.
Indian barrister Ram Viraraghavan
knows more.
- Ram, hello!
- Hello, Michael.
Very good to see you.
What has brought you from
India to London?
I Wanted to taste the waters at
the Fountain of Justice!
That was why I came to the Inner Temple.
What a lovely answer.
I've been learning about Mahatma Gandhi.
It seems that when he was in London...
he was not particularly interested in
politics. So What changes him?
I should think the provocation was he was
thrown off a train in South Africa.
And that, I should think, was the beginning
of his political consciousness.
He was brown - and the South Africans
would have nothing of it.
They threw him out
of the train.
This is What he says: "The
hardship to which I was subjected"...
"was superficial; only a symptom of the
deep disease of colour prejudice."
"I should try, if possible, to root out the
disease and suffer hardships in the process."
"Redress for Wrongs I should
seek only to the extent that...
would be necessary for
removal of the colour prejudice."
And so began, in a small way, the road
which ultimately led to free India.
It's quite extraordinary to think that such important
history begins with an incident on a train.
Of course it does!
It's time for me to take a train from
the very same station...
that the young Gandhi would have
used all those years ago...
and travel on the District Line to
my final stop: Victoria.
Here the District and Circle Lines,
constructed in the 19th century...
meet the 1960s-built
Victoria line...
and the result can be chaotic.
It's a complete mess.
They are, at the moment, doing some improvements.
Do you think that's going to make it better?
I'm hopeful that it will, and just ease
some of the congestion.
It's not intuitive, the Way you
get around the station.
They tell us that, in a few years' time, We're
going to have great big new ticket halls.
- That's something to look forward to, isn't it?
- Yeah!
As Bradshaw says, "Occupying the site
of the Grosvenor Canal basin...
"the Victoria Station is now the busy scene
of the arrival and departure"...
"of the West End and Crystal
Palace, the Brighton and...
South Coast, and the
Chatham and Dover lines."
Not surprisingly, then, Victoria has become
cluttered, congested and confused...
and clearly in need
of an upgrade.
Since 2009, the Underground station
that serves this busy terminus...
has been undergoing a £700
million makeover...
due to be completed in 2018.
David Waboso is showing me What will
eventually be a vast new ticket hall.
David, Victoria Underground station is very
badly congested. What is your master plan?
Well, we want to increase capacity of this
station by a whopping thirty-three percent.
And we have more passengers use just Victoria
Underground station than Heathrow airport.
Over eighty million passengers a
year come through here.
To link the new and old ticket halls, and to
improve connections between the Tube lines...
two hundred and eighty metres of new
tunnels are being squeezed in...
amongst the existing Underground
infrastructure.
The trouble with that, from an engineering point of
view, is we're having to basically tunnel through...
water-bearing sands, which is not very
good material to tunnel through.
How do you cope with that?
We've effectively, here, put in over two thousand
What we call "jet grouting columns".
Basically, vertical columns of concrete that we
pour into the ground under controlled methods.
And that stabilises the ground, so that we can
then build these huge underground caverns.
I tell you, I Walk past here probably
most days of my life.
I had no idea that this great big hole, this
great big box, was here!
I just wish everybody could see it!
It's a great achievement that during these
vast works going on below-ground...
Victoria Station has stayed open.
David is now taking me to
the cutting edge.
[NOISE OF DRILLING MACHINERY]
Hello.
- How are you?
- Ah, Michael.
- Eugene. Pleased to meet you.
- Good to see you.
What is it that Eugene's doing? I'm used to
seeing great big boring machines...
but I'm quite surprised to see Eugene doing,
well, kind of hand-mining, really.
Yeah. When you get this close in,
the space is so limited...
that you really need manual
methods of doing it.
And we exploit the skills of people like Eugene,
who have hand-mining capabilities.
In Victorian times, they had to
do all this hand-mining...
but Without these Wonderful pneumatic tools.
They must have been really good men, mustn't they?
Yeah, they were. It's heroic stuff and, you know,
we owe them a huge debt, really...
because a lot of the stuff we use today
is based on the Victorians...
who built the first sections of
the Tube in the 1860s.
Where exactly are we now?
So, We're about 24 metres below ground level. Right
on top of us is the Victoria Palace Theatre...
which is currently having a
matinee concert.
Either side of that will be London buses. And there'll
be taxis and cars, and people walking around...
and all this stuff is going on underground.
Just behind us, about a meter behind that clay...
will be the running tunnels for
the Victoria line.
- Just behind that Wall?
- Yeah.
On this journey, I've witnessed London's
insatiable restlessness and constant reinvention.
Today, as in Bradshaw's day, its energy attracts
visitors and settlers from around the World.
As a new Underground station takes
shape in the heart of the capital...
in East London Victorian railway sidings
have become an Olympic park.
The East End is used to change, because
waves of immigration altered it...
from one generation to another.
As the son of a refugee, let me urge
you to speak kindly to foreigners.
After being insulted on a train,
Mahatma Gandhi led a movement...
that deprived the British Empire of What had
once been the jewel in Victoria's crown: India.
Careless talk can be expensive.
Next time, I'll discover how 19th-century
engineering made for spectacular theatricals.
Ben Hur was produced there twice.
To make it more exciting...
they actually turned the treadmills around so
that the horses were running towards the audience.
Discover a Victorian luxury,
fit for a queen.
And, so, if I dab this behind my ears...
I can smell like Queen Victoria.
And come face to face with my hero.
George Bradshaw.
[END THEME]
For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw
was a household name.
At a time when railways
were new...
Bradshaw's guidebook inspired
them to take to the tracks.
I'm using a Bradshaw's guide to understand
how trains transformed Britain.
Its landscape...
its industry, society...
and leisure time.
As I arias-cross the country a hundred
and fifty years later...
it helps me to discover
the Britain of today.
I'm nearly halfway through my exploration of the
web of tracks that links up London.
Today, I'm approaching East London on
Britain's first High-Speed line.
Upper- and middle-class Victorians viewed
the East End of London with horror.
Its slums were the scene of
unspeakable depravity...
its dark streets lent themselves to
robbery and murder.
And respectable folk feared revolution, the mob,
and cholera sweeping down the Thames.
I hope to see how the East End was transformed
by railways in the 19th century...
and, again, in the 21st.
Supplementing my usual guidebook with
Bradshaw's special London edition...
I'm following a route from East London's railway hub
at Stratford, towards the centre of the metropolis...
pausing at Temple en route
to Victoria Station.
I'll learn now the Olympic Park sustains a Victorian
ideal of providing leisure space for Londoners.
Oh!
Hear how a lawyer who learnt his trade in
Victorian London went on to change the World.
To this day, every meal served at the Inner Temple
has a vegetarian option in memory of Gandhi.
And meet a modern descendant of the Hackney
cab drivers that Bradshaw would have known.
How can you get from Bishopsgate to the
Old Bailey Without crossing the road?
[LAUGHTER]
By hiring a cab with a
knowledgeable driver!
My Bradshaw's tells me that my first stop
is "an important junction"...
and at the time of my guidebook it was also home
to the Great Eastern Railway's locomotive works.
A few years ago I came here
to Stratford...
to see now one of Victorian London's largest
railway sites was being transformed...
to host the Olympic Games.
Today, I want to see whether tracks laid
at the dawn of the Railway Age...
coped with the crowds
of spectators...
and whether the flame of regeneration still
burns brightly in the East.
The former Olympic Park recently
re-opened to Londoners...
creating a vast new public space
the size of Hyde Park...
studded with contemporary sculptures - including
Anish Kapoor's striking Arcelor Mittal Orbit.
Parks as we now know them were
invented in the 19th century.
Green oases, ringed by elegant homes in the
midst of industrial Britain's smoky cities.
Dr Paul Brickell has been
working to ensure...
that the Olympic Games bequeathed
London a worthy park.
Paul, I was here before the Olympic Games - and
the expectation was that many, many people...
most people - would come by train.
Did it work out that way?
Well, it did - and there were many.
You know, you imagine
the park down below us...
- a quarter of a million / third of a
million people every day.
Plus the tens of thousands of people going
to the shopping centre next door.
Plus the tens of thousands of people
going about their normal business.
And it Worked. The railway
was astonishing.
It's such a connection with the
Victorian period, isn't it?
Because this was the most
extraordinary railway works.
And, of course, you can still see the pattern
of the railways all around.
Yeah. I think they were the biggest
railway engineering yards in Europe.
Stratford Works opened
in 1847...
and were the creation of the so-called
"railway king", George Hudson...
“chairman of the Eastern
Counties Railway.
At the peak of its one hundred and fifteen-year
history, the Works employed...
some six and a half
thousand people.
And, to this day, the whole area is criss-crossed
with railway lines dating back to Victorian times.
One of the big challenges of building the Games
was to Weave this new piece of city...
around all of this hard infrastructure,
this hard railway.
And, I think, to get the beautiful view that
you now see in the midst of all that...
is a tribute to the people who
built the Games.
Another thing that kind of makes me think of Victorian
times is that you have created a park here.
Now, of course, Victorians had to create parks
because their city was growing so fast...
but I suppose it's a While since
London had a new park.
Tell me about yours?
Like those Victorian parks, it is very
much for the local population.
Half the people who come here live around the park,
but also it's a great park for London; for the World.
We're here in the south with the
stadium, the aquatic centre.
The South Park Plaza is a waterside
promenade, tree-lined promenade...
with lots of breakout spaces.
A let's going on in it.
As you get further north you can see the river
winds, you get this sense of river valley...
it's a much quieter park up
there in the north.
It leads then up, of course, to the Hackney
Marshes and the Walthamstow Marshes.
Now, you're a Stratford boy, I think? Now,
the East End was traditionally seen...
as the place of Jack the Ripper,
Fagin from Oliver Twist...
- and then, of course, the terrible bombings...
during World War ll.
Is all of this changing the Way we feel
about the East End of London?
You know, the positive side of that, of course, is that
it was always full of entrepreneurial vim and vigour.
Which has mostly been on the
right side of the law...
and occasionally perhaps not!
The kind of people who are coming here are
people who Want to do new things.
Some of them are old institutions. So, you know,
We're talking to the Victoria & Albeit Museum...
Sadlers Wells, University College London,
about coming to sites here.
So I think that that same spirit is here in East
London. But hopefully more regulated, more legal.
- Stratford on track.
- Yes.
Just as the creators of Victorian
parks sought...
the promoters of the Queen Elizabeth
Olympic Park...
aim to provide space for Londoners
to mingle, relax and exercise.
But no park in Bradshaw's day could
offer Olympic-standard amenities...
like the Copper Box Arena, designed for sports
as diverse as basketball, fencing, and netball.
Get it back, please!
- Hello!
- Hi!
Sorry to interrupt your game!
How does it feel playing it
in an Olympic facility?
It's really, really good! We've been playing
netball here for one season, now.
We've been attracting some really interesting
events While playing in the Copper Box.
It's a really good experience.
And, make my day. Who comes
here to play by train?
Hands up!
Huh?
Do you use the train?
Yes, I do.
It's the perfect Way to travel.
That's the best thing about this location
- is how easy it is to access.
We've attracted a lot of new
players because of it.
Er, well, I guess I'm in
the blue team.
I think so! Let's go. I think you should
have a go with us!
Here we go...!
Yay!
[LAUGHTER]
Oh...
- To me, to me, to me, Michael!
- There we go.
Back to Michael. Let's go!
Don't make it easy for him, girls!
Woooaah. .!!
Having caught my breath, I'm continuing my
journey on the capital's newest rail service...
London Overground.
I'm travelling from Stratford to Hackney Central,
passing straight through the Olympic Park.
Long before Victorian train tracks
wove their Way across the city...
Londoners travelled by carriage.
And its descendant still works
the streets today...
recognised the world over as a
symbol of the British capital.
Hackney Central seems like a good
place to take a Hackney carriage...
which is the official name of a London taxi.
According to Bradshaw's London Guide...
"every driver of a Hackney carriage shall, when
hired, deliver to the hirer a card"...
"whereon is printed the number of the
stamp-office plate fixed to the carriage."
"The utility of this ticket will be readily seen
in the case of loss of luggage."
I must say, I would find it very useful
if that rule still applied.
So handy when you leave your spectacles
in the back of a cab!
Taxi!
Spitalfields, please.
My driver, Howard Taylor, has been
a cabbie for twenty-seven years.
What is the origin of calling a London taxi
a "Hackney carriage"?
There's nothing written in stone, but most people
think it derives from the French term "hacknez"...
which was a horse-drawn
carriage, I believe.
Ah... so not necessarily anything to do
with good old Hackney at all!
How long have Hackney carriages
been around, then?
Over three hundred years now. We were
licensed at the end of the 17th century.
Good heavens!
I Wasn't there at the beginning!
[LAUGHTER]
London taxis are the oldest regulated
transport system in the World.
And their drivers are famed for knowing
the city like the back of their hand.
That's because of the daunting exam that they
have to pass, called "The Knowledge".
How far back does The Knowledge go?
Well before my time. And my
father's before him.
My father was a taxi driver-
that's why I am, in truth.
What did you have to learn?
I had to learn everything Within a six-mile
radius of Charing Cross.
So that was about twenty-five
thousand streets, and...
seventy, eighty, ninety thousand
places of interest.
I reckon I know my city pretty well -
but I'm no match for Howard!
How can you get from Bishopsgate to the
Old Bailey Without crossing the road?
[LAUGHTER]
By hiring a cab with a knowledgeable driver!
With a knowledgeable driver
who'll tell you...
that the City of London has "Streets",
"Alleys", "Hills" and "Places" - but no "Roads".
- Ah...!
- Little bit unfair, I think.
That's a clever one!
In Bradshaw's day, the railways rivalled
the Hackney Cab trade...
and new technology is still
affecting business today.
Nowadays you have these
satnav Johnnies...
"Satnav Johnnies"?!
"private hire vehicles", if that's What you wanna
call them, pull up next to me, totally confused.
And the passenger in the back is
asking me for directions...
'cause the driver's not sure where they're
going and the satnav has really lost them.
So you can't beat The Knowledge!
My Hackney Cab has brought me to a part of town
which at the time of my guidebook...
was the capital's multicultural melting pot.
Thank you!
I'm a few yards from the City of London...
but those who broke off from investing
in the Victorian railway bubble...
and ventured from their counting houses
as far as Spitalfields...
entered a different World.
Here they encountered foreign immigrants.
Your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free.
For hundreds of years, this
area - just outside the old city...
walls - has been home to Wave
upon Wave of immigrants.
Dr Daniel DeHanas has researched
migration in Spitalfields over the years.
Dan, you've really taken me back in time - but
a long way back, way before my Bradshaw's guide?
Absolutely. We've moved into a
Huguenot Weaver's house.
This is probably from around 1720.
And you can see that the Huguenots were masterful
silk weavers. That was their main trade.
But they were forced to leave
Catholic France, because...
they were Calvinists - Protestants who
were being persecuted.
In the late 17th century, following
violent persecution in France...
some fifty thousand Huguenots fled
to Protestant England.
Within the City of London, the textile trade
was tightly controlled by the City's Guilds...
which were largely closed
to foreigners.
So a community of Huguenot Weavers set up
shop here, just outside the city walls...
where they found a ready market
for their beautiful silks.
Overall, the Huguenots were quite a prosperous
group who did very well from their silk trade...
which was really valued by the
upper classes at the time.
Did they face prejudice here?
They certainly did. There's record,
actually, from Parliament...
about a swarm of frogs which
invaded England.
And that is something that's mirrored by other waves
of immigrants that have come to this area, as well.
In the late 18th century, the
opening-up of global trade...
led to the decline of the London
silk-weaving industry...
and the Huguenots gave Way to
Irish immigrants...
escaping the Great Famine of the
1840s and '50s.
They were drawn to Spitalfields by its
abundant employment opportunities...
in the nearby docks, and in the vast
Truman Brewery on Brick Lane.
It's called Brick Lane because this is Where they
would have carted bricks back and forth.
The bricks had to be made outside of the
city walls, and this was actually...
a very, very busy and noxious and
loud and noisy sort of lane.
Then, around the time my guidebook was written,
Spitalfields began to change again...
as Russian and East European Jews
fleeing persecution settled here...
earning the area the nickname
"Little Jerusalem".
And now, as I look around me, We've got
balti houses, We've got curry houses...
so evidently there was another Wave
of immigration after that.
Well, there was. The Bangladeshis are
the Wave since the sixties.
They've really reshaped Brick Lane
as a real curry mile.
But beneath the trappings of
so-called "Banglatown"...
it's possible to glimpse this area's
many-layered past.
Well, it seems that the minaret has
been purpose-built...
but the mosque behind is not,
I think, tailor-made?
That's correct. The building
is from 1743.
And What's remarkable is that it has
been a place of worship for...
all of these successive waves of
immigrants over time.
It was built as a Huguenot chapel. It spent part of its
life as a Wesleyan chapel, and a Methodist chapel.
In the late 1800s this became
the Great Synagogue...
and at that time, there were more than a hundred
thousand Jews living in the East End of London.
And today, this is the Great Mosque.
It's like the archaeology of all the religions
that have been here in Brick Lane.
Anyway, I thank you so much. I'm off to see
if I can have a really spicy evening!
- I hope you do!
- Thank you.
My journey is now taking me
away from the East Encl...
as I travel towards central London
on the District Line.
I'm alighting at Blackfriars...
where Bradshaw's Handbook of 1875 promises
a "new and truly magnificent bridge".
Indeed it is.
But Bradshaw's was referring to the road
bridge, which was new then.
Today we can admire a bridge which arguably
might have excited Bradshaw even more.
Since 1831, when London Bridge
was demolished...
there hadn't been a bridge spanning the
River Thames with buildings on it.
But that's all changed now, with
the new Blackfriars Station...
which spans the river and has entrances on
the North bank and the South bank.
My Bradshaw's Guide loves statistics
about railway stations...
so let me tell you that it's part
of a six and a half billion...
pound refurbishment of the
Thameslink system...
and that this station has four thousand,
four hundred solar panels.
I'm making my way just upriver...
to the so-called "Inner Temple", Where
Victorian lawyers learned their craft.
The Temple. According to Bradshaw's, "formerly
the residence of the Knights Templar"...
that was a medieval Christian military order-
"and now leased by the common-law students."
"There is, in the tranquil retirement
of these buildings"...
"and the garden facing the river, an
appearance of delicious quietness".
And, yet, it was the brief of one of those
students to shake the World.
Much of the Inner Temple was
rebuilt in Bradshaw's day.
But its legal pedigree dates
back to medieval times.
Patrick Maddams is a member of the Inner
Temple, and is showing me around.
Patrick, the Inner and Middle Temple take
their names from the Knights Templar...
but then lawyers came here and
occupied Inns of Court.
What are "Inns of Court"?
Well, Inns of Court were places Where you
would work, Where you would sleep...
where you would eat and drink, and
where you would see friends.
You have a good example of an Inn of Court
here in King's Bench Walk.
It was a single building where, at the basement, you
would have the kitchen and where the servants lived.
On the ground floor you would have the chambers
where the barristers would see their clients.
Above that you would have the rooms
Where the barristers lived.
And right at the top, in the eaves, was where the
student barristers, called "pupils", would live.
By the time of my guidebook, this
quiet corner of London
was becoming a global centre for law, as Britain
exported its legal expertise across the Empire.
Is the opposite happening? Are students
coming from the Empire to here?
It is. It's a two-way trade.
And by the time of the late Victorian era there are
many, many, for example, young Indian barristers...
practising English Law - in India.
Any notable examples?
Well, of course, the most
famous of all is Gandhi.
Mohandas Gandhi would become the leader of the
Indian nationalist movement against British rule.
But his extraordinary career began in Victorian
London, as a young law student.
So here we have, clearly, a bust
of the great man.
Here he is.
And these documents?
Well, these are very important because Gandhi
arrived at the Inner Temple in 1888...
and as every student has to do to this day,
he has to fill in an admission form.
And here we see in his own handwriting,
"I, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi"...
"of 20 Baron's Court Road,
West Kensington"
signing his declaration
that he's a fit and proper person.
Luckily for historians, Gandhi kept a diary
during his three years here.
He took dancing lessons, he played the violin
and he just seemed to be absorbed by...
everything that London had to offer.
And there's a very poignant
final entry in the diary...
when he is on the boat for the first night,
leaving London and going back to India...
And there's a copy of it there, Michael,
if you'd like to have a look at it.
Oh, indeed.
Gandhi's final thoughts on London.
"So much attached was I to London and its
environments, for who would not be."
"London, with its teaching institutions, public
galleries, vegetarian restaurants...
"is a fit place for a student
and a traveller"...
"a trader and a faddist - as a vegetarian
would be called by his opponents."
"Thus, it is not Without regret that
I left dear London."
And this reminds us of one final legacy
that Gandhi gave to the chef here.
Some recipes that his mother
had sent him.
And the chef took kindly on him and
cooked a vegetarian curry.
It soon became very popular and, to this day,
every meal served at the Inner Temple...
has a vegetarian option in
memory of Gandhi.
- This place is full of traditions.
- It certainly is.
After Gandhi qualified as a lawyer in 1891,
he briefly returned to India...
before heading to join an Indian
law firm in South Africa.
Until that point, Gandhi had shown
little interest in politics.
Indian barrister Ram Viraraghavan
knows more.
- Ram, hello!
- Hello, Michael.
Very good to see you.
What has brought you from
India to London?
I Wanted to taste the waters at
the Fountain of Justice!
That was why I came to the Inner Temple.
What a lovely answer.
I've been learning about Mahatma Gandhi.
It seems that when he was in London...
he was not particularly interested in
politics. So What changes him?
I should think the provocation was he was
thrown off a train in South Africa.
And that, I should think, was the beginning
of his political consciousness.
He was brown - and the South Africans
would have nothing of it.
They threw him out
of the train.
This is What he says: "The
hardship to which I was subjected"...
"was superficial; only a symptom of the
deep disease of colour prejudice."
"I should try, if possible, to root out the
disease and suffer hardships in the process."
"Redress for Wrongs I should
seek only to the extent that...
would be necessary for
removal of the colour prejudice."
And so began, in a small way, the road
which ultimately led to free India.
It's quite extraordinary to think that such important
history begins with an incident on a train.
Of course it does!
It's time for me to take a train from
the very same station...
that the young Gandhi would have
used all those years ago...
and travel on the District Line to
my final stop: Victoria.
Here the District and Circle Lines,
constructed in the 19th century...
meet the 1960s-built
Victoria line...
and the result can be chaotic.
It's a complete mess.
They are, at the moment, doing some improvements.
Do you think that's going to make it better?
I'm hopeful that it will, and just ease
some of the congestion.
It's not intuitive, the Way you
get around the station.
They tell us that, in a few years' time, We're
going to have great big new ticket halls.
- That's something to look forward to, isn't it?
- Yeah!
As Bradshaw says, "Occupying the site
of the Grosvenor Canal basin...
"the Victoria Station is now the busy scene
of the arrival and departure"...
"of the West End and Crystal
Palace, the Brighton and...
South Coast, and the
Chatham and Dover lines."
Not surprisingly, then, Victoria has become
cluttered, congested and confused...
and clearly in need
of an upgrade.
Since 2009, the Underground station
that serves this busy terminus...
has been undergoing a £700
million makeover...
due to be completed in 2018.
David Waboso is showing me What will
eventually be a vast new ticket hall.
David, Victoria Underground station is very
badly congested. What is your master plan?
Well, we want to increase capacity of this
station by a whopping thirty-three percent.
And we have more passengers use just Victoria
Underground station than Heathrow airport.
Over eighty million passengers a
year come through here.
To link the new and old ticket halls, and to
improve connections between the Tube lines...
two hundred and eighty metres of new
tunnels are being squeezed in...
amongst the existing Underground
infrastructure.
The trouble with that, from an engineering point of
view, is we're having to basically tunnel through...
water-bearing sands, which is not very
good material to tunnel through.
How do you cope with that?
We've effectively, here, put in over two thousand
What we call "jet grouting columns".
Basically, vertical columns of concrete that we
pour into the ground under controlled methods.
And that stabilises the ground, so that we can
then build these huge underground caverns.
I tell you, I Walk past here probably
most days of my life.
I had no idea that this great big hole, this
great big box, was here!
I just wish everybody could see it!
It's a great achievement that during these
vast works going on below-ground...
Victoria Station has stayed open.
David is now taking me to
the cutting edge.
[NOISE OF DRILLING MACHINERY]
Hello.
- How are you?
- Ah, Michael.
- Eugene. Pleased to meet you.
- Good to see you.
What is it that Eugene's doing? I'm used to
seeing great big boring machines...
but I'm quite surprised to see Eugene doing,
well, kind of hand-mining, really.
Yeah. When you get this close in,
the space is so limited...
that you really need manual
methods of doing it.
And we exploit the skills of people like Eugene,
who have hand-mining capabilities.
In Victorian times, they had to
do all this hand-mining...
but Without these Wonderful pneumatic tools.
They must have been really good men, mustn't they?
Yeah, they were. It's heroic stuff and, you know,
we owe them a huge debt, really...
because a lot of the stuff we use today
is based on the Victorians...
who built the first sections of
the Tube in the 1860s.
Where exactly are we now?
So, We're about 24 metres below ground level. Right
on top of us is the Victoria Palace Theatre...
which is currently having a
matinee concert.
Either side of that will be London buses. And there'll
be taxis and cars, and people walking around...
and all this stuff is going on underground.
Just behind us, about a meter behind that clay...
will be the running tunnels for
the Victoria line.
- Just behind that Wall?
- Yeah.
On this journey, I've witnessed London's
insatiable restlessness and constant reinvention.
Today, as in Bradshaw's day, its energy attracts
visitors and settlers from around the World.
As a new Underground station takes
shape in the heart of the capital...
in East London Victorian railway sidings
have become an Olympic park.
The East End is used to change, because
waves of immigration altered it...
from one generation to another.
As the son of a refugee, let me urge
you to speak kindly to foreigners.
After being insulted on a train,
Mahatma Gandhi led a movement...
that deprived the British Empire of What had
once been the jewel in Victoria's crown: India.
Careless talk can be expensive.
Next time, I'll discover how 19th-century
engineering made for spectacular theatricals.
Ben Hur was produced there twice.
To make it more exciting...
they actually turned the treadmills around so
that the horses were running towards the audience.
Discover a Victorian luxury,
fit for a queen.
And, so, if I dab this behind my ears...
I can smell like Queen Victoria.
And come face to face with my hero.
George Bradshaw.
[END THEME]