Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 7, Episode 10 - Plymouth to Porthcurno - full transcript
For Victorian Britons, George
Bradshaw was a household name.
At a time when railways were new,
Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them
to take to the tracks.
I'm using a Bradshaw's Guide
to understand
how trains transformed Britain -
its landscape, its industry,
society and leisure time.
As I crisscross the country
150 years later,
it helps me
to discover the Britain of today.
I'm now completing my railway
journey from Dover to Land's End.
These tracks over the years have
brought millions of holidaymakers
to beaches in Devon and Cornwall, but
today, my focus is more strategic.
I Want to know how we kept the navy
supplied with rum,
and now Victorians shrank imperial
connections from Weeks to minutes.
Following my Bradshaw's, I'm
travelling from east to west.
My journey started at the crossing
point closest to France
and took me through military
defences and seaside resorts
and across glorious countryside.
I'll end at the first...
and last place in England.
My final leg starts in Plymouth.
I make a stop in Saltash
and St Austell,
before travelling
on to the last station in England.
On this journey, I attempt to learn
the difficult art of crimping...
Don't think much
of yours, Jason.
Marvel at one of
Brunel's finest feats...
It's lovely to see a structure
that's still here so long after
it was built, still in use
for its original purpose.
Discover how
a small bay in Cornwall
effectively controlled
the British Empire...
Cornwall is still the hub
of communication.
They carry messages all
over the World.
And pick up the essentials
of the Cornish language.
Yeghes da!
As I near the end of my journey,
my first stop today will be Plymouth,
described by Bradshaw's as,
"a first-class fortress
and dockyard in Devonshire.
“The dockyard and harbour
ave at Davenport,
"the victualling office
is at Stonehouse,
and there are other establishments,
but Plymouth is
the common name for all."
"Victualling" - that's an
interesting word, bearing in mind
that a navy fights on its stomach.
Built up around the natural harbour
of Plymouth Sound,
the city has forever been defined
by its maritime location.
It's been home to the Royal Navy
since the 17th century,
and today is the largest
naval base in western Europe.
The vast site employs 2,500 personnel
and generates about 10%
of Plymouth's income.
This railway station opened in 1877,
connecting Plymouth to London.
Intrigued by how the navy
kept itself in food and drink,
I'm at the
Royal William Victualling Yard
to meet Bob Cook, a volunteer
from the Naval Heritage Centre.
Bob, according to Bradshaw's, the
victualling office is "a quadrangle
"which costs 1.5m pounds and includes
"biscuit-making machinery, cooperage
and immense provision stores."
Why was this built, and When?
It started, the concept,
from 1822, to centralise
much of their storage
and their manufacturing processes,
instead of depending
on local contractors
for their various supplies.
In the Napoleonic Wars,
the Victualling Board was
responsible for servicing at least
250,000 men - the population
of Plymouth - all over the World.
Following the Napoleonic Wars,
the Royal Navy
Wanted to improve its logistics,
ready for any future conflict.
Architect Sir John Rennie
was commissioned to build
a fine collection
of food-provisioning buildings.
How did the provisions
move from here to the men 0' war?
Basically, by being transported
from the harbour here
on small sailing barges called hoys.
They could take them either up to
the ships or else out towards
Plymouth Sound if anything was
anchored in that direction.
What was the range
of facilities here?
Range of provisions, basically,
very simply, a pound of meat a day,
a gallon of beer, a pound,
usually, of hardtack ship's biscuit,
things like this.
Rum was one of the things
supplied from here.
The rum was supplied and, of
course, that was one feature of
the building behind me,
the brewhouse -
massive, very tall, rum vats.
Rum for the men
and gin for the officers?
Not necessarily. Yes, it was
one of the spirits available,
different strengths
for different ranks of the sailors.
Only the officers
could stand the hard stuff!
- Bob, thank you very much, indeed.
- Good to meet you.
- Good bye.
- Bye-bye.
Spirits formed part of the
daily ration up until 1970,
when the Admiralty Board
decided that alcohol might be
incompatible with the safe operation
of machinery and Weapons.
Tots of rum and gin
were staples on any outgoing ship.
I'm meeting master distiller
Sean Harrison at Plymouth Gin,
founded in 1793.
- Hello, Sean.
- Hello, Michael,
Welcome to Plymouth Gin.
What an amazing building -
What is the history?
It's very old and very interesting.
The oldest part
is about 600 years old,
which was built
by Blackfriars monks,
which is why We're called
the Black Friars Distillery.
The bit We're in at the moment
is about 400 years old,
and this is Where
every single drop
of Plymouth Gin
has ever been made.
What about its relationship
with the navy?
Because the navy Went around
the world, and the Empire grew
during the Victorian era, and
everywhere the Royal Navy went,
- they took gin with them.
- What is navy-strength gin?
Navy-strength gin is gin at 57%.
A couple of hundred years ago,
they couldn't Work out how much alcohol
there was in the product,
so they used to prove it,
mix it with gunpowder
and light the gunpowder.
At 57% and above, the gunpowder
would still fizzle and go bang,
so it proved there was
alcohol in the product.
How did gin begin
its happy marriage with tonic?
It goes all the way
back to the Indian Raj.
The guys Wanted to have
their gin because they liked it,
and they Wanted to have their tonic,
which was a quinine-based drink, to
protect themselves against malaria.
So, the two
just got brought together.
What's all this hubble-bubble here?
What we see here is a spirit safe,
and this is gin.
And this is our first chance
to see it,
and making sure that the still
is doing What we hope it will do.
It's raining gin.
It's raining gin, yep.
In the 17th century, gin reached
Britain from the Netherlands,
Where it was prized
for its medicinal properties.
It soon became a cheap tipple,
taken up by the poor
and the cause of many social ills.
In the mid-18th century, laws
regulated its manufacture and sale.
During the Victorian era,
the quality of gin was improved
and it climbed the social ladder.
OK, Michael,
here's a chance to make some gin.
Whoopee!
So What We've got in front of us
is eight ingredients.
The one in the middle, which is
juniper.
Right, junipers We've got to have.
That'll be fine. Slowly, slowly tip.
You've now made gin,
so now What We're going to do is
massage the flavours a little bit.
What was newly popular
at the time of my Bradshaw's Guide?
Well, the great thing about gin is,
it's linked to the flavours
we discovered as we go through that
'ISO-year period, from 1750 to 1900.
So, liquorice was becoming quite
popular at that time.
- No.
- Not good?
No.
Um, We've got orange and lemon,
coriander seeds, angelica root...
So there's loads of different
flavours you can play around with.
Being Spanish, a touch of lemon.
So you just need to rip it up so it
goes through the hole. Quite small.
Think I might just have
one more flavour. Coriander.
And if that's all your ingredients,
that's the makings of your gin.
Now you need to pick it up
and we need to take it
over to the heat source,
Where We're going to boil it
and create gin.
That's it, just put it into there, and then
What We're going to do is connect it
from one side to the other with
this piece of glass here.
And then we put on some water.
Effectively, What we are going
to do is heat this up,
turn it into a vapour,
it's going to come over here
to this water condenser, Where We're
going to take the heat out of it
and collect 100ml.
And that will be your gin.
- That will be Portillo's Ruin.
- Yes.
As Royal Navy ships conveyed
Plymouth Gin around the globe,
it became, by 1900, the world's
largest volume brand of gin,
with 1,000 cases a week
going to New York alone.
I wonder whether I've made
an equally appealing blend.
So, Michael, here's your gin
that you made earlier.
Fantastic.
Ooh!
That is powerful.
So if we pour a little measure
into each of the glasses.
Those Spanish lemons are really
coming through.
They are.
Here goes the taste...
. am a gin-ius.
I'm joining the Cornish Main Line,
constructed by two railway companies
during the 1850s.
As I leave Devon behind, I pass into
my eighth county of this adventure,
and a moment I've been anticipating.
And now, one of the great
treats of my journey,
the Royal Albert Bridge,
crossing the River Tamar,
carrying us into Cornwall.
Built by Isambard Kingdom Brunei,
one of his finest achievements
and one of the most
beautiful pieces of infrastructure
on all of the UK rail network.
I'm alighting at Saltash,
the nearest station,
to meet local railway historian
Paul Burkhalter.
Hello, Paul, it's lovely to be in
Cornwall, and What a Way to arrive.
The Admiralty insisted on a bridge
with a 100ft clearance.
Isambard Kingdom Brunei responded
with an engineering masterpiece
which he called
"the bowstring suspension bridge".
Paul, how complicated was it
to build this bridge?
Well, you've got to remember,
Michael, that this was at
the forefront of engineering
intelligence of the time.
There was no big bridge building
expertise in that era,
they had to evolve as they built.
- How long did the project take?
- This took six years to build.
They started in 1853,
and finished, as the bridge
says, 1859.
Is it really a suspension bridge?
Yes, suspension chains are holding
the bridge deck, and the tubes,
the huge tubes at the top,
are forcing the piers outward,
so, yes, it is a form
of suspension bridge.
What difference did it make
having the bridge?
Oh, tremendous.
It opened up Cornwall
to all sorts of new ventures,
particularly in
the agricultural World.
So, the railway bridge
was not built for the tourists?
No, it Wasn't,
but it came very soon after,
because the Great Western Railway
was a great self-publicist
and promoted the tourist industry.
You had the posters, the artwork
talking about the Cornish Riviera,
so yes, it came
very quickly after that.
It's looking pristine
and handsome at the moment.
It's just had a big restoration.
It has: Network Rail, 15 million-pound
project, took them five years.
It's only just finished
this year and, a few Weeks ago,
they organised a celebration Walk
across the bridge
to mark the end of that project.
You sound quite emotional about
this bridge. Would that be right?
It's lovely to see
a structure still here
so long after it was built,
still in use
for its original purpose.
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
He's just an amazing man.
Yes. And of course,
he died not long after the bridge
was opened;
he died later that year, in 1859.
- So, it stands as his headstone.
- Yes.
Back on the rails,
I head out of Saltash, with a last
backward glance at Brunel's work.
I'm travelling to my final
destination of the day - St Austell.
Bradshaw's notes
the tin and copper mines
being worked in his day.
But as that industry
has been largely worked out,
I'm interested in a Cornish element
that's on the rise.
Bradshaw's quotes What it claims
is a Well-known rhyme.
"By Tre, Pol and Pen,
you may know Cornish men."
Then, it gives examples
from place names -
Tregothnan, Polperro, Penryn...
and it strikes me that,
now I'm in Cornwall,
I should learn
a few Words of Cornish.
The Cornish language
was in decline for centuries.
It's undergone a revival
in recent decades
and now, around 2,000 people
are said to be fluent.
Matthew Clark, Jerry Jeffries
and Loveday Jenkin
meet up regularly to keep
their language alive.
[SHE SPEAKS CORNISH]
[HE RESPONDS IN CORNISH]
I hear you all speaking Cornish.
How unusual does that
make you these days?
Not as unusual as it used to be.
- Is that right?
- Yeah,
the language
is expanding quite a lot.
Would it be an exaggeration
to say it was once a dead language?
Well, it's quite interesting
to think about,
because actually, although it Wasn't
used as a means of communication
for about 70-80 years,
it's never really died out,
the knowledge of Cornish,
its just as a spoken language.
How closely related is it
to other Celtic languages?
The strongest link, I suppose,
is between Cornish and Breton.
And, in fact, up to the 1500s,
it was mutually intelligible,
Cornish and Breton, at that time.
The three prefixes that people might
know who know nothing of Cornish -
tre, pol and pen -
What do they actually mean?
Tre, which is like
a hamlet or a homestead.
Pol, which is a pool.
Pen, which is a headland or a hill.
And you find those in Brittany,
and all across the map in Wales
as well, that really makes a strong
distinction of Celtic territory.
So, how do I say hello?
- Dydh da.
- Dydh da?
- Dydh da.
- Dydh da.
How do I say thank you?
- Meur ras dms.
- Meur ras dms.
How do I say please?
- Mar pleg.
- Mar pleg.
And how do you say cheers?
- Yeghes da.
- Yeghes da.
Yeghes da!
Indeed, yeghes da.
It's the morning of my second day
and I'm heading out of St Austell,
to enjoy my final stretches of track
towards the end of the rail network.
My next stop will be Penzance.
Bradshaw's says, "This flourishing
port is at the further end of
"Cornwall, and the terminus
of the West Cornwall Railway."
But surprisingly,
in this region's spicy history,
there's been
a strong influence from the east.
End of the line.
Cornwall is the last county
coming from London,
but the first
approaching from the Atlantic.
So its links across the sea
have been as important as those
with Britain's hinterland.
"St Michael's Mount - a conspicuous
granite rock. At the top,
"the remains of a priory
founded before the Norman conquest
"and, forages,
resorted to by pilgrims.
"In olden times, this was called
'Ictis' and was a tin depot."
Hundreds of years before
St Michael appeared as a vision
to fishermen, Greeks had been coming
here with their ships, to carry
the tin to their own land, bringing
with them saffron and pepper-
ingredients that have had
a lasting effect on Cornish cuisine.
The pepper and spices came from afar,
but the vegetables
came from the Cornish earth, as did
the minerals hewn by the miners.
The miners' needs helped to shape
the famous Cornish pasty.
I'm calling in on Jason Jobling,
a master baker.
Jason, you, then,
have your own very special -
and, I take it, secret -
recipe for Cornish pasty?
Yeah, we have. We've been making
pasties since 1860
and We've developed the recipe
over a number of years,
so We're quite proud of it, as well.
All right, so not everything
is secret about it,
because I know it's got potato,
onion and swede.
That's right.
And I think you've got some
spicy secrets in that mixture there.
Definitely, we've got
a long history of trading
- with the peppercorn spices.
- Aha. Ok, how do we begin?
So, if you can put roughly
a quarter of that bowl of
sliced potatoes into the new bowl...
- One quarter exactly?
- Great.
Half as much swede in there, please.
Precisely one half
of the quantity of swede.
And then, half as much
of the onion as the swede.
Ooh! Lovely, fragrant,
tear-jerking onion.
So, we need some salt.
And then the special pepper.
Then, we combine that together.
- Turning it through.
- What do we do with this now?
Just turn it through
the same as the vegetables.
Oh, that chill of the meat.
Am I right in thinking the tin
miners were great devotees
of the Cornish pasty?
Yes, the pasty suited the tin
miners, they used to take it down
the mines and they used
to eat it by the crimp edge,
and then, after eating it,
they used to
- throw the crimp edge down the mine.
- Why?
In the mining process, they had
arsenic and other minerals
oh their hands, and
they didn't have that
touching the food,
and didn't eat it.
So, it's not just there
for decoration?
No, there's a story behind it.
These pasties are made
with skirt beef.
The miners would have been
used to all sorts of fillings,
from rabbit to mackerel,
flavoured with
wild lemon grass and garlic.
Put a handful of vegetables
on your round.
- Some skirt beef over the top.
- Over the top.
Little tip, we want to create
a nice little bit of gravy,
so we add a little
bit of butter on top.
Such a simple idea,
but I bet that is really effective.
So, the next stage is folding
the pastry over to make a D shape.
- I fear that was the easy bit.
- That was the easy bit.
So, now we take the corner
and make a triangle.
Make a triangle.
And then, another triangle,
making this roping effect.
Ooh.
Everyone's got their own unique
style. The staff in our bakery
can tell who's crimped each pasty,
each crimp is that different.
I think they may be able
to quite easily tell who crimped
THIS particular pasty.
OK, let's hold them up,
for the sake of comparison.
They're similar.
[THEY LAUGH]
- Don't think much of yours, Jason.
- No.
After cooking them in the oven
for almost an hour,
I take my version
of the Cornish pasty around town
to try it out on the locals.
I've been making
some Cornish pasties.
Are you not put off by the fact
it's not nicely crimped?
- You could do better.
- Well, with practice, with practice.
Hello. You're not put off by the Way
I've done them, are you?
It's not crimped
properly at all, sorry.
I'm hot very good at crimping.
What do you think of that?
That looks better than I could do
and I've got an A in
catering and hospitality, so...
Have you really?
- Did you make them?
- Yeah.
- That's nice.
- Oh, good.
- Thank you very much.
- You've done a good job.
[THEY LAUGH]
The secret of a satisfactory pasty
is, don't skimp on your crimp.
To end my coastal journey, it's
fitting that the final destination
be at the end of Great Britain.
In Bradshaw's day, this headland
protruding into the Atlantic
pointed to America and sea routes
to the British Empire.
This is Porthcourno,
about eight miles from Land's End.
But Land's End is just another
Way of saying "ocean's beginning"
and, at the time of my Bradshaw's
Guide, the challenge was
how to connect to the
world beyond.
The telegraph system was developed
in the early 19th century.
Railway companies established
and expanded the network on land,
running cables
alongside their tracks.
The next challenge was to take
telegraph cables across the seas.
I'm meeting Gareth Parry, a volunteer
at the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.
Gareth,
when did they first lay ocean cables
terminating here at Porthcurno?
That came in in 1870
and that was the first occasion
when people in this country
could communicate
with any other part
of the British Empire.
Prior to the cable arriving
here at Porthcurno, any message
to Bombay, as it was called
then, in India
could take six or seven Weeks.
With a cable,
that dropped down to nine minutes.
So, it dramatically changed
the way in which this country
controlled the British Empire.
So, the cables that arrived from
the Empire came later in history
than the first transatlantic cable -
is that right?
Yes, the first successful
transatlantic cable
would have been 1866.
These first cables across the
Atlantic Went from the west coast of
Ireland to a place called
Heart's Content in Newfoundland.
Wealthy industrialist John Pender
was the leading financier.
The epic undertaking
faced major challenges.
Did they know that
it was going to Work?
No, the first attempt involved
two ships having two sets of cable
and trying to connect up.
And that failed.
Second attempt in 1858
did establish communication,
but the cable failed after a
relatively short time - a few Weeks.
A lot of effort Went into improving
the purity of the copper
in the cable.
The cable that had
been manufactured was so heavy
there was only one ship
that could carry it,
and that was
Brunets SS Great Eastern.
There was an attempt in 1865
and they lost the cable.
They returned and John Pender raised
capital to get another cable made.
That was successful in 1866.
It was primitive communication,
but it was communication.
Even after some
very expensive failed attempts,
the backers persisted.
Once the technical obstacles
had been overcome, the cable network
centred on Porthcurno spread rapidly.
By 1887, the undersea cable network
connected Britain,
via relay stations,
to every corner of her Empire.
Porthcurno was the hub
of communications
and the largest telegraph station
in the World.
What did the transatlantic cables
look like?
I've got some samples here.
You have a copper core,
which carries the signal,
but you have to insulate it.
So they used a material
called gutta-percha,
which comes from a plant
in the Far East, it's like rubber,
but more tolerant of sea conditions.
Well, up to a point,
because certain sea creatures
are rather partial to gutta-percha,
so you have to cover that.
The biggest concern
for the cable manufacturers was
they would get damaged
by busy shipping lanes.
If they were near the shore,
you would have a heavy
armoured section, which is
What you see on this outer one here.
- You can see they're quite heavy.
- Ooph.
Imagine a couple
of thousand miles of that.
Well, you can see why they needed
the SS Great Eastern to carry it.
In telegraph stations
across the globe,
operators sent and deciphered messages
that had been framed
in Morse code.
Thousands of operators
were trained at Porthcurno,
up until 1993,
when the original cables
were replaced with modern fibres.
It's interesting to compare
What we see here...
with one of today's
optical fibre samples.
Now, if you hold that to the
light you can see some
very thin strands.
They are about the thickness
of a human hair, and this has
dramatically changed communication.
Each one of these
would be capable of carrying
several million telephone calls.
Interestingly, these are coming up
on the beach here at Porthcurno.
Cornwall is still the hub
of communication for fibre optics.
And these carry messages
all over the World.
With foresight and ambition,
this venture laid
the foundations
for today's World Wide Web.
Since I began my excursion
in Dover Harbour,
celebrating the achievements
of the first cross-Channel swimmer,
I've come across
several Victorian heroes.
From inventors to Writers,
and not forgetting one nurse -
Florence Nightingale.
As I travelled
along the south coast of England,
defence was much on my mind.
I encountered the
19th-Century fortifications,
designed to keep the French at bay.
And the Royal Navy,
whose dominance of the high seas
guaranteed the citizens
of our island a century of peace,
from John o'Groats to Land's End.
Next time...
I have a blast in Birmingham...
[WHISTLING]
Brilliant. That's the sound
of the railways, isn't it?
Pay homage to a magnificent organ
that inspired a great composer...
The City Fathers were very proud
of this instrument, so it was a
feather in their cap that somebody
like Mendelssohn should deign
to play on it.
And get a dose of quack doctors
and their bizarre remedies.
"Mother Siegel's Curative Syrup."
There is one here called simply
"The Ills Of Humanity".
And "Pink Pills For Pale People".
[END THEME]
Bradshaw was a household name.
At a time when railways were new,
Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them
to take to the tracks.
I'm using a Bradshaw's Guide
to understand
how trains transformed Britain -
its landscape, its industry,
society and leisure time.
As I crisscross the country
150 years later,
it helps me
to discover the Britain of today.
I'm now completing my railway
journey from Dover to Land's End.
These tracks over the years have
brought millions of holidaymakers
to beaches in Devon and Cornwall, but
today, my focus is more strategic.
I Want to know how we kept the navy
supplied with rum,
and now Victorians shrank imperial
connections from Weeks to minutes.
Following my Bradshaw's, I'm
travelling from east to west.
My journey started at the crossing
point closest to France
and took me through military
defences and seaside resorts
and across glorious countryside.
I'll end at the first...
and last place in England.
My final leg starts in Plymouth.
I make a stop in Saltash
and St Austell,
before travelling
on to the last station in England.
On this journey, I attempt to learn
the difficult art of crimping...
Don't think much
of yours, Jason.
Marvel at one of
Brunel's finest feats...
It's lovely to see a structure
that's still here so long after
it was built, still in use
for its original purpose.
Discover how
a small bay in Cornwall
effectively controlled
the British Empire...
Cornwall is still the hub
of communication.
They carry messages all
over the World.
And pick up the essentials
of the Cornish language.
Yeghes da!
As I near the end of my journey,
my first stop today will be Plymouth,
described by Bradshaw's as,
"a first-class fortress
and dockyard in Devonshire.
“The dockyard and harbour
ave at Davenport,
"the victualling office
is at Stonehouse,
and there are other establishments,
but Plymouth is
the common name for all."
"Victualling" - that's an
interesting word, bearing in mind
that a navy fights on its stomach.
Built up around the natural harbour
of Plymouth Sound,
the city has forever been defined
by its maritime location.
It's been home to the Royal Navy
since the 17th century,
and today is the largest
naval base in western Europe.
The vast site employs 2,500 personnel
and generates about 10%
of Plymouth's income.
This railway station opened in 1877,
connecting Plymouth to London.
Intrigued by how the navy
kept itself in food and drink,
I'm at the
Royal William Victualling Yard
to meet Bob Cook, a volunteer
from the Naval Heritage Centre.
Bob, according to Bradshaw's, the
victualling office is "a quadrangle
"which costs 1.5m pounds and includes
"biscuit-making machinery, cooperage
and immense provision stores."
Why was this built, and When?
It started, the concept,
from 1822, to centralise
much of their storage
and their manufacturing processes,
instead of depending
on local contractors
for their various supplies.
In the Napoleonic Wars,
the Victualling Board was
responsible for servicing at least
250,000 men - the population
of Plymouth - all over the World.
Following the Napoleonic Wars,
the Royal Navy
Wanted to improve its logistics,
ready for any future conflict.
Architect Sir John Rennie
was commissioned to build
a fine collection
of food-provisioning buildings.
How did the provisions
move from here to the men 0' war?
Basically, by being transported
from the harbour here
on small sailing barges called hoys.
They could take them either up to
the ships or else out towards
Plymouth Sound if anything was
anchored in that direction.
What was the range
of facilities here?
Range of provisions, basically,
very simply, a pound of meat a day,
a gallon of beer, a pound,
usually, of hardtack ship's biscuit,
things like this.
Rum was one of the things
supplied from here.
The rum was supplied and, of
course, that was one feature of
the building behind me,
the brewhouse -
massive, very tall, rum vats.
Rum for the men
and gin for the officers?
Not necessarily. Yes, it was
one of the spirits available,
different strengths
for different ranks of the sailors.
Only the officers
could stand the hard stuff!
- Bob, thank you very much, indeed.
- Good to meet you.
- Good bye.
- Bye-bye.
Spirits formed part of the
daily ration up until 1970,
when the Admiralty Board
decided that alcohol might be
incompatible with the safe operation
of machinery and Weapons.
Tots of rum and gin
were staples on any outgoing ship.
I'm meeting master distiller
Sean Harrison at Plymouth Gin,
founded in 1793.
- Hello, Sean.
- Hello, Michael,
Welcome to Plymouth Gin.
What an amazing building -
What is the history?
It's very old and very interesting.
The oldest part
is about 600 years old,
which was built
by Blackfriars monks,
which is why We're called
the Black Friars Distillery.
The bit We're in at the moment
is about 400 years old,
and this is Where
every single drop
of Plymouth Gin
has ever been made.
What about its relationship
with the navy?
Because the navy Went around
the world, and the Empire grew
during the Victorian era, and
everywhere the Royal Navy went,
- they took gin with them.
- What is navy-strength gin?
Navy-strength gin is gin at 57%.
A couple of hundred years ago,
they couldn't Work out how much alcohol
there was in the product,
so they used to prove it,
mix it with gunpowder
and light the gunpowder.
At 57% and above, the gunpowder
would still fizzle and go bang,
so it proved there was
alcohol in the product.
How did gin begin
its happy marriage with tonic?
It goes all the way
back to the Indian Raj.
The guys Wanted to have
their gin because they liked it,
and they Wanted to have their tonic,
which was a quinine-based drink, to
protect themselves against malaria.
So, the two
just got brought together.
What's all this hubble-bubble here?
What we see here is a spirit safe,
and this is gin.
And this is our first chance
to see it,
and making sure that the still
is doing What we hope it will do.
It's raining gin.
It's raining gin, yep.
In the 17th century, gin reached
Britain from the Netherlands,
Where it was prized
for its medicinal properties.
It soon became a cheap tipple,
taken up by the poor
and the cause of many social ills.
In the mid-18th century, laws
regulated its manufacture and sale.
During the Victorian era,
the quality of gin was improved
and it climbed the social ladder.
OK, Michael,
here's a chance to make some gin.
Whoopee!
So What We've got in front of us
is eight ingredients.
The one in the middle, which is
juniper.
Right, junipers We've got to have.
That'll be fine. Slowly, slowly tip.
You've now made gin,
so now What We're going to do is
massage the flavours a little bit.
What was newly popular
at the time of my Bradshaw's Guide?
Well, the great thing about gin is,
it's linked to the flavours
we discovered as we go through that
'ISO-year period, from 1750 to 1900.
So, liquorice was becoming quite
popular at that time.
- No.
- Not good?
No.
Um, We've got orange and lemon,
coriander seeds, angelica root...
So there's loads of different
flavours you can play around with.
Being Spanish, a touch of lemon.
So you just need to rip it up so it
goes through the hole. Quite small.
Think I might just have
one more flavour. Coriander.
And if that's all your ingredients,
that's the makings of your gin.
Now you need to pick it up
and we need to take it
over to the heat source,
Where We're going to boil it
and create gin.
That's it, just put it into there, and then
What We're going to do is connect it
from one side to the other with
this piece of glass here.
And then we put on some water.
Effectively, What we are going
to do is heat this up,
turn it into a vapour,
it's going to come over here
to this water condenser, Where We're
going to take the heat out of it
and collect 100ml.
And that will be your gin.
- That will be Portillo's Ruin.
- Yes.
As Royal Navy ships conveyed
Plymouth Gin around the globe,
it became, by 1900, the world's
largest volume brand of gin,
with 1,000 cases a week
going to New York alone.
I wonder whether I've made
an equally appealing blend.
So, Michael, here's your gin
that you made earlier.
Fantastic.
Ooh!
That is powerful.
So if we pour a little measure
into each of the glasses.
Those Spanish lemons are really
coming through.
They are.
Here goes the taste...
. am a gin-ius.
I'm joining the Cornish Main Line,
constructed by two railway companies
during the 1850s.
As I leave Devon behind, I pass into
my eighth county of this adventure,
and a moment I've been anticipating.
And now, one of the great
treats of my journey,
the Royal Albert Bridge,
crossing the River Tamar,
carrying us into Cornwall.
Built by Isambard Kingdom Brunei,
one of his finest achievements
and one of the most
beautiful pieces of infrastructure
on all of the UK rail network.
I'm alighting at Saltash,
the nearest station,
to meet local railway historian
Paul Burkhalter.
Hello, Paul, it's lovely to be in
Cornwall, and What a Way to arrive.
The Admiralty insisted on a bridge
with a 100ft clearance.
Isambard Kingdom Brunei responded
with an engineering masterpiece
which he called
"the bowstring suspension bridge".
Paul, how complicated was it
to build this bridge?
Well, you've got to remember,
Michael, that this was at
the forefront of engineering
intelligence of the time.
There was no big bridge building
expertise in that era,
they had to evolve as they built.
- How long did the project take?
- This took six years to build.
They started in 1853,
and finished, as the bridge
says, 1859.
Is it really a suspension bridge?
Yes, suspension chains are holding
the bridge deck, and the tubes,
the huge tubes at the top,
are forcing the piers outward,
so, yes, it is a form
of suspension bridge.
What difference did it make
having the bridge?
Oh, tremendous.
It opened up Cornwall
to all sorts of new ventures,
particularly in
the agricultural World.
So, the railway bridge
was not built for the tourists?
No, it Wasn't,
but it came very soon after,
because the Great Western Railway
was a great self-publicist
and promoted the tourist industry.
You had the posters, the artwork
talking about the Cornish Riviera,
so yes, it came
very quickly after that.
It's looking pristine
and handsome at the moment.
It's just had a big restoration.
It has: Network Rail, 15 million-pound
project, took them five years.
It's only just finished
this year and, a few Weeks ago,
they organised a celebration Walk
across the bridge
to mark the end of that project.
You sound quite emotional about
this bridge. Would that be right?
It's lovely to see
a structure still here
so long after it was built,
still in use
for its original purpose.
Isambard Kingdom Brunei.
He's just an amazing man.
Yes. And of course,
he died not long after the bridge
was opened;
he died later that year, in 1859.
- So, it stands as his headstone.
- Yes.
Back on the rails,
I head out of Saltash, with a last
backward glance at Brunel's work.
I'm travelling to my final
destination of the day - St Austell.
Bradshaw's notes
the tin and copper mines
being worked in his day.
But as that industry
has been largely worked out,
I'm interested in a Cornish element
that's on the rise.
Bradshaw's quotes What it claims
is a Well-known rhyme.
"By Tre, Pol and Pen,
you may know Cornish men."
Then, it gives examples
from place names -
Tregothnan, Polperro, Penryn...
and it strikes me that,
now I'm in Cornwall,
I should learn
a few Words of Cornish.
The Cornish language
was in decline for centuries.
It's undergone a revival
in recent decades
and now, around 2,000 people
are said to be fluent.
Matthew Clark, Jerry Jeffries
and Loveday Jenkin
meet up regularly to keep
their language alive.
[SHE SPEAKS CORNISH]
[HE RESPONDS IN CORNISH]
I hear you all speaking Cornish.
How unusual does that
make you these days?
Not as unusual as it used to be.
- Is that right?
- Yeah,
the language
is expanding quite a lot.
Would it be an exaggeration
to say it was once a dead language?
Well, it's quite interesting
to think about,
because actually, although it Wasn't
used as a means of communication
for about 70-80 years,
it's never really died out,
the knowledge of Cornish,
its just as a spoken language.
How closely related is it
to other Celtic languages?
The strongest link, I suppose,
is between Cornish and Breton.
And, in fact, up to the 1500s,
it was mutually intelligible,
Cornish and Breton, at that time.
The three prefixes that people might
know who know nothing of Cornish -
tre, pol and pen -
What do they actually mean?
Tre, which is like
a hamlet or a homestead.
Pol, which is a pool.
Pen, which is a headland or a hill.
And you find those in Brittany,
and all across the map in Wales
as well, that really makes a strong
distinction of Celtic territory.
So, how do I say hello?
- Dydh da.
- Dydh da?
- Dydh da.
- Dydh da.
How do I say thank you?
- Meur ras dms.
- Meur ras dms.
How do I say please?
- Mar pleg.
- Mar pleg.
And how do you say cheers?
- Yeghes da.
- Yeghes da.
Yeghes da!
Indeed, yeghes da.
It's the morning of my second day
and I'm heading out of St Austell,
to enjoy my final stretches of track
towards the end of the rail network.
My next stop will be Penzance.
Bradshaw's says, "This flourishing
port is at the further end of
"Cornwall, and the terminus
of the West Cornwall Railway."
But surprisingly,
in this region's spicy history,
there's been
a strong influence from the east.
End of the line.
Cornwall is the last county
coming from London,
but the first
approaching from the Atlantic.
So its links across the sea
have been as important as those
with Britain's hinterland.
"St Michael's Mount - a conspicuous
granite rock. At the top,
"the remains of a priory
founded before the Norman conquest
"and, forages,
resorted to by pilgrims.
"In olden times, this was called
'Ictis' and was a tin depot."
Hundreds of years before
St Michael appeared as a vision
to fishermen, Greeks had been coming
here with their ships, to carry
the tin to their own land, bringing
with them saffron and pepper-
ingredients that have had
a lasting effect on Cornish cuisine.
The pepper and spices came from afar,
but the vegetables
came from the Cornish earth, as did
the minerals hewn by the miners.
The miners' needs helped to shape
the famous Cornish pasty.
I'm calling in on Jason Jobling,
a master baker.
Jason, you, then,
have your own very special -
and, I take it, secret -
recipe for Cornish pasty?
Yeah, we have. We've been making
pasties since 1860
and We've developed the recipe
over a number of years,
so We're quite proud of it, as well.
All right, so not everything
is secret about it,
because I know it's got potato,
onion and swede.
That's right.
And I think you've got some
spicy secrets in that mixture there.
Definitely, we've got
a long history of trading
- with the peppercorn spices.
- Aha. Ok, how do we begin?
So, if you can put roughly
a quarter of that bowl of
sliced potatoes into the new bowl...
- One quarter exactly?
- Great.
Half as much swede in there, please.
Precisely one half
of the quantity of swede.
And then, half as much
of the onion as the swede.
Ooh! Lovely, fragrant,
tear-jerking onion.
So, we need some salt.
And then the special pepper.
Then, we combine that together.
- Turning it through.
- What do we do with this now?
Just turn it through
the same as the vegetables.
Oh, that chill of the meat.
Am I right in thinking the tin
miners were great devotees
of the Cornish pasty?
Yes, the pasty suited the tin
miners, they used to take it down
the mines and they used
to eat it by the crimp edge,
and then, after eating it,
they used to
- throw the crimp edge down the mine.
- Why?
In the mining process, they had
arsenic and other minerals
oh their hands, and
they didn't have that
touching the food,
and didn't eat it.
So, it's not just there
for decoration?
No, there's a story behind it.
These pasties are made
with skirt beef.
The miners would have been
used to all sorts of fillings,
from rabbit to mackerel,
flavoured with
wild lemon grass and garlic.
Put a handful of vegetables
on your round.
- Some skirt beef over the top.
- Over the top.
Little tip, we want to create
a nice little bit of gravy,
so we add a little
bit of butter on top.
Such a simple idea,
but I bet that is really effective.
So, the next stage is folding
the pastry over to make a D shape.
- I fear that was the easy bit.
- That was the easy bit.
So, now we take the corner
and make a triangle.
Make a triangle.
And then, another triangle,
making this roping effect.
Ooh.
Everyone's got their own unique
style. The staff in our bakery
can tell who's crimped each pasty,
each crimp is that different.
I think they may be able
to quite easily tell who crimped
THIS particular pasty.
OK, let's hold them up,
for the sake of comparison.
They're similar.
[THEY LAUGH]
- Don't think much of yours, Jason.
- No.
After cooking them in the oven
for almost an hour,
I take my version
of the Cornish pasty around town
to try it out on the locals.
I've been making
some Cornish pasties.
Are you not put off by the fact
it's not nicely crimped?
- You could do better.
- Well, with practice, with practice.
Hello. You're not put off by the Way
I've done them, are you?
It's not crimped
properly at all, sorry.
I'm hot very good at crimping.
What do you think of that?
That looks better than I could do
and I've got an A in
catering and hospitality, so...
Have you really?
- Did you make them?
- Yeah.
- That's nice.
- Oh, good.
- Thank you very much.
- You've done a good job.
[THEY LAUGH]
The secret of a satisfactory pasty
is, don't skimp on your crimp.
To end my coastal journey, it's
fitting that the final destination
be at the end of Great Britain.
In Bradshaw's day, this headland
protruding into the Atlantic
pointed to America and sea routes
to the British Empire.
This is Porthcourno,
about eight miles from Land's End.
But Land's End is just another
Way of saying "ocean's beginning"
and, at the time of my Bradshaw's
Guide, the challenge was
how to connect to the
world beyond.
The telegraph system was developed
in the early 19th century.
Railway companies established
and expanded the network on land,
running cables
alongside their tracks.
The next challenge was to take
telegraph cables across the seas.
I'm meeting Gareth Parry, a volunteer
at the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.
Gareth,
when did they first lay ocean cables
terminating here at Porthcurno?
That came in in 1870
and that was the first occasion
when people in this country
could communicate
with any other part
of the British Empire.
Prior to the cable arriving
here at Porthcurno, any message
to Bombay, as it was called
then, in India
could take six or seven Weeks.
With a cable,
that dropped down to nine minutes.
So, it dramatically changed
the way in which this country
controlled the British Empire.
So, the cables that arrived from
the Empire came later in history
than the first transatlantic cable -
is that right?
Yes, the first successful
transatlantic cable
would have been 1866.
These first cables across the
Atlantic Went from the west coast of
Ireland to a place called
Heart's Content in Newfoundland.
Wealthy industrialist John Pender
was the leading financier.
The epic undertaking
faced major challenges.
Did they know that
it was going to Work?
No, the first attempt involved
two ships having two sets of cable
and trying to connect up.
And that failed.
Second attempt in 1858
did establish communication,
but the cable failed after a
relatively short time - a few Weeks.
A lot of effort Went into improving
the purity of the copper
in the cable.
The cable that had
been manufactured was so heavy
there was only one ship
that could carry it,
and that was
Brunets SS Great Eastern.
There was an attempt in 1865
and they lost the cable.
They returned and John Pender raised
capital to get another cable made.
That was successful in 1866.
It was primitive communication,
but it was communication.
Even after some
very expensive failed attempts,
the backers persisted.
Once the technical obstacles
had been overcome, the cable network
centred on Porthcurno spread rapidly.
By 1887, the undersea cable network
connected Britain,
via relay stations,
to every corner of her Empire.
Porthcurno was the hub
of communications
and the largest telegraph station
in the World.
What did the transatlantic cables
look like?
I've got some samples here.
You have a copper core,
which carries the signal,
but you have to insulate it.
So they used a material
called gutta-percha,
which comes from a plant
in the Far East, it's like rubber,
but more tolerant of sea conditions.
Well, up to a point,
because certain sea creatures
are rather partial to gutta-percha,
so you have to cover that.
The biggest concern
for the cable manufacturers was
they would get damaged
by busy shipping lanes.
If they were near the shore,
you would have a heavy
armoured section, which is
What you see on this outer one here.
- You can see they're quite heavy.
- Ooph.
Imagine a couple
of thousand miles of that.
Well, you can see why they needed
the SS Great Eastern to carry it.
In telegraph stations
across the globe,
operators sent and deciphered messages
that had been framed
in Morse code.
Thousands of operators
were trained at Porthcurno,
up until 1993,
when the original cables
were replaced with modern fibres.
It's interesting to compare
What we see here...
with one of today's
optical fibre samples.
Now, if you hold that to the
light you can see some
very thin strands.
They are about the thickness
of a human hair, and this has
dramatically changed communication.
Each one of these
would be capable of carrying
several million telephone calls.
Interestingly, these are coming up
on the beach here at Porthcurno.
Cornwall is still the hub
of communication for fibre optics.
And these carry messages
all over the World.
With foresight and ambition,
this venture laid
the foundations
for today's World Wide Web.
Since I began my excursion
in Dover Harbour,
celebrating the achievements
of the first cross-Channel swimmer,
I've come across
several Victorian heroes.
From inventors to Writers,
and not forgetting one nurse -
Florence Nightingale.
As I travelled
along the south coast of England,
defence was much on my mind.
I encountered the
19th-Century fortifications,
designed to keep the French at bay.
And the Royal Navy,
whose dominance of the high seas
guaranteed the citizens
of our island a century of peace,
from John o'Groats to Land's End.
Next time...
I have a blast in Birmingham...
[WHISTLING]
Brilliant. That's the sound
of the railways, isn't it?
Pay homage to a magnificent organ
that inspired a great composer...
The City Fathers were very proud
of this instrument, so it was a
feather in their cap that somebody
like Mendelssohn should deign
to play on it.
And get a dose of quack doctors
and their bizarre remedies.
"Mother Siegel's Curative Syrup."
There is one here called simply
"The Ills Of Humanity".
And "Pink Pills For Pale People".
[END THEME]