Great British Railway Journeys (2010–…): Season 8, Episode 9 - Gainsborough to Ely - 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 crisscross the country 150
years later,

it helps me to discover the Britain
of today.

My rail journey from
north-western to

eastern England has brought me
to Lincolnshire,



where I'll encounter yet another
example of 19th-century industrial

ingenuity, and consider the contribution
to English literature made by Britain's

longest-serving Poet Laureate.

In Ely in Cambridgeshire,

I'll be reminded that some of the
era's loftiest achievements were

inspired by Victorian godliness.

My route is taking me on a diagonal
across England towards East Anglia.

From Blackpool, I took in the mighty
northern conurbations,

developed in the industrial age.

Leaving Manchester, I cross the Peak
District using the route of the

North Country Continental Rail
Service.

I'll soon traverse the Fens,

finally to arrive in Essex, gateway
to Continental Europe.

This part of my journey starts in
Gainsborough and heads to Lincoln.



From there, I'll travel south-east
to March in Cambridgeshire

before finishing in the
Fenland city of Ely.

'On this leg, I have my reaction times
challenged by a mechanical marvel...'

This would drive you mad if you
did this all day.

Get earned away by the cadences
of comm...'

"Half a league, half a league,
half a league onward

"into the valley
of death rode the 600."

'and I see how today's railway is
regenerating its past.'

We recycled around 46,000 tonnes
of steel last year,

which is actually the equivalent of
six Eiffel Towers.

My first stop of the day will be
Gainsborough.

This is how Bradshaw's presents it.

"Agreeably situated on the eastern
bank of the River Trent,

"an elegant stone bridge of three
elliptical arches forms a great ornament

"to the town."
That's Gainsborough in a nutshell.

But should you judge a town by its
packaging?

In the case of Gainsborough,
perhaps you should.

TANNOY: Next stop is Gainsborough
Lea Road.

Situated on the River Trent,
Gainsborough is Britain's most inland port.

Here a pioneering company
invented a process

which at the time
constituted a breakthrough

And has since become an
indispensable part of our daily lives.

Wrapping and packaging.

The company was founded by
William Rose.

I'm meeting sales director
Andrew Mann.

An impressive sight.
- Thank you.

Andrew, I can't imagine a
world without packaging.

What was it like?

Well, it didn't exist, it was all
completely manual.

It was literally take the sweets out the
jar and place it into a bag, and that was it.

And who was William Rose, who
made a difference to that situation?

He was working in a tobacco shop.

It was his job to measure out, weigh
and pack the tobacco.

So that was his inspiration to
develop an automated machine.

What, he became fed up
with having to do it?

He became fed up with
having to do it, absolutely.

Did he realise fairly soon that this
could be applied to other products?

He did. He very soon got into
packaging things like chocolate bars,

soap tablets, anything similar.

Any consumer goods.

William Rose's invention changed the
retail world forever.

A chance visit by an American
businessmen, Richard Harvey Wright,

to a London tobacconist in 1892 gave
Rose the chance to sell his machines

to the United States.

His business rapidly grew to
employ more than 50.

Did Rose's stick to doing just
packaging machinery?

No. In fact, in wartimes,

they were there much involved in
the military and RAF,

making turrets for Lancaster
bombers, for example.

That's quite a leap from packaging
machinery.

It is, but they were well ahead of
the game in their engineering

skills in Gainsborough.

And they turned to William Rose
for his expertise.

Today the company no longer
wraps products,

but it continues to make and service
the machines that do.

You've got a busy shop here.

We have, yeah.
This is the machine shop,

where we produce all the components.

Those components get designed in
the design office.

They produce the drawings.

And in here, we manufacture the
components from the raw metal.

And all of that then goes into
your machines?

Some of the best packaging
machines in the world.

Some even say that Rose's
branded packaging

may be how Cadbury's famous
chocolates got their name.

A lovely-looking vintage machine.
Looks a bit like a 19503 jukebox.

It is a bit. It was built in the
1950s by Rose in Gainsborough,

and it was designed for wrapping
sweets.

Don't tell me it's still in service.

Still in operation today in a
factory in Leeds.

Well, it looks like a bit of a
challenge, but might I give it a go?

Just press the start button.

[MECHANISM RATTLES]

The machine is moving really fast.

Much faster than I can do,
sliding them in.

The people who operated
this machine didn't miss a one.

This would drive you mad if you
did this all day.

Definitely getting better.
- Yeah, you're getting the hang of it.

Ah! Enough of that. End of scene.
It's a wrap!

Brilliant!

From Gainsborough, I'm rejoining the
Sheffield to Lincoln line,

and travelling 19 miles south-east
to the county town.

I'm on my way to Lincoln,

which Bradshaw's tells me is a
cathedral town and capital of Lincolnshire.

The Roman Lindum, from which the
present name is derived.

Thinking about science and
engineering,

it's clear to me that the Victorians
applied their reason,

but they weren't immune to rhyme.

They lived their lives in prose, but
they were moved by verse.

I'm on the trail of a melancholy
poet who brought Queen Victoria

great comfort during her long years
of widowhood.

TANNOY: We will shortly be
arriving at Lincoln Station,

where this service will terminate.

Lincoln's fortunes have ebbed
and flowed.

During the 13th century, it was the
third-largest city in England.

But by the beginning of the 18th, it
was described as a one-street town.

"I cannot rest from travel.

"I would drink life to the lees."

I can empathise with those words
from the pen of Lincolnshire's most

famous native, born in 1809.

When I was last here, I missed this
fine statue of a Lincolnshire man.

Alfred Lord Tennyson, a great
Victorian.

He is honoured now by standing in
the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral

in perpetuity, although he entered
the valley of death back in 1892.

Today the city is home to the
Tennyson Research Centre.

Grace Timmins is the
collections officer.

Welcome to the
Tennyson Research Centre.

And all this is to do with
Tennyson?

It is.
- This is really quite a collection.

It is. It's the most significant
collection of

Tennyson-related papers in
the world.

Where was he from?

He was born in Somersby, which is
a hamlet in the Wolds.

He was one of 11 children
born in 13 years.

Do we know a lot about Alfred's
childhood?

Yes. He did have formal education
between the ages of seven and 11.

But it didn't suit him at all,
he didn't like it,

and his father took him out of
school to home-educate him.

So these books over here are the
books that really furnished his mind

and his imagination.

Over here, there's a book that his
father set him as homework.

It's Virgil's Aeneid,

and you can see all the work that
has gone into translating it.

But what you can also see at the
front is Tennyson's own doodles.

And this is a picture of his
beloved homeland.

There's little bits of music
coming out of it there.

And there's also, he's done here the
address that many of us I think have

put into books, "Alfred Tennyson,
Somersby in Lincolnshire, in England,

"in Europe, in the world, in
the air, in space."

Isn't that extraordinary? Did he
achieve early fame with his poems?

Some of the poems that he wrote at
this period,

such as The Lady of Sham“,

remain some of his most popular and
most well-known today.

In 1827, Tennyson had entered
Trinity College, Cambridge,

and became friends with fellow
student Arthur Hallam,

who became engaged to his sister.

In 1833, Hallam died of a stroke at
the age of only 22.

His big breakthrough was with In
Memoriam AHH, to give it its full title,

which is a collection of poems
dealing with the grief that he felt

at the death of his best friend.

It took him about 14 years to write.

And this is in his own hand.

This is a gem, and you can actually
see where he's altered things.

Absolutely. It's a marvellous object
of Victorian culture.

And with this comes
fame and success.

Absolutely. It becomes the favourite
poem of a whole range of people.

Prince Albert loves it.

We do actually have a letter from
Prince Albert here,

where he's asking Tennyson to put
his name in the front of a later volume.

"Will you forgive me if I intrude
upon your leisure with a request

"which I have thought for some
little time of making?

"That you'd be good enough to
write your name in the

accompanying volume
of your poems."

A royal autograph hunter.

Absolutely, it's funny!

In 1850, Tennyson was appointed
Poet Laureate,

and wrote In Memoriam,
recalling Hallam,

but from which Queen Victoria
would draw comfort after the

death of Prince Albert.

After what the Times reported as a
"hideous blunder" during the Crimean War,

Tennyson wrote The Charge of the
Light Brigade.

What does he do while he's
Poet Laureate?

Well, the third thing that he does is
write The Charge of the Light Brigade.

What we've got here is evidence
of how difficult he found it

to get to a final version.

He's crossed out the "half a league, half
a league, half a league onward" verse,

and put it up to the top.

He moves it back down again here.

Isn't that remarkable?

And then he moves it back up there.

[MICHAEL LAUGHS]

This is absolutely fascinating.

This is very typical of Tennyson,
isn't it?

This sense of rhythm.

"Half a league, half a league,
half a league onward,

"into the valley of
death rode the 600."

I mean, obviously you can
feel the horses

galloping towards the guns.
- Yes.

'Tennyson's life spanned every
decade of the 19th century,

'and he bore Witness to the birth of
the railway.'

Did he write about trains?

He uses the train as a metaphor for
progress in his poem Locksley Hall,

but he gets it slightly wrong.

Let me read it to you.

"Forward, forward, let us range,

"let the great world spin forever
down the ringing grooves of change."

Now, he realised he'd got this
wrong, that trains don't run in grooves.

And his son explained it as being
the result of his seeing the train,

the very first train that went from
Liverpool to Manchester in 1830.

And because of the increasing
twilight,

and because of the crowds of people,
and his own short-sightedness,

he couldn't see exactly how the
train was working.

And he thought it ran in grooves.

It strikes me that Tennyson has
passed out of fashion a bit.

What was his popularity like
during his lifetime?

He was incredibly popular in his
lifetime.

He was as popular as Charles
Dickens.

My route now takes me up a street
voted Britain's Best Place in 2011.

It's aptly named Steep Hill.

I'm skirting the walls of the Norman
castle on my way to a refreshing ale

in the Victoria pub.

The pub hosts a group of
enthusiasts,

who are keeping Tennyson's legacy
alive in Lincoln.

Good evening. Do I have the pleasure
of joining a group of Lincoln poets?

Yes.
- That's right.

And what you call yourselves?
- Lincoln Creative Writers.

Very good. And you meet here
in the pub.

And what do you do, apart
from drink pints?

We have a workshop, we do a
bit of writing together.

Have you been inspired by Lincolnshire
in the way I think Tennyson was?

Yeah, definitely. I think, obviously
living here and writing contemporary

stuff, you can't help but be
influenced by where you live, so...

Would you mind giving me a sample,
please?

It's called Peregrines Nest.

"I live in a city where peregrines
nest on angels' wings,

"where the exhaled breath of a
thousand travellers up its hill

"hangs in the air with
its history,

"seeping into every cobble,

"flowing into glasses in bars held
up by our veteran souls,

"where men tell tales of older
times, of forgotten times,

"where our city continues to grow,

"fields of rye and rape make way
for houses,

"where new stories are born and
raised and schooled,

"because this is a city that for a
thousand years has never slept,

"although at times is sleepy,

"a city that bends a king's knee,
a city that changed the world.

"This is my city.

"This is our city.

"This is a city where peregrines
nest on angels' wings."

I found that very beautiful.

I particularly sympathise with the
exhaled breath of the people struggling

their way up the hill, which is
something that I did this afternoon!

I'm rejoining the root of the North
Country Continental Rail service and

travelling 60 miles south-east into
Cambridgeshire.

My first stop on this new day will
be March.

Bradshaw's tells me it's a village
in the parish of Dodington.

"Numerous Roman coins and other
antiquities have been discovered."

But my currency is different -
industrial archaeology.

Set amongst Fenland, March boasts
the 11th-century St Wendreda's Church,

about which John Betjeman enthused
that it was worth cycling 40 miles

in a headwind to see.

In the 19203 and 303,

the London and North Eastern Railway
built the Whitemoor freight

marshalling yards.

They became the largest in Britain,
and second largest in Europe.

I'm meeting Joanna Clarke from
Network Rail.

Well, Joanna, an impressive sight.

Tell me about it in its heyday.

Back in the 19203,

London and North Eastern Railways
created a huge marshalling yard.

This is where all the trains would
have been marshalled,

a strategic point for the whole of
the supply chain out to Anglia and

the rest of the country. It would
have had around 3,000 wagons here.

Around 25% of the inhabitants from
March and the local area would have

been employed here.

So it was huge.

Nowadays with motorways and lorries
and so on,

it's quite hard to understand how
strategically important the railways were.

But I suppose every sort of
good and freight went from here.

It did indeed, yes.

We would have seen coal, steel,

all types of materials being taken
by rail from March.

During the war, of course,
strategically it was very important,

and they actually built a decoy site
to the south of this site so that

the German bombers were diverted, so
that this place stayed intact

because of its strategic importance.

'As increasingly freight switched to
the road network in the 19603,

'the yards fell into decline,

'and closed in the 19903.'

Part of the old site did
get sold off,

so this is only a small part of

what would have been here back in
the '203 in the heyday.

'In 2004, a renaissance began at
Whitemoor,

'as Network Rail reopened part of the
old yards as a distribution centre

'from which to transport maintenance
materials across the network.'

Today, in terms of everything that
the railway needs,

this is the core of its supply
chain.

Whitemoor here is the biggest of
three of our depots.

From here, we will ship everything
that we need for the railway, and

that could be sleepers, concrete
sleepers, timber sleepers, rail.

Any material that we need to
upgrade the railway.

'Seven years later, the
once-abandoned

Whitemoor yards expanded again.'

The other part of the site,

which is the really interesting and
exciting part,

is the major recycling that we do
here.

Since 2011, this has been the National
Track Materials Recycling Centre.

So all of the materials that come
back from work sites come back to

Whitemoor to be sorted, graded
and recycled.

That's what we need to look at.
- Absolutely.

Each year, over 500 miles
of used rail,

'800 switches and crossings and
50,000 tonnes of contaminated ballast

'are processed at Whitemoor.'

A remarkable view from here.

It is, it's fantastic.

What actually is this tower about?

So, this is a ballast washer.

'Ballast is the stone and gravel bed
on which the track sits.

'It helps to drain water and hinder
weeds, but becomes soiled.'

We bring in our hazardous ballast,

the ballast that is covered in
contaminants, oil,

all of the nasty stuff.

It comes up on the conveyor belt.

This acts as a washing machine
for the ballast.

It comes out that side into
different-sized aggregate,

which we can then sell into the
construction industry.

You've got a tremendous site here.

What else are you able to recycle?

We recycle all of our sleepers.

So timber sleepers, we will
grade them.

If we can use them back in
the rail network, we will.

What about the rails?

Where possible,
if we can re-use the rail,

we'll re-use it again in the rail
network.

Otherwise, it gets chopped up and it
gets sent to the furnace as scrap.

We recycled around 46,000 tonnes
of steel last year,

which is actually the equivalent of
six Eiffel Towers.

May we see your ballast washing
machine in action?

Yes, follow me!

'The controls to turn the washer on
are below the ballast tower.'

Here we are. And if you want to just
press the start button on the screen.

Press the green start button.

Vast quantities of contaminated ballast
are cleaned every year with this machine.

It would otherwise be sent
to landfill,

so thousands of lorry journeys
are saved.

Here we are at the end of the
process now, with lovely clean ballast.

I must say, you scrub it up
really nicely.

Thank you!

The final leg of my journey
takes me 13 miles south-east,

into the heart of the Fens.

I'm on my way to Ely.

My guidebook tells me that, "the
principal object of interest is its

"venerable cathedral, founded
in 1070.

“51 Bit-hug, and the Norman have
270ft-high.

"Bishop Alcock's perpendicular Chapel,
Northwold's tomb, the Lady Chapel,

"Lantern Tower and Scott's screen
should be noticed."

Ely is built on a 23-square-mile
clay island,

the highest land in the Fens.

The Fens were drained in the
17th century,

but the city had already been named
after the area's most popular catch: eels.

Ely grew up around the magnificent
11th-century cathedral.

The enormous structure known as the
ship of the Fens towers above the

city, its marshy surrounds and the
river, the Great Ouse.

Will Schenk is a guide at the
cathedral.

Good to see you, how do you do?
- Welcome to Ely.

A fantastic prospect.

Bradshaw's tells me that the
foundation of the cathedral is 1070 AD.

When would you date it to?

I date it much further back.

It does go back a lot further.

The original foundation is from the
seventh century, to 673,

but he's probably referring to the
Norman structure,

which is maybe 20 years after
the Conquest.

So about 1085, 1087.

What happened to it after that?

Well, during the Vikings, it would
have been destroyed.

It would have been refounded in
the tenth century.

And when you have the Normans
coming in 1066, about 20 years later,

they pulled down whatever
Anglo-Saxon church would have existed,

and then rebuilt this great
Norman church.

What we look at how, is that
substantially a Norman cathedral?

The nave, the two transepts, the entire
west end, this extraordinary tower.

So yes, the bulk of the
cathedral is still Norman,

which takes people by surprise.

Bradshaw's lists a whole number of
things that I need to see in the cathedral.

Yes.
- I was intrigued by Scott's screen.

Can that be a reference to
George Gilbert Scott?

Oh, most definitely. George Gilbert
Scott was the architect in charge of

essentially the Victorian
restoration.

'In 1322, the central cathedral tower
had collapsed and been rebuilt by

'medieval craftsmen.

'By Victorian times,
further work was needed.

'George Gilbert Scott was chosen to
oversee the process.'

He was first employed by the Dean,
George Peacock,

in 1847 to move the choir,

and subsequently went on to restore
the entire octagon tower.

So he constructed a new
choir space for the chapter.

And the screen is part of that, very
integral to that space.

Scott was born in 1811,

and became one of Britain's most
prolific architects,

designing or restoring over
800 buildings.

Fascinated by medieval structures,

he was known for his work in the
Gothic Revival style,

and designed the Albert Memorial
in London.

What astonishes me, Will,

is that such a perfect and
massive building

was constructed in the 11th
and 12th centuries.

Yes, and you have to imagine it also
looked quite different.

It was painted, plastered and
painted, even gilded.

So as you would have come in
from the west,

it would have been as if you were
seeing an image of paradise.

Now, the floor that we've been
walking over,

that's George Gilbert Scott as well.

And if you look up, you have this
marvellous ceiling from the 18503.

And then above us, a most unusual
and remarkable thing.

That's the octagon lantern.

That is what is unique, extraordinary,
the masterpiece, really, of Ely.

It is dating to the mid-14th century
and is a wooden construction built

out over this space.

And that also has some Victorian
influence?

Oh, it has a great deal of Victorian
paintwork.

So Scott, one of the responsibilities
he had was to restore the octagon.

Originally, the actual lantern would
have been much plainer.

So now you're looking at
something that is really

a work of the high Victorian style.

And the screen?
- Oh, yes.

The screen is just here behind you.

He's working in the Gothic style,

but he's not imitating any known
actual screen.

It is a work of genius,

because you see through it all the
way to the reredos at the very back,

which was the focal point
that he created.

Was George Gilbert Scott, who designed
so many churches, actually religious?

Very much so.

Church of England, his father was
a rector.

So were many of his brothers.

They'd studied for divine orders at
Cambridge.

In fact, he was the black sheep of
the family. He went into architecture.

So George Gilbert Scott is mostly
associated with religious architecture,

but in point of fact, he also
designed St Pancras Station,

which might interest you, the
Midland Hotel.

And there is something here that I
think I'd like to show you that relates

to your interest in railways.

I'm in suspense.
- Thank you.

Now, this is a memorial

to two individuals who died in
a tragic railway accident in 1845.

They were first the driver, Pickering,
and there was the stoker, Edger.

What's particularly tragic is that
their names are misrepresented.

It was not William Pickering, it was
Thomas Pickering.

And it was not Richard Edger,
it was Richard Hedger.

They died in a tragic accident on
the Thetford to Norwich line.

The engine exploded, it came off
the line.

The driver and the stoker were

crushed to death underneath
the engine.

Ghastly.
- Yes.

They had this poem,
The Spiritual Railway.

"The line to heaven by Christ
was made.

"With heavenly truths, the rails
are laid.

"From Earth to heaven, the line
extends to life eternal,

"where it ends."

Gosh, a bit dated, isn't it?

Well, not really. At the time, it
would have been very contemporary.

The railways would just have arrived
in Ely in 1845.

So something like this would have
seemed very modern.

Nothing more modern than
the railways.

A statue of Alfred Lord Tennyson stands
in the shadow of Lincoln Cathedral.

And here at Ely Cathedral,

the work and influence of

Sir George Gilbert Scott
are writ large.

Each was the son of a rector,

at a time when God loomed large
in the affairs of men.

The railway age was also an era of
assertive Christianity,

when poets permitted themselves to
see life as a train journey,

away from sin and towards heaven.

All aboard!

'Next time, I uncover an industrial
pioneer in Suffolk...'

I've never been in a building
like this.

It is absolutely extraordinary.

'...discover that train companies
didn't always win their battles...'

The plans of the Great Eastern
were so huge that the

town council objected to the idea of
having half their town demolished.

'and witness a railway
renaissance.'

The Middy closed before I was born,
and yet the Middy rides again!

[END THEME MUSIC]