In 1840, one man transformed travel in Britain.
His name was George Bradshaw,
and his railway guides inspired the Victorians to take to the tracks.
Stop by stop, he told them where to travel,
what to see and where to stay.
Now, 170 years later,
I'm making a series of journeys across the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.
Ripped By mstoll
Today my ancient Bradshaw's Guide is going to steer me across London
as I continue my journey from Brighton to North Norfolk.
I'm astonished that by the 1860s, trains were already fast enough
to enable people to do even long-distance commuting.
So, city workers could live in rural or suburban greenery.
And then, each morning they'd arrive in the capital,
the only city I've ever lived in.
On this journey I'm travelling along lines
built to allow Britain's middle classes to shuttle from the suburbs to the city
and to travel beyond.
Each day I'll cover another stretch,
searching for the people and places written about in my guide.
On today's leg of the route,
I'll be finding out how even the dead benefited from the railways...
It was also the terminus
of what was rather irreverently known as the Stiffs' Express.
...understanding how London became a great shopping destination...
Part of what's changing is coming about through the railways.
Suddenly you're getting suburbanites coming into the centre of London
to walk the streets, to shop.
...and I'll be trying my hand at one of the oldest trades on the river.
- Would you like to have a little drive? - I'd love to.
Left hand down a bit?
(man) Left goes left, right goes right.
It's not like tyres on the road, it's more like tyres on treacle.
Having covered the 56 miles from Brighton to Crystal Palace,
I'm now heading into London
before following a major commuter line north into Cambridgeshire.
From there I'll explore the Fens as I aim for King's Lynn,
then travel on through Norwich
on the way to my final stop, Cromer.
Today I'm starting in Waterloo before weaving my way to Liverpool Street
and on to the docks at Canary Wharf.
I'm travelling into London from the south
on a line used by thousands of Victorians on their way to work, to shop
or just to enjoy the glories of the capital.
Bradshaw says of this approach to London,
"The line passes over viaduct or arches
through a part of the densely populated parish of Lambeth."
"Over the tops of houses, past the grounds of Lambeth Palace
and across the river may be seen the splendid towers
of the new Houses of Parliament."
When I was a kid, we used to take our annual holiday on the Isle of Wight.
I remember coming back to Waterloo, generally late at night,
and we would look across the river
and we'd see the beaming face of the clock tower.
Maybe that's when my infatuation with that building, with that palace, began.
Waterloo Station opened in 1848
and was designed to bring travellers close to the heart of London's West End.
What I remember from coming here as a child is the vastness of Waterloo.
This was the biggest building in which I had ever set foot.
And even as a child, I learnt that it is the biggest station
in the United Kingdom with its 19 platforms.
That's not counting Waterloo East.
It's not counting the four underground lines beneath us.
It's not counting the now disused Eurostar terminal.
Waterloo is simply the big daddy of British railway stations.
My guide says, "Omnibuses convey passengers
to and from all parts of town. "
"The terminus is a spacious building."
Today Waterloo sees almost 90 million passengers pass through each year.
That's more than any other station in Britain.
Good morning.
I'm using my 19th-century guidebook to go around on the railways.
I think in days gone by there would be many more people
dressed as beautifully as you and not many dressed as scruffily as I am.
Well, I can remember my uncle saying,
"The trouble is, the trains encourage the common people to travel,"
which probably is very politically incorrect.
Have a wonderful journey. Are you travelling first class?
No. No, no. I do it cheaply.
- Have a wonderful journey. - Thank you.
I haven't come to Waterloo primarily to spot elegant ladies.
I'm here to find out about one of the station's lesser-known services
from writer Andrew Martin.
Here you are, Andrew. Beautifully positioned under the clock.
- Nice to meet you. - Very good to see you.
My Bradshaw's Guide tells me that Waterloo
had many railway offices and departments.
I think you'll tell me about a rather unusual one.
Yes, it was also the terminus
of what was rather irreverently known as the Stiffs' Express,
a line that carried dead bodies to the largest cemetery in the British Empire
at Brookwood in Surrey.
And you could have a whole funeral service based around this railway line.
The service could be conducted at this end or at the end of the cemetery.
But either way, you put your relative onto the train
and they had a one-way ride to Brookwood.
You yourself as a mourner had a return ticket.
The all-inclusive service was run by the London Necropolis Company,
which was set up in the 1850s.
They had discreet offices
and even their own funeral platform just next door to the station.
(Andrew) Waterloo would have been a very railway-haunted area.
The constant rattle and clatter of the trains
coming in and going out every minute over the viaducts, over the high level.
Even in death they were trying to fit you into a railway timetable.
(Michael) This façade, this splendid façade, is the Necropolis Station.
(Andrew) This is what survives of the whole Necropolis complex.
Why were they sending all these bodies out of London?
They thought it was a good business proposition,
but it was also a response to a genuine crisis, a shortage of burial space.
In the first half of the 19th century, the population of London doubled.
There were bits of skeletons lying about in churchyards.
They needed space to bury bodies.
And it had been discussed since the 1840s
that there ought to be a big cemetery safely far away from London
so that cholera would not be an issue.
The bodies would be transported there
on this newfangled invention, the train.
At its busiest, each train carried up to 48 bodies,
along with the various funeral parties.
At the cemetery, there were two purpose-built stations,
one for Anglicans and one for other denominations.
You've brought me up quite a long staircase,
up to the level of the railway viaduct.
(Andrew) We're now behind the office part of the Necropolis complex.
The hearse would come sweeping in through this archway.
Then the bodies would be lifted by an electrical lift
up to the actual Necropolis Station on the viaduct there.
What sort of carriages did they travel in?
The carriages were funeral carriages and passenger carriages.
Both were divided into first, second and third class.
Sorry. I have to stop you there.
You're telling me the bodies went first, second or third class?
You might think why would you send your maiden aunt first class?
You could easily save a bit of money sending her third.
She wouldn't know the difference.
But they took more care with your coffin if you went first.
Whether you bought a first-, second- or third-class ticket for the corpse
would correspond to the type of funeral that you bought.
If you bought a fancier funeral package, a first-class ticket would go with that.
Before long it wasn't just the dead
who were taking advantage of the third-class fares.
A lot of people would sneak onto the funeral service
even if they weren't burying anyone, especially golfers.
There was a good golf course near Brookwood Cemetery.
Now I have an idea of golfers dressed in black pretending to be mourners.
I'm assuming that golfers
did not wear garish yellow checked jumpers in those days.
I don't think they could have masqueraded as being in mourning.
And what they did with their golf clubs, I don't know.
The business ran successfully for almost a century.
But today, just hints of the line remain.
And so when did the last Stiff Express puff out of here?
(Andrew) April 1941.
Later in that month there was a big bombing raid
and not only was most of the Necropolis complex here destroyed
but the funeral train was blown up into the bargain.
That was really curtains.
It's time for me to make my way from Waterloo
across town to my next destination, Piccadilly,
using London's famous underground.
It was in embryonic form when Bradshaw published my guide.
The first line opened in 1863 and was eventually followed by ten more.
The Bakerloo line was one of the first
of the new generation of deep railway lines, tubes.
Before that it had been cut-and-cover close to the surface
and you could hardly use steam engines with the smoke deep underground.
This railway had been first planned in the 1850s
but at last in 1906, powered by electricity, the Bakerloo line opened.
In the 19th century the tubes and railways
made it much easier to travel around the city.
The middle classes flocked into town
and London's famous cultural and commercial centre began to grow.
I'm only going three stops,
getting out at Piccadilly Circus, gateway to London's West End.
"Bradshaw's" has pages about the West End,
so I'm following it on my tour,
aware that many of the Victorians' favourite haunts are mine too.
Now we're at the place where on the left I buy my swimming trunks
and on the right I buy my macaroons.
This is Burlington Arcade.
Bradshaw's says, "The prettiest gallery in London,
it's a facsimile of a portion of the Palais-Royal,
but the tradesmen who occupy these shops are of a less wealthy class."
"The place is considered as the fashionable gentlemen's lounge."
I'd never thought of it that way,
but in that spirit I'm going to revisit it today.
Built by Lord Cavendish in 1819,
this was Britain's first modern shopping arcade,
complete with its own security force.
They still patrol the 200-yard strip of shops today.
Excuse me. You're what's known as the head beadle.
(beadle) I am. I'm the head beadle of the arcade.
(Michael) You're on patrol.
(beadle) I'm making sure that everything is OK in the arcade.
E*verybody that walks through is happy, safe and here to enjoy the environment.
This is pretty unusual to have... what are you? A kind of police force?
The beadles in the arcade predate the Metropolitan Police by ten years.
Before you had police forces round the country,
you had beadles patrolling certain parishes.
A beadle would have been in charge of about ten constables.
They would have been nightwatchmen.
They would have collected little fines imposed by people.
(Michael) Any special rules?
(Beadle) You mustn't sell smelly produce within the arcade.
You must also not whistle within the arcade
because in 1809 you could no longer be hung for pickpocketing.
So therefore we had a big increase in pickpocketing in London at that time.
The pickpockets would whistle signals to one another.
Lord Cavendish originally designed the arcade
as an exclusive retreat where his wife could shop.
By the 1860s, it had become a popular destination
for a new generation of bourgeois shoppers
arriving by train to enjoy a taste of the good life.
(beadle) When the arcade was built, Lord Cavendish made sure
that where we are now is a slight incline which goes up.
It's about ten feet higher at Burlington Gardens than Piccadilly.
He wanted his wife to be able to walk with her friends up and down
and to shop in peace
without the interruption of having to walk up any steps.
I've walked up here any number of times. I've noticed the slope
but I've never thought about how you don't have to climb steps.
(beadle) It's one reason why when people come in from Piccadilly
or from Burlington Gardens, they escape the hurly-burly of London.
It would have been the same in Regency and Victorian London.
Next I'm heading for Regent Street,
an elegant sweep of terraced architecture
which "Bradshaw's" describes as "one of the greatest thoroughfares in London".
"On each side are a collection of brilliant shops
filled with the most costly articles,
attesting at once to the wealth, luxury and refinement of the land. "
The description resonates even today.
I'm meeting urban historian Professor David Gilbert
to find out how Regent Street
became one of the greatest shopping enclaves the world.
- David? Michael. - Hi, Michael.
Good to see you. Who were the early shoppers
and how did they change over time?
When it started in the 1820s and 1830s this was very much for the elite.
They'd come up in their carriages,
get out and be shown into the shops and shown the wares.
It's very much in that kind of way.
But by the time of your guidebook, this street is changing.
Part of what's changing is coming about through the railways.
Suddenly you're getting suburbanites coming into the centre of London
to walk the streets, to shop.
Completed in the 1820s,
architect John Nash laid out Regent Street as a series of colonnades.
Like the Burlington Arcade,
these covered walkways were designed to provide a safe haven
to linger and shop out of the rain.
- Was Regent Street safe? - It was safe during the day.
That's part of it. You had public space that was safe during the shopping hours.
After dark, Regent Street became a very different kind of place.
I think one of the reasons for that is if we think about
where it is in the geography of London,
it's a great fault line, a great dividing line between,
to the west, the big aristocratic estates,
and to the east, you've got Soho,
which is going rapidly downmarket,
has a kind of reputation for vice, a reputation for violence.
Here's the place where those two worlds meet.
At night, crime and prostitution
sheltered in the shadows of the colonnades.
In 1848 they were torn down
and gradually replaced by a new kind of shop
with large glass windows facing directly onto the street.
- Plate glass itself was quite new. - (David) Plate glass was very new.
This area we're in, there were tensions between the architects
who wanted sort of fine architectural colonnades along there
and the shopkeepers who wanted to display their wares.
Increasingly as the century goes on, they want people to window shop,
to shop in what is an identifiably modern kind of way.
We think of this as one of the great triumphs of town planning in London.
But it's also of course about profit,
about making the most out of the way that the street works.
Since Bradshaw's day,
the West End has been geared to accommodate thousands of shoppers.
Regent Street, cutting through its centre, remains globally recognised
as an outstanding location for retail therapy.
Now I'm travelling from the West End to the East End using the Central line
which travels due west-east along the lines of Oxford Street and Holborn.
This line was opened in 1900 and had a flat fare of two old pence per mile.
Because of the shape of the tunnels, it became known as the Tuppenny Tube.
Well, the flat fare went long ago
but the word "tube" has stuck with us to the present day.
I'm travelling a couple of miles towards the City,
to one of my favourite London stations.
I do like Liverpool Street. When I was Minister of Transport,
they were completing a modernisation project
which involved bringing some lines that used to stop short
right up to the terminus.
The result is very successful because it has the space of an air terminal
inside Victorian cathedral windows
and beneath a roof suspended on beautiful columns.
Just outside the station is the former Great Eastern Hotel,
where I'll be spending the night.
This Victorian landmark was built in 1884 by the Great Eastern Railway,
which ran lines from East Anglia.
A nightly goods train brought coal for the hotel
and took away its rubbish.
Over the years the hotel gradually declined.
But in 1996, it was given an extensive makeover,
during which the builders discovered a secret room behind a false wall.
After checking in, I'm heading deeper inside to find out more.
My goodness.
Nigel, thank you for coming.
I know you've come to explain this to me.
Yes, indeed.
Nigel Brown is the Grand Secretary of the Freemasons.
I know it's a Masonic Temple,
but what on earth was the origin of such a splendid place?
(Nigel) The key reason that this was built
was because the railways were doing so well at that time.
The Great E*astern Railway Company,
chaired by a chap called Lord Claud Hamilton,
who was also a Mason,
wanted to show to the world how successful they were.
Therefore they produced a really, almost over-the-top, opulent room.
With 12 different types of Italian marble,
the room cost the equivalent of £4 million to build.
It was closed off in the 1990s when it became too expensive to maintain.
After redevelopment,
the magnificent room was opened for hire to the public to earn its keep.
(Nigel) The room was designed as a meeting room.
It's extremely over the top.
You won't find this is a typical Masonic meeting room, I can assure you of that.
But here you would have regular meetings
and the lodge would meet three or four times a year.
Purely the business of the lodge would be conducted
before they then went on to have a jolly good dinner.
That sounds like a fine idea for me before I turn in for the night.
Next morning, my "Bradshaw's" leads me into the throng of London's rush hour.
Never having worked in the City and now having discarded
the suit and tie of my previous employment,
there's quite a satisfaction seeing all these commuters streaming by
with deadlines to meet while I have none.
Whilst they head for their offices,
I'm on my way to Tower Gateway Station to meet railway expert Alex Werner.
- Alex, morning. - Hello.
Today, Alex is taking me out of the City on the Docklands Light Railway,
built in the 1980s.
It follows the route of the old London & Blackwall Railway,
which dates from early Victorian times.
Back then the easiest place to build the line was up above the city streets.
This railway is built on viaducts, over arches.
Bradshaw celebrates the fact that these arches soar above the houses.
They must have had a huge impact on London.
The viaducts cut their way through the city.
It was already a very densely inhabited place.
The viaduct was the solution to linking the railways in the inner-city area.
If you had a sort of causeway that you had to cut
there would be so much property that you would need to acquire.
It was relatively cheap to build a viaduct in conjunction
with also all the sort of station building along the line.
The trains travelling along these viaducts
were part of an integrated transport system.
Ships brought their cargo and passengers up the Thames to the docks
to be whisked by train all around the country.
Bradshaw was impressed by the sheer scale of the docks, writing,
"Situated at the East End of London,
they are the storehouses of the widest commerce of the world. "
We've come to West India Dock, now part of Canary Wharf,
to understand what so captivated Bradshaw.
My Bradshaw's Guide talks about this place in the 1860s.
204 acres of water, 600 ships can berth here
with cargoes of 200 and 300 tons each. Must have been quite a scene.
It was an incredibly busy dock,
ships coming from all over the world by the 1850s and '60s.
Traditionally it was the West India trade,
carrying sugar and rum from the Caribbean.
But by the mid-19th century, goods were coming from all over the world.
Each of the docks specialised in particular cargoes.
St Katherine's Dock took in marble, sugar and brandy
while the Surrey Docks dealt in timber.
(Alex) This is where all the cargoes of the world were being stored.
This was London as the port of empire. Incredibly active space.
Where we're standing there would have been a transit shed.
The ships would moor, unload their cargo into transit
and then they would be taken off into the warehouses.
As well as describing each dock, Bradshaw writes about the people, too.
"A busy army of 20,000 workmen are employed here
in loading, unloading and storing. "
He was talking about watermen who rode passengers ashore
and lightermen who took cargo.
There are no watermen left,
but the descendants of some of the lightermen remain,
men like Cornelius Andrews and his grandson.
Do you remember the docks that were behind you?
We had a boat in every dock. In their heyday, marvellous.
Full up with ships and barges. It was like Piccadilly Circus.
It was fantastic.
(Michael) Was there a lot of comradeship on the river?
Yeah. Lovely. E*specially in the pubs.
(Michael) I'm going to go out now with your grandson on the river.
You'll love him, he's a good kid.
- Hello, James. - Hello, Michael.
Very good to see you. You'll take me on the river?
Yes, certainly.
James Andrews has been a lighterman for 17 years
and today hauls cargo with a tug boat rather than with oars.
The lightermen had a reputation for being an aristocracy of the river.
Is that true now?
(James) Up until maybe the '90s,
I think the London waterman or lighterman was well renowned.
I know a long time ago, Nelson himself insisted that every ship of the line
had a London waterman on board.
(Michael) I've been following a 19th-century guidebook
and it talks about 20,000 people working in the docks.
Have you any idea how many people are working on the river?
I think at the last count there was between 400 and 500 licence holders.
When you're coming down from 20,000 men, it's a big drop.
Although there aren't many lightermen on the river,
they still play a vital role,
not least removing London's refuse on barges.
And today we're carrying rubbish. Where is it going to?
It is going ultimately to a place in Essex called Mucking.
- Mucking? - Rather appropriately named.
- Would you like to have a little drive? - I'd love to.
- Left hand down a bit? - Left goes left and right goes right.
It's not like tyres on the road, it's more like tyres on treacle.
It's definitely the longest vehicle I've ever steered.
And it's all delayed reaction.
You push the wheel and nothing seems to happen,
and then after about 30 seconds a lot happens.
Holding the wheel is one thing,
but I think I'll leave parking this 80-foot convoy to the expert.
That was the niftiest bit of steering I've ever seen.
I think I might have to practise quite a long time
before I could do that.
This part of the river is no longer the busy thoroughfare it once was.
In the 1970s, new docks were built further downstream
to handle large container ships.
The East London docks lay unused for years
until they were transformed into a new financial district
called Canary Wharf, housing the tallest building in Britain.
The key to Canary Wharf's success was of course a railway,
the Jubilee line extension,
for which as a minister, I fought tooth and nail.
George Bradshaw would enjoy this statistic.
The station is so vast
that the box underground, under water in which it sits
would be big enough to accommodate the Canary Wharf tower
lying on its side.
In Bradshaw's day, London was revitalised by the railways.
And that story continues today.
The old tracks are constantly re-used and extended
as the city reinvents itself.
The age of railway building began before the Victorian era,
but it hasn't ceased yet.
London is all business and bustle,
from department stores in the west to investment banks in the east.
And now, shopping is all the rage and shipping has ceased.
But before the railways came to town, the river was the permanent way.
The speed of travel was limited to how fast a man could row.
On the next leg of the journey,
I'll be seeing how the trains changed the fortunes of Newmarket...
It's a sign of a smart town
to have one station for people from the North, one for people from the South
- and one for the horses. - Absolutely.
...looking back on my student days...
That's where my all-important cocktail bar was.
I probably had a desk as well, but I don't remember.
...and finding out that Cambridge has a surprising claim to fame.
One could say it was the birthplace of the modern game of football.
Ripped By mstoll