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
My journey now takes me towards the coast of Kent
and I think of this county as being England's orchard or garden.
But as Bradshaw reminds us, "It's bound to the east and southeast
by the German Ocean and the Straits of Dover."
And that means it's also been our frontier
against our Continental enemies.
As the county closest to the Continent,
Kent has always played a crucial role in our defence.
Its railways provided arterial routes not only for the flows of commuters,
but also for the needs of war.
And today, I'm following my guidebook along those tracks.
On this journey, I'll be finding out how a railway
helped to save Canterbury's historic heart in World War Two...
The cathedral actually had railway lines laid into the nave
to deliver sandbags to protect it.
...hearing how the Whitstable whelk industry has changed
since Bradshaw's day...
In the old days, that's not what happened.
No, they all used to go away in the shell.
But when the rail stopped taking perishable goods,
we had to find another way of dealing with it.
...and exploring the history of a seaside swim.
Imagine you're in Margate, you'd come out of your lodgings
and wait for a bathing machine to be ready
which apparently always smelt like rotting carpet,
that kind of horrible sort of smell.
So far, I've travelled over 60 miles from London, through Kent,
to Tunbridge Wells.
From there, I'll head east towards the coast
before tracing the shoreline bordering the Channel
on my way to Folkestone.
Then I'll pass through Ashford,
en route to my final stop, Hastings.
Today I'll begin in Canterbury and travel on to Whitstable
and skirt the sea to Margate.
We will shortly arrive at Canterbury.
Canterbury's been a destination for devout pilgrims for millennia,
and especially since Thomas Becket was murdered in the cathedral
in the 12th century.
Once the railway was built, it became a magnet
for Victorian tourists keen to understand their history.
Canterbury Cathedral from the train is so impressive.
Even when you're prepared for it, you're not prepared for it
because it just rises so high,
the tower is so magnificent and dominating of the whole town.
Some of the great views of cathedrals are from railways.
Time to get off.
"Bradshaw's" waxes lyrical about the cathedral's Norman architecture
and the unusual double cross above its 574-foot-long nave.
Lovely morning, isn't it?
Discovering the city through my guide, I appreciate why Victorian tourists
were inspired to take the train to Canterbury.
Let me read you this from Bradshaw's.
"The appearance of Canterbury is exquisitely beautiful, and as we enter,
symbols of its antiquity stare us in the face everywhere."
"Narrow passages, crazy tenements with overhanging windows,
peaked gables and wooden balustrades jut out on every side."
"Here and there, some formless sculpture of a fractured cherub
or grotesque image peer out from a creaking doorway."
Isn't that wonderful writing?
Has any modern guidebook ever said it better?
Fortunately, Bradshaw couldn't foresee that within a century,
this magnificent city would come under devastating attack during World War Two.
Now here's something that's not in my Bradshaw's Guide.
I was tipped off to look for this.
Had Germany attacked in 1940, '41,
then invading troops might well have passed along this road.
And little rectangles have been cut in the railway bridge
so that British forces defending might have hoped to keep them at bay
by pointing their machine guns through those apertures.
Canterbury sits on a strategic railway link
between London and the port of Dover.
During the war, it constituted a major supply route
for troops and materiel, and the city became a target.
- Paul. - Michael. Welcome to Canterbury.
Very good to see you.
Paul Bennett's an expert on Canterbury's history.
This is my Bradshaw's Guide.
Would it be a reliable guide to Canterbury today?
Sadly not, no.
Parts of Canterbury, Bradshaw would recognise
but a significant part of it was lost during the Baedeker Raid
- of 1 st June, 1942. - German air raid.
German air raid on Canterbury, on historic towns.
And we lost the very heart of the city.
The Luftwaffe consulted a German tourist guidebook called Baedekers
to select historically important English cities for bombing.
How sad that a book written in celebration of human achievement
was so cynically misused.
The phrase "the Baedeker Raids" comes from Gustav Braun von Stumm,
a German propagandist who said, "We will bomb every building in Britain
that has three stars in the Baedeker Guide. "
By April '42, they'd bombed Exeter, and then Bath and then Norwich,
and then on 1 st June, 1942, at 12:45am,
16 blood-red flares shone out over the skies of Canterbury
and down rained 8,000 incendiaries and about 150 high explosives
that devastated parts of the town.
Now given both the strategic significance of Canterbury
and the wonderful heritage of Canterbury,
presumably the people of Canterbury were prepared for all this?
They were very prepared.
The population of Canterbury had been provided by then with lots of shelters.
Many of the principal buildings had been covered in sandbags.
The cathedral actually had railway lines laid into the nave
to deliver sandbags to protect it.
During the raid itself,
there were people chucking incendiaries off the cathedral roof.
It was such a close-run thing.
We could've lost Canterbury Cathedral in that raid
if it hadn't been for the organisation of the city at that time.
People used all kinds of wiles to defend the city.
They created fake Canterburys by lighting up areas of the countryside,
while obscuring the real city in smoke.
Despite this, they endured 35 raids which took their toll.
So we lost 880 buildings, 6,500 buildings were damaged.
But fortunately, only 115 people were killed.
That's a tribute, I suppose, to how far civil defence had advanced by then,
that the shelters were in place and so on.
10,000 shelter places were created in 1941, and thank goodness for it.
The shelters might be steel boxes built in people's homes
or half buried in the garden.
Many residents also sought refuge in the railway tunnel,
and overall, thousands of lives were saved.
For some who experienced the bombings,
like volunteer rescue operator, Anthony Swain,
the memories remain powerful.
What do you remember of the air raids themselves?
The screaming of the planes as they dived down.
And then the explosions of bombs.
And then shoutings in the street.
Do you remember looking at the devastation of the city
- after it had occurred? - Oh, rather.
- It smouldered for about two weeks.
It must've been very shocking.
Oh, it was. We couldn't even breathe, the air was so hot.
You imagine a whole city burning. The heat was incredible.
- How would you describe the noises? - Absolute hell on earth. It was.
It was not only our guns shooting at the planes,
it was the bombs that dropped, the screaming of people in the streets.
It was just hell let loose.
But through it came people of strength, I must say that.
I find it moving to hear at first hand
what the people of Canterbury lived through
and how their ingenuity helped to save the cathedral.
And now as I reach the station,
by chance, another bit of history of thunders past.
It's brilliant just to see a steam engine race by you.
I've been on several steam journeys recently
but I'm not normally in the position of watching an old locomotive race by
with all the wind and the smoke and the steam. Fabulous sight.
It would've been a common experience for Victorian tourists
following their "Bradshaw's Guides".
But I'll have to settle for modern electric efficiency
to get me to Whitstable, with a change at Faversham.
Faversham. And my connection goes in three minutes.
- Where are you going? - Whitstable.
- Whitstable is the front four. - Oh. Whitstable.
What?
Looks like I'm not the only person going to Whitstable.
Perched atop the Kent coast,
Whitstable has since Roman times been famed for shellfish.
In 1830, it gained one of the very first railways
to convey coal between the coast and Canterbury.
It also carried seafood, and inevitably,
the Canterbury and Whitstable Railway was nicknamed the crab and winkle line.
Two years later, it was joined to a new harbour
serving the expanding shellfish trade.
"Whitstable," says Bradshaw's, "is the harbour of Canterbury,
and is celebrated for its oyster fishery,
the produce of which, under the name of Native's,
is highly esteemed in the London and other markets."
But I'm here to find out more,
not about the oyster, beloved of metropolitan toffs,
but rather the Whitstable whelk,
traditionally the food of the British working classes.
I'm meeting Derek West, a whelk fishermen
whose family has been fishing here for three generations.
Derek. Michael, lovely to see you.
In your memory, what was it like in its heyday, this harbour?
Oh, very, very busy in the war and just after the war.
There was shipping here. We used to have all the old rail lines
around the harbour here. Very good, them days.
The things that were caught here, the oysters, whelks and so on,
how were they sent on?
What we used to have to do is bag them up, and take them up the station
and they used to go to the London market.
- Did they go fresh on the trains? - No, no, they were all cooked.
They was all put in bags and took up to the station up at Whitstable
and on the trains.
In Bradshaw's time, fresh and cooked whelks were sent by rail to the city
and sold as a snack on London streets.
They cost around a penny for five, and Cockneys loved them.
Demand was high,
so Derek's great-grandfather employed a different kind of whelk pot
which improved the catch.
Derek's brought a half-sized one for me to see.
- That was the old original whelk pot. - This is a kind of iron or steel cage.
That's right, yeah. We used to rope them up.
Your whelks are attracted into the pot.
The bait goes in the pot there,
and then the smell draws the whelks into the pot.
And then what prevents them getting out?
Well, there's a net in here, a small net,
what we call a criny which stops them from coming out.
That's like a valve. They can get in but they can't get out.
Can't get out.
Have you any idea, in the old days, your grandfather's day, maybe in your youth,
how many people were fishing whelk in those days?
Oh, there used to be about ten whelk boats on the harbour here.
- And what is it now? - There's only about two.
In the late 20th century, as the popularity of whelks declined,
the industry waned.
Derek's family is one of the few in Whitstable
that still catch and prepare them for sale.
These days, they're removed from the shell, cleaned, and sorted by size.
- Hello, Jean. - Hello there. How do you do?
I won't shake your hands.
Jean West is an expert picker.
She and her team can prepare 200 kilos of whelks per day.
- You're Derek's bride, I believe. - That's right. 57 years.
And you've done a few of those in your time, I daresay.
- Yes, I've been doing this since 1963. - Good heavens.
And these are now put into packets and they're frozen, is that right?
Yes, they're put in 2.5-Kilo packets and they're frozen
and then people come with refrigerated lorries and collect them.
We have them from Birmingham, Essex, London, all over.
In the old days, that's not what happened.
No, in the old days, they all used to go away in the shell
by the train up to Birmingham, down to Hastings and places like that.
But when the rail stopped taking perishable goods,
we had to find another way of dealing with it.
Since the late 1960s, lorries have replaced trains
as the main carrier of perishable goods like shellfish.
They're something that you either love or hate.
And the people that like them really go for them.
I mean, I don't like them very much but I've got friends that do.
You don't like them and you spend your entire day with them.
That's right. I see enough of them.
Now, how do you actually pick a whelk then?
Turn the shell. Take the hat off.
Do you think I might have a go at that?
Turn the shell.
- Ah, there we go. - There you are, well done.
Now you have to take the hat off.
- You have to take the hat off? - Yeah.
Right. Pop that in there.
With it out of its shell, I'd better try one of these once-so-popular whelks.
So it's got a kind of tough bit and a soft bit, hasn't it?
- Mmm, that's nice. - That good?
They have a reputation for being very chewy, but that's quite nice.
- The smaller ones are nice. - Mmm.
The coast here at Whitstable is given a beauty by the severity of the tide,
the sea is far away and grey under a greyish sky.
It's really kind of beautiful. Little fishing boats silhouetted.
In Bradshaw's day, this coast was heaving with boats,
catching not only whelks but oysters, too.
The Whitstable Oyster Company sent 60 million to London in one year alone.
So, appropriately, tonight I'm staying in a place strongly linked to fishing.
This beautiful house, rebuilt in 1778,
was apparently the home of Captain Jasper Rowden
who was a famous Whitstable oyster dredger.
Bernard Wright owns and runs The Captain's House
as a bed and breakfast.
Hello. It's lovely to see you.
- Very nice to meet you. - Jasper Rowden, who was he?
Jasper Rowden was the pre-eminent oyster dredgerman of his generation.
This house stood here on the beach
before anything else was built around it.
There were maybe one or two other houses scattered about the place.
But he would've lived here and would've been looking straight out to sea
rather than on to this road you see here.
In Captain Rowden's day, oyster dredging was back-breaking work.
The oysters were hauled up by hand into special boats called yawls
where they were separated from the rubble from the sea bed.
So, staying in The Captain's House, I feel respect for him and his crews.
He would've been a very well-known character in the local area.
We sort of feel him about,
as if he's still here sometimes in the house, which is a nice feeling,
just to understand the history of the place
to do with the town being so famous for oysters.
- Well, I'm here to spend the night. - Yes, come on in.
- Thank you very much. - After you.
You'll have to mind your head.
A bright and breezy new day, and reluctantly I leave behind
the pretty harbour and delicious seafood of Whitstable.
I'm now heading around 15 miles along the Kent coast.
The Victorians could be rather pompous. "The line to Margate."
"This has been called the pleasure line and certainly the beauty of the country
traversed by its trains justly entitle it to that distinguishing appellation."
"Its iron roads and branches intersect Kent in all directions,
affording the inhabitants of the great metropolis
facilities of visiting the numerous watering places on its coast."
In modern parlance,
that means this is the line to sun, sand, sea and fun.
- This was called the pleasure line? - Yes.
Do you still get a lot of weekenders, sun-seekers, holidaymakers?
Oh, yeah, thousands and thousands.
Especially in the summertime at Whitstable, Margate, Broadstairs.
No different to Victorian times?
No. No, I don't think so.
We get the whole spectrum from elderly people to young kids.
The young kids seem to love Margate.
You've got the sea, the beach and the escapism of it, I should imagine,
- from living up in town. - Yeah, well, that's what I'm there for.
I'll do a bit of escapism while I'm here.
My guide comments on Margate's meteoric rise in popularity
once the railways arrived.
It says, "Steam has done wonders
and Margate visitors have to be numbered by hundreds of thousands. "
With new journey times from London of just two hours,
trainloads of day-trippers sped their way towards the seaside town.
What a great big impressive station Margate is.
I suppose that's telling us that, as Bradshaw says,
hundreds of thousands of people would come to Margate
for a day trip or a holiday.
- Bye-bye, now. - You enjoy Margate.
- I'll enjoy it. Thank you. - I hope you find your escapism.
- Safe trip. Bye. - Ta-ra.
Bradshaw goes on to say, "When London folks however grew wiser
and found that short trips had a wonderful power
in preventing doctors' bills, the place grew rapidly. "
In fact, salt water had long been considered a cure for diseases
like rickets and TB.
The world's first sea bathing hospital was built here.
I'm meeting historian Alan Brodie at its grand entrance.
Now this is really rather a lovely building.
This is the Sea Bathing Hospital.
The committee to establish it was founded in 1791.
And there was a small building here, opened in 1796.
Now, the magnificent thing we're looking at
is a reconstruction of the mid-19th century.
Who are these patients?
They are children from poor backgrounds
who this charitable committee have brought down,
firstly on the sailing boats and then on steamers, to be treated here.
And they're suffering from the whole range of tuberculosis
as well as probably diseases that are essentially poverty related.
The upper classes also came to Margate to bathe
and even to drink the curative sea water.
But rather than visiting the hospital, they took a dip in the sea
in a private contraption that it's claimed was developed here:
The bathing machine.
The bathing machine, when and where does that originate?
The first bathing machines probably date from the very early 18th century.
And Margate has a special part in the story
because it takes the simple bathing machine,
essentially just a cart drawn into the sea by a horse,
and puts a strange concertina-shape canvas cover at the back of it,
so that if you're a lady or a gentleman who wanted to have a bit of privacy,
you could come down the steps from your bathing machine
and have a swim inside this...
It was effectively a little private bath in the sea under this strange canopy.
Our ancestors didn't care to swim as we do today.
They savoured a ritual which grew up around the bathing machine.
You'd come out of your lodgings,
you'd go to little bathing rooms on the high street
where would sign your name on a blackboard
and you'd wait for a bathing machine to be ready.
You'd come down into the bathing machine where you'd be provided
with some kind of costume, or you may have some costume of your own,
and perhaps some towel to dry yourself with.
You would change inside this bathing machine
which apparently always smelt like rotting carpet,
that kind of horrible sort of smell.
A poor horse dragged the machine into the sea and then you went down the steps
and bathed under this canvas canopy in privacy,
or if you were a bit more adventurous or felt you could swim,
you could come out of the canopy.
From the mid-19th century, the railways transported a new wave
of working-class visitors to Margate who entered the sea
not to improve their health, but for pleasure.
The Victorian period is a transitional period
between the Georgian period and the 18th century,
where people drank sea water, they bathed, dipped in the water.
And by the Victorian period, you were beginning to get that system
of using bathing machines to be dipped in the water from,
is being transformed into the beginning of the swimming
and the beach holiday culture that we would much more recognise today.
By the end of the 19th century,
so many people were catching the train to the beach
that the cumbersome bathing machines
made way for the more practical swimming costume.
The railways made the British seaside holiday a part of national culture.
And it clings to its position to this day.
Before I leave town, I'll visit a place
that Victorian tourists wouldn't have missed;
the mysterious Shell Grotto,
which was discovered shortly before my guide was written.
Extraordinary. It's like entering a subterranean cathedral.
Everything's covered in mosaics, but mosaics made of seashells.
And the whole thing, very elaborate, very intricate,
incredible amount of work.
And big.
Over 4.5 million shells were used to create this underground masterpiece.
And this is the greatest room of all. And you must be Sarah.
Hello, I am.
Sarah Vickery owns the grotto.
I saw a sign saying "Don't touch the shells because they're delicate."
And here and there, some have fallen away,
but it's in pretty good condition.
Considering it's been open to the public since 1837.
So literally millions of people will have walked through here,
so it's a miracle the condition it's in, I think.
Believed to have been discovered by a group of schoolchildren
playing hide and seek, the grotto quickly drew the crowds.
When it opened, it would've been the thing to do in Margate.
And Margate was an incredibly busy town, of course.
And so, yes, I think at one stage, they had a one-way system going in here,
it was so busy.
So they would've had hundreds and hundreds of people through every day.
Grottoes became fashionable in Britain in the 18th century.
Wealthy travellers returning from grand tours of Italy
recreated the idea in their landscaped gardens.
Some have suggested that this grotto was built as a temple.
Others, a secret meeting house. In truth, nobody knows.
But in a way, it's a fantastic story, isn't it?
This huge work of art exists and we don't know who the artist is.
No, exactly, it's anonymous.
Following my "Bradshaw's Guide" around Britain,
as so many 19th-century tourists did,
I'm continually surprised that so much that the Victorians saw
we can still see today.
My guide may be over 150 years old,
but much of it remains relevant for the 21st-century traveller.
For the railway tourist, Kent offers medieval heritage,
fine seafood and excellent sea bathing.
Whitstable has adjusted to the 21 st century,
Canterbury has been rebuilt after World War Two
and Margate maintains its position as a sea-bathing centre
on Kent's pleasure line.
On my next journey, I'll be hearing how the railways helped Britain
to win the First World War...
It made it possible to supply the troops with the equipment they needed
in a much greater quantity than they might otherwise have had.
Simple as that.
...imagining how to fill some famous boots...
The ones actually worn by Wellington?
Yes, they're very much the icon of our collection here.
...and venturing into the very first railway tunnel under the sea.
It is absolutely unique. It's massive, yet it's invisible.
And it is honestly one of the wonders of our modern day.
- A renaissance in rail. - We hope so.
Ripped By mstoll