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
For the Victorian tourist, travelling by train
was more than just a way of getting from one place to another.
For those people who lived in industrial cities,
watching a rural idyll drifting past the carriage window would be an education.
The experience would be all the more improving
if the tourist referred to his Bradshaw's Guide.
As I venture deeper into Kent,
I'm appreciating my "Bradshaw's" more than ever.
A modern guidebook can point the way to historic artefacts.
But one a century and a half old
unwittingly reveals the values of a society
which modern Britons both mock and revere.
Today, I'm heading for Romney Marsh,
where the railways helped ensure the success of a special breed of sheep.
(man) It was an important route for my family.
It was the closest station from where they lived.
I'll be finding out why my guidebook
compared Kent to the French Champagne region...
The south-facing slopes on the North Downs,
that Bradshaw would have seen, is perfect terroir for champagne.
...and discovering how the railways led Victorian Britain
into the grip of fern fever.
The nurseries would use the railways to send the plants to the customers.
So this amazing craze was helped on by the railways?
Oh, yes, definitely.
I'm almost at the end of my journey from London,
travelling 175 miles in a circuit through Kent,
enjoying the county's rich history.
Having followed the coastline to Folkestone,
now I'm making my way west, just over the border into Sussex.
The final stretch starts in Westenhanger,
before passing through Ashford
and ending at the seaside resort of Hastings.
In the 19th century, the railway line snaking along the coast
allowed hundreds of city dwellers to discover the rural villages of Kent.
I'm alighting at Westenhanger,
not much more than a tiny hamlet in Bradshaw's day.
Having travelled around Kent,
I feel like one of those Victorian urban tourists myself.
I've always lived in the metropolis.
Of course, I have visited Kent, but I've never given it a proper tour.
I've found that it's not only a county of great natural beauty,
but fundamentally important to British history.
Westenhanger is just my gateway to a remarkable English ecology,
a windswept landscape of salt flats and shingle, Romney Marsh.
Since the 11th century, settlers have attempted to tame this wild terrain.
This spectacular panorama is Romney Marsh.
Bradshaw says that "it extends along the coast for 20 miles,
including about 60,000 acres, which within the last few years
have been successfully drained and cultivated."
In fact, the land and sea have battled over this terrain for hundreds of years.
But now, with the provision of a sea wall and with constant drainage,
the marsh is stable.
Reputedly, a fearsome climate.
In the 1700s, the marsh was shared
between smugglers and malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
Life expectancy was a mere 35 years.
But the Victorians finally built sea walls
strong enough to keep the waters at bay.
The marsh may never have welcomed human life,
but a more hardy animal has thrived here.
Romney Marsh sheep.
Paul Bowden's family has been rearing them since the 1880s.
- Paul. - Morning.
What a fantastic vista over the marsh.
It is, it is.
(Michael) It looks like a gentle place,
but it has a bit of a reputation for being a bit spooky.
(Paul) It has, definitely. The mist comes in very quickly.
It just runs across the field. It looks quite eerie.
The superstitious type would think it was full of spirits.
(Michael) It leads down to the sea and it's flat.
Would I be right in thinking it's all been reclaimed?
Yes. Predominantly.
Everything you can see here has been reclaimed over past centuries.
And what sort of a soil has that given us down there?
It's a rich alluvial silt, really.
- (Michael) Fertile? - (Paul) Very fertile.
Hence the amount of crops down there now. Not so much grass.
Have you any idea how long the Romney Marsh sheep has been here?
(Paul) It's been on the marsh for over 1,000 years.
I believe the Romans probably brought them in initially.
As time's gone on, they've evolved, really, to what they are today.
- (Michael) Good for wool and for meat. - (Paul) A dual-purpose breed.
Being resistant to disease and able to feed on the boggy pasture,
these sheep are well adapted to the damp, harsh conditions.
Their meat is particularly sought after,
as it picks up a salty flavour from the marsh.
The railway arrived at Smeeth in 1852.
By the 1890s, Paul's family was using it on a weekly basis.
(Paul) It was quite an important route for my family.
It was the closest station from where they lived.
They were living on the edge of the marsh.
Paul preserves a Victorian farming diary kept by his great-grandfather.
Just day-to-day jobs in here. What they were doing on the farm.
There's references which are very apt to the railway station nearby.
This one here. January 14th, 1895.
"A hundred trusses, straw, to Smeeth Station for Mr Hook."
There's one here. January 31 st, 1894.
"One horse to Smeeth Station for coals."
(Michael) I guess it really shows
that sheep farming has been going on for a while.
The farmers were adapting to using the railway to keep supplied.
Yeah, very much so. Cut a lot of miles, I suspect.
Trains could carry sheep to markets all over the country.
By the second half of the 19th century, the breed had become so popular
that it was exported to most of the world's continents.
Today, 70 percent of New Zealand sheep
are descended from Romney Marsh specimens.
(Michael) What are their main attributes?
(Paul) A strong-bodied sheep. Strong in the legs. Got good, sound feet.
That's one of the main characteristics coming off the Romney Marsh.
It's traditionally a wet landscape.
They've got good tolerance to foot rot, when living in wet mud.
Your family's been farming sheep here for a long time.
Would your great-great-grandfather recognise these sheep?
(Paul) Very much so. They've probably got a bit less wool on their head.
They'd have been more woolly 140 years ago.
In Bradshaw's day, Romney Marsh
had an unusual system of freelance shepherds, called lookers.
They lived out on the marsh in tiny brick huts for weeks at a time,
keeping a close eye on the flock.
These days, Paul checks on the sheep himself.
- Catch a good one. One that's... - I recommend you catch a small one.
(Paul) If I can get near. They're going to be a bit lively.
(Michael) Oh, Lord.
(Michael) So, first catch yourself a sheep.
You're good at catching sheep.
This would be because you get the sheep like this if you're going to shear.
(Paul) Something like this.
And you shear a sheep. Where's that wool destined for?
All our wool goes through the British Wool Marketing Board.
It goes into the local wool growers, which is in Ashford.
It's graded there and it's sold on the wool exchange at Bradford.
But Romney Marsh wool, still highly regarded?
Yeah, yeah. For its versatility, really.
Although the historic exchange is no longer used for trading,
the wool is still regularly auctioned in Bradford.
And just as in Bradshaw's day, it's mainly used in carpets and clothes.
This sheep is destined for quite a nice life.
Once a year, it's got to put up with the indignity of being sheared.
It's got to produce a fair number of lambs. That's it.
No, that's right.
They've got to rear...
We'd like to try and rear one and a half lambs from the sheep.
Although on average, it's 1.3.
(Michael) Per year?
Are you ready to have 1.3 lambs?
- Yeah. I think she's all set. - Good. Good.
It's time for me to bid farewell to these distinguished sheep
and return to Westenhanger Station to catch my next train.
I was hoping to see a Eurostar rush by on the special tracks
the other side of this barbed-wire fence.
But none has passed.
I shall be moving closer to Victorian speed.
I'm travelling 11 miles to Ashford.
The line runs parallel to the high-speed route to the Continent.
A century and a half before the Channel Tunnel was built,
my guidebook was already reminded of France.
Bradshaw's describes this part of the line between Ashford and the coast as
"swerving slightly to the southeast
and having on each side a delightful Champagne country."
Now, it must be because it reminded him of Champagne in France.
Because as far as I know, in Victorian times,
they didn't grow grapes here for sparkling wine.
But now, they do. So Bradshaw's was clairvoyant. Spooky.
Although vines have been grown in England since Roman times,
Britain last attempted winemaking on a commercial scale in Bradshaw's era.
Wealthy Victorians returned from their rail tours of Europe
inspired by continental viniculture to try their hand.
(tannoy)... shortly arriving at Ashford International.
But their efforts fizzled out before World War One.
And only in the 1950s did a successful British wine industry emerge.
I've come to the most beautiful setting of a vineyard.
I suppose it could be France. But the tree line is entirely English.
Wine producer Frazer Thompson
is just weeks away from harvesting this year's growth.
- (Michael) What a beautiful place. - (Frazer) Thank you.
My Bradshaw's Guide compares this terrain to Champagne.
But I guess there were probably no vineyards around
when that was written in the 1860s.
Very few.
In fact, English wine's gone through a revolution
really predominantly in the last 30 or 40 years.
(Michael) Would the terrain remind a Victorian of Champagne?
(Frazer) Very much so.
The first thing you see when you come to England is this mass of chalk.
To a Frenchman arriving, thinking about Champagne,
chalk is manna. That's terroir for Champagne.
This great seam of chalk goes up through the North Downs
and it turns to be facing broadly southwards.
The south-facing slopes that we see on the North Downs,
that Bradshaw would have seen, is perfect terroir for champagne.
Kent is just 220 miles away from Champagne in France,
so it's not surprising that there are similarities between the regions.
The cooler English climate actually works in the wine grower's favour,
producing sharper, refreshing, less alcoholic wines,
to suit tastes which have evolved since Bradshaw's day.
Back in the Victorian era, and perhaps earlier in the 20th century,
we'd have been experiencing and wanting bigger, warmer, fleshier,
more alcoholic wines, with different flavour profiles and sweetnesses.
Now, people want acidity, freshness and low alcohol.
That's exactly what English wines provide.
(Michael) These grapes here, what are they?
Chardonnay grown in England.
It'll go towards making great blanc de blanc sparkling wine.
Try one.
This taste, what you'll get is mainly acids.
You can get some of the fruit in there as well, though.
That acidity is what's going to make your mouth water.
That's what we need to make great sparkling wine.
That's the very wine
that England's just won one of the world's greatest wines for.
- Really? - A blanc de blanc.
It's one of our competitors.
He's done a fantastic job and produced a blanc de blanc sparkling wine, 2006.
It's beaten all the competition from all over the world
to make the best sparkling wine in the world.
- (Michael) Including French? - (Frazer) And everywhere else.
Hopefully, if Bradshaw was to write a book in 200 years' time,
he'll come back and compare somewhere else to the great vineyards of England.
That would be wonderful.
What distinguishes champagne and other sparkling wine
is that it's fermented twice.
Once in the vat and again in the bottle, which creates the bubbles.
Dom Perignon is often credited with inventing the process.
In fact, it was first documented in the 1660s
by an Englishman, Christopher Merret, in a paper for the Royal Society.
So the wines arrive here
It's the final part of the journey for a bottle of sparkling wine.
It arrives here upside down. Or, as the French call it, sur pont.
At sur pont we've got all the yeast that's been used to make the bubbles
and the extra alcohol in the wine is condensed
into a little crust at the bottom of the bottle. It's upside down.
By the time we enter the machine here and it comes off the other end,
it's a perfect bottle of sparkling wine.
Corked and caged, the wine bottles are then cleaned and labelled.
And I'm curious to know what remains to be done.
How long after all that before you can actually drink it?
Drink it straightaway.
The moment it comes off this machine behind you, it's drinkable.
There's some debate as to whether
a month or two of cork ageing will do it any good.
But essentially, it's very drinkable.
Very, very drinkable, the moment it comes off this machine.
Very drinkable, you say? Shall we go and put that to the test?
More sparkling wine is sold here than in France.
And for the first time,
England is competing seriously in the international wine stakes.
That's what I call a picnic basket.
(laughs) Let's hope you like the contents.
- Cheers. - Cheers.
Wow. Powerful. Tastes of fruit.
- It's a bang-on mouthful of flavour. - Yeah.
What am I getting? Apples, certainly.
Probably apples.
You're almost certainly getting some wild strawberries
and maybe even a bit of shortcake.
I don't think my sample was quite big enough for me
to get all the flavours at one go.
Do you mind if I have a little top-up? Thank you.
- I even like the noise. - Cheers again.
Nicely stimulated by my glass of English fizz,
I'm ready to find a hotel for the night,
and my guidebook has a suggestion.
Time for bed.
Thanks to my Bradshaw's, I can continue the champagne life
because he recommends to me Eastwell Park,
this fantastic pile, which was the seat of the Earl of Winchilsea.
He tells me that it's the place where Richard Plantagenet,
the last descendant of that royal household, breathed his last.
The story is that the boy was told by his father, Richard III,
just before his death at the Battle of Bosworth,
to keep his identity a secret so that he would not face persecution.
And Bradshaw tells me that Richard Plantagenet died here in obscurity
as a bricklayer to the family who lived here, in 1550.
Well, it's a good story.
This may or may not be the last resting place
of Richard III's illegitimate son.
But it'll do splendidly as a resting place for me.
- Good evening. - Welcome to Eastwell Manor.
Very good to see you. Have you got a room for me?
We have Broderick for you, sir.
I was hoping for Plantagenet.
It's a much nicer room on the grounds side. Have a lovely stay.
Thank you very much.
Oh, yes. Suitably grand.
And a vista over the formal gardens.
One of the prettiest views in Kent.
The next morning, I'm moving on to the last leg of my journey.
So it's back to Ashford to catch my final train.
For the first time since I began my trip,
I'm on a diesel and not an electric train.
I'm quitting Kent for Sussex.
I'm headed for one of the best-known places on the British coast, Hastings.
Famous for 1066 and all that.
I'm heading about 25 miles along the line, towards the sea.
(tannoy) We are now approaching Hastings.
Hastings.
This was one of the first towns, along with Eastbourne, Ramsgate,
to offer a service early on a Monday morning,
so that London workers could get back to their offices.
That gave rise to a new kind of holiday, from Saturday to Monday morning.
And it wasn't until 1870 that the Oxford Dictionary recognised a new phenomenon
and entered for the first time the word "weekend".
In the second half of the 19th century,
weekend breaks by train became popular with middle-class Victorians.
Hastings grew from a small fishing town to a lively seaside resort.
"The openness of the coast and the smoothness of the beach
have long made Hastings a favourite resort."
"The water's almost limpid
and of that beautiful sea-green hue so inviting to bathers."
"A very efficient substitute for a trip to Madeira."
So there we are. Scrap the package holiday. Buy a train ticket.
The railways didn't boost tourism alone.
In the 1860s, as trains conveyed fresh herring to London,
fishing flourished too.
I'm heading to a famous area of the Hastings beach, called the Stade,
to meet fisherman, Bud White.
- (Michael) Hello, Bud. - (Bud) Hello there.
- I hope I'm not interrupting you. - Not at all.
I go around using this 19th-century railway guidebook.
Your great-grandfather, grandfather,
were they using the railways to send fish elsewhere?
They certainly were.
I'm not absolutely certain of the dates. Probably towards the late 1800s.
Directly the railways were up and running to London,
they could get their mackerel from here to London
early enough to get the market at Billingsgate.
They got a much better price for several years.
My great-grandfather did very well. Very well indeed.
There's no harbour here.
On their return from fishing, the boats must be hauled onto the beach.
From necessity, they tend to be smaller than elsewhere,
as are their catches.
(Michael) People worry about sustainability.
So your small catches presumably mean
that you're quite respectful of the fish stocks.
Absolutely. Over the years, you're brought up with the fact
that all the small fish is your future.
You get it back in the sea as quickly as possible.
All the fish that we return to the sea,
with the exception of a very small percentage, is alive and survives.
Your fishing boats, here on the beach,
are part of what makes Hastings distinctive.
I hope you don't me mind saying, picturesque.
The other things are the net locks. Tell me about those.
(Bud) They were used originally for drying nets.
When the likes of my great-grandfather and grandfather were fishing,
for each type of fish they were catching like mackerel, herrings, sprats,
it was a different-sized mesh.
They used to use the different floors of the sheds
for particular types of nets.
They'd have mackerel nets on the first floor, herring nets on the next floor,
sprat nets on the next floor.
It wasn't that easy to tell one net from the other.
These days, wider-mesh nets are used to catch only mature fish.
That's earned Hastings
a sustainable fishing certificate from the Marine Stewardship Council.
(man) Hello there.
- What lovely-Iooking fish. - Thank you very much.
(Michael) What's local?
Skate. Bass fillets. Whiting.
- (Michael) All local? - (man) All local stuff.
(Michael) Tell me about public taste.
Do public tastes change over the years?
- Definitely. - What are they into now?
When I came and worked here with my mum and dad at 16,
it was cod, haddock, plaice.
That was the majority of it.
Now, with people travelling so much,
they see different things abroad
and they realise they can get it here in the UK.
They see it on the counter and they're willing to try it.
We sell more and more of that sort of stuff.
Would you say Hastings was a good place to come and buy fish?
Definitely. I mean, a shop like us,
we're ten paces from the boat that caught a lot of this stuff.
So Hastings has a lot to offer, fish-wise.
We get such a variety down here.
Before I leave Hastings, I'm setting out along the cliffs
to a place that became hugely popular with the Victorians: Fairlight Glen.
It inspired a lyrical description in my guidebook.
I wish I had more time here.
Bradshaw's says, "A week may be delightfully spent
exploring the fairy-like nooks around Fairlight Glen."
"Situated in a sweet umbrageous spot,
down which by narrow winding steps hewn out of the solid rock,
one only can descend at a time."
I'm here to discover a Victorian craze.
My guidebook displays symptoms of fern fever,
an obsession with feathery green plants
that gripped the Victorians for several decades.
Fairlight Glen, with its secret forests and abundant ferns,
captured the Victorian imagination.
I'm meeting garden historian, Dr Sarah Whittingham, to discover why.
- Sarah, hello. - Hello.
Good to see you.
Why did the Victorians have such a passion for ferns?
It was the heyday of natural history.
If they weren't hunting for ferns,
they were out tapping rocks with hammers to find fossils,
or catching butterflies, or looking into rock pools.
It was the first time that you got the middle classes
who had villas and houses in the centre of town.
They had a small garden that they wanted to fill with plants and flowers.
Ferns were seen as magical plants,
with, some believed, the power to make you invisible.
Books identifying almost 2,000 varieties were published
to aid the fern-mad Victorians.
The craze even had a name. Pteridomania.
The railways enabled amateur collectors to widen their hunt for specimens.
And a fern-by-mail-order business developed.
Fairlight Glen is pretty, isn't it?
I can imagine Victorians getting on the railways
and coming to remote spots like this, looking for their ferns.
That's right. But they didn't have to come to these places.
They could just buy their ferns from nurseries.
The nurseries would use the railways to send the plants to customers.
(Michael) The middle classes could buy whatever they needed for their garden.
They could buy their ferns from a professional fern tout.
They certainly used the railways.
They would come out to places like this. They'd ransack the countryside.
They'd send up huge amounts of ferns in hampers up to the towns.
They'd follow them up.
Then they'd tout them from door to door or they'd sell them on street corners.
So this amazing craze was helped on by the railways?
Oh, yes. Definitely.
But all those Victorians hoping
to recreate a slice of country life in their urban houses
found it to be harder than they thought.
So when Victorians take their ferns back to their homes and their gardens,
do they thrive in the city?
Well, no. That was the major problem.
Victorian cities were very polluted places.
Luckily, a doctor in the East End of London, Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward,
who was a very keen fern grower, found a way of successfully growing ferns.
He invented what became known as the Wardian case.
(Michael) Which was what? A little conservatory?
(Sarah) That's right.
Like the terrariums that became popular in the 1960s and '70s.
They came in all shapes and styles. All sizes.
And it became the thing to have in your drawing room in the 1850s.
Fern fever took root, and feathery leaves made their appearance
on wallpaper, teacups and chamber pots.
Even in architecture, they adorned columns and railings.
It's now time for me to leave the Enchanted Forest and Hastings.
I've reached the end of the line for this journey.
My trusty guidebook supplies me with a suitable way to say goodbye.
Bradshaw's commends the view.
"Reaching from Beachy Head to Dover cliffs, between 70 and 80 miles apart,
and stretching out to the heights of Boulogne."
"The best time for seeing it is in the afternoon."
"Upon favourable atmospheric influences, it is a view never to be forgotten."
As I look back on my journey, I thank George Bradshaw for guiding me
from the heart of London to the cliff"s edge.
From the nation's capital, to the end of England.
On my next journey, I'll be travelling up the west coast of Scotland
on a railway voted the world's most scenic.
Along the way, I'll be discovering how the Victorians built a weather station
atop Britain's highest mountain...
We're talking about people going up there to take the readings?
They didn't have to go up there. They had to live there.
...finding out how the railways spread the word about whisky...
This is from pretty much the exact time of the railways arriving in Oban.
(Michael) I can see the railway. Here's a train puffing along.
...and crossing a pioneering viaduct, one of Britain's most spectacular.
Somehow, the wheels are gripping the wet rails.
And now we're on the wonderful Glenfinnan Viaduct.
Ripped By mstoll