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 breath of the country, to see what of Bradshaw's Britain remains.
Using my Victorian Bradshaw's guide, I'm beginning a journey up the
west coast of Scotland, the northern part, the west Highland line,
was recently reported on one travel survey the world's most
scenic railway. Trains brought tourists to places previously
accessible only to deer and sheep. 19th century novels romantised
Highland culture, and Queen Victoria began the royal habit of holidaying North of the border.
Bradshaw helps in understanding those social changes.
As the railways reached the Highlands, the guide books
provided useful tips for those travelling north. On this stretch
of the journey, I'll discover why 19th century Paisley was a magnet
for Italians. Seeing how the railways helped golf
to flourish in Scotland. It was 1925, and there was something like
20,000 people came on the railway from Glasgow.
And celebrating haggis, in the home town of poet Robert Burns.
Fantastic! Starting on the Ayrshire coast, this journey takes me north
to join the stunning west Highland line. I will be following its path
through some of the Highlands' most dramatic scenery, and I will end up
on the Hebridean island of Skye. My route today begins in Ayr, then
up the track to Prestwick, my last stop will be one of the great Victorian textile towns, Paisley.
I'm travelling through a county
with a rich industrial past. This is Ayrshire, and my Bradshaw's
guide says it has abundant mines of coal, free stone, limestone, iron, lead
and copper, and from the great abundance of seaweed, which is cast
ashore, vast quantities of kelp is made. Like in many place, the
railways were built originally for coal, it wasn't too long before the
companies realised they had to make provision for passengers too.
This line opened to passengers in
1839, and in the first year alone it was used by 137,000 people.
It developed into a busy commuter route, linking Glasgow with the pretty coastal town of Ayr.
My Bradshaw's refers to Ayr as a
port at the mouth of the Ayr water, a picturesque stream, and says that about 5,000 tonnes of
shipping are registered here. Before Glasgow rose to prominence,
this was the stepping off point for trade with the Western Isles. Even
in Bradshaw's day, tourists were coming here, this is what my guide
book refers to as the land of Burns.
Celebrity fascinated Victorians. Using trains they could visit places made famous by literature,
or gawp at the birth place of a popular writer like Robert Burns,
it stands close to Ayr, and my guide book says "Innumberable
pilgrims from all lands visit these scenes, and the poet's residence to
gaze upon what has been charmed and sanctified by his genius".
Bradshaw's listing for Ayr, contains three columns of quotes
from Burns. But no verse perhaps is more famous than that in which the
great Scottish poet elevated a humble Scottish peasant dish, to
the status of international celebrity. With his address to a haggis.
The poem is recited every January
at Burns night suppers, although tongue-in-cheek it's a proud
celebration of Scottish cuisine. "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!".
Those verses brought haggis to global renown, and the railways enabled many
outside Scotland to have their first taste. I'm meeting award winning haggis baker Stewart Duguid to chart it's rise to fame.
While I'm in Burns country, I thought I would find out more about haggis? You have picked the right
place to come to. How did it start? It goes back to the days when the
gentry ate the lamb, and the peasants ate the offal, they made
it into a meal. Traditionally it was a pudding made for poor people?
Without a doubt. It is immortalised now. By Robbie Burns, did he write
that address to the haggis, did he write it as a joke, forgive me?
my God, no, don't say that to a Scottish man, either. It was a
completely serious thing? It was a serious poem, he was serious about it.
Then it becomes, thanks to Robbie Burns, a dish that is craved,
even in London? Oh yes, not just in London, all over. Fortunately the
railway station just along the road there, we send a tremendous amount
of haggis down south, by railway. Do you think the railway itself
helped the export of haggis to outside Scotland? Of course it did,
it was the only way of transporting it in the early days by rail. There
was a problem with refrigeration, but it worked. Once it's cooked
it has a seven-day shelf life. I'm looking forward to seeing how
you make them. We're ready for you, with the coat and hat. I'm ready too.
Bradshaw's says of haggis, "it's ingredients are oat meal, suet,
pepper, and is usually boiled in a sheep's stomach". But perhaps for fear of putting people off,
it doesn't mention the most important ingredient.
This is the heart, lungs, and liver. That's the raw material.
We cook these, probably about 200 pound at a time for a batch size.
That is the size it cooks down to. Once everything is mixed up, it's time
to make the haggis, sheep's stomachs are used for the largest,
and intestines for the smaller ones. Hold it firm, and again. Oh dear! Try another one.
Well done, well done, keep it firm. Let it slide
now slightly. Perfect. Lovely. So what we're going to do is open the
oven up there and bring one exactly like that. You have actually made a haggis.
Aren't they beautiful. Now is your chance, Michael, we
would like you to taste this. That is great honour. Before you do so,
you have to recite the poem, we will ask you to do the first verse.
"Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the pudding-race! Aboon them a' yet tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o'a grace As lang's my arm."
What do I do now? Slice it open. Look at that. That is not how I normally do it I pick it out with my fingers!
Marvellous, it has a bit of an edge to it. A lovely, lovely haggis.
Bradshaw says haggis is "a heavy yet by no means disagreeable dish", and I
don't argue with that. It's now time to leave Ayr and
catch the train a few miles up the line to Prestwick.
The tracks running up this stretch of coast offer wonderful views
across the Firth of Clyde.
In the 19th century, the new railway allowed wealthy Glaswegians
to move out to this beautiful scenery, turning Prestwick into a
haven for commuters.
This is Prestwick Town, which scarcely gets a mention in Bradshaw's, because it was just a
tiny village on the edge of Troon, but when the rail link arrived here, that was the moment
when the middle-classes from Glasgow could build their
magnificent villas here, to take advantage of the sea views and the
vistor over towards the Isle of Arran, and with the railway coming here
in 1840, it was 11 years later they put in the golf course, and the
best view of the golf course is from the station.
When my guide book was published, Prestwick was poised to become one
of Scotland's most important golf courses. As club secretary, Ian
Bunch explains. What fantastic course? Welcome to Prestwick.
This is the home of Open Golf in Scotland? The first Open
Championship was held here in 1860, only eight people took part in that Open.
It was Tom Morris, his concept, and they sent invitations
out to the leading clubs for them to put forward players to play in
this Open event. I suppose then the railways did make it possible for
it to become a big spectator event? The last Open we held here was 1925,
and there is something like 20,000 people came on the railway from
Glasgow. How fantastic. Forgive me, it must have been quite difficult
to control 20,000 people in this size of course? That is why we no
longer have the Open championship, because the crowd control, there
was none. Everyone was on the fairways in those days, they
followed the match. You had all the people bottlenecking, that was the
last Open in 1925 that we had.
Golf originated in 15th century Scotland. In the railway age it spread rapidly. By the 1900s there
were over 1300 courses in Britain. Have the railways played an
important part in the history of golf? Very important, if you think
of a links course, it is beside a railway station, it was more
holidays, Industrial Revolution, people had working week down to 55
hours, they had more time and could play golf. In those days you didn't
have a car or a boot to sling the clubs in, you put them on the train.
Absolutely. It was horse and cart or train. Railways offered cheap tickets and
deals for golfers. Here railway staff made special arrangements so
players didn't miss their train. In days gone by the station master
used to have a bell which he would ring, which would ring in the bar,
to advise that the train was going to arrive within five minutes. We
had a wonderful relationship with the railways in days gone by.
Just time to drink up and go? Absolutely. In Prestwick the memory of the
railway's hey day is cherished. I have a good story about railways
and golf. The ladies playing in Prestwick long ago in the 1920s of
steam trains, and the train came into the station as she drove, and
she sliced it over the wall out of bounds, hit the train, came back on
the course, and as she walked up the driver leaned out and said that
was lucky. Are you playing tomorrow. And she said, yes I've got a
tee time at 1.00, he said he would try and be here. Golf is something
I'm leaving for later life. So I had best just head off in search of
tonight's hotel. Prestwick's good rail links to
Glasgow led to a building boom in the 19th century, and rows of
elegant terraces sprang up. And one of them is rather special.
I'm now just a stone's throw from the golf course, and my bed tonight
will be in one of those mid-19th century villas, this one was built
for John Keppie, who was an architect and a friend of Charles
Renny Mackintosh, I hope when I embark on my journey tomorrow my
head will be full of grand designs. Mackintosh, Scotland's most famous
architect, often spent time in this house, it is easy to see why he
loved Prestwick. This quiet, coastal town provided him with the
necessary peace for creativity.
That looks lovely, thank you very much. After a hearty Ayrshire breakfast,
it's time to continue my journey, starting back as Prestwick station, to catch my next train.
I'm on my way to Paisley, travelling through
Renfrewshire. Bradshaw says this county contains many manufacturing
towns and villages, bounded by the Firth of Clyde and the Clyde river. He talks about the
industry and enterprise of the inhabitants, about extensive
machinery, in immense buildings where hundreds of human beings are
actively engaged in manufacturing. It is a very telling description of
an industrious and industrialised county at the beginning of the
second half of the 19th century. In Bradshaw's day, these parts were
being transformed from tranquil villages into substantial
industrial towns. My next stop is a good example.
I have now arrived at the very Victorian-feeling station of Paisley Gilmore Street, my
Bradshaw's says of Paisley, it is a thriving seat of the cotton trade,
with a population of about 47,952 don't you love that combination
of approximation and precision.
In the 19th century, Paisley was one of
Britain's most productive textile towns. It gave its name to the
Indian-inspired shawls, patterned with the iconic teardrop.
But Victorian Paisley produced a fabric with origins closer to home. In the
mid-19th century, Paisley was a town of weavers, and the cottage
industry had given way to big new mills. With tourists pouring into
Scotland on the trains, and the royal interest in all matters
Scottish, there was a tartan craze, and the mills were churning out
mile after mile of the stuff. It was being exported everywhere,
beginning its journey, of course, by rail. Sad to remember, just a
century before Victoria's reign, tartan was almost lost forever.
The Highlanders who supported Bonnie Prince Charley's uprising had been
defeated by Government troops at the Battle of Culloden. The director of the Scottish Tartan Authority, knows
the story. After Culloden what happens to the Highlanders ?
The first blow was that tartan was banned from 1747 until 1782. That resulted in many
of the old looms being lost, many of the old patterns being lost.
That very proud and unique identity of the Highlanders was taken away from them.
They were made to wear trousser, to
them they were impractical and not Scottish.
The authorities tried to suppress the rebellious Highlanders by
destroying their culture. They didn't quite succeed in killing off
tartan. Tartan goes from being banned in
the Highlands to being an English fashion accesssory for Londoners,
how did that happen? A remarkable coincidence of events. George IV
was invited to Edinburgh in 1822, orchestrated by Sir Walter Scott.
When he arrived in Edinburgh he was kitted out from top to toe in
tartan, and even wore some pink tights, that didn't go down too
well. In the invitation to the clan chiefs to come to meet the king,
Walter Scott said dress in your clan tartans, many didn't know what
the tartans were, because of the previous ban. They were scrabbling
around going to the weavers, talking to the old people in the
Klan asking did they remember the tartan. At this point, two young
men appeared, the Sebvesky brothers claimed to be grandsons of Bonnie
Prince Charlie and said they discovered an ancient document that
could solve the problem. They said they had a rare document which
detailed in minute detail Scottish clan tartans, not just for the
Highlanders, but also for the lowlanders and people on the
borders, families on the borders who had never had tartan before.
Walter Scott was very suspicious of this, but the rest of Scottish
society welcomed these with open arms because of this romantic wave.
The brothers produced a dictionary of tartans, allowing many clans and
families to lay claim to ancestoral pattern, tartan sales began to take off.
Do you think the railways helped to
spread the tartan mania in the Victorian period? We are positive
they had a very great effect. Not only did they provide a
marvellously improved means of transport, to get tartans from the
Highlands down to the market in the south, but they also, on the return
journey, brought the tourists with them, who would come into the
Highlands and would buy tartan. I think it was a marvellously
symbiotic relationship. The public was so infatuated with tartan, that the
book's authenticity went unchallenged. Many of today's
tartans turned out at the end of the day to be forgies. The book was a fraud ?
Yes, gifted forgies because they were very imaginative, but the Klans
accepted them and that makes up many of todays clan tartan books.
What tartan are you wearing? Fraser tartan. Your family tartan?
My grandmother was a Fraser. And you're sure it's genuine?
It better be, she will be in trouble if it isn't. It seems that many
ancient tartans were invented in Bradshaw's day. Now anyone can
design and register a new one. But for traditionalists the idea of
clan weaves has stuck. We're an offshoot of the MacKay tartan but I don't know a great deal about it.
Would you have an idea what it looks like? A green background, the
other colour no. Do you lay claim to any tartan yourself? I don't,
I'm Italian and English. Would you wear one? I know I can't. I have
been told I can only wear Black Watch because I'm not Scottish.
Did you know there was a connection between Paisley and an Italian town?
It's to do with fish and chips and ice-cream. The Italians know their food.
Paisley has an Italian
community that dates back to Victorian times. When the railways
brought thousands of immigrants to South-West Scotland. I'm meeting
Scots Italian, Ronnie Convery in one of Paisley's oldest fish and
chip shops. Nice to see you. What is the connection between Paisley
and "La bella Italia"? It goes back a long way, Italy we think of as
a stylistic capital, but in the 19th century it had incredible
poverty and failed harvests. So Italians left Tuscany to come to
places like this. This was regarded as the place to make a new life. They
came through London and spread out from London, following the railway
lines through centres like Glasgow and Paisley. Here, in this part of
Scotland, the majority of the Italian community come from one
tiny little village high in the alps called Barga. In the 19th
century the people of Barga were hit by famine, as the railways
spread through Europe, some were able to escape, many ended up in
Paisley hoping to make their fortunes. Why have we met in a fish
and chip shop? That's another story. When the Italians came they were
hawkers, ice-cream became the trade on barrows. An interesting thing,
in our health and safety obsessed world, in those days they used to
sell ice-cream in little glass cups they would lick the ice-cream out
and hand it back. It was only in 1905 that an Italian from
Manchester invented the cone. That hasn't got us to fish and chips yet ?
Ice-cream isn't great seller in the winter. Italians being here, not
wishing to take the jobs of the local community had to find
something new. Fish and chips wasn't new to Italians, it was sold
in London by Greeks, but seeing the market they took it outside London,
and it's a very easy thing to set up. There's an endless supply of
potatoes in Britain, and a reasonably endless supply of fish.
How big did this trend grow, were there lots of Italian fish and chip
and ice-cream shops? Between 1890 and 1910, the Italian population of
Scotland quadrupled, but the number of ice-cream and fish and chip
shops increased ten-fold. Out of the large number of Italian fish
and chip shops, that once graced Paisley, only a handful have
survived. I was struck, I have just come into this fish and chip shop,
an Italian fish and chip shop, but it has a Scottish name? Yes, Allen's,
there are a few like that called the Savoy Cafe. That is because of
the war time experience of the Italians, when Mussolini entered
the war in 1940, Churchill said collar the lot, the whole community,
men up to 70 were arrested and interned. The impact of the war
time experience was extreme on the Italian community, a scar on their
psyche. So much after the war, there was an incredible desire to
integrate and not stand out from the crowd. Scots Italians now feel
so at home here that they invent their own tartan.
Recently another guy in the community decided it would be
good idea to create a Scottish Italian tartan. He used all the colours, the
blue of the Italian national football strip, the green, white and red of
the flag, and applied to the national tartans authority, and
obtained their permission to have the first approved ethnic tartan.
Given your shirt and tie, you may get away with that today. That is an example
of integration. That is super, I wouldn't have known that wasn't
just a pure Scottish tartan? It could be Macbeth or McDonald.
I see, the blue of the Italian football team, of course the green,
white and red. That is the giveaway if you know where to look.
Parle Italiano? Si. Where are you from? I'm Scottish but
speak a bit of Italian. You know about your Italian roots? Oh yeah,
this is my grandfather's shop. How lovely, do you do ice-cream as well
as fish and chips? Yes, but our speciality is haddock and chips, I
have a nice haddock coming out of the pan if you want it. I've just
had a spaghetti. You come here and When Do We Eat pasta not fish
and chips. Look what you could have had.
My Bradshaw's guide has helped me to understand the traditions and the
myths that make the Scots special. It struck me on the journey today
how very influential Scotland has been in the world. Golf is game
that's played everywhere, and Scotch whiskey is enjoyed
universally. Wherever you go in the world, people know that haggis and
tartan are Scottish, and for such a small country, to have such an
impact, strikes me as remarkable. Since my mother is a Scot, I feel entitled to feel a little proud.
On my next journey, I'll be discovering how Queen Victoria
attracted train loads of tourists to Loch Lomond.
This is very valuable, I can see it's signed by Victoria.
Finding out how Scottish timber fuelled the railway boom. We have fast-growing trees for things like
railway sleepers, that was one of the big demands in the 19th century.
And learning how a great sailing ship took her name from a witch in a poem.
It comes from a Burns poem, Tam o' Shanta. He can't help himself and jumps up and shouts, "Weel done 'cutty sark'!".
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