In 1 840, 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, 1 70 years later,
I'm makIng a serIes ofjourneys across the length and breadth of the country
to see what of Bradshaw's BrItaIn remaIns.
My Bradshaw's GuIde has now steered me
towards the stunning naturaI beauty of the Cumbrian coast.
In these parts, the proximity of the sea,
the rich mineraI deposits and a network of raiIways
has Ied to industriaI deveIopment centred around the mines.
On today's part of my journey,
I'll be explodIng the myths behInd CumbrIan slate...
(aIr horn blows)
That was a much bigger bang than I'd expected.
..submergIng myseIf In a top-secret world...
Not much room here.
..and dIscoverIng why VIctorIans loved the HangIng Town.
This is a short drop rope.
(MIchael) Short drop meaning that they wouId be strangIed.
They danced on the end of the rope.
I began my trIp In BerwIck-upon-Tweed
and I'm travellIng through the spectacular countIes of CumbrIa,
Northumberland and LancashIre,
fInIshIng by saIlIng the IrIsh Sea to the Isle of Man.
Today's leg of thejourney starts In Kirby-In-Furness
and then hugs the west coast, cIrcumscrIbIng Morecambe Bay,
culmInatIng In the CIty of Lancaster.
My Bradshaw's says that peopIe here
are engaged in the sIate, iron and copper mines.
But I'm intrigued by this entry under Kirby-in-Furness.
It says, ''This pIace has a popuIation of 1 ,666
empIoyed in the bIue sIate quarries.''
That sounds Iike quite a Iot of peopIe in Victorian times.
I'm not sure I even know what bIue sIate is.
I've arrIved at Kirby-In-Furness,
perched on the West CumbrIan coast.
ThIs area Is renowned for Its famous blue slate,
whIch has been coveted sInce Roman tImes.
But It was durIng the 19th century that productIon ballooned.
I've come to the BurlIngton quarry to fInd out more from Ian Kelly.
You've brought us to a fantastic vantage-point
and I see sIates aII around us but I'm in search of bIue sIate.
- Do you have bIue sIate? - Lots of bIue sIate here.
There's a few pieces there.
This entire mountain that we're Iooking at here
- where the quarry is is fuII of it. - (MIchael) What's bIue sIate used for?
The product is stiII used for roofing sIate. We make quite a Iot.
We aIso make architecturaI products. WaII cIadding, fIooring, kitchen tops.
Anything you can basicaIIy think of that in a buiIding we can make from sIate.
As towns and IndustrIes grew In BrItaIn In the VIctorIan era,
so the clamour for good qualIty buIldIng materIals Increased dramatIcally.
The questIon was how to transport the vast volumes of slate
out of the quarry dIrectly to customers throughout BrItaIn.
HIstorIcally, the Furness area had always been Isolated,
wIth the only road across the treacherous sands of Morecambe Bay.
So the local landowners buIlt a raIlway,
IncludIng the spectacular and stIll functIonIng ArnsIde VIaduct,
to allow for shIppIng eIther by raIl or sea.
After two years of constructIon, the raIlway opened In 1 846.
There were quarrying sIate by hand.
They wouId make it into what we caII cIogs of sIate,
which is a piece of sIate they can manage by hand and ith puIIeys.
They wouId Ioad it onto a raiIway bogie,
which they wouId then push by hand or puII ith a pony
through tunneIs and out to the production area.
When it's been made into roofing sIates
they'd use another raiI mechanism, which was an incIine,
which was a sIope where Ioaded bogies wouId go down
and empty bogies wouId come up.
This wouId take the sIate approximateIy a miIe down into Kirby viIIage
where the raiIway station is.
GravIty-powered raIlways were amongst the earlIest tracks In BrItaIn,
relyIng on the weIght of the full wagons goIng downhIll
to pull the empty wagons up.
These open-sIded trucks, or ''bogIes'' as they were known,
delIvered the slate straIght to the raIlway statIon.
I'm keen to see more of thIs hIstorIc quarry,
whIch remaIns fully operatIonal.
That is an impressive sight, I must say. This is huge.
You can see by the voIume of rock that been extracted over the years
there's a Iot gone out.
Rumour has it that it is one of the deepest man-made hoIes in Europe.
It Iooks Iike they've worked it down by Iayers over the years.
What's happened is they've worked one IeveI of the quarry fIoor
and when that's been finished, they go down
and put a sink in, which is sinking into the fIoor
if you Iike, dropping down, take another IeveI out.
If you Iook to the east end, you can see the different IeveIs
of where they've gone down over the years
into the bottom of the quarry.
In Bradshaw's day the slate was wrested from the rock face
usIng only hand tools and explosIves.
The VIctorIan mIners worked hard to ensure
that the blocks remaIned as Intact as possIble
In order to provIde the best-qualIty raw materIal.
Today,just 150 people work a total of seven quarrIes
wIth a hIgh degree of mechanIsatIon.
But VIctorIan quarryIng technIques are stIll practIsed today
and recognIsed to be hIghly effectIve.
We try to be as gentIe ith rock as we possibIy can.
We're using a technique there caIIed diamond ire saing.
They did use ire saws in here a Iong time ago,
but this is a more modern technique used in the ItaIian marbIe quarries.
It invoIves driIIing hoIes into the rock to meet up,
threading a diamond-encrusted ire around them,
then spinning it and draing it back Iike a cheese ire.
Ian's takIng me to the very heart of the quarry to show me
a rather more spectacular VIctorIan extractIon technIque
that's stIll practIsed today.
(aIr horn sounds)
That was a much bigger bang than I'd expected.
That IittIe bit of gunpowder. Quite a bIast.
- It is quite Ioud. - That's been a success?
- That's done what you wanted. - Yes. Yes.
In the 19th century, roof slates were made
by dressIng or hand workIng large blocks of rock.
Unusually, thIs quarry's slates have tradItIonally had a curved end,
earnIng Kirby resIdents the nIckname ''Roundheads''.
The current hand dresser, John Earl,
Is goIng to let me have a stab at dressIng a roof tIle
In the old-fashIoned way.
A few pointers might be usefuI here, John.
OK.
(John) Grip it Iike that ith your hand and your thumb on there.
- OK. - If you just start in there.
- (MIchael) Just take that edge off? - Yes.
(MIchael) Whoops.
Keep your finger out of the way.
- Oh! - You're aIright.
I'm aIright, am I? Just keep going.
That's not quite as beautifuI as yours, is it?
The hardest bit is getting a straight Iine.
Once you get that, you're away.
I'm getting the hang of it now.
I'm getting the hang of that now.
(both laugh)
Right, here goes.
- There we go. - There we... (laughs)
It's not quite Iike yours, is it?
Oh, dear. Oh, dear. Thank you very much indeed.
HavIng got the chop from my tIle dressIng job,
I'm now followIng the route that the slate would have taken,
south down the raIls to the port of Barrow-In-Furness.
I'm told that thIs lIne provIdes
one of the most delIghtful raIlway journeys In England,
sandwIched between the IrIsh Sea to the west
and glImpses of the Lake DIstrIct to the east.
These mountains produce more than just bIue sIate.
As my Bradshaw's puts it poeticaIIy,
''Iron is now forged in this vicinity
where the stag, woIf and iId boar were formerIy hunted.''
LocaI Iandowners and entrepreneurs put in a raiIway Iine to Barrow-in-Furness
and there they constructed a dock and a steeIworks
and they used that steeI to buiId ships.
DurIng Queen VIctorIa's reIgn,
BrItaIn became the most powerful tradIng natIon In the world.
At the heart of thIs was the successful development of steam technology.
It powered not only the raIlway network,
but also the shIps that operated on the major trade routes
to IndIa, South AfrIca, the OrIent and AustralIa.
BrItIsh shIpyards came to domInate the world,
as they pIoneered the use of Iron and steel In shIpbuIldIng.
WIth Iron ore In the CumbrIan hIlls,
Barrow-In-Furness grew from a tIny hamlet to a major shIpbuIldIng town,
home to the largest steelworks In the world by 1 876,
earnIng ItseIf the monIker ''the ChIcago of the North''.
The dockyard Is stIll goIng strong,
famous for buIldIng a very specIal type of boat,
fIrst constructed here In the VIctorIan perIod.
SubmarInes.
I've been granted very specIal access to the top-secret DevonshIre dock.
My guIde Is BrIan Hurley.
It is enormous, isn't it?
It's Iike the Iast scene of a James Bond movie, isn't it?
It is. It's a phenomenaI buiIding.
It's 1 7 storeys taII.
It's probabIy the biggest open space that we have in the country.
At the moment from what I can see you've got two boats, as you caII them,
two submarines, under construction. How are they getting on?
Behind you you can see Audacious. This is boat four.
She's in what we caII open outfit.
On the south buiId Iine we have ArtfuI, which is now into cIosed outfit
where we're now finishing systems
and getting ready to hand them across to the commissioning team.
AstonIshIngly, submarInes have been buIlt at Barrow sInce 1 886,
when the shIpyard buIld Its fIrst submersIbles for the DanIsh.
EarnIng a growIng reputatIon for qualIty buIlt boats,
the shIpyard claImed at the turn of the century
to be the only one capable of desIgnIng, buIldIng,
engInIng and armIng Its own vessels.
What is the chaIIenge of making a submarine?
The chaIIenge of making a submarine is putting aII the things
that you wouIdn't want to put together into one tin can.
You've got a nucIear reactor, you've got a power station, a hoteI.
High-voItage systems, high pressure systems, aII inside a confined space.
It's one thing you wouIdn't want to do. You'd want as much space as possibIe.
Barrow won the contract for the Royal Navy's fIrst fIve submarInes.
BuIlt and launched In utmost secrecy In 1901,
the HMS Holland 1 could dIve to a depth of only 100 feet
and had to surface every day.
But the AdmIralty was suffIcIently convInced
to contInue wIth submarIne development.
SIx decades later the shIpyard constructed Dreadnought,
BrItaIn's fIrst nuclear-powered submarIne,
launched In 1960 by the Queen.
I name this ship Dreadnought.
May God bIess her and aII who saiI in her.
(cheerIng)
- (man) Hip, hip! - (crowd) Hooray!
Do you have a sense working here of the heritage of submarine buiIding?
Is it something you're aware of?
CertainIy from my perspective,
I'm the fourth generation in shipbuiIding.
My father actuaIIy worked for me on Ambush as a paint supeRVisor.
Before that, his father was a rigging supeRVisor on one of the boats.
Before that, his father was a machinist in the shipyards.
So, yes.
The heritage and the Iegacy rest quite heavy ith me
and I'm quite emotive about the whoIe buiId of submarines in Barrow.
As I walk besIde the levIathan that Is HMS AudacIous,
It's rIvetIng to recall that all thIs began wIth VIctorIan entrepreneurs.
TheIr constructIon of the Furness RaIlway In the 1 840s
to carry Iron ore, slate and lImestone,
allowed for the Immense expansIon of the deep water port at Barrow.
Being underneath the submarine you get another idea of how big it is.
Things have reaIIy come on over the years.
Yes, certainIy.
The HoIIand cIass submarine that we first buiIt was just over 20ft Iong.
The Astute cIass submarine is just over 300ft Iong.
I've been gIven the rare prIvIlege
of goIng on board the nuclear-powered submarIne HMS Ambush
as she lIes In the water undergoIng fInal tests before her sea trIals.
Not much room here.
Fantastic, isn't it? You enter a different worId.
They shouId warn me. Not much headroom here.
No, it's quite confined inside.
Where are we now?.
We are in the controI room of HMS Ambush.
AII the information wouId be dispIayed here.
The controI room isn't the traditionaI controI room
that you expect to see ith the periscope.
We have externaIIy mounted masts and digitaI input.
What you see, the screens, are the digitaI outputs from the masts.
I'm rather amazed to dIscover that 2 1st-century submarInes
don't necessarIly have tradItIonal perIscopes.
The Astute class are the fIrst BrItIsh submarInes
to use hIgh-spec vIdeo technology Instead.
- The commanding officer sits here. - The commanding officer's chair.
Has a perfect view of the whoIe scene in the controI room.
Fantastic. BeautifuIIy air-conditioned.
Wires everywhere.
So, this is the Senior Rates Mess?
That's the senior non-commissioned officers on the boat.
How many are they?
There is approximateIy 30 on board.
Thirty. Not so big for 30, is it? What wouId they do in here?
(BrIan) They'd spend some of their recreationaI time,
eating and drinking ithin this faciIity.
- ObviousIy in shifts. - In shifts.
The guys work four-on-four-off, so they rotate through this faciIity.
How many months is the same crew at sea?
A patroI couId Iast three months
and that's based on the amount of food that the submarine can carry.
Before I leave, I want to meet someone who's spent hIs whole workIng lIfe
as a welder on the submarInes.
Joe Murphy.
They toId me to Iook you up. They toId me you're a bit of a weIder.
I've been weIding 40 years. I've been teaching for another six.
Teaching others to weId.
It's nice to pass on your skiII to somebody eIse.
How do you feeI about this work you've done here?
The boats that we buiId are the highest specification.
BuiIt to the highest specification in the worId.
Nobody eIse buiIds them Iike we buiId them.
Oh, it's great.
I get a Iot of satisfaction from what I do now.
What we're trying to instiI in the Iads is pride. Pride in the work.
That's everything. Neatness.
When I Iook at weIding and see the neatness,
I see the concentration that these Iads have put into that.
Neatness equaIs pride.
And that's what it's aII about. Pride in your work.
Pride keeps our crews safe.
That's what keeps the water out.
This town depends on this shipyard.
Without the shipyard, there's no... That town wouId foId behind it.
Let's hope that never happens. A reaI priviIege to meet you.
- Thank you very much. - Bye.
Thank you. Bye now.
I was once the polItIcal boss of the armed forces.
I've always found It humblIng to meet the people
whose energy and skIll provIde the natIon wIth Its submarInes.
For my overnIght stop, I'm takIng the West Coast MaIn LIne
and crossIng the border Into LancashIre, headed for Lancaster.
The cIty's port was one of the busIest In BrItaIn durIng the 19th century.
The raIlway statIon Is InspIred by the towerIng 13th-century fortress
beneath whIch It nestles.
My Bradshaw's refers to Lancaster CastIe Station as being the northern terminus
of the Lancaster and Preston raiIway.
''The station is a very neat buiIding erected of fine, white freestone.''
I Iove the fact that it's been made to Iook Iike a castIe.
I'm stayIng overnIght at a Bradshaw recommendatIon, the King's Arms.
But he's not the only great VIctorIan who took a shIne to the place.
Bradshaw says that Charles DIckens stayed here In 1 857
and remarked that hIs orders were,
''Promptly executed as all orders are In thIs excellent hotel. ''
- Which fIoor is that? - Fourth. Enjoy your stay.
- Thank you very much. Good night. - Good night, sir.
SleepIng where DIckens once dId was certaInly novel.
WIth the arrIval of mornIng, I'm up early to head Into town.
My breakfast order was promptIy executed
and that's put me in a good mood for a new day.
The late-19th century saw an Increase In leIsure tIme for all,
wIth the fIve-and-a-haIf day week becomIng standard.
LancashIre, as the gateway to the Lake DIstrIct,
experIenced an upsurge In VIctorIan tourIsts,
as traIn companIes such as the Furness RaIlway wIdened theIr remIt
from ferryIng IndustrIal traffIc
to embrace the carryIng of fare-payIng passengers.
My next destInatIon was a favourIte locatIon for VIctorIan vIsItors.
Although perhaps, as I am led to belIeve,
not for the most savoury of reasons.
Lancaster CastIe, my Bradshaw's says,
''Standing on a hiII west of the town, it incIudes the Shire court,
County jaiI, four or five oId towers,
of which the dungeon, 90ft high, is the oIdest.''
And to my amazement, I see that even today
it has a notice describing it as ''Her Majesty's Prison Lancaster CastIe''.
I've come to HadrIan's Tower,
one of a number of towers that defended the castle,
to meet Steve Allen, my guIde to thIs ancIent bastIon.
- HeIIo, weIcome to Lancaster CastIe. - It's a magnificent buiIding.
How oId is Lancaster CastIe?
WeII, there's been a fortification here since Roman times.
But it was the Normans who rebuiIt it and turned it into a stone fortress.
They controIIed Lancashire and what is now South LakeIand area from here.
How Iong has it been a prison?
It's been a prison reaIIy since Norman times.
It has a history stretching back nearIy 900 years.
The prison here is the oIdest working prison in the country,
or rather it was up untiI March 201 1 when it cIosed.
It stiII receives and dispatches prisoners to criminaI court here.
The court housed wIthIn the castle began dIspensIng justIce In 1 800
and Is the oldest contInuously workIng crImInal court In the country.
VIsItors could be forgIven for thInkIng thIs more lIke a torture chamber
lookIng at the shackles hangIng from the walls.
These chaIns were often used for prIsoners
who were sentenced to transportatIon to AustralIa.
ShockIngly, Lancaster Crown Court sent many hundreds of men, women
and even chIldren Down Under.
Steven wants to show me another room In thIs labyrInthIne fortIfIcatIon
that has a macabre hIstory.
What took place there, he belIeves,
Is the real reason that VIctorIans flocked to the castle.
- So, here we are now in the Drop Room. - Drop Room.
Yes, a kind of en-suite execution faciIity.
It was part of the rebuiId and extension of the castIe here.
This is a short drop rope. A noose.
Short drop, of course, meaning that they wouId be strangIed.
That's right.
They danced on the end of the rope.
Indeed. Three, four, five, six minutes.
This wouId be in fuII view of thousands of peopIe
who wouId come to the town to see the execution.
In VIctorIan tImes, publIc hangIngs were very popular.
People would come from mIles around to watch.
SpecIal traIns were laId on, as the poet AE Houseman recalled
about hIs natIve ShropshIre.
''They hang us now In Shrewsbury jaIl. The whIstles blow forlorn. ''
''And traIns all nIght groan on the raIl. To men who dIe at dawn. ''
This indow is aIso a door.
It's a wooden door disguised on the outside as a stone indow.
The door opens inward...
..and the party step out onto a temporary wooden pIatform
that's been erected the night before.
Sort of keep in an easy-to-assembIe kit version for these speciaI occasions.
Outside, this vast crowd of peopIe
have aII packed into every avaiIabIe bit of space.
In fact, the vicar was abIe to charge peopIe to stand or perch up on the roof
so that they couId get a good gaIIery view seat of the operation.
And even today you can see the hoIes in the waII of the castIe
where the super-structure was attached.
The noose wouId be put around the condemned man's neck.
Then a hood put over the head.
The sheriff or his deputy wouId read a procIamation.
The priest wouId say a prayer.
And then the officiaIs wouId ithdraw.
The executioner stepped down,
puIIed the Iever, reIeased the boIts and we're in business.
Lancaster Court Is saId to have sentenced
more people to swIng from the rope than any place outsIde London,
earnIng It the epIthet ''the HangIng Town''.
But as the century progressed,
the authorItIes realIsed that the crowds were more entertaIned
than deterred from commIttIng hIdeous offences.
So a ParlIamentary Act of 1 868
fInally removed executIons to wIthIn the prIson walls.
WIth all the dramatIc landscapes that I'm travellIng through,
It's hardly surprIsIng that I'm passIng over some spectacular brIdges.
Bradshaw's attentIon was caught partIcularly
by the one I'm approachIng now,
just east of Lancaster on my last leg of today'sjourney.
My Bradshaw's says, ''Further up the River Lune is the aqueduct bridge,
ith five semi-circuIar arches each ith a 70ft span.''
''This magnificent undertaking conveys the Lancaster CanaI over the Lune
and under one of the arches
the North Western RaiIway Iine passes up to Yorkshire.''
With a wonderfuI description Iike that,
of raiIway and aqueduct, I just have to see it.
Before he turned hIs attentIon to the raIlways,
Bradshaw had made hIs mark In 1 830
by publIshIng a guIde to the canals of LancashIre and YorkshIre.
Throughout the 1 8th and 19th century,
the canals were the lIfeblood of the IndustrIal RevolutIon.
At a tIme when the roads were poor and haphazard,
a sIngle barge could transport ten tImes the cargo of a horse and cart.
BrItaIn was the fIrst country to acquIre a natIonwIde canal network.
Over 4,000 mIles of waterway at Its heIght.
ThIs led to some stunnIng engIneerIng and archItectural breakthroughs.
The Lune Aqueduct Isjust such an achIevement.
I'm takIng a barge on the Lancaster Canal over the RIver Lune
to meet canal expert Andrew Tegg.
Setting foot on this aqueduct towering above the river, I'm very impressed.
This is a fantastic achievement quite earIy in the IndustriaI RevoIution.
Very much so.
This was conceived and constructed in the Iate 18th century.
It's a great exampIe of the engineer's art and abiIity,
at that stage mainIy constructed
using rudimentary machinery and manpower.
(MIchael) What was the purpose of the canaI?
(Andrew) The canaI was constructed to Iink the coaI fieIds in the Wigan area
ith the South LakeIand area for Iimestone.
So it was known as the bIack and white canaI.
(MIchael) Because I aIways bang on about raiIways,
I'm in danger of forgetting that before the raiIway revoIution
there was a canaI revoIution, there was a canaI mania.
There was. In the Iate 18th century,
you know, canaI technoIogy was the future.
It was the High Speed Two of its generation.
It reaIIy revoIutionised transport.
CanaIs Iike this were very much an exampIe of that.
They made the movement of goods very, very profitabIe.
Therefore, investors were very keen to invest in such schemes.
On Its completIon In 1 797, the aqueduct was InscrIbed wIth a LatIn motto,
whIch translates, ''Old needs are served, far dIstant sItes combIned. ''
''RIvers by art to brIng new wealth arejoIned. ''
But the golden age of water transport came to an end In the mId-19th century
and It was none other than the more competItIve raIlway network
that drove It Into dIsuse.
But thanks to conservatIon and tourIsm over the last few decades,
the BrItIsh canal network Is startIng agaIn to dIsplay scope and beauty.
That is gIorious. That is so eIegant, isn't it?
That is a thing of beauty.
It absoIuteIy exceIs my expectation when we were waIking up there.
It's... WeII, it is so 18th century, isn't it?
It's just... Just magnificent.
On this Ieg of the journey
I feeI I've seen the span of the IndustriaI RevoIution.
From an 18th-century aqueduct
to a 21st-century nucIear-powered submarine.
The common thread is the vision of briIIiant engineers,
the sort of peopIe that George Bradshaw admired,
the sort that I revere.
On the next step of my raIl trIp,
I'll be vIsItIng an Island steeped In smugglIng hIstory...
He stepped onto his ship and his trousers spIit
discharging the tea into the harbour water beIow him.
..dIscoverIng BrItaIn's fear of enemy spIes In the Second World War...
The British Government toId the Manx Government
to teII aII the boarding-house keepers and hoteIiers
to move out ith ten days' notice.
..and scalIng the heIghts to vIew seven kIngdoms...
We're in the GuInness Book of Records for having
the oIdest working tram in history.