'For Victorian Britons, George Bradshaw was a household name.
'At a time when railways were new,
'Bradshaw's guidebook inspired them to take to the tracks.'
I'm using a Bradshaw's Guide to understand how trains
transformed Britain, its landscape,
its industry, society and leisure time.
As I crisscross the country 150 years later, it helps me to discover
the Britain of today.
On my semi-circular route, through the home counties south of London,
I'm continuing with the theme of Victorian innovation,
some of which was positively explosive.
And at the same time,
musicians and painters were also exploring new frontiers.
Following my Bradshaw's Guide, I've travelled through Kent
and am continuing through Surrey,
where I'll be encountering Victorians of talent,
fearlessness and pedigree.
My final destination is in Oxfordshire, riverside,
at Henley-On-Thames.
Today's journey begins back in time, at East Grinstead.
There are explosions in Merstham, sweet music in Dorking
and art near Guildford.
TRAIN WHISTLE SOUNDS
'Today, I volunteer at a heritage railway...'
Argh!
'..and feel the pressure.'
Whoa!
'I discover a 19th-century painter who, 100 years later,
'was to change the course of history.'
President Obama talks about being converted to
a life of political activity,
through a sermon on Watt's painting of Hope.
'And I have a blast with a formidable Victorian invention.'
Three! Two! One!
LOUD EXPLOSION Whoa!
That was a much bigger bang.
My first stop will be East Grinstead.
Bradshaw's tells me this was one of the places
disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832.
It must've been very small then,
no longer to qualify for a parliamentary seat.
And even in Bradshaw's time, the population was just 4,000.
But, for railway buffs, it is enfranchised by a line
that is as beautiful as it is historic.
Today, East Grinstead is a railway terminus
for one of the radial lines out of London.
When my guidebook was published, and for about 70 years in total,
the line continued on to Lewis, via a few small, rural stations.
After being closed in the 1950s, it was raised from the dead
as one of Britain's first heritage railways,
with the beguiling name of the Bluebell.
NEWSREEL: 'Today the Bluebell line is run entirely by amateurs,
'who give up their weekends to pursue this so English hobby.
'Where else in the world would anyone spend every day off working?
'But then, it's said, men never grow up
'and we suppose this is merely an extension
'of every boy's love of trains.'
Hello. Hello, there. Lovely day, isn't it?
'I've donned my overalls to join today's army of 800 volunteers.'
But first, I'm going to enjoy the Bluebell as a passenger
and my travelling companion is chairman Roy Watts.
Hello, Roy! Hello, Michael.
It is a rather curious line
because it doesn't really serve any populations,
apart from East Grinstead.
So why was it built in the first place?
It was built during that classic heyday of railway mania,
where everybody built a railway line, north to south, east to west,
simply, possibly, to stop another railway company building a line.
You've got a few stately homes on the line,
so was it built, really, by aristocratic influence?
Very much so. The good lords of the day had their own station,
because it was a great symbol.
And for the passenger, what's the joy of the line?
Well, for a lot of them, it's a real step back in time.
It has rolling stock from the mid-1800s,
right the way through to the late '50s.
So you've got people who come along and say,
"I've travelled as great-grandfather travelled,"
or, "As dad used to travel to work."
And you can see the expression on their faces,
when they stand in front of the door,
expecting it to open automatically.
Whereas, they realise, they actually have to turn the handle.
Well, I'm old enough to say,
in this carriage, that I'm travelling as I used to travel.
The railways carries around 200,000 visitors a year.
I'm alighting at Horsted Keynes,
as I can't resist a ride on the footplate.
Hello, may I join you? Hello.
I'm Michael. Hi, I'm Liz.
Hello, Michael. How do, how do.
Who's driving the train today? I'm driving today, yeah.
Are you? Now, that's...
I've been on a lot of heritage railways,
I don't believe I've met a woman driver before.
Are you quite rare, still?
A little bit rare, yeah. There are a few women at other railways,
probably more than there are here.
I'm the only woman here that's driving at the moment.
How long have you been driving trains? Two years.
Just two years here, but I've been working here for about 16.
We're off.
TRAIN WHISTLE TOOTS
On a day like today,
there's no reason to feel blue on a belle of heritage railways.
TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS
Sheffield Park.
We're here. End of the line. Yeah.
Smoothly done, thank you very much. Thank you.
Bye!
The railway operates around 35 steam locomotives,
which need to be kept in tiptop condition.
I'm not wearing overalls for nothing,
I'm meeting Andrew Sabin, known to all as Horace,
to help to wash out a boiler.
Hello, Horace. Hello. I'm Michael. Hello, Michael.
And I believe you've got a little job for me?
Yes, every 25 to 35 days, we have to wash out a boiler,
because of all the sediment.
All the impurities in the water, like your kettle at home,
get scaling.
Now, is that fairly strong, that hose?
Yeah, you're just about to find out.
Right, if you pick it up. Yeah.
You put it towards your body. Into my body? Yeah.
Right. Stand with your legs far apart. I'm braced.
And Jim, behind... Ah, hello, Jim.
..he will turn it on and off for you, OK?
I'm ready, Jim.
On!
Argh!
I'm really struggling just to hold the hose down.
That is very, very fierce.
OK, Jim, off!
Think you can handle it? That's a relief.
I think so. Good.
My hose skills honed, I'm let loose on the train's boiler.
So, I stick this into... ..into the hole.
Into the hole.
Jim, water on, please. On? On!
Whoa! The pressure is pushing me back.
I'm having to hold the nozzle in position.
The pressure hose flushes out the sediment,
which cascades from the engine.
How long do I have to do this for, Horace?
Until I say so.
OK, that'll do, yeah.
Horace, how many of these plugholes do you have to wash out? 25 of them.
25? Well, I think I've got you off to a very good start.
I think you might've done, thank you very much.
I'm going back up the line to East Grinstead station
and to the comfort of being a passenger, once again.
The next part of my journey leads me out of West Sussex...
..to a change of train at East Croydon...
..with the next service taking me on to Surrey.
My next stop will be Merstham.
Bradshaw's tells me that it was
formerly famous for its apple orchards.
There are valuable stone quarries in the vicinity.
And, just a few years after the publication of my guidebook,
those quarries witnessed a remarkable demonstration
of the potency of modern technology.
I arrive via the Merstham Tunnel, a feat of Victorian engineering,
which cuts through the North Downs.
And blasting through the landscape,
is what brings me to my next destination.
In 1868, a newspaper of the day described, "Some curious experiments,
"at the Merstham Grey-Lime Stone Works, with dynamite,
"a new blasting powder."
I'm heading to what was once a quarry
to meet explosives expert Mark Wynne-Pedder,
who's going to give me a demonstration.
Hello, Mark. Ah, Michael, very good timing.
Literally just put the fuse in.
It looks like you're ready for some pyrotechnics. Indeed.
Who actually invented gunpowder?
That was the Chinese, back in the 9th century.
What were the limitations of gunpowder?
I mean, it was obviously pretty effective, you know,
they thought of blowing up parliament with it and so on.
Absolutely, 1605, the Gunpowder Plot. Yes, very much so.
Its limitations is how it's confined.
So, within The Gunpowder Plot,
it was a large quantity, but in oak barrels,
because it needs to be confined to work.
If it's not, then you just get a flash and a big puff of smoke.
It's not particularly dangerous.
And what've you got in here? Here is just pure gunpowder at the bottom
and a delayed fuse in the top, just to make it safe for us to light.
Right, what you need to do is light the fuse right at the end,
then we retire four paces.
OK. Light and retreat.
Whoa!
Not much of a bang, but a lovely plume of smoke and a flash.
So that's not good enough, when does dynamite come along?
Well, dynamite, that was invented by Alfred Nobel, back in 1866.
Swedish chemist and engineer Nobel came up with a revolutionary,
new product that made the powerful explosive,
nitroglycerin, safe to use.
Nitroglycerin on its own is incredibly unstable.
It's very susceptible to shock, so, if you drop it, it can explode.
Or compress it, it'll explode, it's very unstable.
So how did Nobel improve on nitro-glycerine?
Well, he found that mixing it with diatomaceous earth,
effectively a clay,
absorbs the nitro-glycerine. That was his formula for dynamite.
At the time, it was Nobel's Blasting Powder, which is strange,
cos it wasn't actually a powder.
And what was it, then, that forced him to come to Merstham Quarry?
Money, basically. He wanted to sell it.
It was very difficult to get in,
there was a lot of bureaucracy at the time,
so he had to convince the authorities that it was safe to use.
He threw it off of a cliff here, down into the quarry,
to demonstrate both its capabilities and its safety features.
Nobel's invention was quickly taken up for use in construction.
In particular, blasting the landscape to make way for the new railways.
Munitions manufacturers adopted it next,
developing dynamite into lethal weapons of war.
The establishment of the Nobel Peace Prize, by Alfred himself,
was a reaction to the harmful consequences of his invention.
You wouldn't happen to have any about your person now, would you,
that we could have a go with?
I thought you might ask that question... Wow.
..so that is a stick of dynamite.
Dynamite has a shelf life of about a year.
You have to keep turning it, even in storage.
You have a regular cycle of turning it round,
otherwise it becomes unstable,
again, then likely to combust and explode.
Well, I'm sure I'm in very safe hands with you.
May we have a bigger bang, please? By all means.
So, explosive all ready to go.
And, judging by the amount of cable we've got here,
we're going more than four paces.
Oh, yes, yes. We're going 40 metres on this one.
So, site is clear.
Standing by.
Firing in... Three! Two! One!
LOUD EXPLOSION Whoa!
That was a much bigger bang.
We have recreated history, a blast from the past! Absolutely.
As I leave behind a trail of destruction,
I'm heading back to Merstham Station
to complete the final leg of today's travels.
Winding my way west across the home counties, I change at Redhill...
..from the Southern to the First Great Western service.
I'm going to end my day in Dorking where Bradshaw's
mentions The White Horse which seems worth a flutter.
'I'm saving my exploration of Dorking until tomorrow...'
Goodnight.
'..and make my way to The White Horse which has been a hostelry since 1750
'and provides my bed for tonight.'
I'm starting my second day in historic and beautiful Dorking.
This old market town is situated between
the hill range of the North Downs and the Greensand Ridge
up whose steep gradients I'm heading.
Leith Hill rises 294 metres above sea level.
And once you take into account the 18th-century folly at its summit,
it becomes the highest point in south-east England.
"Dorking is situated in a valley commanding some of the finest views
"in the kingdom. It's a favourite resort of lovers of rural scenery.
"There are several very beautiful villas and mansions around the town."
It brings out the poetry in my Bradshaw's and it inspired
a resident of one of those mansions to burst forth in song.
Set in this glorious landscape is Leith Hill Place -
a 17th-century Palladian mansion which was the childhood home
of one of England's great composers, Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Hello, Gabrielle. Hello, Michael.
It's a wonderful house and such a view. It is, isn't it? Fantastic.
I'm meeting Gabrielle Gale of the National Trust.
Leith Hill Place is clearly a substantial house.
I take it then that Ralph Vaughan Williams came from
quite a well-to-do family.
Yes, he was part of the Wedgwood family and, by extension,
the Darwin family as well, because his grandparents,
Josiah Wedgwood III and his wife Caroline -
who was sister of Charles Darwin - came to this house in 1847.
Did he begin his musical life in this house?
He did. His first teacher was his Aunt Sophie and she taught him
the piano and the violin and also musical theory.
And was he one of these prodigies, like Mozart?
Was he composing early? He certainly was.
In fact, the very first piece of music that he wrote was
when he was six years old.
It was called The Robin's Nest and it was six bars long.
It would be hard to live in this house for any period
and not be inspired by the view.
Was the landscape an important influence?
Absolutely. That peace and tranquillity, I'm sure,
filtered into his music.
Perhaps Vaughan Williams is best known for his composition,
The Lark Ascending.
MUSIC: The Lark Ascending by Ralph Vaughan Williams
It typifies the Englishness of his work which was influenced by
his studies at the Royal College of Music under Sir Hubert Parry -
the composer of the great English anthem Jerusalem.
'You are watching members of the BBC Symphony Orchestra recording
'R Vaughan Williams' interpretation of Serenade To Music.'
Vaughan Williams wrote prolifically for opera, ballet and film,
as well as creating great choral works
and numerous orchestral symphonies.
He worked right up to his death in 1958 at the age of 85.
And if the landscape left an impression on him,
did he then leave a mark on Dorking?
He did in the form of the Leith Hill Musical Festival,
and he was the first conductor of that festival
and he conducted it for 50 years.
In later life, Vaughan Williams collected English folk songs
which he incorporated into his works.
MUSIC: Bushes and Briars by Ralph Vaughan Williams
# Through bushes and through briars
# I lately took my way
# All for to hear
# The small birds sing
# And the lambs to skip
# And play
# If I show to him
# My boldness
# He'll never love me again. #
Steph... Hi. ..that was lovely. Quite sad, quite moving. Vaughan Williams?
Yes, absolutely.
This was a very important song for Vaughan Williams.
It was the first folk song that he ever collected
and it was the beginning of a great big snowball of folk song collecting
that was going to be a really important part of his life.
As a young musician yourself, are you inspired by Vaughan Williams?
Yes, absolutely.
I grew up here in Leith Hill the same as Vaughan Williams
and, like him,
ended up being a classical composer that is also a folk musician
and so I kind of exist in the same borderlands
between the traditional and the classical world.
And he's a major source of inspiration for me.
Well, I hope that you, like he, may go on innovating
inspired by the surroundings of Leith Hill. Thank you.
Yes, I hope so too.
Back at Dorking Deepdene Station, I've hopped onto my next train
heading for Guildford.
This line is a little unusual for England's south-east.
It's a diesel, not electric and, instead of being a radius pointing
towards one of London's terminus stations,
it's an arc - a little bit like a quarter of a railway M25.
And at this point, it hugs the North Downs
which, today, are showing the first tints of autumn.
Afternoon. Tickets, please.
Thank you very much indeed, sir.
Beautiful section of line this, isn't it?
It certainly is, it's a great office to work in.
It never looks the same twice. Thank you.
I'm often struck by references in Bradshaw's to things that were
clearly famous at the time, but which to me now are obscure.
I'm now going in pursuit of a painter whose Victorian celebrity status
has failed to pass down to the present day.
And I hope to make that discovery in Guildford which, suitably,
my Bradshaw's describes as "picturesque".
Guildford, surrounded by lovely countryside,
is an important railway junction,
serving as an interchange between four busy lines.
Hello!
Beyond the large station's modern facade,
the town's historic centre retains its charm.
I'm heading to the village of Compton, just south of Guildford,
to visit a gallery
dedicated to the works of Victorian artist George Frederic Watts.
The curator is Nicholas Tromans.
Hello, Nick. Michael, hello. Welcome to Watts Gallery.
Thank you very much. I don't know much about GF Watts.
Would you describe him as a typical Victorian artist?
Really, the opposite.
He really stood aside from the mainstream of Victorian art.
Not very interested in the Royal Academy, not very interested
in the art market. Always ploughing his own furrow
and a furrow that really lasts consistently for the career
of some 70 or even 80 years.
So, he really spans from what artist to what artist?
Early in his life, he was exhibiting alongside Turner,
as early as the 1830s, and at the end of his life, he's influencing
the young Picasso at the beginning of the 20th century.
So, you're looking at an artist whose career spans, literally,
the whole of the reign of Queen Victoria and further.
Extraordinary. I'd love to see some stuff. Please, come through.
Born in 1817, Watts produced sculpture and portraiture
and works of symbolism and social commentary.
Give me some idea of GF Watts' popularity during his lifetime.
In the 1880s onwards, he was, without exaggeration,
the most famous artist in the world.
A lot of people don't believe that today, but it's true.
In the 1880s, he had the first ever one person retrospective exhibition
at the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
And hundreds of thousands of people went to see it.
Just looking at these walls, there is obviously a variety of genre.
This picture here, for example, is very, very dark.
Very dark, very traumatic, very tragic.
This is called The Irish Famine and it is, as far as I know,
the only major British painting about the Irish famine of the 1840s.
Watts shows himself as a furious defender of the impoverished,
the downtrodden, the forgotten.
Absolutely not what you expect in a Victorian painting.
And so has GF Watts been taken up by politicians?
Absolutely.
There's a strong tradition in Labour politics of people
saving up their pennies to buy a cheap reproduction of Watts.
At a very different level, President Obama talks about,
in his memoirs, being converted from a life of law to a life of
political activism through a sermon on Watts' painting of Hope.
Regarded as one of the finest portrait painters
of the Victorian era, he was much in demand.
Recording likenesses of the great and the good of the day.
His larger more symbolic paintings, such as Time, Death and Judgment,
were also prestigiously displayed.
The picture is on loan to us from St Paul's Cathedral
where it hung in the nave for most of the 20th century
and, there, it became one of the best known paintings in London.
It actually occurs in a scene in EM Forster's novel Howards End.
The gallery was built after his death in 1904 in the grounds of his home
which he shared with his second wife, Scottish artist Mary Fraser Tytler.
She was responsible for commissioning
the now Grade 1 listed chapel,
which is a fine example of Arts and Crafts architecture.
Today, the whole estate is an artist village, where Jenny Dewitt Harris
is the artist in residence.
Do you share things in common with GF Watts? Definitely.
He was very interested in the subjects of mortality and time
and those are the things that really interest me and come out in my work.
Are these here on the subject of time?
Yes, they are. They all start their life as pieces of driftwood.
So, over time, driftwood gets its history beaten into it
and I feel that we're a bit like that really.
So, they're metaphors for the passage of time.
For the majority of people who don't know very much about GF Watts,
what are they missing?
I think they're missing someone who was a deep thinker.
He wrote a lot about how he worried about the world
and that comes out in his work.
I don't think he should be neglected
and I don't think you should be either. Thank you.
Ralph Vaughan Williams' interest in traditional folk songs
might seem like a reaction against change, but in fact his own music
represented progress towards something completely new.
The invention of dynamite was innovation at its most raw.
It carried the potential for enormous construction benefits,
such as the building of railways.
But its destructive power made this an anxious age,
perhaps reflected in GF Watts' painting Time, Death And Judgment.
'Next time, I'll get my hands dirty at Wisley...'
In the long term, this will do the plant no end of good.
A bit of rough love. Absolutely.
'..and pitch up to see some early camping kit.'
Probably not when it's full, Michael.
That is actually a washing-up bowl.
'..and get a fright at the wheel of a vintage racing car.'
The throttle's got stuck.
No, the throttle's got stuck.
Thank you very much. That was a nasty moment.