Great British Railway Journeys

One of the first Monster Excursions took place in August 1840 when a special Sunday train set off from Leeds to Hull. Organised by the Leeds Institute, it had an incredible 40 carriages transporting 1,250 passengers for the day. Trips like these not only did a huge amount to publicise the idea of railway excursions, but also made Hull a recognised destination. This information might have some locals snorting into their sleeves, but, thanks to Bradshaw, we can glimpse a surprising view of Victorian Hull.

‘It presents the eye an interesting spectacle of numerous vessels floating to and from the port of Hull: while that opulent and commercial town in its low situation close to the banks and surrounded by the masts of the shipping in the docks seems to rise like Venice from amidst the sea; the whole comprising a scene which for beauty and grandeur can scarcely be exceeded.’

Believe it or not, Hull was an attractive resort in Victorian times, the sort of place Queen Victoria was happy to visit. In 1854 she stayed in what swiftly changed its name to the Station Hotel, shortly before enhancing it with the prefix ‘Royal’. Built in 1851, it was probably the first railway hotel of its kind, literally straddling the platform. It also gets a mention in Bradshaw, along with the zoological gardens, the camera obscura, the music hall, the Crystal Palace and the fireworks held every Monday evening during the season!

Hull’s sheltered location on the Humber estuary led to it developing as a prosperous port. Initially the wealth came from whaling, which until the 1840s was subsidised by the government. At much the same time as the subsidy disappeared, the railway line arrived, opening up the opportunity of new markets. The whalers turned to fishing and Hull soon became one of the biggest white fish ports in the world.

The railway was crucial to Hull’s growth. There were some 300 miles of railway track transporting fish within the city boundaries, and 20 fish trains left Hull every day for destinations all over the UK, including Manchester’s new fish market. Consumption grew from three to 80 tons a week and at a quarter of the price it had been previously.

Hull remained an important white fish port until the 1970s, when the industry collapsed following the Third Cod War. In 1975 Iceland placed a 200-mile exclusion zone around its coastline. Britain refused to recognise the barrier and its trawlers continued to fish in the newly created Icelandic waters. When they were confronted by Icelandic ships the Royal Navy became involved. Although a few shots were fired, it was mostly a war of ramming and stand-offs, peppered with net-cutting incidents.

97 PER CENT OF OUR COD IS IMPORTED AND, WITH THE TEMPERATURE OF OUR COASTAL WATERS RISING, THAT’S UNLIKELY TO CHANGE

Almost wholly dependent on fishing, Iceland took its action in the face of diminishing stocks. Britain also realised that fish catches were dipping, but resented the strategic action taken by its small, northerly neighbour. A compromise was eventually reached which permitted a small number of British ships to trawl in the disputed waters while limiting their catch.

The writing was on the wall for the East Coast fishing fleets. In 1977 there were 127 trawlers working out of Hull, but within two years that number had gone down to just six. Today, 97 per cent of our cod is imported and, with the temperature of our coastal waters rising, that’s unlikely to change.

If there is an upside to the rising temperature of our coastal waters, it is that other fish like sea bass can tolerate the North Sea. In fact, over the last decade the east Yorkshire coastline has seen a steady increase in the number of sea bass, so we decided our next stop would be Bridlington, 25 miles up the coast, to find the antidote to over-fishing.

Bradshaw describes Bridlington thus: ‘This attractive resort lies on the Yorkshire coast, but at that point where the line turns westward from Flamborough Head and then sweeping round to the south forms a capacious bay called Bridlington Bay ... the Esplanade is a spacious level green commanding a beautiful view of the Holderness coast which stretches in a curve as far as the eye can trace.’

The arrival of the railway in 1846 had turned the sleepy fishing village into a popular resort for West Yorkshire’s industrial workers and, with much of that Victorian esplanade still intact, it still attracts thousands of holidaymakers every summer.

Fisherman Frank Powell pursues his trade in a way that’s about as far away from giant trawl nets and factory ships as you can get. He chooses to fish sustainably, so much so that he doesn’t even leave land. He fishes for sea bass from the shore, using a system that relies on the tide, and he only takes a few fish each time. What’s more, Frank uses a net that only keeps fish of a certain size, making it a method of fishing which should see stock protected for future generations. Who knows, in years to come maybe the fish in our fish and chips is more likely to be red mullet or sea bass than cod or haddock.

Victorian visitors to Bridlington relished the sight of squalling waves around the cliffs at Flamborough head.

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Flamborough lighthouse, built in 1806 and automated since 1996, acts as a beacon for ships to Bridlington.

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Winding our way up the coast, our next stop was Bempton, just four miles along the track. Bempton was the closest we could get by rail to the magnificent Flamborough Head, which turned out to be every bit as impressive today as it was in Bradshaw’s time, with its ‘lofty cliffs of nearly five hundred feet elevation, teeming in the spring and summer months with thousands of birds of every hue and species and exhibiting yawning caverns of stupendous size’.

GALES REGULARLY SMASHED FISHING BOATS ALL ALONG THIS COAST, BUT THE FISHERMEN FROM FILEY WERE PARTICULARLY AT RISK

Meeting Ian Kendall from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Michael discovered that the beautiful, unchanging scenery belies a worrying decline in the North Sea bird population. The change in water temperature over the last 25 years has decimated the sand eel population which is a major food for the birds. The tragedy is that many species of bird are simply starving, leaving them unable to breed and threatening their future.

This coastline also boasts two lighthouses that are worth a mention and a visit. The Chalk Tower is an ancient beacon built around 1674 which lays claim to being England’s oldest lighthouse. Then there’s a far more recent one designed by architect Samuel Wyatt and built by John Matson in 1806 for the princely sum of £8,000. Wyatt’s lighthouse used red glass for the first time, giving the characteristic lighthouse flash of two white flashes followed by one red flash. The red flash was easier to see in thick fog and was quickly adopted in other lighthouses.

Another 15-minute hop up the coast lies Filey, which is described by Bradshaw simply as ‘modern’. When the railways arrived in 1846, Filey grew as a quieter alternative destination for visitors wanting to avoid its more lively neighbour, Scarborough.

Tourism wasn’t the only industry growing in Filey. Fishing was expanding too, and in 1870 there were 100 vessels manned by around 400 men. But it was a tough and dangerous job on the treacherous coast here, and many lost their lives. Bradshaw makes an oblique reference to the tragedy of fishing here, observing that ‘owing to a great number of men being drowned in 1851, the population of women is considerably greater than that of the men’.

It’s not clear exactly which disaster he’s referring to, or whether it was one or several, but it’s not difficult to believe. Gales regularly smashed fishing boats all along this coast, but the fishermen from Filey were particularly at risk. They used and still use boats known as cobles, which are flat bottomed with no keel, making them easy to launch and land at the beach. They also have high bows, which make them better for ploughing directly into the surf. They are very stable for their size, but the men of Filey used them for winter fishing. Whilst boats from neighbouring towns were laid up, the men of Filey were out long-line fishing at a time when gales were most likely.

During ‘wakes week’, when the mills closed, Scarborough was thronging with families.

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It was so dangerous that the tradition of knitting jumpers took on a different, darker role. The style and pattern of these not only varied from town to town but also from family to family – to ensure that bodies of people lost at sea could be identified.

SCARBOROUGH, THE FINAL STOP ON OUR JOURNEY, HAS ALSO HAD ITS FAIR SHARE OF FISHING BOAT DISASTERS

In the neighbouring coastal towns fathers and sons worked on different boats to prevent whole families being killed. For the men of Filey, the tradition was for a man to be accompanied by his sons on his boat, this being the best way to pass on the necessary skills. But it meant that the cost to one family following a tragedy was immeasurable. It’s claimed by Filey people that, proportionately, no maritime community has lost so many men as their own.

Scarborough, the final stop on our journey, has also had its fair share of fishing boat disasters. But the town’s sons had other career options. Scarborough had long been a holiday destination for the rich, who were attracted to the spa and its iron-rich waters. Indeed, their beneficial effects were well known in the seventeenth century, and the town can claim to be England’s first seaside resort. Once the railways put the town on the map as a major holiday destination for the masses, the numbers increased dramatically. As Bradshaw writes, ‘There are thirty-three miles of coast which may be inspected at low water over a course of the finest sands in England.’

As the cotton mills across the north-west closed for a holiday called ‘wakes week’, the workers headed to the coast, and especially to Scarborough. Bradshaw describes many attractions in detail: the iron bridge, the twelfth-century castle and hilltop walks complete with panoramic views. But they also flocked to see a skeleton called Gristhorpe Man. On his discovery in July 1834, the remains of this Bronze Age man became a national sensation. It was thought to be the best-preserved example of an oak tree trunk burial – a coffin made from a hollowed-out tree usually reserved for a tribe’s elite – and Victorians travelled from far and wide to see him.

Gristhorpe Man is still on display in the town. In 2005 a team of experts arrived to take a closer look and were at first sceptical. He was so well preserved that they were convinced he was a fake. But after a close examination using the most modern forensic tests they concluded that he was in fact a genuine Bronze Age man who had died in his sixties, possibly from a brain tumour. Tests also revealed that he was likely to have lived locally, on a high-protein diet full of meat, and had kidney stones. Even after 2,000 years, modern methods were able to peel away Gristhorpe Man’s secrets.

Gristhorpe man dates from the bronze age and died in his sixties, probably from a brain tumour.

© Tony Bartholomew

Before the railways Gristhorpe Man might have recognised some aspects of English life. Afterwards the fundamentals of everyday living changed. In our 10 days’ travelling from Liverpool to Scarborough the enormous impact the railways had on almost every aspect of Victorian life became starkly apparent. In a matter of a few years everything changed in a revolution that then proceeded to sweep the world.

JOURNEY 2

THE HOLIDAY LINE

From Swindon to Penzance

Most of us take it for granted that we’ll take a holiday at some time. Indeed the number of Britons going abroad each year is now more than 56 million. Before the spread of trains, though, vacations at home or overseas were exclusively the province of the rich. For want of time and money, the majority could not dream of spending a week or even a day away – until the railway system spider-webbed the country and changed every thing. And no line was more instrumental in unshackling swathes of the population from their homes and employment for a short spell than a 300-mile stretch nicknamed the Holiday Line.

Initially the man behind this westward-bound railway was the far-sighted engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–59), working for the Great Western Railway. His hallmark designs are still apparent today in the shape of Paddington station, the original Bristol Temple Meads station which stands disused next to the current station, and the Box tunnel, as well as all the bridges, viaducts and other tunnels along the line – engineering feats that doubtless concerned him more than fortnights away. The more westerly sections of the line were in fact not finished until after his death, and it wasn’t dubbed the Holiday Line until 1908 by GWR spin doctors.

The Holiday Line still runs between Paddington and Penzance. By the time of its completion, bucket-and-spade holidays had become the norm rather than the exception.

However, it wasn’t the spread of railways alone that sparked an explosion in the popularity of British seaside resorts. The Victorian era was the age of philanthropy, and crucially employers began to embrace the idea of holidays for the workers, none more so than those at the Great Western Railway.

The GWR was based in Swindon, our first stop along the holiday line. Its enormous works, constructed there in the early 1840s, were described by Bradshaw as being ‘one of the most extraordinary products of the railway enterprise of the present age. A colony of engineers and handicraft men.’ Soon Swindon, previously a small market town, was wholly reliant on the railway. Although buildings that once held bustling workshops are now empty shells, they are testament to the thriving industry that was once centred here.

When it first opened the GWR works employed 200 men. A decade later the number had risen to 2,000 men, and by the end of the century some three quarters of Swindon’s working population were employed by the railway company. There was no facet of train or track that could not be built or repaired at the vast complex, a fact that inspired pride among the workforce.

The genius of Isambard kingdom brunel transformed transport in England’s south west.

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Holidaymakers had brunel to thank for Paddington station at the start of their journey west.

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Better still from the workers’ point of view were the terms and conditions of the jobs. Not only did GWR build an entire village to house its workers, but with it came a school, a church, a hospital, hairdressers, swimming baths, a theatre and even a funeral director’s. Then, from 1848, it started to run free trains for employees and their families heading to the West Country every July, a tradition which continued until the 1970s.

These holidays, known simply as ‘Trip’, were extraordinary feats of organisation. Tens of thousands of people were transported to resorts all over the south-west, the largest recorded trip being organised on the cusp of the First World War. 0n 9 July 1914, with tensions rising in Europe, 25,616 people headed west on trains that started to leave at four o’clock in the morning.