Читать книгу Great British Railway Journeys - Michael Portillo - Страница 9

JOURNEY 1

COTTONOPOLIS AND THE RAILWAYS

From Liverpool to Scarborough

The obvious place to start our journeys seemed to be the birthplace of the modern passenger railway. Lots of places lay claim to that title, but for us, once we’d looked into it, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway was the clear winner. It is true that fare-paying passengers had been carried by rail before its inception, but the Liverpool & Manchester was different. Unlike the other railways that predated this one, carriages were not horse-drawn, nor were they pulled along wires fixed to a stationary locomotive. It wasn’t a tiny pleasure railway with limited use. This was a proper twin-track line, the first in the world where steam locomotives hauled paying passengers, and it changed the face of travelling in Britain.

There are certainly longer, older and more beautiful routes, but the line between Liverpool and Manchester seemed to us to be the perfect launch pad into the past.

The original purpose of the line wasn’t to service passengers at all, but to move freight between two booming cities. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, most goods were transported on a thriving and extensive canal system, but it was both expensive and slow, and this trip took 36 hours. So in 1822 Joseph Sandars, a local corn merchant and something of a forward thinker, decided to invest £300 of his own money in surveying a route for a railway between Liverpool and Manchester.

The project suffered numerous setbacks as aristocratic local landowners campaigned to prevent the proposed line from passing through their lands, while the canal owners, fearful of competition, tried to stop it altogether. It looked for a while as though it would never get off the ground until another blow turned out to be the line’s saving grace. When the project’s original surveyor landed himself in jail, George Stephenson (1781–1858) was appointed in his place.

Stephenson was one of those great Victorians for whom nothing seemed impossible. Born to parents who could neither read nor write, he went on to become an inventor, a civil engineer and a mechanical engineer. He designed steam engines, bridges, tunnels and rail tracks. Whilst there’s disagreement over whether his skills lay in invention or in harnessing other people’s creations, he is rightly known as the father of the railway. Without a doubt, the modern railway developed more quickly than it would have done without Stephenson’s involvement.

On the line for the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, one of the first things Stephenson was tasked with was re-examining the route. What he came up with was a new plan which as much as possible skirted contested land. In this instance it wasn’t an easy option. It would require building no fewer than 64 bridges and viaducts along its 35-mile course and needed Parliamentary permission before it could begin.

Engineer George Stephenson is considered the father of the railways.

Maria Platt-Evans/Science Photo Library

It took four years of haggling before the Parliamentary Bill was passed in May 1826, enabling the compulsory purchase of land for the railway. Getting to this point had cost many compromises, however, one of which was that the line couldn’t go into Liverpool itself and instead had to halt outside the city centre. After the opening of the line in 1830 it was a further decade before it could be extended into the city and Lime Street station, one of Britain’s first railway stations, was opened.

In the middle of the nineteenth century Manchester was the centre of the cotton industry and Liverpool was a bustling dockyard. In fact, Bradshaw’s Descriptive Railway Hand-Book, the Victorian railway bible that we used throughout our travels around Britain, hails Manchester as ‘sending its goods to every corner of the world’. Liverpool had the port to facilitate doing just that. Bradshaw calls the docks ‘the grand lions of the town which extend in one magnificent range of five miles along the river from Toxteth Park to Kirkdale’. By 1850 – just 20 years after the Liverpool & Manchester line opened – Liverpool docks were the second most important port in Britain, handling 2 million tons of raw cotton every year destined for the Lancashire mills.

For Liverpool, it wasn’t all about freight. Moving people was also big business. Liverpool was one of the points on the notorious transatlantic slave trade triangle. Ships left the port with goods and headed for Africa, where the cargo was traded for slaves. The same ships then embarked on an often treacherous journey known as ‘the middle passage’ to America. Men, women and children who survived the crossing were consequently sold to work in plantations.

The slave trade – although not slavery itself – was finally abolished in Britain by an 1807 Act of Parliament, despite vociferous efforts by some Liverpool merchants keen to maintain it for financial reasons. Fortunately, there were more people waiting in the wings to fill Liverpool’s idle ships, this time willing passengers with an altogether brighter future in mind. It was the age of emigration to destinations such as America, Canada and Australia. Families looking for a new start came from across Britain, Ireland and Europe to Liverpool to take advantage of the numerous available passages and the relatively swift transatlantic journey. Consequently waves of people from many nations arriving or leaving Britain passed through the port. Apart from the wealth generated by ticket prices, there were associated benefits for the city in catering for this transient population. Accordingly businesses such as bars and boarding houses prospered, and as time went on so too did the railway system. In 1852 alone, almost 300,000 people left the Liverpool docks to start new lives in the Americas.

These peoples had an enormous impact on the city and its culture. Peter Grant, a local journalist, historian and specialist in all things Liverpudlian, was enlightening on the issue. ‘Scouse,’ he explained, ‘is an accent, a people and a dish.’

The first two are familiar, but the third is something of an unknown. Originally called Labskause, it turns out to be a mixed casserole dish of mutton and vegetables which had been brought to the city by Norwegian sailors. ‘The dish,’ said Peter, ‘is a perfect metaphor for Liverpool. You add a bit of this and a bit of that, then put in your spoon and mix. Much like the Scouse accent, which is made up of Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Lancashire and Cheshire accents, and according to where you are in the city it has its own distinct twang.’

By 1872 Liverpool was the national focus for emigration.

Liverpool Record Office

From Liverpool we headed east to Rainhill, just 20 minutes down the tracks. Steam trains expert Christian Wolmar waited on the station platform. Although noisy and not that pretty, Rainhill station seemed the most appropriate place for him to talk about what is perhaps the most significant stretch of railway line in the world. As trains thundered past, Christian explained that the first competition between steam locomotives had taken place here in 1829, before train and track were inextricably linked. Indeed, rails had been in existence for years, usually extending between mines or quarries and nearby industrial centres. Loaded wagons were usually pulled by horses. At the time of the contest the notion of an independently powered engine doing the donkey work was still new.

GEORGE STEPHENSON’S ROCKET WON HANDS DOWN, HAVING ACHIEVED A TOP SPEED OF 30 M.P.H.

It seems extraordinary now, but the 1829 Rainhill trials were organised to enable the directors of the Liverpool & Manchester Line to decide whether the trains should be powered by locomotives or by stationary steam engines. Five locomotives took part, one of which was powered by a horse walking on a drive belt, and were timed over the same course, with and without carriages. There was a £500 prize for the victor, whether or not a locomotive was eventually chosen. George Stephenson’s Rocket won hands down, having achieved a top speed of 30 m.p.h., and set a steam locomotive agenda for the Liverpool & Manchester Line, and ultimately the rest of the country. The display was enough to convince any remaining doubters that locomotives were the way forward as far as rail travel was concerned.

A year later the line was opened by the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington. But Stephenson’s day of triumph was marred by the death, not far from where we stood, of Merseyside MP William Huskisson, who became one of the first victims of the modern railway.

Huskisson accidentally opened a carriage door in front of the oncoming Rocket, was knocked off balance and fell beneath its wheels. Although the Conservative MP was rushed by train to the town of Eccles by Stephenson himself, he died there within a few hours. His untimely death gave ammunition to a stalwart band of nay-sayers who opposed the railway on the grounds that it was new, that it threatened long-established ways of life and that there were unknown dangers associated with it that had yet to become apparent. Iron roads were not welcome everywhere they went. But despite Huskisson’s demise it was apparent that the age of rail, indeed rail mania, was here to stay.

Stephenson’s Rocket was the winner of a steam locomotive competition held in rainhill in 1829 that determined a bright future for this new technology.

Stapleton Historical Collection/Photolibrary

Eccles was the next destination for us too. Heading out towards Manchester through the sprawling housing estates, we wondered what Eccles had to offer the Victorian traveller and turned to Bradshaw to find: ‘The little village is prettily situated on the northern banks of the Irwell and environed by some of the most picturesque rambles.’

The railway changed all that. Within 30 years, Eccles had been swallowed up into the suburbs of Manchester. Even in Bradshaw’s day, though, Eccles’s claim to fame wasn’t so much about being a pretty village. It was about the cakes produced there.

Eccles cake making was big business.

Salford Local History Library

Nobody knows for certain when Eccles cakes were created, but they definitely predate the railway. In the seventeenth century Cromwell and his Puritans even banned them, on the grounds that they were too rich and sumptuous. Fortunately for Eccles and the rest of the Puritan-weary population, the ban was lifted during the Restoration. James Birch opened the first shop in the town to sell Eccles cakes on a commercial basis in 1796. There followed some rather ill-natured rivalry – and even today the townsfolk hold that a cake made outside of Eccles cannot truly be called an Eccles cake.

What the railways did was to make it quick and easy to ship the cakes all around the country. It has also been claimed that they were responsible for a change in ingredients. At the time the cakes were sold from station platforms and laced with brandy to help preserve them. But, the story goes, one driver enjoyed a generously laced Eccles cake too many and fell off his footplate, almost causing a crash. From then on, brandy was banned for the railway’s Eccles cakes, though it was still used to preserve cakes made for export to America and the West Indies.

Today the cake is as popular as ever. Ian Edmonds is the fourth generation of his family to produce Lancashire Eccles cakes. The secret of their success, he explained, lies in the ingredients. Ian uses only the very best currants money can buy. Called Vostizza A, they come from a Greek farmers’ co-op in a town near Corinth – from which we get the word currant. Ian’s team carefully wash 10 tonnes each week to quality-control the fruit. The plumped-up currants are then encased by hand in buttery pastry in a factory that produces 150,000 Eccles cakes a day for the domestic and export markets.

From Eccles the train brought us swiftly into Manchester, to discover more about cotton and the railway. It was clear from reading Bradshaw that the fortunes of the two were intertwined. By the 1830s Manchester was well established at the heart of the cotton industry, but the creation of the line to Liverpool and the subsequent lines that followed transformed its fortunes. At its peak in 1853, there were 108 mills in Manchester and it became known as Cottonopolis.

ECCLES’S CLAIM TO FAME WASN’T SO MUCH ABOUT BEING A PRETTY VILLAGE. IT WAS ABOUT THE CAKES

That history is still evident in the city’s buildings and streets. Local journalist-cum-tour guide Jonathan Schofield believes the only way to see the city so as to take it all in is to walk. From the Royal Exchange, where the cotton lords met each Tuesday almost 200 years ago, through the Godlee Observatory on Sackvillle Street, named after local mill owner Francis Godlee, to the iron street kerbs found around the city built to protect the pavements from the overloaded carts, cotton resonates on almost every route around Manchester. It was cotton that turned Manchester into the fastest-growing city of the nineteenth century.

The terrible congestion, squalid living conditions and harsh working conditions led to unrest, with strikes and food riots culminating in the Peterloo massacre, in which 11 people were killed and hundreds injured. Manchester was at the forefront of the movement towards reform that led to the Factory Acts.

Another of Manchester’s many claims to fame is that in 1801 George Bradshaw, author of our guide to Victorian Britain, was born here, in fact just outside the city in Pendleton, near Salford. Bradshaw was an engraver and cartographer who completed a detailed record of the canals of Lancashire and Yorkshire in 1830, known as Bradshaw’s Maps of Inland Navigation.

When the railways arrived he spotted a lucrative gap in the market and in 1839 started publishing one-off, then monthly timetables in a yellow wrapper which later graduated into a round-England and then a Continental guide. Within four years an eight-page pamphlet had grown to 32 pages, drawing together the times and services run by numerous rail companies. Without Bradshaw passengers were dependent on locally produced timetables that rarely extended beyond the often narrow boundaries of the rail company itself.

His name swiftly became a byword for timetables and featured in several Sherlock Holmes stories and in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, reflecting its hallowed place in society. Phineas Fogg began his adventure in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days with a copy of Bradshaw under his arm.

An active Quaker, Bradshaw was also notable, if less well known, for his charitable works among the poor of Britain’s industrial heartlands. Bradshaw died of cholera in August 1853 during a visit to Norway, where he is buried. But his products continued to flourish, their popularity unabated despite their somewhat complex content. It wasn’t until the eve of the Second World War that Bradshaw stopped appearing in print. By this time rail companies were keen to publish timetables of their own.

Whilst much of what Bradshaw marvelled at still exists, today’s Manchester is a very different place. The decline of the cotton industry began with the American Civil War in the 1860s, when supplies faltered. The perils of an industry reliant on raw materials grown a vast distance away became starkly apparent. It was only a matter of time before other producers working with reduced costs, including America, Japan and India, began to challenge Manchester’s dominance. The mill owners were also slow to update their antiquated machinery, making them less competitive than ever. No amount of import tariffs could halt the inevitable. The Manchester mills were doomed.

Mill stacks loomed large by the river irwell in manchester by 1859.

The Art Archive

Whole families relied on mills for employment.

The Art Archive

Some mills made way for modern developments. Others have been transformed into flats and hotels. The cause of another great change to the city skyscape was the IRA bombing of the Arndale Centre in 1996, which injured more than 200 people and caused £1 billion of damage. Today the surviving mill buildings are surrounded by steel and glass in a city that looks firmly forward whilst still acknowledging the past.

There is no more eloquent memorial to that past than the former terminus of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which now houses the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry. It is the oldest passenger railway station in the world.

THE PERILS OF AN INDUSTRY RELIANT ON RAW MATERIALS GROWN A VAST DISTANCE AWAY BECAME STARKLY APPARENT

The next leg of our journey took us on a short detour south-east to Denton to visit what was left of another Victorian success story, again driven by the railways – the hat industry. In Bradshaw’s Britain there were 90 hat factories around Denton, and at one point almost 40 per cent of the local population was employed in them. It’s claimed that the trilby, perhaps one of its finest creations, was born here.

In Denton we found a tale mirrored up and down the country – one of expansion during the second half of the nineteenth century followed by rapid contraction, leaving a few very specialist high-end producers. The period of growth was often tied in with the arrival of the railways, which allowed companies to move their goods further, faster and more cheaply. The contraction usually came as it became cheaper to produce the goods in alternative markets. In Denton, there was a twist.

Denton’s felt hat industry had already had a tough time at the hands of the whims of fashion, but its eventual demise was the result of another major invention in transportation – the motor car. After all, who needs a hat when all you have to do is jump in your car? The result is that the only factory remaining is Failsworth Hats.

At Failsworth’s, hats have been produced in much the same way since the company was established in 1903, using virtually original machinery. However, manager Karen Turner highlighted one significant change. Up until the twentieth century, mercury was used to separate rabbit hair from the hide used to make felt hats. Not surprisingly, many of workers in daily contact with rabbit hides suffered from poisoning. Symptoms included erratic behaviour and dementia, and it’s this, they say, that gave rise to the phrase ‘mad as a hatter’.

From Denton we headed north past Ilkley Moor, and back in time, to catch a steam train on the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway just on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. One of my great discoveries making the series was how many steam trains there are still in existence around the country carrying holidaymakers and even commuters. This railway, part of a branch line that was closed by the Beeching cuts in the 1960s, was reopened in stages as a heritage line from 1981 to 1998, when Bolton Abbey station was reopened.

Stephen Middleton, who met us at the station, is unusual even among those passionate about the railway. He doesn’t record their numbers or photograph them. He doesn’t even drive them. What he does is buy and restore old carriages which are then used, for example, on the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway. His aim is to recreate the magic he felt as a boy, riding on a privileged ticket, thanks to his father’s job on the railway, in a first-class carriage. It was a boyhood sensation enjoyed by many and rarely bettered. And it was certainly the best way to travel in the age of steam.

Undoubtedly it sounds romantic today, but steam locomotive travel was dirty and smelly, particularly for third-class passengers in the early days who travelled in coaches that were little more than open-topped wagons lined with benches. As if being open to the elements wasn’t enough, there was also the hazard of burning sparks and soot spewing from the locomotive. But the idea that everyone could afford at least one trip a week on the railway was enshrined in law in the 1840s, after which all railway companies had to offer at least one ‘open to all’ ticket. Quick and cheap, a new phenomenon of day-tripping was created by the railway. Almost overnight, Bolton Abbey became a day-trip sensation.

The Abbey is on the 30,000-acre estate owned by the Dukes of Devonshire since 1755. In 1888 the then Duke realised the potential of turning it into a tourist destination and built a station to accommodate day-trippers who came there to marvel at the unspoilt views. Even Bradshaw was wowed by the Abbey and its stunning location, in his stiff sort of way: ‘The Abbey is … most charmingly situated on the banks of the river Wharfe. Indeed the picturesque character of this and surrounding districts in peculiarly striking and impressive.’

The Abbey has retained its magic and the journey by steam makes getting there a fantastic adventure, visitors experiencing it today in much the same way as Bradshaw did all those years ago.

For the next part of our eastward journey to York, we were lucky enough to take to the air, something that George Bradshaw would have loved. In his day the railways were kept safe by railway staff called policemen – although they were not part of any constabulary – who had positions at key points along the lines. There were no signals and the policemen’s job was to ensure that there was a 10-minute gap between the trains, holding them up if not. They also walked the lines to check for debris. Now, though, the Network Rail helicopter full of gadgets and gizmos does much of that work, including using infrared cameras that show whether the heating system on the points is working properly. The helicopter regularly surveys the 20,000 miles of Network Rail track, a feat that would have kept thousands of Victorian policemen busy.

Heritage lines like the embsay and bolton abbey steam railway have long been popular with young and old.

SSPL/Getty Images

Picturesque bolton abbey remains easily accessible by train.

Paul Thompson/Photolibrary

However you approach York, it is a beautiful city. Entering it by rail, though, there is the added beauty of the station itself. Designed by architects Thomas Prosser and William Peachey, it was built in 1877 and was the largest station in the world. It’s now one of the busiest, with 400 trains passing though it every day, bringing many of the 4 million visitors who come to York each year.

There’s plenty to see. Although best known as a medieval city, York started out in AD71 as a settlement beside a huge 50-acre Roman fortress which housed 6,000 soldiers. It was more than just an important military base: for a short time when the Emperor Severus lived there in 209 the entire Roman Empire was ruled from York.

The most enduring legacy of the Romans is the magnificent city walls, including the Multangular Tower. Although many of the walls were there for Bradshaw to see, since then the city has continued to yield up its Roman secrets, and excavations go on today.

From York our route took us towards Hull via Pontefract. We were in search of liquorice, because in Bradshaw’s day Pontefract was famous for the black sweet, with plants being farmed in the fields surrounding the town. It’s thought that monks had started to grow liquorice there some 600 years ago when they discovered that the area’s deep, loamy soil was perfect for the plant’s long roots. They used the roots for medicinal purposes, extracting the sap and using it to ease coughs and stomach complaints.

After the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the sixteenth century, local farmers continued to cultivate liquorice and a thriving cottage industry was established. Then, in 1760, Pontefract apothecary George Dunhill made a breakthrough. He added sugar to the recipe and created the liquorice cake sweet.

Before the railways, almost all the liquorice grown was used locally, but the arrival of the trains saw it transported nationwide. More of the surrounding land was turned over to growing it. There’s scant trace of it now, though.

Tom Dixon’s family grew liquorice for over 200 years, and in their heyday they supplied Boots – it was a chief ingredient for their throat sweets. Tom told us that his great-grandfather had even sent liquorice down to Queen Victoria, who was said to adore it. He did so without realising that liquorice brought on high blood pressure, which is what led to her demise.

York station with its bold lines and graceful roof was an object of pride for its staff.

Keasbury-Gordon Photograph Archive

The death of Pontefract liquorice came much later. It was grown in the fields around Tom’s house until the late 1960s, when the last harvests took place. Indeed, Tom is said to have Pontefract’s last liquorice bush. Like so many products that boomed for a while with the arrival of the railways, it had become cheaper to import it from elsewhere as travel costs fell across the board. For liquorice, the primary markets became Spain, Italy and Turkey. Curiously, liquorice was known locally as a stick of Spanish – it had originated in Spain.

After the short stop in Pontefract, we were back on the train heading east towards the city and North Sea port of Kingston upon Hull, better known today as Hull. Bradshaw explains that this was one of the earliest routes used for the popular day-trips which started in 1840 and were known as Monster Excursions.

Liquorice plants harvested in Yorkshire were turned into popular sweets until 50 years ago when competition from overseas made the industry unviable.

Wakefield Libraries/© Dunhills

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.

Flight Images LLP/Photolibrary

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

David Clapp/Photolibrary

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.

Getty Images

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.