Great British Railway Journeys Text Only. Michael Portillo
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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.
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