Great British Railway Journeys

by Charlie Bunce

  Trip veterans Ron Glass and Mary Starley, whose fathers both worked for GWR, recall with fondness later trips and the company’s cradle-to-grave umbrella of care. ‘Virtually the whole town was coming to a standstill for a week,’ explains Ron, who was himself a GWR employee.

  Dressed in their Sunday best for both travelling and the beach, trippers were assigned trains that left throughout a Friday so as not to disrupt weekend timetables for the rest of the travelling public. The journey itself had a smell, a taste and a rhythm of its own, as packed carriages towed by GWR steam engines painted in Brunswick green sashayed towards the seaside.

  Although the train journey was free, families still had to finance their accommodation, which was a challenge when no one prior to the Second World War received holiday pay. The week after trip became known as the dry week, because workers had received no wages and therefore couldn’t afford a drink at the pub. Ron remembers his father giving up smoking for a spell each year to pay for the holiday. For Ron, Mary and the thousands of others, their holidays had started at Swindon station, famous in Bradshaw’s day for having had the first refreshment rooms in the country. At the time, there were no buffet cars or tea trolleys on trains, so every GWR train stopped at Swindon for a 10-minute break. According to Bradshaw, the rooms were ‘abundantly supplied with every article of fare to tempt the best as well as the most delicate appetites and the prices are moderate, considering the extortions to which travellers are occasionally exposed’.

  THE JOURNEY ITSELF HAD A SMELL, A TASTE AND A RHYTHM OF ITS OWN, AS PACKED CARRIAGES SASHAYED TOWARDS THE SEASIDE

  The story Bradshaw didn’t know, or at least didn’t tell, was that when Brunel was building the Swindon complex he was so short of money that he struck a deal with his contractors. They built the works, houses and the station in return for the rent revenue and a lease on the station refreshments, ‘with the obligation that Great Western stop all trains there for ten minutes for the next hundred years and refrain from offering alternative catering’. It was a deal that stayed in place until 1895, when the company finally bought itself out.

  Great Western Railways not only built trains and track but also schools, homes and shops for its sizeable workforce.

  STEAM Museum of the GWR, Swindon

  From Swindon, the train heads south-west to Bath, passing through one of Brunel’s most spectacular engineering achievements. Brunel knew that the straighter the route, the faster his trains would go, so Box Hill in Wiltshire, five miles east of Bath, posed a particular challenge. Rather than curve round it and lose speed and time, Brunel made the decision to go straight through it. It was to be the longest tunnel in the world.

  ALMOST 100 MEN LOST THEIR LIVES AS A TUNNEL LENGTH OF ONE AND THREE-QUARTER MILES WAS FORGED

  It took 4,000 men more than four years to carve a path through the limestone rock – also known as Bath stone. Almost 100 men lost their lives as a tunnel length of 1¾ miles was forged by two gangs, one each side of the hill, who successfully met in the middle thanks to Brunel’s astonishingly accurate calculations. In building Box Tunnel, Brunel acquired an adversary, one Dr Dionysius Lardner, who claimed that travelling at speed through a tunnel would render breathing impossible. Put simply, everyone using it would die. When the tunnel finally opened, publicity garnered by Dr Lardner meant that many passengers were too frightened to pass through it. Instead, they left the train prior to Box Hill and took a coach for the remaining distance to Bath. Impossible to know what, 170 years on, nervous passengers would have made of the new Gotthard base tunnel currently being built beneath the Alps, which will be more than 35 miles long.

  If Swindon is a shadow of the place Bradshaw trumpeted, the Bath he describes is, for the most part, completely recognisable today: ‘Spacious streets, groves, and crescents lined with stately stone edifices and intersected by squares and gardens complete a view of the city scarcely surpassed by any other in the kingdom.’ Bath’s elegant streets, crescents and circuses remain stunning. The most eminent were designed in the eighteenth century by the renowned architect John Wood (1704–54) and his son, also John, whose genius was to create classical, uniform façades in Bath stone that gave terraced town houses the grandeur of stately homes. Intriguingly, behind the facade the houses are very different from one another, as the original owners were able to dictate the individual layout of their home.

  The regimentation was a great success and turned Bath into the playground of high society. That was until the arrival of the railways when, for the first time, the middle and lower classes could afford to travel there and sample what the wealthy had been enjoying for centuries – the spas.

  People had bathed here since Roman times, believing the waters – absorbed through skin pores – to be a cure for everything from infertility to gout. It turns out they were partially right, but for the wrong reasons. The minerals are not absorbed through the skin, but Dr Roger Rolls, a local GP, historian and author of The Medical Uses of the Spa, has studied the water’s medicinal properties and points out that it did have some benefits.

  Two gangs forging a tunnel from each side of box hill in wiltshire met in the middle thanks to Brunel’s accurate calculations.

  For years visitors took to the spas in bath, convinced it would benefit their health and wellbeing.

  Bath in Time - Bath Central Library Collection

  Rejuvenated pools in bath, including one on a rooftop, have ignited a fresh demand for the town’s natural spas.

  Photolibrary

  The Victorians drank an abundance of cider, port and Madeira, all contaminated by high quantities of lead from the fruit presses. As a result, many of Bath’s ‘fashionable invalids’, as Bradshaw terms them, had ailments arising from lead poisoning. Modern research has shown that immersion in hot water up to the neck increases pressure and makes the kidneys work harder, causing people with raised levels of lead to excrete it more quickly. So the spa water does help with poisoning.

  THROUGHOUT THE LATE NINETEENTH CENTURY, THE RAILWAY BROUGHT ORDINARY PEOPLE TO THE SPAS IN THEIR THOUSANDS

  Throughout the late nineteenth century, the railway brought ordinary people to the spas in their thousands, but by the mid-twentieth century the baths fell out of fashion and their doors finally closed in 1978. However, in 2006 – albeit behind schedule and over budget – the Thermae Bath Spa opened. It is a stunning piece of architecture, one that the Woods themselves might have approved. Once again people are flocking to Bath to take the waters, wallowing in a rooftop pool whilst gazing out over the majesty of the city.

  From Bath the line heads west, along the valley of the meandering River Avon, to Bristol, where some of Brunel’s finest work can be seen, including the Clifton Suspension Bridge and his great steamship Great Britain, then the largest ship in the world, and the first large iron-hulled steamship powered by a screw-propeller.

  In Bradshaw’s day Bristol lay in a different time zone from London. Victorian Britain enjoyed an assortment of times, as clocks were set locally according to the setting sun. London was 10 minutes ahead of Bristol, which was fine until, like Brunel, you were trying to create a timetable for a fast-moving steam train. Brunel’s solution was to standardise time across his network, using what he called railway time, and George Bradshaw ably assisted him. When he started putting his timetables together in 1840, Bradshaw also stuck to railway time and ultimately convinced all the other railways to follow suit. Within 10 years the whole country was in a single time zone. It was arguably Bradshaw’s most significant contribution to modern society.

  In 1934 Bristol temple meads station was hectic with commuters and freight after a recent expansion.

  Getty Images

  The grand terminus, Bristol Temple Meads, designed by Brunel and opened in 1840, is today a ghost station. Changes made as Bristol became a major rail junction rendered Brunel’s great passenger shed obsolete. From 1999 it was the home of the British and Commonwealth Museum, until that was moved to London. It’s not about to b
e pulled down any time soon, however. The historic nature of the building means that it is still highly prized. What is a shame is that it is now closed, so few people are aware of it and no one steps inside to soak up the grand flavour of the architecture.

  Our next stop was at Yatton in Somerset, another reminder of how quickly change occurred with the advent of the railway. In our battered copy of Bradshaw’s guide, Yatton barely warrants a mention. Later, in 1868, a new branch line was added, feeding Cheddar into the national network, which put Yatton at the centre of a booming strawberry industry.

  The London markets were already catered for by Kent’s strawberry growers. But this new branch line, nicknamed the Strawberry Line, meant that for the first time huge quantities of fresh Cheddar Valley strawberries could be whisked around the country, especially to the north. In its heyday, there were 250 growers here producing strawberries which, for those few weeks each year, were picked and transported to market every Friday. Today there are just four growers left, while the Strawberry Line itself fell victim to the Beeching axe in 1964.

  Brunel’s cavernous passenger shed was built to accommodate the original line from Paddington.

  © Science Pictorial/Science & Society

  Bristol’s Clifton suspension bridge was another of Brunel’s grand designs.

  © NRM - Pictorial Collection/Science & Society

  Tourism thrived at Cheddar Gorge after the railway brought visitors by the thousand to the neighbourhood.

  Sir Richard Beeching, then known as Dr Beeching, was the chairman of the railways at a time when they were considered too costly. The railways had been losing money since the 1950s, and a decade later the government, whose transport minister Ernest Marples was the director of a road construction company, decided enough was enough. Beeching came up with a plan that he believed would save the railways from financial meltdown. It resulted in the loss of 2,128 stations, 5,000 miles of track and 67,000 jobs, with rural Britain the hardest hit. As the expected savings failed to appear on the balance sheet, Dr Beeching’s name became a by-word for ill-considered and ineffective cuts. Perhaps the move towards reducing our food miles may yet herald the rebirth of the Somerset strawberry industry.

  One local industry that’s not in decline is tourism. Before the railway, Cheddar Gorge on the edge of the Mendip Hills was a destination for rich, independent travellers who came to marvel at the deepest gorge in Britain. The trains gave thousands of day-trippers the chance to enjoy it too. They flocked to see what Bradshaw describes as ‘a place of some notoriety from the discovery of two caverns in its vicinity, one called the Stalactite and the other the Bone Cave, which now attract a great number of visitors’.

  Today half a million people visit each year, but few are as fortunate as my team, who got a personal tour from archaeologist and director of Cheddar Caves and Gorge, Hugh Cornwell. Hugh wanted to reveal a set of caves discovered by an eccentric sea captain and showman called Richard Gough. Gough had turned them into a tourist attraction, the first caves in Britain to be lit with electric light.

  As more of the caves were opened to cater for the growing number of visitors, they revealed secrets Bradshaw would have relished. The most important of these was the 1903 discovery of Cheddar Man, the oldest complete skeleton ever found in Britain, dating back some 9,000 years. Examination suggested that as a teenager Cheddar Man had been hit on the head with an axe, but had gone on to live into his twenties. It was odd that he had been buried on his own away from the rest of his tribe. Hugh’s theory is that Cheddar Man suffered a brain injury which resulted in antisocial behaviour that doubtless ruffled feathers among fellow tribesmen. When he died, his tribe didn’t deal with him in the usual way but buried him instead in the cave, believing it to be a sort of twilight zone that would prevent Cheddar Man’s spirit from joining his ancestors in the next world.

  From Yatton, the line continues west, past the resorts of Weston-super-Mare, birthplace of John Cleese, and Burnham-on-Sea, before turning inland and heading south. After Bridgwater and Taunton it swings westwards into Devon and then south again towards Exeter and the coast.

  IN THE WORDS OF BRADSHAW: ‘THERE IS SCARCELY A MILE TRAVERSED WHICH DOES NOT UNFOLD SOME PECULIAR PICTURESQUE CHARM’

  The section of route to our next destination, Torquay, is one of the most picturesque rail journeys in existence. Hugging the western side of the Exe estuary and then sliding its way along the coast through Dawlish and Teignmouth, it’s a route that’s barely changed in the last 170 years. In the words of Bradshaw: ‘There is scarcely a mile traversed which does not unfold some peculiar picturesque charm or new feature of its own to make the eye dazzled and drunk with its beauty.’

  And the line is not only generous with exceptional vistas but remains an extraordinary feat of engineering. This was one of the most challenging sections of the GWR to construct. In fact, the Exeter Corporation wanted it to stay inland but the redoubtable Brunel insisted it follow the coastal wall, which meant boring five tunnels through the cliffs and building four miles of sea wall to protect the tracks. The result is a magnificent, memorable journey, beneath towering red cliffs, with repeated plunges into darkness as the train goes through one tunnel after another, and all within a few feet of the sea. One signal box was built so close to the waves that the signalmen used to be issued with the oilskins worn by sailors.

  The line reached Torquay with its warm microclimate in 1848, and immediately the Great Western Railway started promoting the town as a perfect holiday spot. They even coined the phrase ‘The English Riviera’ to describe the resort. A few years later, Bradshaw is again comparing Torquay with the south of France, suggesting that ‘those English invalids who, in search of a more congenial temperature, hastily enter on a long journey to some foreign county and wilfully encounter all the inconveniences attending a residence there’ would do better to ‘make themselves acquainted with the bland and beautiful climates which lie within an easy jaunt’.

  The English invalids seem to have listened. It wasn’t long before they were arriving by the coach-load to relax and enjoy the 19 beaches and coves spread over 22 miles of coastline. On one particular Bank Holiday, 20,000 people arrived there by train in a single day. Thanks to the railway, Torquay had become a major resort.

  Sunny Torquay quickly earned itself the soubriquet of ‘The English Riviera’.

  SSPL/Getty Images

  From nearby Paignton it’s possible to recreate the train journeys that Bradshaw and Brunel would have recognised. A steam train travels south to Kingswear, first alongside charming beaches among abundant wildlife, then through some of the most idyllic countryside of South Devon by the tranquil River Dart, and all at a sedate 25 miles per hour.

  But the railway of Bradshaw’s day wasn’t only concerned with getting from A to B. It was also about what you did when you got there. Salmon fishing on the Dart became a popular sport for Victorian tourists, and recreational fishermen arriving by train could even buy their fishing permit at the station. In the early 1900s a train laden with salmon and trout from Loch Leven in Scotland would stop at several points along the river to release the exported fish. The railway also encouraged an explosion of commercial salmon fishing, allowing the catch to be swiftly transported inland.

  Today salmon stocks have declined in the Dart and there are strict regulations controlling the catch. There are now only three families still licensed to fish for salmon, and all of them have to use the traditional method called seine-netting. Travelling in an oared seiner, fishermen shoot a weighted net in a semicircle back towards the shore which is then hauled in, often all but empty.

  With stunning sea views and lush countryside, a train journey along the south Coast of Devon was the starting point of a holiday.

  Photolibrary

  Totnes is returning to the values of a previous era with its new green economy in action.

  Francis Frith Collection/Photolibrary

  Reading our Bradshaw, it occasionally seemed as thoug
h little had changed in 170 years. The book found us hotels, told us what to see, even gave tips for our journey. It was Bradshaw who highlighted that we’d need to take the ferry to cross to Dartmouth because there was no bridge there over the Dart. For nearby Totnes, though, change has certainly come.

  Bradshaw was clearly not particularly impressed with Totnes. The book gives the town scant mention. It lists the population as 4,001, suggests one hotel, The Seven Stars, and tells us that, because the town is situated on the River Dart, most people are employed in the fishery. It’s a very different place today, with double the population in the Totnes parish alone and a radical outlook.

  Totnes is part of a global campaign for sustainability called Transition Towns. It was started there by Rob Hopkins in 2006 as a reaction to climate change and the challenge posed by the age of cheap oil nearing its end. Rob’s idea was to treat this as an opportunity rather than a crisis, and in Totnes it seems to be working. One of the key elements is a garden share scheme, which Rob described as being like a dating agency. To reduce the distance food is transported they have a land swap system, putting people who want to grow their own food in touch with people who have spare bits of land they could use.

  Totnes also has its own local currency, which can be spent in over 80 shops there. Rob likened Totnes to a leaky bucket, with money coming in and then pouring out again. Of every £1 you spent in a supermarket, 80p was out of Totnes by the next day. But this currency, which you obtain in exchange for cash at one of the local businesses participating in the scheme, can’t go anywhere else – it encourages you to spend your money locally and support the town’s economy.