Great British Railway Journeys

by Charlie Bunce

  Inverailort was ideally placed as it was remote and yet enjoyed rail access to bring in men, equipment and ammunition. And the surrounding landscape, prohibited to the public during the conflict, was an ideal setting for war games – many of which involved live ammunition. Men were brought here from all over the country to master the black arts of hand-to-hand combat, knife fighting, sabotage, demolition, field work and survival skills.

  Finally our rail journey finished at Mallaig, where the ‘Road to the Isles’ and the West Highland Railway both come to an end. But before heading home we boarded a ferry to Skye to pick up on an odd reference in Bradshaw. ‘At Kilmuir … Florence MacDonald, the Prince Charles heroine is buried.’

  After Culloden Bonnie Prince Charlie took refuge in the Outer Hebrides, hoping for a passage to France. Eventually he happened upon Flora MacDonald (1722–90), aged 24. Despite some misgivings Flora pledged her help and asked her stepfather, the local commander, for a pass to the mainland for herself, a boat’s crew, a manservant and a maid named as Betty Burke. ‘Betty’ was in fact the prince in disguise. The boat sailed to Skye, after which the prince crossed to Raasay and boarded a ship for France.

  Flora MacDonald was soon arrested, not least because local people had noticed that the gait of Betty Burke did not appear to be that of an Irish spinning maid. Flora was imprisoned in the Tower of London but was soon permitted to live outside its grim walls until in 1747, after a general amnesty, she was released.

  Her act was one of charity, she insisted, rather than conviction. She later married and emigrated to America shortly before the War of Independence. After five years she returned to Skye, and on the voyage revealed her characteristic mettle by refusing to leave the deck when privateers attacked her ship. Her name resonates with the virtues of honour and courage that run like a thread through Highland history.

  Mallaig is the end of the line in the western highlands and the gateway to The Isle Of Skye, which is rich in romance and folklore.

  Photolibrary

  JOURNEY 7

  RAILWAYS MADE FOR TRADE

  From Newcastle to Melton Mowbray

  For railway enthusiasts the journey to the north-east is something of a pilgrimage. It was here that George Stephenson (1781–1848), father of the railways, was born and brought up. And it’s in this area that much of his pioneering work was done. Newcastle was already an important coal-mining area before the age of the train. Other early endeavours in the Industrial Revolution were also clustered in this northern corner of England. Although these enterprises preceded the railways, all benefited from improved transport links when they arrived.

  Travelling between Newcastle and Melton Mowbray you’re taken from industrial urban to distinctly rural, a stark contrast visible from a train carriage window. The railways transformed not only the cities, but the countryside as well.

  George Stephenson was the son of a miner and before he became an engine man he worked in the colliery himself. His only son Robert was born into these humble circumstances too. One of George’s earliest inventions was a safety lamp for miners, ultimately overshadowed by one unveiled by Sir Humphrey Davy at about the same time.

  On discovering he had a talent for engineering he soon got into the business of building tracks and, later, steam locomotives. Until the coal industry was revolutionised by his inventions, coal from Newcastle was shovelled on to ships docked in the Tyne to be transported to London. Ultimately the train would do the job quicker and more cheaply, while rail also criss-crossed the complex of collieries, taking on some of the more back-breaking tasks. Nowhere was the invention of railway steam locomotives more welcome than among working men of the north-east.

  Robert Stephenson who, unlike his father, enjoyed a formal education, joined with others to set up a family locomotive works near the station in Newcastle as early as 1823. It was here that Locomotion No 1, the first locomotive to operate on a public railway, was built. The Forth Street Works, as they were known locally, went on to export locomotives to developing railways all over the world. When he died in 1859 Robert Stephenson’s company was the biggest employer on Tyneside.

  For Bradshaw the might of the coal industry was something to shout about. ‘Coal, the true riches of Newcastle, was first worked here in 1260 but the produce was scanty till steam power was used in 1714. Within a circle of eight to ten miles more than 50 important collieries are open among which are the Hetton, Hartley, Wallsend and other familiar names employing 10,000 to 15,000 hands. High-main coal is got from a rich bed six ft thick, nearly 200 fathoms beneath the surface. The great northern field of which this is the centre, covers about 500 square miles in Northumberland and Durham and may be 1,800 ft deep. Many and various calculations have been made by practical men and geologists as to the extent of supply but all agree that it will take some hundreds if not thousands of years to exhaust it.’

  Robert Stephenson shared his father’s flair for engineering and design, and his company exported locomotives from Newcastle to all over the globe.

  Institute of Civil Engineers

  The promise of job security proved false for mining communities. For one village in particular, perched on the sea cliffs near the mouth of the Tyne, the coal mining industry and the cliffs gave out long before the coal seams. Until 40 years ago Marsden was home to 700 people with homes, a school, a miners’ institute, a Methodist chapel and a railway line with a station. The post office doubled as a general store and its front room was sometimes a doctor’s and a dentist’s surgery. Men from the village worked in the nearby colliery from its opening in 1878 until its closure 90 years later, after the surface coal was exhausted.

  St Hilda’s colliery in South Shields was one of numerous mines in the north east that operated more efficiently with the benefits of new technology after the industrial revolution.

  Mc Dowell Trust Collection of the Stephenson Locomotive Society (Newcastle Centre)

  Amenities were basic. Returning black with dirt from a day’s labour, the most a man could hope for was a bath in a tub in front of the fire. Once a week a horse and cart came to the village to collect the contents of the earth closets, while rubbish – at the time almost entirely bio-degradable – was tossed over the cliffs into the sea.

  Food was grown on allotments or pulled from the waves. And it was the sea that once nourished the people here that finally proved to be their nemesis. Constant rock falls brought the cliff edge ever closer to the village. Anxious residents were soon complaining that they could fish from their back gardens because the sea was so close. Hopes that the small community would survive the closure of the colliery in 1968 were soon dashed when it became obvious the sea wasn’t about to halt its forward march. First it became a ghost village. Now most of it has vanished.

  Despite the advent of the mechanical age, boys like these were still expected to go down the pits from an early age, sacrificing their childhood for the sake of the industry.

  Sybil Reeder

  Wagons rolled at St Hilda’s colliery until its closure in 1940 after a 130-year history, with 2,000 men employed there during its heyday.

  South Tyneside Local Studies Library

  Village and pit were built in the lee of Souter lighthouse. Opened in 1871 to protect ships from a notorious stretch of rocks, it was the first lighthouse to use a form of electricity. Its mechanics were designed by Sunderland-born Joseph Swann (1828–1914), who continued honing the uses of electricity until in 1879 he produced the first incandescent light bulb. Although it was decommissioned in 1988, the building with its distinctive red hoops still stands intact, fortunate to have been sited on the structurally sound Lizard Point rather than the adjoining cliff top. Today it’s a tourist attraction owned by the National Trust.

  Old Marsden was doomed, but it seems that in the future there may be hope for the coal industry at nearby Whitburn. Professor Paul Younger, an expert in the study of water pollution levels in former mines, believes the days of sending men down into the pits are lon
g gone. Instead he is investigating ways of extracting coal cleanly, economically and safely with new technology. In layman’s terms he suggests boring into the mineral seam, igniting the coal within it and using the heat that comes out to generate steam and electricity. Further, he envisages the carbon emitted in the process being captured and returned to the same borehole to be sealed up for ever. If these ideas become a reality they certainly could provide a stepping stone as the country seeks a carbon-free economy.

  Given the dire consequences a mighty swell can have off this coast, it is perhaps not surprising to discover that the first lifeboat was pioneered at our next stop in South Shields. Bradshaw first alerted us to this fact. ‘At South Shields may be seen, in the church, a model of Greathead’s first life boat, invented and used in 1790.’ Bradshaw is referring to St Hilda’s Church and to boat-builder Henry Greathead (1757–1818), the man credited with the creation of a boat capable of rescuing stranded crews in high seas.

  IF THESE IDEAS BECOME A REALITY THEY CERTAINLY COULD PROVIDE A STEPPING STONE AS THE COUNTRY SEEKS A CARBON-FREE ECONOMY

  The quest for a lifeboat design began in earnest in 1789 after the loss of the Adventure, a Newcastle ship wrecked at the mouth of the Tyne. Thousands of spectators gathered to watch the demise of ship and crew, who fell from the rigging one by one just 300 yards from the shore. None of the horrified onlookers would take to a boat and attempt a rescue, as they were certain they too would be lost. Subsequently a committee was formed which offered a prize for a boat design ‘calculated to brave the dangers of the sea, particularly of broken water’.

  A design by William Wouldhave, the parish clerk, was forged in copper, made buoyant with the use of cork. Its chief advantage was that it could not be capsized, but the competition organisers disliked the copper aspect of the model. Greathead’s boat was made of wood but floated bottom up if it was capsized.

  Wouldhave was granted one guinea for his idea, while Greathead was given the contract for making the boat. In the end he incorporated cork cladding from Wouldhave’s model and further added a curved keel. It was rowed with 10 short oars and could carry 20 people. The ‘Original’ served for 40 years before being wrecked on rocks. Greathead went on to build more than 30 lifeboats, but his claim to have invented them was challenged both by Wouldhave and by Essex man Lionel Lukin, who believed his drawings of an ‘unimmergible boat’ predated Greathead’s by at least five years.

  The ‘original’ served as the rescue craft of the tyne lifeboat society for 40 years.

  South Tyneside Local Studies Library

  Lifeboats certainly played their part in the story of South Shields, because of its position. The unstable sandbars near the mouth of the Tyne proved a perpetual hazard to shipping. And it was shipping, along with coal, that made it a boom town. Its population increased from 12,000 in 1801 to 75,000 by the 1860s.

  ALL THOUGHTS OF MINING MISERY ARE BANISHED BY THE SPECTACULAR SIGHT OF THE NORMAN CASTLE AND 900-YEAR-OLD CATHEDRAL

  Its history goes back much earlier than that, though, and the banks of the Tyne are littered with Roman remains, including two very well preserved Roman forts, Arbeia at South Shields and Segedunum at nearby Wallsend. Moreover, Hadrian’s Wall, built by the Romans to keep out the Picts of Scotland, is still evident here, although much of its stonework has been recycled in other projects including the thirteenth-century Tynemouth Priory. It wasn’t until the middle of the nineteenth century that the first steps to preserve the Roman wall were taken. It is now recognised as a world heritage site, which means its stones can no longer be used for local road-building projects as they were throughout the eighteenth century.

  Hadrian’s Wall was not the only piece of heritage that was almost lost in the region. The tradition of rapper sword dancing is still alive and well in the north-east despite decades of negligible interest in it. It sounds like something modern, but in fact rapper sword dancing is so old its origins are unknown. It is surely related to other sword dances that are known to have existed in Yorkshire and across Europe.

  It is widely thought to have had two ‘revivals’, the first when conditions for miners both above and below ground were grim. In the colliery village of South Hetton, for example, there were five water taps to serve 190 houses in 1842. Fifty years on and there was but one toilet for 154 houses. Living was hard, but the result was a close-knit community that sought to make the most of its limited leisure time. Rapper sword dancing, with its camaraderie and its competition, became an antidote to the misery of working life. The next revival came after the Second World War when a group of university students recalled the dances for public consumption.

  The rappers are flexible lengths of steel – although in olden days greensticks would have sufficed. Moving to a fast beat, the performers dance acrobatically and wield the rappers with alarming speed, bringing them together with loud clashes to form different patterns. The Forster family from the village of High Spen, just across the border in County Durham, are continuing a tradition begun in 1926 by ancestor Fred Forster, who taught a group of local children how to dance. A year later, calling themselves the Blue Diamonds, the group won the junior sword section of the North of England Musical Tournament. His grandson and other members of the family happily don costumes of nineteenth-century miners to perform the dances today.

  The blue diamonds of high spen, junior champion rapper sword dancers in 1927 and an inspiration to those continuing the tradition today.

  With the onward journey to Durham, however, all thoughts of mining misery are banished by the spectacular sight of the Norman castle and 900-year-old cathedral, towering over a wooded horseshoe bend in the River Wear. Bradshaw says of Durham: ‘From all the neighbouring points of view, its appearance is unique and striking and the public edifices exhibit a great degree of magnificence. The centre of eminence is occupied by the cathedral and the castle.’

  Although the surrounding area had numerous collieries, Durham itself played little part in the Industrial Revolution. However, it had already been an important military and ecclesiastical centre for many centuries, as its fine medieval buildings testify. Its religious significance goes back to 995, when the body of St Cuthbert, 300 years after his death, finally found a permanent resting place. Durham became a place of pilgrimage, and after the Conquest the Normans built the huge castle and cathedral, from where the bishops of Durham wielded great power.

  Durham cathedral was completed by the middle of the twelfth century and is a pristine and monumental example of norman architecture that has become an icon of the north east.

  Library Of Congress Prints and Photographs Collection, Detroit Publishing Company

  One episode of ecclesiastical history that is barely remembered now, but which may ring a few bells, concerned one of Durham’s bishops in the middle of the nineteenth century, who was at the centre of an expenses scandal. Bradshaw identified the nub of it when he said: ‘In 1856 an Act of Parliament was obtained to enable to Bishops of London and Durham to retire from their sees with handsome pensions.’

  Already handsomely paid, the Bishop of Durham, Edward Maltby (1770–1859), asked for such a large sum that Liberal politician William Gladstone (1809–98) accused him of simony, or profiteering from spiritual things. Although the pensions were grudgingly agreed in Parliament, the money Maltby received with his fellow bishop and his prospective role as statesman remained a matter for concern.

  Inside Durham cathedral the decor remains a tribute to the army of artisans who worked there during its creation, with only basic tools to hand.

  Francis Frith Collection/Photolibrary

  Hansard, the Parliamentary handbook, records a vitriolic attack by George Hadfield, MP for Sheffield between 1852 and 1874, on the subject, in which he refers to the two bishops receiving ‘nearly £1,000,000 of the revenue of the church while there were 10,000 clergymen of that very church each receiving a sum not exceeding £100 per annum’. The injustice was not to be endured, he said, in a speech which c
ame to this contemptuous climax: ‘Would not the fact of these two right reverend Prelates, after having received nearly £1,000,000 from the state, and coming to the house and asking for retiring pensions to the amount of £10,500 a year, be canvassed in every pothouse in the country, and be made the subject of the song of the scoffer and the mockery of the drunkard?’

  NEXT ON THE LINE CAME DARLINGTON, IN NORTH YORKSHIRE, A PLACE OF PILGRIMAGE FOR RAILWAY HISTORIANS

  Today the amounts translate to an income of more than £67,000,000 paid while the Bishop was in post and £700,000 a year in the form of a pension. The MP’s rage mirrors that of many over more recent stories of money-grubbing by elected and unelected Parliamentarians. In fairness, Maltby was the first regular bishop after a long line of ‘prince-bishops’ who wielded extraordinary power. Perhaps he expected financial recompense for waiving the right to raise an army, hold his own parliament and mint his own coins.

  As the train head south, next on the line came Darlington, in North Yorkshire, a place of pilgrimage for railway historians. It was here in the 1820s that George Stephenson began laying rails to link the Darlington collieries with the river at Stockton-on-Tees. Opened in 1825, it is given the accolade of being the first purpose-built, locomotive-driven freight railway.

  The Stockton & Darlington Railway began its life in 1821 the same way as any other, with an Act of Parliament. Its owner Edward Pease (1757–1868) initially conceived it as track with wagons drawn by horses like many others. But George Stephenson persuaded him that ‘one locomotive was worth 50 horses’. When Pease saw an early prototype steam engine in action, he knew Stephenson was right.