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.
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.
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 be 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.
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
