How Did Trains Transform What We Eat? | Full Steam Ahead EP3 | Absolute History

the age of steam shaped how we live today [Music] the victorians laid over 20 000 miles of lines in the biggest engineering project the country has ever seen connecting our towns with high-speed links revolutionizing trade and transportation communication and recreation it was the greatest transformation in our history but how did it happen to find out historians ruth goodman alex langland's shoveling coal is something i'm going to get very very familiar with and peter bringing the railways back to life as they would have been during the golden age of steam i feel like i'm in a western this is very definitely the best team they will be helped by armies of enthusiasts who keep the age of steam alive on britain's 500 miles of preserved railway this is a way to experience train travel isn't it it is they'll follow in the footsteps of the world's finest engineers these are the men that built britain's railways those who ran it industrialism and those for who life would never be the same again internet it had nothing like the impact of the railways this is the story of how the railways created modern britain [Music] nowhere was the effect of the railways felt more acutely than in the british countryside where the nation's food was produced scour the history books and you'll struggle to find any information on farming and the railways so i'm really interested in exploring the profound impact that the ability to move bulk goods to a landscape would have had on agriculture the story of steam didn't only play out on rails but in britain's farm yards fields and factories sparking both an agricultural and culinary revolution the railways were really good at moving a lot of produce quickly and cheaply but what effect did that have on the food that we eat the arrival of steam power changed how we fed ourselves as a nation and i'm interested in seeing just how that affected the ebb and flow of rural life this is lovely the way they all move together isn't it yeah the way they flock together well it's nice to be back on the farm isn't it it is [Music] before the arrival of the railways in areas like rural dorset the only way of transporting livestock to market was to walk it there along ancient droving roads that connected britain in these rural areas people are poor and they're using very very traditional methods with which to get their stock to market ancient ancient means of moving livestock across the isles currently our stock the other side that valley how did that happen quick come back here [Music] livestock driven on long journeys lose precious meat and fat this old and inefficient method of distributing food across the country was no longer up to the task of feeding a population that rose from 8 to 30 million over the 19th century in overcrowded industrial cities of factories and mills fresh food had to be grown locally and increasingly there wasn't enough to go around the 1840s became the hungry forties with millions malnourished and facing genuine starvation way back in the 16th century we had just about sorted out a system of markets carts and roads that allowed us to even out food supply but 200 years on we were once again reaching crisis point yes we had increased our agricultural production but if we couldn't move that food fast enough and efficiently enough we were in trouble the industrial revolution could well without the railways have just fizzled out [Music] originally built to transport industrial materials it was the railway's ability to take fresh produce in bulk from the countryside to the cities but rescued a nation on the brink transforming the way that britain fed itself sheep no longer had to be driven to market losing weight and condition on the way [Music] now they could be taken there in hours rather than days using the new rail network so long as they could be loaded safely that is i happen to be really careful here with these sheep because they're spooked you know they're looking around they're not sure and they're big old animals and these hurdles are pretty sturdy but if they went if they really went they could push them over the edge so we're just going to be nice just let them chill out for a bit get used to us i mean the the acid test here is going to be how they react to an enormous great big steam locomotive coming right up alongside them isn't it what's a sheep ticket on a train these days they all use the same rail card all right here it is using rural stations on the existing passenger and freight network in 1845 over a hundred thousand animals were transported by rail that's it that's fine in it for us that is that is that's on the nail [Music] at its peak a century later over one and a half million cattle and three and a half million sheep were traveling in livestock wagons every year here they go good girls [Music] that went too easily [Music] i'm gonna see here come on cheers that went extremely well that went very well didn't it [Music] large-scale transportation of livestock on trains hasn't been seen since the 1960s when roads took over from the railways oh we're off and there we go [Music] and there we have it sheep moving by the power of steam for the first time in at least a generation john possibly even several generations [Music] john martin a professor of agricultural history at de montfort university has come to see this practice which had such a profound impact on both farmers and consumers and what was it meant for farmers that in the 19th century to have had access to steam transportation well certainly widening the markets for all types of livestock products meat production and distribution was revolutionized by the development of the railway system it enabled farmers to market their fat stock to enable urban centres to grow as a result of the way in which meat could now be easily transported into these growing centres so they want more and more meat they've got a taste of meat and the railways can deliver that the railway's certainly delivering it right expanding middle classes in terms of numbers growing population and the railways playing a key role in enabling the solution of meat to reproduce meat consumption in britain tripled over the 19th century but as much as the railways benefited farmers for many the physical impact of these iron roads was less welcome and i looked to my right and i see a field there and a field there but before this railway was here that was one field they left with essentially two farms crossing from one field to the other was a perilous task a collision with a farmer's cart in 1833 is said to have inspired the first locomotive whistle and drivers like steve barker have to give good warning on their approach to unmanned crossings at whistle points along the track give it a blast yeah okay so you're coming up i can see the w we got a bend there they can't see us so that gives enough warnings in 1883 stray livestock on the line accounted for collisions with 110 sheep 59 cows 40 horses four donkeys and one deer depending on the crossing depends on how far ahead you whistle yes if i have a footpath where people can see in time yeah obviously for possession to walk across doesn't take long but a farmer with a couple of cattle or a trailer of some sort it takes longer yeah so they need to be able to see further but they can't see that's why i have a whistleblower coming i don't know how our sheep was this is uh quite a ride for them crazy world this is our destination i know she's perfectly fine don't they yeah looking excellent just another day at the office for them yeah good job it's not another day at the avatar [Music] from a growing nation struggling to feed itself in the 1840s now had access to produce from all over the british isles [Music] cities no longer had to rely on fresh food grown locally spreading deep into the countryside connecting people and places the railway network created a national market changing the way food was produced what was produced and where it was produced [Music] this line was built in order to gain access to a really quite remote part of the countryside we're in the north york moors and because of the nature of the grounds very high the roads really weren't up to much um they were difficult to get over there was large bog areas wagons and carts got bogged down they have very steep inclines so it meant that this area was really quite cut off the railway was deliberately put here to open up this part of the countryside and in particular to gain access easy access for people and goods to the last station along the line whitby the whitby and pickering line revived the fortunes of whitby then a declining and isolated whaling port on the north sea coast allowing it easy access to the rest of the country the project was a great success turning whitby into a thriving fishing town photographs collected by local historian glenn kilpatrick show the extent of whitby's once booming herring industry these are the um the herring boats leaving part we're actually stood right here at the moment there we are towards the east lighthouse gosh there's loads of their little lights right out to the horizon as children we were told you could walk you know basically walk one side of a harbour to the other across them oh yes i see what you mean about being able to walk right out for lots of boats a number of fish yeah yeah shoveling them up by that many just using the shovel to get them in the barrel wow now that's a lot of fish it's the amount of fish and they're hauling this sort of catch out of the sea again and again and again and again and again yeah for over a long period of time yes by the 1880s almost 5 000 people were employed in whitby's herring industry transported in bulk by the railway they became a relatively cheap staple of the victorian diet eaten in working-class households that had never been able to afford fresh fish before they became known as the poor man's friend and although overfishing would eventually lead to the herring industry's demise in whitby some local traditions have survived [Music] barry hello oh cool they look good they're still smoking traditionally the way it's we've always been uh still using the victorian methods yes yeah yes nothing's changed barry brown is the fifth generation of his family to run fortunes of whitby the firm has been producing kippers for 144 years what's the approved method in with the knife just above the fin okay so you run it down its backbone through the head back down the backbone to the tail don't go through the tail if you can help it out flick it that way the gills come up it's more or less ready for washing okay all right well you made that look simple fish hand on yeah herring fishing was seasonal as the shoals moved south traveling down with them on the east coast rail lines were migrant workers from scotland employed to gut the fish for low wages it's quite tough through the head helps if if you just push against it push against it and do it a little okay i'll try that next one all were women they were known as the herring girls so i have read the herring girls could do up to 16 of these a minute i might do one in a minute if i'm lucky the fish guts weren't left to waste they were sent by train to factories where they were processed into fertilizer but if i went back to the beginning of the 20th century i'd find myself down that railway not just surrounded by boxes of kippers but also by great big barrels full of fish guts that were heading off inland to be used as fertilizer yes yes it was you just fertilizer yeah yeah i'm making a mess of them aren't i you can be honest you're making a mess of them your first one was your best one [Music] the herring will be cold smoked meaning that the fish remains uncooked this is not only for taste but to preserve the herring this process is to keep the fish longer yeah it also cools and flavors it but it is for keeping purposes cold smoking the herring is a delicate and skillful art requiring just the right quantity and combination of wood to cure and flavor the fish so these shavings it's quite critical what sort of woods you're using it's hardwood it's uh oak so we want this to burn and smoke but don't put the dust on top of that that'll calm it right down so it's about oxygen control yeah yes so you're wanting oxygen in at the base but not too much near the surface oh yeah we've got flames and we don't want too many flames yeah it's just a calming down thing with the orca so they're just supposed to be small low smoky not much heat lots of smoke that's right it must be utterly second nature to you it is to be fair yeah yeah we we sort of like fight we don't pull them out the herring will be smoked for over 24 hours only at the end of the process can they be called kippers cheap and easily transported without the need for ice packed wagons the railways and kippers were an ideal match they could be posted to any destination on the network using either freight or passenger services morning good morning even modest size firms like fortunes of whitby could now send their products by rail to all corners of the country the smaller consignments would just be popped into the guards van and this mixture of freight and passenger all in one train meant that small businesses with smaller loads could take advantage of the railway network using all the trains that ran it gave him real flexibility as a freight system [Music] lovely food on the dinner plates of victorian households was sourced from further and further afield the new rail distribution network created greater competition amongst the nation's producers and farmers [Music] both in business and in the showroom this was when agricultural shows caught on the chance for livestock breeders to check out their rivals from across the british isles i am always amazed when i come to a show like this and you can see all the different breeds of sheep together in one place yeah just how much they're different yeah it's remarkable the first devon county show took place in 1872 when the railway brought together farmers and their animals from the county and beyond back in the 18th century before the railways you'd only ever know about breeds by looking at those wonderful color plates that were produced but the problem with those color plates is they're idealized artistic lights there was a lot of artistic license the railways come along and all of a sudden the farmer from suffolk get on the train come all the way down to devon and for the first time he can actually clap his eyes on a different breed and weigh up its characteristics see if the actual animal will lift up to the hype yeah not only could farmers come face to face with rivals livestock but using the rail network breeders could now travel across the country with their prize rams and bulls selling their unique qualities to the highest bidder this what about this yeah this thing crashed out here now well there's a big lad in it chief livestock steward edward dark has been breeding sheep for over 60 years these are the actual horns well you know it comes from max moore so they're right on top of the hills yep and they have to be very very hardy you know to obsess up there right so going back in an age before the railways really as a sheep farmer you weren't choosing what breed you could use or specialize in no that's right you very much worked with what was local to the airport [Music] as the railways enabled livestock to be moved more easily over long distances giving rise to a three-fold increase in meat consumption victorian farmers increasingly began to either experiment with other breeds or crossbreed their own stock with bigger animals from different regions better suited to changing demands look at that one i mean that is a monster he's a big lad didn't he but the key thing about introducing the suffolk is is about getting the meat it's putting back more meat back they've got the size and they've got the the extra flesh over the top and over the line the lego lamb yeah oh my most expensive little joint tower yeah victorian farmers not only wanted the meatiest breeds but the most productive wine were sheep farmers looking to cross their breeds with a border leicester well yes they're more uh prolific and they put more milk in in into their protege so when you say prolific what do you mean by that have more lambs they have more land that's right yeah and produce more milk into that female you see yeah because if she didn't have that extra milk you know the extra lambs well she remembered the weird one right i get it i get it well it's great to have been talked through some of these breeds you know what the old saying is don't you no go on i must hurry up and go along steady right i must hurry up and go along steady yeah okay do you remember that one i must hurry up yeah yeah i must hurry up and go steady yeah okay all right as selective breeding grew in popularity among a society that valued social rank so did competing to see who could breed the most impressive animals prize-winning bulls became celebrities with people traveling from far and wide to see them i mean he seems quite docile for a ball yeah well he is yeah if you've got to go in the field and watch out for the ball chasing out i'm too fat and old now to to run too much so i'd rather have a nice ball like this this year mike cowell's red ruby devon won the top prize in his class with a ball that you're showing i mean what characteristics are you looking for when he walks in the ring you look at his head yeah make sure he's a nice devon head yeah then you'd walk around him stand off him a little bit have a look at the length of the ball and this is a particularly long ball yeah it's almost got an extra rib and then looking in from the back checking his legs and just making sure he's good for the job is his job obviously is serving cows he's going to be on them legs quite a bit right so you know he's got to have good legs if you're judging for a show is that akin to also if you were if you're going to purchase to breed yeah yeah you exactly the same way okay so so breeders like you are giving animals like this the best life possible so we can essentially have the best meat he lives fantastically well this ball i go on holiday and he comes with me and it's um it's all right it's good i do i do the same but um i don't think he'd fit in the caravan [Music] well peter it's been a great show hasn't it yeah and i think it's time for us to hurry up go along steady did you say cytotomy well maybe on the way [Music] driving all these changes in farming were the consumers in the expanding victorian cities at the epicentre of the rail network was london itself by 1871 a metropolis of over four million people drawing fresh produce from all over the country to its main markets smithfield covent garden fields and for fish [Music] billings gate billings gate became very rapidly the biggest fish market in the world and this vast expansion was due to the new transport the railways that were able to bring produce from all those east coast fishing ports places like great yarmouth whitby grimsby all concentrating down to one market all of britain's fish in one place billings gate [Music] by the mid-19th century 120 000 tons of fish were traded through billings gate each year the market had a reputation for foul language and lively characters arrive in our good coat on victorian walls and you'll leave in scale armor good morning welcome to billings gate this looks fabulous yes a grand variety of products we're proud of don tyler is one of the few current wholesalers who has worked in both the original building and the new site opened over 30 years ago i had a list here and i just wanted to ask you it's a list of of quantities being sold in billingsgate in about 1850 so just after the railways are really sort of get going and it's talking about parrying 250 000 barrels at 150 per barrel is that comparable to modern well it isn't comparable because very very sadly we don't see that quantity of herrings now on a regular basis so actually in the 1850s there was more harrington through billings than there is now yes unfortunately now with quotas um and tonnage restrictions we go several weeks of the year now where herrings are not available right i think we've missed a generation out of the public learn who have learned or been taught how to either herring quite frankly because they're missing so many weeks of the year yeah i mean and the list is just enormous cod is talking about 400 000 averaging 10 pound weight each whiting 17 million 920 000. scary isn't it i mean they're staggering figures even to me and i've been in the trade many years and they'll be even more staggering to people coming into the trade newly now uh they think well no those those sort of tonnages aren't feasible but they were in 1830 at the dawn of the railway age a clerk at billings gator told a reporter that the working classes would never eat fish [Music] 20 years later they were seen as the main ingredient in their diet oh wow well hello fish and chips the son of fish and chip shop owners daniel dixon works at b mission county durham where they've recreated a coal-fired chippy as it would have been at the turn of the 20th century when this institution had become firmly rooted in british life i mean it's just like a modern chip shop isn't it it's like everything everything you would expect to see and it's in miniature because this sort of thing would have been found in someone's back room on the end of a terrace really yeah people of the street would come with their own balls and plates to be filled so really quite makeshift oh yes look at the size of this you could easily fit that in front of your fire breast in your front room yeah you could actually this would be quite easy to just install and turn your front room into a shop yeah [Music] we call it a rumbler it's a potato peeling machine demand was so great that selling fish from living rooms was soon replaced by purpose-built chippies that used the latest technology to satisfy the nation's appetite for convenience food [Music] so this really is about the whole commercial oh yeah stepping up a production because we have customers to be fed yeah we've got to do it quickly enough to supply that range you always have one trouble sympathy a potato in and press yeah i'm liking this we go a lot faster than that and our customers to be served and you don't stop until that bucket is full right okay [Music] despite becoming a quintessentially british combination the chip came from the french and the battered fish arrived on these shores with jewish refugees how do you tell if these are hot enough then there's no thermostat there's no temperature control so it's traditionally disappearing they would have spot into the pun no and if the fat spits back it's all right to fry fish and chips were invariably fried in beef fat a readily available by-product of the meat trade i think we could just about get this fish in i'll let most of it drip into the pan right so that you get all of your butter bits is that enough yeah lay it in because if you drop it you'll cover your hands in hot dripping yeah you're now a fish fryer that's another feather in your house i can't think of anywhere in britain that hasn't got a fish and chip shop somewhere within easy distance exactly well it's a national dish everyone loves this a national dish and that's weird too isn't it i mean in a world before railways there weren't any national dishes everything was local you know every every area had its own specialities its own regional this is the first time you have a pan britain speciality dish [Music] it must have been a revelation though mustn't it just go to a shop and buy a hot dinner instantly at affordable prices exactly it must have made such a difference to people this is the first instance of that like nowadays our culture is fast food your local village chippy was the first example of that from the cod to the potato from the coal to heat the ranges to the newspaper wrapping [Music] that's good fish and chips was a railway dish giving rise to a new takeaway style of dining that's your proper fish and chips this is yeah yeah beef dripping that's what it is cooked over coal that is delicious and here we are eating it outside in public that's a big deal it's a funny thing to think isn't it you know that the whole eating republic eating takeaways is such a new idea that people didn't eat in public you know i mean modern culture is just so completely almost centered around take away food you know i mean everywhere you go there's an absolutely no people eat everywhere and yet before the railways nobody did absolutely nobody it's fish and chips that start off this outdoor eating the railways are changing the diet yeah but they're also chasing social moors yeah they are absolutely i think if i eat anymore this fish and chips are never hot via the railways people in victorian britain were getting used to fresher better quality and cheaper food in their shops seeking to keep pace with the growing demand the nation's biggest landowners looked for ways to bring their increasingly antiquated farms up to speed with the industrial age in the 18th century landowners were investing vast sums of money in brand spanking new buildings like this [Music] the problem was by the time we got to the middle of the 19th century these buildings just weren't up to scratch they weren't designed to meet with the challenges that the railways presented farmers with in the 1850s capturing the aspirations of the day at holcomb hall in norfolk a model farm was constructed a purpose-built set of buildings that more closely resembled a victorian factory than georgian barns [Music] here the aim was to produce more and produce it cheaper by incorporating the latest technology for manufacturing and industry and this really is the business end of this model farm a steam engine and i could just as well be sat on the footplate of a locomotive although this is a static engine and this is the thing that effectively changes british farming in the 19th century because this steam engine via a flywheel and a drive wheel over there will be actually powering a drive bar that runs all the way along the back of this farm and it would power all sorts of tools in workshops in a row so you'd have a sawmill saw benches bellows plate hammers effectively a series of craft workshops which were designed to service this farm a new age powered by steam faced with the challenges of increasing productivity victorians recognize the potential of steam power to be harnessed on land as well as in workshops in 1854 the royal agricultural society of england even offered a prize of 500 pounds for anyone who could find an efficient steam substitute for the horse-drawn plow [Music] the winner john fowler had himself witnessed the horrors of the irish potato famine a decade earlier and had resolved to devote his time and resources to cheapen food production inventing engines and a plow that would be exported around the world ain't getting all in george yeah not too bad good morning gentlemen when i think of steam plowing you you're sort of tempted to imagine a steam engine actually pulling a plow but that isn't the case is it with these engines no not at all no what's the setup here no so we'll have um one engine either end of the field yep and uh we'll pull the plow backwards and forwards right the plow will be pulled on a steel rope between mark farwell's two engines but first they must be perfectly lined up parallel do you think no i think we're a bit i haven't quite got the grips with this uh steering have i yeah we better back up a bit let's back up again [Applause] there we go [Music] although much faster than the horse-drawn plow the steam method still required a team of workers to operate the engines and plow [Music] contractors would work in teams traveling from farm to farm and paid by the acre the standard victorian horse-drawn plow had just one share making a single furrow under steam power a plow with five shares can be used it's just amazing to think of the power in this cable and in fact this steam engine isn't using all of its power to pull this plow if it did use all of its power it would start actually pulling these two steam engines closer together that's how powerful it is and it's amazing for me to see it today but just cast yourself back to the 1850s and think about a farmer seeing this power for the first time i mean the ambitions they must have had for these machines the ability to plow 20 to 30 acres in a day rather than your standard one acre a day which you would have done with horses it's just phenomenal it must have been a really revolutionary moment in british farming plowman like george willie would be judged on their speed and accuracy to produce straight furrows right now i think it's time for you don't you're keeping that okay let's go for it right now if you're wearing holding onto it yeah try not to put your thumb like that right if we get a stone you might break your thumb so i'm sort of like this yeah it's not power assisted then no no no no i need my thumbs okay driver [Music] [Music] all right there we are there we are we're in yeah my word the power of this thing it's absolutely incredible isn't it this is great bit more speed now got a bit of confidence now [Music] there we are okay and you're ready to go back to uh back down man did you enjoy that did you draw it that was good fun i just want to look back look at the work oh yeah goodness that's not too bad it's not too bad actually but i must admit i haven't told you something about going back the other way what's that the left is right and right there so it's reverse steering it's reverse steering okay don't ask me why yeah it could have been quite easily rectified but they just thought they'd throw that in well you've got to remember these blokes drunk a lot of cider yeah so maybe that was something to do with it okay then so i think i'm ready for this [Music] here we go reverse steering oh [Music] not too bad [Music] i've never concentrated so hard in all my life george [Music] oh you can start coming this way man start coming this way now so it's this way isn't it down to call me out no no just go back the other way a little bit not bad yeah that isn't bad you're right you're happy with it yeah because there's a little little kink in it let's have a look not not a pad at all really if you get any kinks in it all we have to say then is there was a bird's nest and we were going around the bird's nest oh that's what you said yeah that's a skylark yeah that's so solid because we don't want to damage it yeah because you know yeah so if we get any kinks right there it's a little bit of a bird's nest up there i think i think that's what we're putting down yeah i'm happy with that keeping up with the supply of food that the railway could now distribute in greater quantities than ever before steam power provided the answer in agriculture increased mechanization radically altered the way in which we grew cereal crops and cheap amongst those cereal crops was barley which as we all know is the main ingredient in beer traditionally beer had been produced locally by thousands of small independent breweries many were put out of business as the railway network paved the way for the emergence of national brewing centers by embracing the steam revolution against bigger competition britain's oldest brewery shepard neem grew and prospered the brewhouse was always on this site drawing water from the source every day since 1573. wow its success and subsequent expansion from a small town brewery to a major regional player in the southeast owed much to both the arrival of a rail link to london and the kent coast and the foresight of jonathan neems victorian ancestors to swap horsepower for steam power pretty special isn't it this is fantastic [Music] installed in 1860 to pump water from a natural spring three stories up to the top of the building the combined efforts of steam on rail and in the brewery had a dramatic impact this was put in only two years after the railway came in so the brewery uh could see that there was a great opportunity for expanding they say it's freeing up manpower and it's it's making everything more efficient absolutely right between 1858 and the early 1870s a production of this brewery multiplied four times by 1900 we had 18 railway depots from harridge through to brighton south london so we are putting quite a lot of beer on the railways and transporting it around the southeast of england on a sort of distance an economic distance that we still cover today oh goodness beautiful isn't it absolutely remarkable i think i could watch this for hours milling stirring and pumping four separate engines powered the brewery mass producing beer on a scale unimaginable before the railways were able to transport the beer over long distances but barrels still had to be moved from breweries to stations and from warehouses to pubs and once again steam power provided a faster and more efficient alternative to the horse hi guy you're right is it real loaded uh yeah i think so ready i'm ready you're driving yeah i'm driving we're in charge of all things to do with steering brian okay guy deebs has brought along this traction engine which evolved from the portable engines used in agriculture transporting goods faster and in greater quantities than any horse and cart [Music] he's a really strong little engine really powerful yeah it was designed to pull a load of 10 tons quite small as well yeah small but built to do a job these are the sort of engines you'd use in a in a town centre city center a delivery company turn up on a railway maybe with two trailers on loads of goods on the trailers need to deliver them either to the shops or the end user and what's the advantage of this over the horse you'd simply need an enormous team of horses to do what it can do right and of course it doesn't need uh it doesn't need feeding other than coal bit of maintenance uh it's working lifespan once you've gone over the initial investment which was pretty it's pretty huge yeah um this particular engine worked for over 50 years for one company you'd have needed five generations of horses [Music] it's quite fast isn't it wait till we see it in top gear oh we're not in top here yet oh no [Music] for a short golden period in the middle of the 19th century steam power had rejuvenated british farming but by the 1870s this wonder technology had itself become the farmer's worst enemy the ambitions of these early pioneering industrial agriculturalists were never realized and this is because the same steam technology that was being used to power forward the industrial revolution here in britain was also being exported to other parts of the world and places like north america for example they were setting out railway lines that were connecting up the ports on the east coast with vast acreages of virgin prairie in the central heartlands of america and it was on this prairie that farmers were growing wheat in huge quantities the railway lines could then ship it back to the ports it could be steam shipped across the atlantic and then the railway network here could transport it throughout the country and as a consequence of this british farmers just couldn't compete and british agriculture in general suffered arguably the greatest depression it had ever seen in its history reacting to the sharp fall in wheat prices many victorian farmers moved away from arable farming either turning to livestock or making best use of the railway network by supplying specialist perishable produce of their global competitors couldn't provide railways permitted a real nationalization indeed a globalization of markets but at the same time and perhaps a bit ironically they also created the possibility for true local specialization no longer did you have to sort of do a bit of this and a bit of that and the other that you could sell locally you could now put all your efforts and really concentrate on the one thing that your soils your climate your skills and expertise were particularly good at take this line here running through metally in yorkshire now it was originally built to move coal it was a colory line however what it meant in the end was that the farmers in this region could turn all their attention to one special product oh my goodness in dark giant sheds yorkshire farmers grew rhubarb what a strange place just a decade before the first railways a new method of growing rhubarb had been discovered shielded from the light in the final stages of growth rhubarb was found to yield a more flavoursome and succulent crop and these plants are actually growing in the dark they are they are simply growing looking for light but they've got all the energy they need in the roots janet oldroyd whose family has been producing rhubarb since the 1930s is the latest in a yorkshire rhubarb dynasty we know today rhubarb is a vegetable but we eat it as a fruit what fruit did they have at home absolutely in in in the coldest darkest moments of the winter yeah so it was perfect it was a treasure basically so this became a major industry for this small area it did it became known as the rhubarb triangle and within that triangle over 200 producers became established why did rhubarb growing become concentrated in this little triangle of yorkshire the location the climate was perfect for rhubarb roots production everywhere else the tried they couldn't get as early and they couldn't get the yields with the ideal soil and climate an ample supply of cheap local coal to heat the sheds and shoddy a byproduct of the wood industry to fertilize the ground the quality of the yorkshire crop became renowned by the late 19th century 95 of the nation's rhubarb were grown by yorkshire farmers and distributed from one rail line so how much rhubarb was being produced over 200 tons nicely when it was at its peak 200 tons of rhubarb at night destined for the london markets and then on into europe out of this one small area so the trends became nicknamed the rhubarb express trains because all they carried was carriage after carriage of rhubarb entire trade rhubarb a railway industry who'da thought rhubarb as the railways facilitated the rise of regional specialization so specific areas of the country became famous for their agricultural production plotted cream from devon scottish highland beef jersey potatoes and somerset cider all grew in reputation during the steam age this revolutionized their industries and their economy but it also changed the landscape as well but arguably the most significant development was not here in the countryside it was in the cities because access to all of these new projects effectively changed the nation's diet forever at the heart of this revolution was the mid-hands line originally opened in 1865 as an alternative route between london and southampton the midhands line became best known for providing victorian londoners with their latest superfood watercress still produced by grower james harper in the same mineral rich spring waters as its victorian heyday watercress could only be eaten close to where it was grown well here we are lovely spot ready to go all ready to be picked absolutely getting watercress from field to mouth relied on speed something the railways made possible so what are we doing here then james well we're actually pulling uh the watercress with its roots that we pull and clear so you pull it with the roots with the roots and then we're packing it into this wicker flat okay but i've got a bunch of of a poorly picked a bunch of uh watercress here but how quickly is that going to deteriorate well the reason why they used to send it with roots is because it kept the plant going for a lot longer and then when it got to market it was sold in what was called hands of watercress so it's physically as much as you can get in your hands it was cut and clean so you'd chop away the roots and that would be a hand of watercress and then that was made into smaller uh bunches and then sold as you know with raffia around them sold as little sort of food on the go food i could buy that off you now for a day in the factory and then i oh that's right and your hands would off to be covered in if you were a factory working all day you'd want something you could just hold you'd eat the leaves and the tops of the stems and then basically you discard the leftovers and what would it have meant to lake victoria and london say for example to have something quite as healthy as this being served up on a daily basis well i think it's safe to say it was revolutionary i mean it was it was a really good cheap affordable available to the masses source of nutrition and in terms of gram for gram there is no vegetable that was more nutrient dense than watercress wow quite delicious that's about as fresh as it gets absolutely the development of the hamster line meant that watercress could be picked in the afternoon taken by horse and cart to the station that evening and be on sale in london markets by the early hours of the following morning keith chambers worked in the line's parcel office in the 1970s and as a as a product how much would it have cost to to send punnets like this up to london well it was apparent what was called a perishable rate right so it was about double what um a standard parcel would be is that because it's it's this um perishable good you know it's quite a high maintenance good exactly it's because it had to be looked after and it had to be got onto the platform quickly yep and on to the first train possible right and uh unloaded quickly at the other end so did you eat this sort of stuff did the staff indulge themselves in this sort of stuff well interestingly some of the staff just wouldn't eat it because the rumor was that um when they wanted to relieve themselves in the watercress beds they didn't walk right to the edge of course okay and guess what okay well i can assure you this has been picked from the cleanest uh watercress beds that there are in hampshire from a world before the railway and the only fresh food on the dinner plate had to be grown locally when livestock still had to be driven to market on foot [Music] by the end of the century the way britain fed itself and what people ate had changed beyond recognition [Music] the rail network of the national market that it created provided the consumer with more choice more variety and a more nutritious diet than ever before you've got some english lamb here all the lamb's english okay well i think i'll have the two small ones and a big one for peter all this at a time when the population had more than tripled most people had moved away from the countryside to live and work in towns and cities how you doing all right asparagus strawbangers we trusted you to get the strawberries where did you get them i've got some lamb chops lamb chop strawberries classic combination imagine being in lake victoria london and seeing all this food coming into the city vast urban populations creating this huge demand for more food and for more specialized food well it's that exchange between the countryside and the city that is vital to allow the city to industrialize and the countryside to focus on producing produce such as this the change in both isn't it you can't separate the two the countryside is utterly changed by this new distribution system this new specialization [Music] i love the fact that this is a market built in the arches of not one not two but three railways it's quite an amazing space isn't it i'll tell you what look spice that's the one thing we don't have for our wonderful lamb asparagus and what is rapidly turning into strawberry jam meal okay okay jersey potatoes as well okay two things but maybe a bottle of cider as well that's three things we don't have three things next time we see how the railways connected people as never before revolutionizing the postal system it's remarkably physical but something as light as a letter delivering up-to-date news news today chip paper tomorrow and that was only possible [Music] because of the railways radically speeding up the pace of life wow it's amazing to be able to have this kind of food on potato that one wasn't it

Channel: Absolute History

Views: 408,688

Keywords: history documentaries, quirky history, world history, ridiculous history, fish and chips, british history, victorian trains, steam trains, how trains changed the world, history of food, history of traditional fish and chips, ruth goodman, absolute history, full steam ahead

Id: qOg-Ti-eYzs

Length: 58min 12sec (3492 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020