The Birth of Steam
Railway Walks with Julia Bradbury episode 3
Transcript
00:00Britain is a country that owes a great deal to its rail empire. For a hundred years the
00:24railways dominated the development of this country, the network that supported a global
00:29superpower. But today our island is home to 10,000 miles of disused lines, a silent
00:39network of embankments, platforms and viaducts. For me and many others they've become a
00:49perfect platform for exploring the country on foot.
01:15Welcome to the north Cornwall coast and the dramatic entrance to the harbour at Portreith.
01:20With all its rocks and cliffs this has always been a notoriously difficult harbour for ships
01:24to enter, which is why it's quite surprising that in 1820 it was described as Cornwall's
01:29most important port. Well today I'm going to get to the bottom of that comment and find
01:34out why.
01:37For a number of reasons this railway walk promises to be quite an adventure. You could
01:43say that I'll be walking right across the country from the north Cornwall coast to its
01:48counterpart in the south. There'll also be not one but two railway lines, both of which
01:54date back further than anything I've explored so far. This railway walk is a journey into
02:00the complex history of Cornish mining.
02:16Now the harbour is the true beginning of my walk but unlike many railway walks there's
02:20no station to start from and the reason for that is quite simple. This line didn't carry
02:24passengers, it was purely to transport materials to and from the mines and there were no railway
02:29locomotives here either because this was a tramway with horses and wagons. But despite
02:35the horses, Cornwall was really important to the railway age because this is where the
02:40steam engine really took off.
02:45Now it may surprise you but the world's first steam locomotive was built by a Cornishman.
02:51But Richard Trevithick's greatest contribution to his home county was the building of high
02:55pressure steam engines for local mines. It was this revolution that helped turn Portreith
03:01into such a bustling port, that and the fact that it had the region's first railway.
03:12In 1800 the railway map of Great Britain was, well, blank. But in various mining parts of
03:18the country there was a realisation that a system of wagons on rails was far better than
03:23a bunch of horses when it came to transporting heavy materials. The Portreith Tram Road arrived
03:30in Cornwall in 1809 with a route from the north coast, deep into the copper and tin
03:34mining territory. Other railways quickly followed, including the Redruth and Chasewater Railway,
03:41which soon ran from the mining areas to the south coast. Today the two lines form the
03:47backbone of Cornwall's coast to coast trail.
03:53Now railways, whether they're working or not, tend to get a lot of attention from authors
03:56and historians, but not here. These two railways have been really hard to research amongst
04:02all the facts about Cornish mining, but I have managed to find this local book which
04:06covers the precise route that I want to follow. I'm also hoping that it's going to negate
04:11any necessity for an archaeologist.
04:15And I've not been the only person struggling. The helicopter team were here before me filming
04:20my journey from the air. They managed to choose a beautiful, clear Cornish day, except for
04:26the area over Portreith. But this is where my walk starts. So let's take a look at the
04:32route.
04:36Heading east from the coast, there's an area of farmland before you reach the villages
04:41of Wheelrose and Scoria.
04:49From here I head south, into the heart of mining country, past old industrial communities
04:57like Toddpool and the unmistakable Poldyce Valley.
05:04This was the end of the line for the Portreith tram road, but as I head towards the south
05:09coast I pick up my second railway, the Redruth and Chasewater, which followed the valley
05:14of the Carnon River and passed underneath the amazing viaduct of the active rail line
05:20to Falmouth.
05:23The village of Deveran, sitting at the top of a long estuary, is the first sign of the
05:27end of my walk.
05:33But I'll be following the water's edge all the way to the mooring point at the old railway
05:38terminus.
05:47You know me, I like a little bit of insider knowledge before I start a walk and Dave Cuffright
05:52is a man who knows this trail better than the back of his hand. Hello Dave.
05:54How do you do?
05:55Now you love this trail so much that you even lead cycle tours along it.
05:58I do indeed, for people's health, yeah. It's great family entertainment without a computer
06:03unless it's on the bike telling you how well you've done it.
06:06We know about the health benefits of walking, but along my route here today, what kind of
06:11things can I expect to see? What am I looking forward to, to excite me?
06:14This whole trail right across Cornwall, a hundred and odd years ago used to be the richest
06:20place in Britain, believe it or not. Hard to believe when you look around now. Now we're
06:24left with a rich infrastructure of the trails that's left behind after the tramways.
06:30One thing that this has got is diversity because here we are on the north coast, the Atlantic
06:35pounds in, batters everything. As you move to the south coast it gets more deciduous
06:41with woods and flowing greenery.
06:44I obviously know a little bit about the history of the tramway here and how it serviced the
06:49mines, but how did it all gather such momentum?
06:53Obviously Cornwall's out on a limb on its own and there's obviously a lot of ore got
06:57to be transported. There's coal that's got to go in to feed the steam engines to pump
07:01the water out. Taking it by road up country just wouldn't have been feasible. So really
07:07it's the straightest line from where all the mines were to the sea, which is poor trade.
07:13I know it's difficult to be precise, but what sort of date are we talking about? When did
07:16it slowly ever wane?
07:17About 1860. About 1860 is when it started to wane on this side.
07:221860 seems like such an early age for a forward thinking industry to be dying.
07:28Right, I mean people think of railways and nobody thinks about railways disappearing
07:33until Beeching in the 60s. But 100 years previous it was already happening here on one of the
07:38first railways in Cornwall.
07:43Back in the day, the route of the tram road was a key feature of this seaside village.
07:48But 150 years has been more than enough time to obscure its route entirely. And my walk
07:54starts with a stroll through the back streets of Portreith.
08:01After a quarter of a mile, the coast to coast trail does leave the modern tarmac though
08:05and begins to take on a more expected feel.
08:12This isn't a walk where you'll find overgrown platforms and crumbling engine sheds. The
08:17remains of Cornwall's first railway are subtle to say the least. But they are there if you
08:22look for them.
08:23Aha, now these are the original granite sets that the tramway used to run on. Sort of like
08:32early railway sleepers if you like.
08:39If you look due south from here, you can just about make out the outskirts of Redruth and
08:43that was the main mining town in the area. And that thimble of a monument straight up
08:48ahead, that was built to honour Baron Basset. Now he was head of the most powerful mining
08:52family in the area. And their status was so great that Portreith was often referred to
08:57as Basset's Cove.
09:02This photo from 1893, with the new monument on its hilltop, clearly shows the vast mining
09:08infrastructure that the Bassets looked after.
09:13If there was ever any doubt of the impact of tin and copper on this area, images like
09:17this quickly dispel it. Baron Basset himself hardly fits the image of a brutal mine owner
09:24either. His monument was built with donations from a grateful public. In his time, the Baron
09:31helped build defences around Plymouth and campaigned against slavery. And he also left
09:37behind him the bustling town of Redruth, a town that exploded into prominence once the
09:42neighbouring seams of tin and copper had been found.
09:49Ah, now there is my first glimpse of some Cornish engine houses. And those three chimneys
09:56stacked on the horizon there must be Wheel Pever. And that is reputedly the best preserved
10:01engine house in the area. And well worth a little visit a bit later.
10:13Engine houses are very much a symbol of this part of Cornwall. Remains of over 200 are
10:21left intact today. But as we have already seen around Redruth, these fields were once
10:28littered with industrial chimneys. And there would have been hundreds more. Many were dismantled
10:34and rebuilt elsewhere as mines opened and closed.
10:43Two miles out of Portreith, my historic walking route disappears entirely, stolen by the modern
10:53tarmac. But the clues are still there. The local populace is clearly keen to keep a hold
11:00of its past.
11:13Now I have read that wheel in Cornish means place of work. And when you look at the map,
11:28there are just wheels all over the place. You have got wheel rows, there is wheel plenty,
11:33there is wheel busy. I like that one. But for now this is the only wheel I am interested
11:38in.
11:42The approach to Wheel Peaver is dramatic. For those that know little of Cornwall other
11:47than its coastline, this would be a good place to come. The grace and stature of the engine
11:53houses is striking, particularly set on such a hilltop as here. And for me it is an opportunity
12:01to understand the industry behind my railway walk.
12:07Kingsley Rickard is an industrial historian, but specifically he is a leading light of
12:16the group dedicated to Cornwall's very own Richard Trevithick.
12:23Here is my question for you Kingsley, why three? Why three chimneys?
12:27Well, three engine houses because they were used for three different purposes. You had
12:33usually out of three, the bigger of the three would have been a pumping engine, and then
12:38you had a winding engine to wind materials up and down, and also a stamps engine which
12:43was a type of crushing machinery.
12:45And the mining game like many was a speculation game wasn't it? It was whatever you hit first,
12:50whatever seam you came across.
12:52Very much so, that's right. In modern mining it is possible to drill down and tell what
12:55is there, but in the old days until you dug a hole and got down there you didn't know
12:59what you were going to find.
13:01And that was exactly the case at Wheel Pever. In the mid-1700s it started as a copper mine,
13:07but as the digging got deeper it was the tin that took over, reaching a peak in 1880, the
13:14era when the present pumping house and its mine shaft were in full operation.
13:19This was the main pumping shaft of the mine and is 660 feet deep.
13:24660 feet, is that particularly deep as far as mine shafts go?
13:28Not particularly in Cornwall, we went down to over 3,000 feet, so, you know, the mountains
13:33of the Lake District go that far upwards.
13:36Wheel Pever wasn't a big operation by local standards, but it did produce a particularly
13:41rich variety of tin ore.
13:44Good news for the mine owner, John Williams, who controlled nine out of ten mines in the
13:48immediate vicinity.
13:51And finally we get to the stamp house.
13:55That's right. This was the stamping engine and the huge crushing heads for the stamps
14:02were just along here. They worked 24 hours a day and you could have heard them two and
14:07a half to three miles away.
14:08Of course, none of this would have been possible without one man who I know you think is a
14:12bit of a hero and many people do as well, Travithic, Richard Travithic.
14:16Yes, Richard Travithic, or as we know him in Cornwall as Captain Dick.
14:20Great name.
14:22But he was a phenomenal engineer and, of course, he's gone down in history as being the inventor
14:28of high-pressure steam, which really kick-started, I suppose, the Industrial Revolution.
14:33Certainly, the whole steam locomotive business.
14:36Yes, yes. He produced the world's first self-propelled vehicle, road vehicle, in 1801 and then moved
14:44on in 1804 to produce the world's first railway engine.
14:49In your opinion, do you think he was overlooked as an engineer?
14:52Yes, I don't think he really got the recognition that he deserved, but not being a businessman,
14:58I don't think self-promotion was in his mind at all.
15:02He just loved solving engineering and mechanical problems.
15:06Coal is something Cornwall doesn't have. We had to import it all. It was a pretty expensive
15:11thing to import and so Travithic worked on high-pressure steam, knowing it was going
15:17to be more efficient and would save Cornwall thousands of tons of coal in a year.
15:22So he wasn't just vital to the steam locomotion future industry, he was vital to Cornwall
15:27and its mining industry as well.
15:29Yes, to mining and engineering in general.
15:32I tell you what, Kingsley, you get a great view of my walk so far from up here.
15:36Wonderful, yes. You are looking from the north coast there, Patrice down in the valley and
15:42you can see how we're much higher than Patrice. The tram road has had to climb considerably
15:47to get up to this sort of height.
15:49And I've still got quite a long way to go as well.
15:51Oh yes, you have.
15:52So I might head off like a pack horse.
15:54Thank you, Kingsley.
15:55Lovely, nice to see you.
15:56Nice to meet you.
15:57Aha, here's Dave on his tour, Dave.
15:58How about you? More work. Enjoy.
15:59Thank you. Hello.
16:00Hello.
16:01Hello.
16:02Hiya.
16:03Hello.
16:04Hello.
16:05Hello.
16:06Hello.
16:07Hello.
16:08Hello.
16:09Hello.
16:10Hello.
16:11Hello.
16:12Hello.
16:13Hello.
16:14Hello.
16:15Hello.
16:17Oh hello.
16:18Hello.
16:19Oh yeah.
16:20Back on the tram road, the industrial communities come thick and fast as I head from Wheelpeeber
16:25to Wheelrose.
16:26Hmm, look at this, a pint-sized image of Cornish mining, and if you put that together
16:35with the sign over there, I think we can hazard a guess and say that an enthusiast lives here.
16:40But to be honest, it's quite nice to have some clues that the tram road ever existed
16:45because modern industry has just taken over.
16:50Cornish clotted cream is one local industry
16:53that's never involved any mining.
16:56But the Rodders Creamery now stands
16:58where the tram road once ended.
17:01When the great experimentation with rail began,
17:04this was as far as they dare go.
17:07But by 1819, the line was extended further inland,
17:11right through the estate of the man who paid for it.
17:14Scoria House is still owned by the descendants of John Williams.
17:18He was a mine owner, a shipping and a smelting magnate,
17:21and a chief investor in the Portreith tram road.
17:24A true entrepreneur who could charge his fellow mine owners
17:28for using his revolutionary railway.
17:31And with his land still being private,
17:32I have to leave the tram road and make my own way
17:35to the massive mining valley of Poldyce.
17:44Cornwall's coast-to-coast trail has developed around the spines
17:48of the two main mining railways.
17:51But even here, in the depth of unity wood,
17:54you're only ever metres from industrial heritage.
18:03But in this walk of contrasts, the wood doesn't last for long,
18:07giving way to the collection of mining cottages at Toddpool,
18:11a very quiet place today.
18:13But once a village that sat precariously on the edge of the vast
18:17and varied operations of the Poldyce Valley.
18:24Poldyce does a good impression of a lunar surface.
18:27Since medieval times, the valley has been carved up by mankind,
18:31producing tin, copper,
18:33and Cornwall's less heralded resource of arsenic.
18:40God, look at that landscape.
18:44It's hardly beautiful, but it's certainly dramatic.
18:55If it wasn't for the ruined state of the buildings,
18:57you'd think that mining was still going on here.
19:01And it's one of Cornwall's very last miners that I've arranged to meet,
19:05amongst the remains of Poldyce arsenic works.
19:09So, Mark, I'm very excited because I'm sitting here
19:11with a genuine bonafide miner.
19:12And you were mining until quite recently.
19:14Yes, I mined until 1998, and I started mining in 1981.
19:19And I followed in my father's footsteps,
19:21and he started mining in 1948.
19:23True family biz.
19:25But, of course, mining in the days that we're going to talk about now
19:27was a very different prospect, wasn't it?
19:29A whole different line of work.
19:31Yes, when miners were working in this valley 200 years ago,
19:35it was completely different.
19:36In its heyday, there was over 50,000 people working in this valley.
19:41So great was the tin prospects here at the mine
19:44that a poem was written about it.
19:46And the poem went something like this.
19:50At Poldyce, the men are mice, tin is aplenty.
19:54Captain Teague, he's from Brigg, he'll give you ten for 20.
19:58Now, that meant for every 20 shillings worth of tin
20:02that came to the surface, that team of men would get 10 shillings.
20:06So it was quite a lot of money for the work they'd done.
20:10But they did it because they knew this mine could produce
20:13lots and lots of tin.
20:14And this is how competitive these tin mines were.
20:17So not a bad job to have had then, apart from the danger
20:19and, you know, the near-death experiences.
20:21Apart from the danger, even though the money was good
20:24in real terms in those days,
20:28those miners weren't expected to live much beyond 35 years old.
20:32They had to climb down shafts,
20:33they climbed down ropes and chains and ladders.
20:36And the conditions underground, there wasn't much air.
20:39They were working up through waste and water in some places.
20:42Very, very difficult and very, very dangerous.
20:45But the mines here, the water was very acidic
20:48and it was the arsenic in the water and the sulphides.
20:51When most people think about arsenic, of course,
20:53they'll think about the poison, they'll think about the dangers.
20:55Initially, it was annoying for the miners
20:58because it didn't give you pure tin or pure copper.
21:02They found by roasting it out,
21:04the arsenic powder could be used as a pesticide.
21:08And apart from being a nuisance then,
21:11it became a product from a mine.
21:14And there's areas now which still haven't recovered
21:17from the arsenic poison in the ground,
21:19that there are absolutely barren pieces of ground
21:22200 years after the arsenic has been refined in the areas.
21:25So when you think about it then, the money that they got paid
21:27and everything, really, I mean, it just, it wasn't worth it.
21:30The only people it was worth it for
21:31were the people that owned the mines.
21:33The mine owners controlled how people spent their money.
21:36And the Williams family, they actually produced their own currency.
21:40Ta-da! This little fella.
21:42That's a Cornish penny, known as a Cornish token.
21:45All people associated with the mine would be paid in pennies.
21:50Now, those pennies could only be spent in the mine owner's shop.
21:54So they'd pay them, they'd say on the one hand,
21:56they'd say, we're going to pay you really well
21:57for this dangerous work and you're the expert.
21:59On the other hand, here's your cash, but you can only spend it with us.
22:02Yeah, that's what they did.
22:03And it produced approximately £50 million profit from the mine owners.
22:08Now, that's a lot of money 200 years ago.
22:10So, a lot of money, but then there was a,
22:13as we started finding new countries, the British Empire,
22:17they could find copper and tin in those other countries.
22:20And there was a crash in the copper price and the tin price.
22:24Many of these mines stopped, ceased overnight.
22:27And Cornish miners went all over the place.
22:29And there is a saying, wherever there's a hole in the ground,
22:31there's a Cornish miner.
22:32And that's very, very true.
22:36Would you go back down the mines now, Mark?
22:39Well, I had a serious accident just before the mine closed,
22:41where I had a rock come down and nearly killed me.
22:44Got a huge scar across the back of my neck
22:47and it damaged some nerve endings on this side.
22:49So to do any long-term mining, I wouldn't be able to do it.
22:52But is it something, is it something that you miss?
22:54I miss every day.
22:56Really?
22:57Working down a dark, dangerous mine, thousands of feet underground.
23:01Lovely job.
23:02No hassle, no cars.
23:04No people. No people.
23:06Well, Mark, thank you very much. It's been really interesting.
23:09I'm heading off and I'm going to come across the second railway as well, aren't I?
23:11Yes, what you're going to find about a mile down the valley
23:14is the Red Rooster Chasewater railway line.
23:16Never actually went to Chasewater, but it went down to Deveren.
23:19I shall look out for it. Thank you.
23:21You're going into the age of steam.
23:23Thanks, Mark. OK, bye. Bye-bye.
23:29Before I reach my second railway of the day,
23:32there's the footpath heading south down the length of Poldyce Valley.
23:35It's a hodgepodge world of mining detritus.
23:39The white piles of dust, known simply as the sands,
23:42are the barren remains of the arsenic works that operated until 1929.
23:50A unique section of railway walk.
24:02This is what Mark was talking about,
24:04the Red Rooster Chasewater railway coming in from Red Rooster.
24:08I am now firmly back on the track bed.
24:12The Red Rooster Chasewater was the creation of John Taylor,
24:16controller of the massive consolidated mines.
24:20Taylor's business was so large
24:22that it warranted the building of a new railway, which opened in 1824.
24:27It carried 50,000 tonnes of ore,
24:2950,000 tonnes of ore in its first year.
24:34According to my invaluable guide,
24:36the Red Rooster Chasewater railway managed to achieve something
24:39that the Portreith tram road never did,
24:41and that was to swap horse-drawn carriages for steam engines.
24:45In 1854, they introduced two.
24:47One was called Miner, the other was called Smelter.
24:50See what they did there? Miner, Smelter, Mining?
24:52Yeah, you get it.
25:00A third engine, called Spitfire, joined the line in 1859.
25:05But within 15 years, Taylor's railway was already going into decline,
25:11another victim of the global slump in copper prices.
25:14The Red Rooster Chasewater eventually ground to a complete halt in 1918.
25:23Much like the railway itself,
25:25the Red Rooster Chasewater was the first railway
25:28Much like the railway itself,
25:30the last part of my walk follows the Caernarvon River
25:33as it heads towards the all-important coastline at Deveran.
25:39The much later railway line, connecting Plymouth with Falmouth,
25:42had to cross this wide valley,
25:44a challenge that was handed to none other than Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
25:52It seems that poor old Brunel didn't have the budget to do this job properly,
25:56so reluctantly, to save money, he used timber fans to prop up the tracks.
26:01But as he predicted, just 70 years later,
26:04the entire viaduct had to be replaced.
26:07Not up to his usual standards at all.
26:09That's the original, that's the replacement.
26:15When work started on Brunel's viaduct,
26:17builders found they had to dig through 30 feet of silt and mining spoils
26:21to reach the solid floor of the valley.
26:24This path here would have once been part of the estuary,
26:27before centuries of mining pushed the open water further and further towards the sea.
26:35Deveran too used to be a major port,
26:37a busy interchange between the steam locomotives
26:40and the waiting boats in the estuary's deep waters.
26:45The village hall today is actually the old maintenance shed
26:48for the likes of miner and smelter,
26:50for this is as far as the locomotives got.
26:55The end of my walk, much like the beginning, is along a simple tram road,
27:00an extra mile used to transfer coal and metal ore
27:04to ships further down the estuary.
27:09In 1900, this was where the railway ended,
27:12a quayside known simply as Point.
27:17A classic Cornish beauty spot.
27:20But the end to a very industrial walk.
27:25Just look at the difference between here and the sea-battered cliffs of Portruith.
27:30Even this picture-perfect Cornish estuary
27:33can't escape the presence of the mining industry.
27:35Just around that corner there would have been a tin smelting works,
27:38and long before that, before the railway even,
27:41teams would have been working in and under the estuary,
27:44sifting through the sand and the gravel, looking for bits of tin ore.
27:48This really was a world devoted to extracting as much from the ground as possible.
27:58Of all the old railways I've explored so far,
28:01none has been so entirely linked to a single purpose.
28:06This has been a fascinating walk
28:08through a varied and often man-made landscape,
28:11but most of all, it's been a walk through the changing fortunes
28:15of a vast local industry.
28:18And let's not forget that today I've also seen
28:21where the steam engine first showed its true potential.
28:24And for that, all my other railway walks can be truly grateful.
28:48.
28:53.
28:58.