A Brief History of Britain 1851–2010 Read online

  Because railways caught the popular imagination, with railway novels proliferating and widespread coverage of railway crimes, pictures of trains, and accounts of speed records, the press also devoted much space to the opening of new links and facilities, and to other railway news. For example, on 11 July 1855, the first number of Chudleigh’s Weekly Express provided the London–Plymouth timetables. The scale of travel was immense. The number of passenger journeys measured in million miles rose from 60 in 1850 to near 300 in 1870. Moreover, the spread of the network continued, and in 1911, there were 130 staffed stations in Devon and Cornwall alone.

  The manufacture and maintenance of trains became an important aspect of Britain’s industry, with major workshops at towns that were founded or greatly expanded because of the railways, such as Crewe, Doncaster, Swindon and Wolverton. Even towns that are no longer noted for their railway works, such as Eastleigh, in Hampshire, could be heavily dependent on them. In Brighton and Gateshead, for example, the railway was the largest employer. Conversely, towns that missed out on railway development or that at best were on spur lines became of lesser consequence. Thus, Stamford was obscured by Peterborough.

  The volume of freight carried rose from about 38 million tons (38.6 million tonnes) in 1850 to 513 million (521 million tonnes) in 1912, and industries were transformed by the new communications. For example, use of the railway enabled the brewers of Burton-upon-Trent to develop a major beer empire across much of England, and also helped speed North Wales slate towards urban markets, which greatly changed townscapes. Thanks to the train, London newspapers could be transported rapidly around the country, while perishable goods were sent to the cities. In the 1870s, the rail companies opened up urban markets for liquid milk, encouraging dairy farmers to produce ‘railway milk’, rather than farmhouse cheese. Over 15,000 tons (c. 16,000 tonnes) of Cornish broccoli were sent by train annually by 1900, and a special daily refrigerated van carried Devon rabbit carcasses to London before the Second World War. Fresh fish was moved from North Sea fishing ports such as Aberdeen, Peterhead, Hull and Lowestoft to inland markets.

  Companies and towns that wished to stay at the leading edge of economic development had to become, and remain, transport foci. In Carlisle, Jonathan Dodgson Carr (1806–84) adapted a printing machine to cut biscuits, replacing cutting by hand; helped by the city’s position as a major rail junction, he sold his products, notably Carr’s table water biscuits, throughout the country. Similarly, Huntley and Palmer, suppliers of sponge fingers to the nation, were based in Reading: another major biscuit-maker in another key rail junction. As a result of such activity, economic patterns changed, not least the nature of marketing. Small market towns without railways collapsed and the position of towns in the urban hierarchy therefore altered.

  The impact of rail was also psychological. ‘Space’ had been conquered. As in America today, people could analogize space and time, such that, for example, a place became two hours away, rather than a certain distance. Moreover, the very building of the railways, with large gangs of migrant workers moving across rural Britain, disrupted local social patterns and assumptions. Maintaining and running the system also became a major source of employment. By 1873, there were 274,000 rail-workers. New sounds and sights, notably of the train passing, contributed to a powerful sense of change, and this change was overwhelmingly presented as progress. Such a perception encouraged the venture capital that was so important to the expansion of the railway system, as well as ensuring that local opposition was lessened. A key element in the process of conciliation was the winning over of landowners by re-routing lines and by building stations, or establishing stops, to serve their estates.

  The impact of rail was powerfully visual. Major railway stations, such as St Pancras – built by Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811–78) and W.H. Barlow (1812–1902) in 1873 – were designed as masterpieces of iron and glass, and large railway shed-like stations, as in Darlington, York and Newcastle, became key urban structures. Moreover, alongside accompanying buildings and spaces, notably marshalling yards, the train took over important parts of the townscape. Railway lines also altered local landscapes with their embankments and cuttings, and transformed street plans, each to an unprecedented extent. The stations reflected the importance of functionalism in the search for effective designs, an importance already seen with Paxton’s Crystal Palace. Railways and other examples of new industrial technology brought a requirement for new buildings and in dramatically new forms.

  The railway, moreover, brought uniformity, as time within Britain was standardized. The railways needed standard time for their timetables, in order to make connections possible, and, in place of the variation from east to west in Britain, they adopted the standard set by the Greenwich Observatory as ‘railway time’. Clocks were kept accurate by the electric telegraph that was erected along lines. Thanks to the train, the meaning of place changed. Edinburgh and Glasgow were now closer to London as an aspect of a national network for which York and Manchester were merely important stages. Dublin was brought closer, with expresses from London to Holyhead (crossing the Menai Straits on a dramatic bridge) followed by steamships thence to Ireland. Rail also brought a new speed to news and changing fashions. Local trends and towns were eclipsed by metropolitan fashions.

  Rail, in addition, spread familiarity with the country. In 1864, the original fort at Fort William was demolished to make room for the railway station through which English tourists reached the Scottish Highlands. This demolition was a symbolic change of function and an aspect of the way in which new-build was often at the expense of the most prominent sites of the past, including, in the case of the railway, Berwick and Newcastle castles and Launceston Priory.

  In the second half of the nineteenth century, industrial growth increasingly focused on engineering, shipbuilding and chemicals, rather than the textiles and metal smelting of earlier industrial development. The pace of scientific advance and technological change was unremitting, and British scientists led in a number of fields. In electricity, James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79), the first professor of experimental physics at Cambridge, and Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) expanded on the earlier work of Michael Faraday (1791–1867), and the development of commercial generators led to the growing use of electricity. As industrialization gathered pace, the contrast between industrialized regions and the rest of the country increased, for example between South and central Wales, notably Glamorgan and Merioneth, although, in turn, South Wales was to suffer because it saw little of the new industry of the early twentieth century, such as car-making.

  Housing

  The populations of the industrial cities had to be housed, and one of the ways in which the changing country of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century is still with us is that much of the housing stock today derives from that period, whereas a relatively small percentage of the current stock survives from earlier periods, notably so in urban areas. By the 1860s, the terraced streets we know today were being built in England and, to an extent, Wales, and by the 1870s, a standard version of working-class housing was the two-up-two-down ‘through terrace’ – with its access at both front and rear, solid construction and adequate ventilation, and sometimes small gardens or back yard. Increasingly, this was becoming the standard dwelling, although, in Scotland, housing remained tenemented across the classes until the collapse of private building and its displacement by local authority building after 1919. Houses are rare in Scottish city architecture prior to 1920, with Aberdeen a partial exception.

  The traditional terraced house reflected the rise in average real wages in the 1850s–60s as the economic boom of industrialization brought prosperity. These houses were a great improvement on the back-to-back, the lodging-house and the damp cellar in which all too many had lived. In part, this was because terraced houses were built at a time of prosperity and rising construction standards when covered sewerage systems and adequately piped clean water were being included in new residences. Indeed, f
rom 1875 it was mandatory to provide lavatories on the same plot as a new house. These houses, with their separate rooms, enabled greater definition of the spheres of domestic activity, from chatting or reading to eating or sleeping, all of which had major implications for family behaviour and gender roles, as well as for a sense of privacy.

  Terraced houses were usually built in straight streets. This pattern replaced an earlier style of layout frequently described in terms of a warren. This earlier style had been difficult to keep clean or to light because it contained so many self-enclosed alleyways, closes or courts. In contrast, the straight streets of terraced houses, equally apportioned and relatively spaciously laid out, were easier to light and to provide with supplies of gas, water and drainage. This situation was true not only of areas as a whole, but also of individual properties. Legislation was important. The removal of the Brick Tax in 1850 encouraged the large-scale utilization of bricks in construction, and their use helped keep damp at bay. Similarly, the end of the Wallpaper Tax in 1861 affected the interior of houses. Technology also played a role, as in the provision of inexpensive linoleum from the mid-1870s as an effective floor covering.

  Nevertheless, many of the urban poor and casually employed still lived in one-roomed dwellings, tenements, back-to-backs, rookeries and courts, and would continue to do so until the Second World War. Their walls frequently ran with damp, sanitation was often primitive, lighting was limited, and poorly swept chimneys contributed to the fug in many homes. Health was greatly affected as a consequence. Prominent and wealthy individuals derived income from areas of poor housing, including Robert, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903), Prime Minister in 1885–6, 1886–92 and 1895–1902. This housing was deplored by social commentators and contributed to the growing concern with the environment in which the bulk of the people lived, a concern that led to social surveys and also to missions to the poor in slum areas, especially in the East End of London. George Bernard Shaw’s (1856–1950) first play, Widowers’ Houses (1892), concerned the relationship between the aristocratic Henry Trench and Blanche Sartorius whose father gains his wealth by slum landlordism. Trench is appalled, only for Sartorius to point out that Trench’s money came from similar sources.

  Townscapes and Architecture

  The new townscapes were in part achieved by clearing existing areas, and, more generally, changes in the urban landscape reflected shifts in society. Paintings such as Myles Foster’s (1825–99) Newcastle upon Tyne from Windmill Hill, Gateshead (c. 1871–2) showed formerly prominent buildings – the castle keep and cathedral – now joined by the new buildings representing change, in this case, factory chimneys and the railway bridge.

  There was also extensive civic architecture, for example the big, high-ceilinged banking halls and post offices that took up prominent sites. During the post-1945 Modernist vogue, Victorian architecture was much castigated and many buildings were destroyed, famously the Euston Arch outside the London railway station, or left stranded amid a new world of concrete and cars. Nevertheless, an enormous amount of this architecture survives in city centres, and this remains an aspect of the Victorian culture that can be readily approached. Greek Revival was the dominant style in the first half of the century, and can be found in many cities, but it was challenged in the mid-nineteenth century by Gothic Revival (or neo-Gothic), a style advocated by Augustus Pugin, who presented it as the quintessential Christian style. It was readily adapted for the extensive church-building by Protestants and Catholics in the second half of the century. Significant architects in the style included Sir George Gilbert Scott, William Butterfield (1814–1900), G.E. Street (1824–81), Norman Shaw (1831–1912) and Alfred Waterhouse (1830–1905).

  The influential cultural commentator John Ruskin (1819–1900) also proved important as, in place of classical order, he advocated varied skylines and steeply pitched roofs. There was also much secular building in the neo-Gothic style from the 1850s, including Waterhouse’s bulky and imposing Manchester Town Hall (1869–77), as well as St Pancras Station in London. The neo-Gothic style was seen as conveying solidity and permanence. As the century waned, however, the neo-Gothic became increasingly repetitive in England, although Scottish baronial style ensured that Victorian domestic, and to an extent civic, architecture reached its apogee in the Glasgow region.

  Yet Gothic Revival did not enjoy an unchallenged ascendancy. Other styles included the neo-Renaissance of Sir Charles Barry (1795–1860). His range indicated the eclecticism that was a pronounced feature of the period. Barry’s output ranged from the neo-Gothic Houses of Parliament to the Greek Revival Manchester Athenaeum.

  The variety of the Arts and Crafts movement associated with William Morris (1834–96) helped to lighten the neo-Gothic. The influential Morris popularized an interest in craftsmanship and design skills. As was typical of the Victorians, entrepreneurship and production played a major role, with Morris and Co., established in 1861, producing wallpapers, furnishings and stained glass windows that influenced fashionable style.

  Other architectural styles and themes included, at the end of the century, Art Nouveau, which drew on Continental developments and was particularly associated with Glasgow architects, especially Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928), who stressed functionalism and modernity and criticized the revival of past styles. His 1896 design for the Glasgow School of Art was a triumph of functionalism, as were the houses he built in Glasgow in the early 1900s. Mackintosh also played an important role in furniture and design, offering interiors that were far from the opulent, often cloying, heaviness frequently associated with the period.

  The Sense of Change

  The spread of towns outwards was more significant than changes in the pre-existing urban area. This spread was accompanied by the improvement of transport links and led to the development of commuting as an aspect of daily life. The railway played the key role, but omnibuses, first horse-drawn, and later motor-powered, joined by trams, swiftly expanded the new urban transport systems. Life became a matter not only of the extent of the built environment, but also of the intense web of connections that gave it drive.

  Prefiguring the modern communications revolution of the internet and the mobile phone, the Victorians had daily postal services covering the country, as well as the telegraph to send messages even faster at home and abroad. Life was particularly speeded up in and by the cities. In 1899, Sir J.W. Barry (1836–1918) estimated that eight horse-drawn buses a minute would pass an observer on Tottenham Court Road in central London.

  This process of change did not stop or slow with Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, yet another instance of the danger of placing too great a weight on supposed turning points and significant moments. Instead, the new power sources, electricity and the internal combustion engine, provided continuing opportunities for entrepreneurs and advocates of change. New industries developed and created new links between regions. By 1907, the Britannia Foundry at Derby included a motor-cylinder foundry making 400–500 cylinders weekly for car manufacturers, such as Jowett Motors of Bradford, an output that indicated the cascading benefits of industrial production and demand.

  The sense of new possibilities was captured in the name of the cinema opened in Harwich in 1911, the Electric Palace. In addition, science fiction was increasingly potent in the imaginative landscape: The Time Machine (1895) was the first major novel by H.G. Wells (1866–1946), prophet of New Liberalism, whose scientific futurism seemed increasingly appropriate in the rapidly changing world. The Time Traveller goes to the year 802,701 where he finds a dystopia with two human species: the aesthetic Eloi and the crude Morlocks, the latter the descendants of subterranean labourers. This vision, a warning about the social and cultural divisiveness of modern Britain, reflected Wells’ interest in evolution.

  The Rise of Suburbia

  As a result of the pace of economic activity, the process of urban expansion continued to be rapid over subsequent decades. Inexpensive land, a product of the downturn in the agricu
ltural economy from the 1870s, and the availability of cheap credit, combined to satisfy the demand from the increasing population. The new housing was linked to a change in the nature of industry. The growth of factory employment and factory districts meant the decline of workshops, and thus of the industrial nature of the inner city. The new factory districts were linked to the establishment of housing estates, both these aspects of a form of development zoning that became a more apparent feature of the differentiation of cities by area. Thus, the west end of Newcastle had industry and working-class housing in marked contrast to the middle-class suburbs of Jesmond and Gosforth to its north.

  Industry was generally kept at a distance from suburbia. Indeed, the growth of suburbia reflected the desire for a life away from factory chimneys and inner-city crowding, a desire catered to in the publicity advocating life in the new suburbs. Place and movement were particularly susceptible to change, as the cities altered and the motor car spread in the early twentieth century in a symbiotic development: cars encouraged housing of a lower density, while the new suburbs were shaped by the road systems constructed for these cars. The tightly packed terraces characteristic of Victorian England, for the middle as well as the working class, were supplemented by miles of ‘semis’: semi-detached houses with some mock-Tudor elevations, red-tiled roofs, and walls of red brick or pebbledash, with a small front and a larger back garden. Each house had a small drive and a separate garage, which was often structurally linked to the house. This was a suburbia, later eulogized by the poet John Betjeman (1906–84), representing the application of pre-First World War ideas of garden suburbs, notably with an emphasis on space, calm and the separateness expressed in individual gardens.