Great Victorian Railway Journeys: How Modern Britain was Built by Victorian Steam Power. Karen Farrington
expeditions echo the eccentricities and evolution of Victorian railways, glimpsing an age of lines and locomotives the legacy of which is still evident today.
At Fenchurch Street Station.
© Illustrated London News Ltd/Mary Evans
THE GREAT WESTERN RAILWAY TERMINUS AT PADDINGTON STATION.
Initially, the town was bounded by walls and fishermen lived cheek by jowl with one another, crammed into streets known as The Rows. For decades it was The Rows that gave Yarmouth its defining features, and they expanded to fill every available inch. Several wider roads ran roughly parallel with the waterfront. Narrower passages extended from those roads at right angles, creating a medieval grid that incorporated housing for rich and poor alike.
The Rows were so narrow that a law was passed to ensure doors opened inwards rather than outwards, to avoid injury to passers-by. Daylight and privacy were at a premium for the inhabitants. Drains that acted as open sewers ran down The Rows, with good community health dependent on prevailing winds and driving rain to drive the steady outpouring of sewage into the sea.
Author Charles Dickens was struck by the bunched-up quaintness:
A Row is a long, narrow lane or alley quite straight, or as nearly as maybe, with houses on each side, both of which you can sometimes touch at once with the fingertips of each hand, by stretching out your arms to their full extent.
Now and then the houses overhang and even join above your head, converting the row so far into a sort of tunnel or tubular passage. Many picturesque old bits of domestic architecture are to be found among the rows. In some rows there is little more than a blank wall for the double boundary. In others the houses retreat into tiny square courts where washing and clear starching was done.
Eventually Yarmouth’s population outgrew the confines of the thirteenth-century town walls and, led by the example of wealthy merchants, spilled over on to nearby land formed when the seaways silted up.
Bradshaw’s guidebook mentions to the town’s fishing industry, also making reference to The Rows:
© Mary Evans Picture Library/Francis Frith
Great Yarmouth, Row Number 60, 1908.
© John Worrall/Alamy
A steam train passes Weybourne windmill on the North Norfolk Railway connecting Sheringham with Holt.
© Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division
The Jetty, Great Yarmouth
The old town contains about 150 streets or passages, locally called rows, extending from east to west, in which many remains of antiquity may still be traced … the inhabitants are chiefly engaged in the mackerel, herring or deep sea fisheries which are here prosecuted to a very great extent with much success.
Yet it makes little reference to the holiday trade which was by then beginning to boom. Great Yarmouth had long been a destination for a few well-heeled tourists who enjoyed the fresh air and the perceived benefits of sea water.
It was the arrival of trains that fired up the holiday trade, with trippers coming from London and other cities to sample the delights of the east coast. Without the onset of train travel, it’s doubtful that the national passion for a trip to the seaside would ever have taken root, for travel by coach was slow and expensive by comparison. The town’s first station, known as Yarmouth Vauxhall, opened in 1844, and so popular was Great Yarmouth as a destination that one estimate insists more than 80,000 people visited the resort just two years after that station opened.
Great Yarmouth was once served by four separate train lines, and a clutch of town centre stations and no fewer than 17 other stations were spread around the borough. It was such a popular destination that the Great Eastern Railway produced postcards featuring views of Great Yarmouth to sell to its passengers.
When a suspension bridge collapsed on 2 May 1845, killing 79, the dead surely included some of the new influx of tourists. People had gathered on the bridge to watch a clown in a barrel being towed down the River Bure by a team of geese. As the barrel passed under the bridge they rushed for the other side to catch more of the spectacle, causing supporting chains to snap. Scores of people, mostly women and children, were hurled into the river and local men took to their boats to save them.
According to an account in the Norwich Gazette, tragedy on a far greater scale was averted:
It can be easily imagined that a mass of people thus precipitated into water, five feet deep, would have but a small chance of saving themselves; and but for the prompt assistance which was afforded, few, very few, would have escaped. Boats and wherries were immediately in motion and from 20 to 30 with gallant crews, were soon among the drowning people, picking them up with wonderful rapidity. Many were put on the shore in their wet clothes who went directly home, and no account was taken of the number thus saved.
The tombstone of nine-year-old bridge disaster victim Thomas Beloe, in nearby St Nicholas’ Churchyard, depicts the tragedy. In fact saving lives became something of a theme for Great Yarmouth, with local boat-builder James Beeching winning the 100 guinea first prize in an 1851 competition to find the best self-righting lifeboat.
THE SELF-RIGHTING LIFEBOAT
Lifeboat design was still in its infancy in the Victorian era and the 1851 competition was launched to design a new and better boat. It had several stated aims. Lifeboats of the future needed to be lighter in construction than previous models so that they could more easily be launched from the beach. They also needed to be cheaper to make so that more could be produced. With such generous prize money on offer the competition attracted 280 entries from across Britain, Europe and even the USA.
Following adjustments, and with inspiration taken from other designs submitted for judging, the Beeching lifeboat became the basis of the longstanding Norfolk and Suffolk class of boats. Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century the design was improved, but the Beeching boat’s enduring feature was its buoyancy, with air-filled cases at the bow and stern and cork cladding. It effectively discharged the seawater which frequently swamped small, open boats through valved tubes, and an iron keel acted as ballast. It was stable, self-righting, fast, robust and comparatively roomy. Boats like this saved countless hundreds of lives during the remainder of the century.
A self-righting boat like Beeching’s was popular with lifeboat men. Analysis of the number of capsizes between 1852 and 1874 showed their instincts were probably right. In that time, 35 self-righters rolled with the loss of 25 men out of a total of 401. At the same time 8 non-self-righters capsized, killing 87 men out of 140.
© Mary Evans Picture Library
A lifeboat rests on its carriage, c. 1880.
However, a train from Great Yarmouth heading for Norwich was involved in a night-time collision on 10 September 1874 in which 25 people died and 50 were injured. It occurred after a signalling error