- 13/06/2025
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00:00I'm heading out across Britain to find the history embedded in the landscape.
00:06This is a country where you're never very far from an ancient routeway,
00:11a glimpse of lost industry or a grand monument from our past.
00:16So from coastal paths to hilltop tracks...
00:20I've started doing some serious walking.
00:24Each of my walks leads me to a different time and a stunning location.
00:29To find the stories you can only really appreciate on foot.
00:34I'm in sleepy North Norfolk for this walk, exploring a famously quiet coastline.
00:40But in Victorian times, this area seemed set to change.
00:44Royal patronage, celebrity visitors, a host of railway lines and some very fine sea bathing,
00:52all made this the place to be.
00:55So how on earth did North Norfolk remain such a celebrated backwater?
01:12Just here, I'm only 100 miles from London, yet I'm in one of the quietest corners of England.
01:18And it's fantastic walking territory.
01:22One of the things I love so much about Norfolk is that you don't often come here unless you're going to come here, if you see what I mean.
01:29It's not on the way to anywhere. It's an edge, a periphery.
01:32And so much of what it is, is defined by those characteristics.
01:37In our unique British way, we've come to celebrate the fact that this area is, well, a little bit backward.
01:46Simply the best of Norfolk!
01:52We're asking you to tell us who is simply the best person Norfolk has ever produced.
01:57Where else could Alan Partridge hail from except North Norfolk?
02:02But something very dramatic happened here during the long reign of Queen Victoria.
02:08Her son, the Prince of Wales, arrived in the county, accompanied by a succession of railway lines.
02:15This area was in danger of becoming trendy.
02:20So I've come to find out how the Victorian gentry managed to keep North Norfolk in a perfect state
02:26to become the natural home for Alan Partridge.
02:30My four-day route starts beside the wash at the Queen's private residence, Sandringham.
02:37So different from its coastal neighbour, the experimental seaside resort of Hunstanton.
02:44Day two, and I'm crossing ancient agricultural land.
02:48Much of it's still dominated by the county's largest estate, Hocum.
02:53Further east, and it's the coast that's of interest, at the Victorian-inspired nature reserve of Blakeney.
03:01Finally, steam power will help carry me to Cromer,
03:05the Victorian resort that became a battleground for the heart and soul of North Norfolk.
03:11But that's 35 miles and four days east.
03:20I'm starting at a royal residence that threatened to kick-start a Norfolk awakening.
03:26Sandringham House.
03:30In 1861, Queen Victoria and her husband Albert were searching for a property for their wayward son Bertie, the future Edward VII.
03:39That summer, the 19-year-old prince had been on an army camp in Ireland, but managed to spend three nights with a young actress.
03:49Victoria claimed the incident so appalled her husband that it killed him.
03:56So when this remote country estate came on the market the following year, the now-widowed Victoria snapped it up for the equivalent of £22 million in today's money.
04:08To find out if North Norfolk tamed Bertie, I'm meeting historian Dr Kate Williams.
04:17Queen Victoria, she loved the idea of the healthy body and the healthy mind. That was Prince Albert's mantra.
04:23And that was quite a modern thing, wasn't it? It was a very modern thing, very German thing.
04:26Of course, Prince Albert was just dead, but they still, the idea of running around outside and keeping healthy and being in the country, Queen Victoria loved the idea of it.
04:36The Prince of Wales was a bit of a bad boy, wasn't it?
04:38What Queen Victoria wanted, the idea of her pushing him to get his country estate, was hopefully here he'd be away from all the glamour girls of London and be able to focus on his wife and family.
04:48But Victoria's plans didn't exactly work as she'd intended. In 1863, Edward married Princess Alexandra of Denmark.
05:00But this sheen of grown-up respectability masked a cavalcade of royal mistresses.
05:07Did any of the mistresses come here?
05:08I'm afraid they did, Tony. They came to the parties with their husbands and some of the other ones were kept outside in little cottages.
05:14So some of the mistresses were married?
05:16He had married mistresses, because if you find a married mistress, you could cover up the evidence.
05:21Bertie's ladies included actress Lily Langtry, French actress Sarah Bernhardt, French singer Hortense Schneider,
05:31the Countess of Warwick, Lady Randolph Churchill, mother of Sir Winston, and Alice Keppel, often referred to as the Prince's favourite.
05:43With its discreet location, Sandringham seemed to be the ideal cover for this sort of behaviour.
05:53Nonetheless, simply by being here, Bertie was opening the eyes of the nation to this corner of North Norfolk.
06:00People in the late Victorian era were urban dwellers, so increasingly the countryside wasn't what it was before, a place where you worked.
06:08It was a place for tourism, holidays became more popular throughout the leisure classes.
06:13Once the royals had purchased Sandringham, everyone wanted to come here. Royal spotting was an absolutely top popular hobby in the 19th century, so it really gave the area a huge boost.
06:24Our passion for the royals today is stronger than ever, no matter how soggy it gets.
06:37Our current Prince of Wales attends the Sandringham Flower Show every year, these days with Camilla, the great-granddaughter of none other than Alice Keppel, his great-grandfather's favourite mistress.
06:56Funny how things work out.
06:59Having soaked up the scandals of Victoria and Sandringham, I'm setting off on my walk through the public areas of the modern estate.
07:11In the 1860s, access here would have been strictly limited.
07:15Space and privacy really were the point.
07:18Because in addition to ladies, Bertie's other passion was shooting.
07:23Over his 50 years at Sandringham, more and more land was purchased.
07:287,000 acres of woodland were planted.
07:33Sandringham became the country's premier sporting terrain.
07:38Shooting would start each year on November the 9th, the future king's birthday.
07:43After which Bertie would use all available time to entertain the great and the good.
07:49A single day's shoot, it said, once accounted for 1,300 partridges.
07:56Edward even decreed that time itself should be altered to maximise enjoyment of the estate.
08:03This involved moving all the clocks here forward by half an hour in order to make the most of daylight hours in the winter months.
08:10He was bringing his own way of doing things to North Norfolk.
08:16And the most fashionable man in Britain was dead set on keeping development here to a minimum.
08:27Bertie, though, needed one cutting edge bit of technology to make his dual life in London and Norfolk possible.
08:34Two miles west of Sandringham House, I'm stopping off at the Royal Railway Station.
08:41In 1846, a line from St Pancras to King's Lynn was completed.
08:46It was part of a transport explosion that saw Britain acquire 10,000 miles of track in the space of just 15 years.
08:56And as Bertie and his bride, Princess Alexandra, moved into Sandringham,
09:01the Lynne and Stanton Railway Company were extending the line to the North Norfolk coast,
09:06right past their front door.
09:10It was practically their own private facility, the old station at Wolferton,
09:15about two miles from Sandringham, so near enough to be incredibly convenient and far away enough not to intrude.
09:22The trains may have long gone, but Wolferton Station remains fit for royalty,
09:31thanks entirely to its railway enthusiast owner, Richard Brown.
09:36Richard, this station, when the Prince of Wales came here, did it look like this?
09:41More or less, yes. It's changed, of course, obviously, with no track, of course, now,
09:47and that was the original building over there.
09:50That's the one with the Prince of Wales feathers over the door.
09:53But presumably, the Prince of Wales and Alexandra didn't just hang around on the platform,
09:58reading the newspaper, waiting for the train to arrive.
10:00No, they both had a hand in the design of this side, with the Great Eastern Railway.
10:08At Wolferton, an entire station was built to keep the Prince and Princess of Wales happy.
10:14The lamp fittings came topped with crowns.
10:17The station buildings matched the Tudor style of the estate.
10:21Can we have a look?
10:23So this is, as it were, the royal waiting room?
10:26Yes, indeed. Oh!
10:29And inside, there were fixtures and fittings fit for a future king and queen.
10:35To say nothing of all the VIPs who would also come through here.
10:39But his nephews, for instance, Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm,
10:46and his nephews-in-law, the kings of Greece and Spain,
10:50all came through Wolferton on their way to stay at Sandringham.
10:54Thanks a lot, Richard. Bye-bye. Bye.
10:56In 1862, the railway company must have been ecstatic.
11:04The little branch line they'd lobbied, campaigned and fundraised for
11:09was now going to service the most talked about spot in rural Britain.
11:15And heading north, I'll be sticking close to the old railway line
11:18for the rest of my days walking.
11:23My final stretch inside the Sandringham estate takes me across Dursingham bog.
11:32It's a rare chance to see what this land on the edge of the Fens
11:35would have looked like centuries ago before forestry made its mark.
11:40Lowland heath like this, with its bed of acid peat,
11:51once littered the eastern shores of the Wash.
11:54Now a protected nature reserve,
11:58Dursingham bog is home to insects galore,
12:01the black darter dragonfly,
12:03and the odd walker.
12:04Bog conquered.
12:14And I can follow the old railway track bed for a while
12:18as I make my way to the coast,
12:20and the line's ultimate destination, Hunstanton.
12:25Here at the very north-west tip of East Anglia,
12:28the line stretched beyond the royal estate,
12:30straight into another massive Norfolk landholding,
12:34that of the Lestrange family.
12:39In the 1840s, two decades before Bertie arrived at Sandringham,
12:43the man in charge was Henry Stileman Lestrange.
12:48Artist, aristo and innovator,
12:51he took note of two things,
12:53the coming of the railways
12:55and the craze sweeping more developed parts of the country,
12:58seaside holidays.
13:01Since the beginning of that century,
13:03seawater had been heralded as a wonder drug.
13:06Swimming in it could cure everything,
13:09from corns to cancer, it was claimed.
13:12South coast settlements like Brighton, Weymouth and Eastbourne
13:16had been transformed into grand and profitable resorts.
13:20But here on grassy clifftops,
13:23where sheep had grazed for centuries,
13:25Lestrange conceived of a new style of coastal resort,
13:28one that was just a little bit more Norfolk.
13:32This is a copy of his bird's-eye view of the proposed sea-bathing village
13:41near the old village of Hunstanton.
13:43Lestrange's design is like a Cotswold village.
13:48Always intended to be classy, there was to be no brash metropolis here.
13:53There were going to be between 60 and 80 little houses and a hotel somewhere for people to bathe.
14:01It was a radical vision mapped out in 1846.
14:08But even then, Lestrange believed it would take a railway to make his resort village a reality.
14:14Problem was, there was no guarantee of any railway at that point.
14:18Initially, all that got built was the new inn, which is what's now the Golden Lion Hotel there.
14:28Without a railway, this location was just too remote.
14:32Development ground to a halt, and the lonely hotel became known as Lestrange's Folly.
14:37But ten years later, there was a breakthrough.
14:44A concrete plan was laid out to extend the line from Kings Lynn past Sandringham to this northwest tip of East Anglia.
14:52This is what Lestrange had waited for.
14:55He seized his chance and gave away stretches of his land for free to ensure the line got built.
15:01The first train rolled into the new Hunstanton in October 1862.
15:08But Lestrange sadly wasn't there.
15:11He died from a heart attack five weeks before the line opened, aged just 47.
15:21Lestrange was a pioneer and a visionary, and like so many of such people,
15:27after he died, other developers were able to pursue his dream.
15:30Although I'm not sure Lestrange would have been that enthusiastic about this bowling alley and the amusement arcade,
15:37or that row of shops over there.
15:40Not incredibly Lestrange, are they?
15:45The truth is, Sunny Honey, as it's affectionately known, grew and grew in a way Lestrange could never have imagined or wanted.
15:52The railway did bring people, loads of people.
15:57And whilst Hunstanton has never rivalled a Brighton or an Eastbourne, it was an early lesson for the great and good of Norfolk.
16:05The railways had the power to usher in major and unwelcome change.
16:10Tomorrow, though, I'm moving along the coast to explore how Lestrange's even wealthier neighbours did things rather differently.
16:20I've reached the north-west tip of Norfolk, on my walk exploring how this area has remained one of the least populated stretches of modern England.
16:35Today I'm heading East, and walking away from the Wash, through an area that remains beautifully undeveloped.
16:43So why did this part of my walk never receive the Sunny Honey treatment?
16:48With a railway to support it, Hunstanton had become a rare outpost of local tourism by 1865.
16:55Today's walk, though, should prove just how rare a thing that was.
17:02Over 20 miles, I'll be crossing land that's been cultivated for centuries,
17:07as I head towards a farm that grew and grew into the county's largest and most powerful estate, Hocum.
17:18Four miles from Hunstanton, I've reached the rather lovely village of Thornham.
17:24This is just the kind of thing I was expecting from North Norfolk.
17:31Here's a nice little bit of history.
17:33In the year 1666, they were building that church tower there to fit on the end of the building.
17:39But then the Great Fire of London happened.
17:41So they had to stop because the construction team needed to go down to London in order to help in London's reconstruction.
17:47And they didn't finish it until later. Quite a bit later, actually, in 1935.
17:53Well, that's got to be the longest builder's tea break in history.
17:58But in those three centuries, I doubt the look of this land had changed that much.
18:04A field of barley is still a field of barley.
18:07But one thing had changed. The land ownership.
18:13By the time Victoria reached the throne, nearly all North Norfolk's vast acres of fertile soil were in private hands, conferring real power on those fortunate landowners.
18:24But I'm heading to Barrow Common, one of the few remaining patches of common land, where I've arranged to meet Tom Williamson, an expert in the history of Norfolk's landscape.
18:37So what happened to all the common land?
18:40When agriculture changes and modernises in the 18th century, most of it gets enclosed in various ways, often by parliamentary enclosure and reallocated as private land.
18:52Farms are getting bigger, small farms are going to the wall.
18:55But for the rich, that is an invitation for them to create these wonderful new large places for themselves.
19:01Yeah, absolutely. Once you've amassed property, through purchase, through enclosure, whatever, then you can start improving it, as they say.
19:09Creating modern farms, creating a nice park and garden round your posh mansion.
19:18It's difficult to conceive in this day and age that until quite recently, millions of acres of our country weren't owned by anyone.
19:26There were simply rights allowing folk to grow crops and graze cattle.
19:34George III's Enclosure Act scrapped that, and they transformed rural areas like this, allowing landowners to take a modern industrial approach to farming.
19:45The acts gave smart farmers the chance to become the oligarchs of the age.
19:50Here in Brankister, there used to be one of the most perfect examples of the industrialisation of Norfolk agriculture.
20:02It was called the Brankister Malthouse, and it was absolutely massive.
20:07It was finished in 1797, and it used to run all the way down the far side of that lane there, about 100 metres.
20:14And it processed 120 tonnes of barley every week.
20:20And when they'd finished processing it, they used to bring it over here to Brankister Stave.
20:25And Norfolk barley went all over the place.
20:28It went to Scotland to make the whisky.
20:31It went to Holland to make the beer.
20:33Even went to Dublin to make the Guinness.
20:35So after the land enclosures, barley was grown, malted and shipped on a massive scale.
20:44This coastline was becoming highly profitable, without the slightest hint of a tourist.
20:50And on this north-facing coast, the geography simply didn't fit the tourist mould either.
20:56What the Victorians wanted was a cliff-top walk, or a nice sandy beach and a dip in the sea.
21:04But what you get in this part of North Norfolk is this, great swathes of tidal salt marsh.
21:13Longshore currents, pushing tonnes of silt west towards the wash,
21:18have created the muddy, ever-changing marshlands of North Norfolk.
21:22They now dominate the coastline for over 20 miles.
21:27And there's one product of that process I'm rather fond of.
21:31There's a lovely patch of it there.
21:34Samphire, or samphire as they call it, round here.
21:37When I was a kid you wouldn't touch this with a barge pole,
21:40but now you can get it in all the swanky London restaurants at inflated prices.
21:45Just wash it through to get rid of the salt, cook it very, very lightly,
21:50add a bit of oil and vinegar and some pepper.
21:54Absolutely gorgeous. Fantastic.
22:00Well, the Victorians may not have been drawn to these salt marshes,
22:04but just east, the collection of villages known as the Burnhams
22:09did produce one thing the Victorians loved.
22:13A true hero.
22:14Burnham Thorpe was once home to one of England's finest.
22:19Horatio Nelson, who was born here in 1758, the son of a local rector.
22:25He didn't live long enough to be a Victorian.
22:28He died valiantly at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805,
22:32the scene of his greatest triumph.
22:33This son of Norfolk was revered by Victorian society,
22:40and about 250 pubs in Britain bear his name.
22:44But I'm stopping for lunch at the only one that was actually his local.
22:49After his first 17 years at sea,
22:53Nelson returned to his home village in 1787
22:56and waited five whole years for his next commission.
23:00Plenty of time for a drink, you'd think.
23:03And we do know that he actually came here
23:06because it's recorded that in the year 1793
23:09he threw a big dinner for the men of the village
23:13in order to celebrate the fact that he'd just taken command
23:17of the 64-gun Agamemnon.
23:19Is that for me? Thank you. Cheers.
23:22So, er, I'm in good company, aren't I?
23:27Nelson would go on to become the national hero.
23:30But in North Norfolk, the biggest name by far
23:34was Nelson's neighbour, who was busy building an estate
23:37that to this day makes even Sandringham look a little pokey.
23:40Look at that avenue, it's pretty impressive, isn't it?
23:48Just over two miles from Burnham Thorpe
23:51is the south entrance to Hocum Hall.
23:54I'm, er, just there at the entrance to Hocum Park.
24:00Hocum Park's about 3,000 acres, all trees and grass.
24:04It's really very, very big with Hocum Hall in the middle of it.
24:10But that's just the start of the story,
24:13because all the way round it there's the Hocum estate
24:16going right up to the sea and all the way round here.
24:19That is eight times as big as the park.
24:28Of all the great Norfolk estates
24:30that came together in time for the Victorian age,
24:34Hocum was the biggest and finest of the lot.
24:37It was controlled by the ultimate Norfolk farmer,
24:41Thomas William Cook,
24:43who just happened to be godfather to Henry Lestrange
24:46back in Hunstanton.
24:49Cook's utter dominance of this area
24:51was recognised in the form of a royal visit.
24:54A young Victoria came to stay,
24:56with the man hailed as the greatest commoner in England.
25:00Why did she come?
25:02Well, I think Thomas William Cook was almost a legend
25:05within his own lifetime.
25:07He'd been an MP for nearly 50 years.
25:09She commented in her diary about what an old man he was,
25:12but yet how vigorous and lively he was,
25:14you'd think he was 30 years younger.
25:16She also commented on the fact that his wife,
25:18who in fact was his goddaughter,
25:21was 40 years younger than he was.
25:22Yes, so he was.
25:24So that kept him vigorous obviously.
25:26A mischievous guy.
25:28With his international agricultural fairs,
25:31crop rotation techniques,
25:3330,000 acres and dozens of tenant farmers paying him rent,
25:37Thomas William was the greatest beneficiary of land enclosures.
25:42He's still known simply as Cook of Norfolk.
25:46Not everybody was that impressed by him, were they?
25:48No, this was a very small elitist group of very wealthy capitalist farmers,
25:53and of course under them were a huge number of very poor farm labourers.
25:59There was a lot of underemployment, a lot of unemployment,
26:02wages were the lowest amongst agricultural workers anywhere in Britain.
26:08It would be harsh to blame Cook for the broad social ills of 19th century Norfolk,
26:12but he's proved to be the key figure that shaped large parts of my walk today,
26:19and indeed tomorrow too.
26:21Such was the extent of his estate.
26:24And as if his influence wasn't great enough,
26:28Queen Victoria made the ageing Cook Earl of Leicester.
26:31In return, the new Earl of Leicester built a pub on the edge of his park,
26:37in honour of his queen.
26:42But as Cook of Norfolk gave way to his son,
26:45so our old friend the railway arrived.
26:48It went between the enormous expanse of Holcombe Beach down there
26:53and at Holcombe Village.
26:56So did that mean the estate was about to be swamped by tourists?
27:10I'm finding out how North Norfolk has remained so famously undeveloped.
27:15And so far at least, a handful of powerful landowners have been the key.
27:20By the early Victorian age, life and business in this extremity of rural Norfolk
27:27were dominated by the Earls of Leicester and their power base at Holcombe Hall.
27:32But even they couldn't escape the new age of industry and travel altogether.
27:37And in 1866, the railway came.
27:41This was the greatest farming estate in Norfolk.
27:43But in a county now made trendy by the royal family,
27:48could Holcombe resist the railway age of mass tourism?
27:52In short, yes.
27:54And today I'm hugging the coast to see how the Victorian age effectively killed off
28:00any chance of modern development ever happening.
28:02From Holcombe Park I'll be passing through the small port of Wells
28:08and on across more salt marshes to the famous nature reserve at Blakeney Point,
28:14a pristine conservation area born out of all things the Victorian love of hunting.
28:19Back on the edge of Holcombe Park, the 2nd Earl of Leicester was now adjusting to life with a railway.
28:29In 1866, the very first people to use the new line past Holcombe
28:35were the Prince and Princess of Wales, paying a visit from Sandringham.
28:38Countryside pursuits were all the rage, and the 2nd Earl of Leicester was great mates with Edward, Prince of Wales,
28:47and the two of them would go out with their guns and slaughter as many of God's creatures as they possibly could.
28:54And no amount of trains or holiday makers was going to be allowed to get in the way of that hallowed pursuit.
29:02But the 2nd Earl wasn't anti the railway age.
29:06In fact, he invested heavily in the local network, just not for tourists, but for his barley.
29:13Wells next the sea was the key gateway where the estate's barley was malted and shipped out.
29:20We got maltings all the way round the town.
29:23There aren't so many now, but there were a dozen hundred years ago here,
29:27and we were exporting half the exports of malt in the country.
29:31With the Earl of Leicester's backing, there wasn't just one, but two railway lines.
29:36Lines set to push the port and the maltings to a whole new level.
29:41But there's barely a glimmer of industry in Wells today.
29:45It's a charming little quayside where locals and visitors come crabbing as the tide comes in.
29:50But if it had two railways, why didn't Wells grow more?
29:56Wells was already busy before the railway came.
30:00And in fact, the railway made Wells quieter.
30:04Why?
30:06It actually put it into decline because it was so...
30:09Wells was built on exporting stuff and importing stuff.
30:11Yeah.
30:12And it was easier to do it by rail than it was by boat.
30:16The railways were more effective than anyone could have imagined.
30:20They killed off the fortnightly packet boat service to London almost immediately.
30:24And as ships grew bigger and the North Norfolk silt grew deeper,
30:29Wells struggled to live up to its billing of major port.
30:33All of which has left the town in some kind of time warp.
30:38Just the sort of place that appeals enormously to 21st century visitors.
30:42The next nine miles of my walk is a return to the world of the salt marsh.
30:55This unique ecosystem is fiercely protected.
30:59But 130 years ago it certainly wasn't.
31:02And the abundance of bird life drew those gun-loving Victorians.
31:07Here on the Norfolk coast, the attraction was wildfowl.
31:17The gentlemen enjoyed the sport.
31:20The ladies liked the feathered hats.
31:25Above all, gentlemen gunners wanted to shoot here.
31:29The four-mile spit of land known as Blakeney Point.
31:32Hi. Hello.
31:33Hello.
31:34The quality and range of the wildlife found here was irresistible.
31:39But, as it turned out, dangerously fragile.
31:44Coastal ranger RJ Tagala has agreed to ferry me out to Blakeney Point.
31:49It was discovered in the Victorian times as a great place to come rarity hunting,
31:53shooting birds, which were later stuffed.
31:55When you say rarity hunting, what were they after?
31:57They had a motto of what's shot is history, what's missed is mystery.
32:02It was a learning process.
32:04In 1884, a couple of brothers from London travelled down
32:07and found a bird called the Blue Throat.
32:09A beautiful bird with blue markings.
32:12The shooting of one rare visitor to Britain turned this obscure shingle spit
32:18into a dream destination for the shooting fraternity of Britain.
32:22Strange as it may seem, these gents considered themselves lovers of nature.
32:28But, without the barrel of a lens, they loved nature via the barrel of a gun.
32:37Alongside the terns, gulls and oyster catchers, today, Blakeney has some other famous residents.
32:44Is that what I think they are?
32:47It certainly is, yeah.
32:49Here we've got a mixture of grey and common seals on the end of the point.
32:52They're just as curious in us as I think we are in them.
32:56So charming, aren't they?
32:58Look at that one, kicking off up there.
32:59Look at that one.
33:00Look at that one.
33:06By the late 1800s, mass slaughter by rarity hunters and wild fowlers
33:13was having a serious impact on wildlife stocks.
33:17At Blakeney, common turn numbers dropped by up to 90%.
33:23Oyster catchers disappeared altogether.
33:25If there were to be such things as rarities in the future, something would have to change.
33:32And it did.
33:35Blakeney Point became a standard-bearer for a new national sentiment.
33:40Thanks a lot.
33:41Why do you think there was that great sea change between shooting wildlife and conserving wildlife?
33:51I think through having the opportunity to look at wildlife up close that they'd shot, gave them a sense of sentimentality.
33:56Mm-hm.
33:57Because they were appreciating the beauty of these creatures.
33:59Yeah.
34:00And a realisation that they were taking their lives.
34:02And in actual fact these wonderful creatures deserve to be conserved.
34:06What about here?
34:07When did it stop just being a spit where you might take pot shots at sea birds and seals,
34:13and started to be somewhere for the protection of wildlife?
34:16Well, in 1901, the Cly and Blakeney Wild Bird Protection Society was set up.
34:21How did that happen?
34:22Well, local wild fowlers decided that the breeding birds needed protected.
34:26A guy named Bob Pynchon came the first watcher out here.
34:29And he had been an assistant to these gunners and a wild fowler,
34:32and ended up working here protecting the birds.
34:34So he started off very much as the Victorian and then ended up the modern man, as it were.
34:41Yeah, indeed, yes.
34:44Modern conservation was a Victorian innovation.
34:48The RSPB and the National Trust, both creations of the late 1800s.
34:55The highest levels of society ditched their feathered hats in favour of flowers.
35:01And even Bertie, back at Sandringham, ended up patron of his local Birds Protection Society.
35:09And this is where you live now?
35:10This is, yes.
35:11Wow, it is so fantastic.
35:14Everybody must be green with envy.
35:18The old Blakeney lifeboat station is home to RJ and two other National Trust Rangers.
35:2521st century versions of Bob Pynchon.
35:27The man who shot, and then saved, the wildlife of Blakeney.
35:40But what did this sudden empathy for wildlife mean for the long-term future of North Norfolk?
35:45Well, in 1910, the then landowner of Blakeney Point threatened to sell to a property developer.
35:53A thousand acres in total.
35:56The new conservationists were in uproar.
35:59So funds were raised, £695 in all, to purchase the land for the new National Trust.
36:08Their first coastal nature reserve.
36:12Conservation had become a new way of ensuring this coastline would never get developed.
36:17The tiny village of Cly next to the sea is my destination this evening.
36:26Tomorrow, it's my final day's walking in Norfolk.
36:30A return to the railways, and a visit to North Norfolk's one genuine Victorian resort.
36:36I've reached my final day exploring North Norfolk.
36:50From the Prince of Wales to the birth of the National Trust,
36:54I've seen how big players here in Victorian times helped keep Norfolk nicely detached from the modern industrial world.
37:01But no one, no matter how powerful they might be, could stem the rise of the British summer holiday.
37:08In 1871, holidays became a statutory right.
37:13It might not sound much, but the Bank Holidays Act gave us six days off a year.
37:20And the rail companies wasted no time marketing their destinations to a new mass audience.
37:26In the late Victorian times, it wasn't just the rich who were coming here.
37:32My final day's walking is leading me to the place which by 1900 had become the epitome of North Norfolk.
37:40At least, as far as the holidaying masses were concerned.
37:45The nature reserves and salt marshes are behind me.
37:48And fittingly, it's steam power that will help me on my way today,
37:54before an afternoon stroll to the cliffs, villas and pier of Cromer.
37:59In national terms, the railways were, not surprisingly, rather late to arrive in this distant corner of East Anglia.
38:14But when they did, they made a big impact.
38:19And it's nice to find one that's still with us.
38:22The North Norfolk Railway has been entertaining steam enthusiasts along an old route to Cromer for nearly 50 years.
38:36But back in Victorian times, the line was intended to transform this part of the county.
38:41How old is this railway?
38:461887 was the year when it was completed through to Cromer.
38:49So that's quite late.
38:50Yes, indeed.
38:52It was built, hopefully, to sell to the Midland Railway.
38:55Why did the railwaymen in the Midlands want to throw a spur out to North Norfolk?
38:59The idea of an East-West connection gets away from all the other railways being London-centric,
39:06and opens the Midlands and the North up to wonderful holiday resorts.
39:12So it was very much a tourist line with tourist stations on it?
39:15Yes.
39:17The industry was just beginning in late Victorian times, and the idea was to take advantage of it.
39:22Pretty successful it was.
39:23They came during the summer, so much so that the profits made during the summer kept the railway running during the winter.
39:32For the railway companies, getting Londoners and Brummies to the Norfolk coast wasn't the end of the story.
39:38Once they were here, they aggressively marketed day trips.
39:43It was advertised as the Royal Route from the Midlands.
39:47Later years, once the tourism was established, they would run you all round the system.
39:51On a Wednesday, they advertised a charavan tour of Sandringham.
39:57My dad always said sixpence to the person who sees the first side of the seat.
40:01I don't think we ever were paid, but...
40:04Today, the railway only stretches as far as Sheringham, where it's clear the line built to carry tourists
40:20is now a major attraction in its own right.
40:28I'm only passing through Sheringham, but it's easily the biggest settlement I've seen on my walk.
40:33If you look at those dates, they all post-date the arrival of the train.
40:38It's hard to believe that a relatively short time ago that was all fields, isn't it?
40:46So, finally, I've found some real urban development in Victorian North Norfolk.
40:50But I'm heading on a further five and a half miles to my final destination, an intriguing coastal spot,
41:01because since the dawn of sea-bathing fashion, it had been renowned for the purity of its waters.
41:07Cromer.
41:11There was a certain class of people who came here before the railways.
41:15There were the Gurneys, who were bankers from Norwich, the Barclays, bankers from London.
41:21These were ultra-well-heeled families who were following Prince Edward and Prince Albert
41:26in coming here to live the rural life with lots of fresh air.
41:34So, unlike everywhere else on my walk, Cromer had a tourist platform to build on,
41:40albeit quite an exclusive one.
41:43And by 1887, it was the terminus of two railway lines.
41:47Londoners could be here in less than three hours.
41:52Cromer was set for an invasion from the trendy middle classes.
41:59I'm meeting Alistair Murphy of the Cromer Museum to find out what happened next.
42:04If you'd been here 100 years ago, there would have been hotels lining here
42:09and there would have been people in posh clothes, people outside the hotels
42:14and there would have been carriages pulled up.
42:15If you were anyone in the 1890s, you had to have been to Cromer.
42:21Now you'd have to have been to South East Asia.
42:24Yeah. But in 1893, it was Cromer.
42:29This entire Westcliff area of town appeared in the last ten years of Victoria's reign.
42:35At this time, the Empress of Austria and the German nobility came to stay.
42:40Prince of Wales Bertie was made patron of Royal Cromer Golf Club,
42:46although he much preferred hanging out at the Virginia Court Gentlemen's Club.
42:50And for the middle classes, there was Clement Scott, theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph.
42:56He came at the invitation of the railway company and penned a series of gushing travel reports.
43:01He named the area Poppyland, which quickly proved to be nothing short of a marketing triumph.
43:10The businessmen of Cromer, who were also the councillors, realised that they could make money out of the Poppyland brand.
43:17So a local chemist made the Poppyland bouquet, which was a perfume that ladies visiting the town would buy.
43:26And there was Poppyland China, which is very sought after to this day.
43:30But not everything about Poppyland pleased its councillors.
43:35In 1897, the elderly gentlemen who ran the council, some of them were having apoplexy at council meetings.
43:43It's in the records.
43:45At the prospect of men and women actually bathing together in the same area of Beech.
43:51Prior to that, the women would have bathed in one part of the town and the men would have bathed in other parts.
43:58But from 1897 onwards, you could bathe with your partner as long as you were dressed in a costume from neck to knee.
44:07As one of the first resorts to allow McSee bathing, visitor numbers grew and grew.
44:13And the decision was made to create an eye-catching centrepiece for Cromer's reinvention.
44:19A pleasure pier.
44:22They're all about promoting the place, aren't they? A statement of confidence.
44:26We're here to give you a really good time.
44:31Cromer Pier opened in 1901, the very end of the Victorian age.
44:38After almost 60 years of waiting, Bertie, Prince of Wales, was now Edward VII.
44:43And with its pier memorabilia and mixed bathing, Cromer seemed to finally be leading Norfolk into the world of mass tourism.
44:54But looking back at Cromer, what strikes me is how small it is.
44:58It doesn't begin to compare with all the large Victorian resorts of the south and west coasts.
45:02In truth, Bertie's ten-year reign was as good as it got for tourism in Cromer.
45:13Poppyland, with its mix of resort and rural, was the perfect brand for genteel Edwardian leisure.
45:19The Great War, though, changed British society forever.
45:26The resort that went on to thrive now had to cope with millions of working families each year.
45:33Cromer was really quite happy with just a few thousand.
45:37Poppyland simply slipped from the public's attention.
45:49And now, North Norfolk's railways have mostly gone.
45:53The nature reserves have grown.
45:58And the vast estates continue to farm, shoot and shape the future of this coastline.
46:03But I'm not sorry, because if the entrepreneurs and developers had changed this coastline in the way they did elsewhere,
46:12I wouldn't have wanted to walk it.
46:14And Cromer may be small, but it is perfectly formed.
46:18On which note, it's almost time for the end of the pier show.
46:21SPS is looking for budding entrepreneurs to take part in a revolutionary business experiment.
46:41If you've struggled with employment, but have a business idea, then we want to hear from you.
46:45Apply now at sbs.com.au forward slash business program.
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