Victorian Britain was changed forever by the advent of the railways. The rapidly expanding railway networks linked distant towns together for the first time, opening up new markets for manufacturers, and opportunity for local people. Development of railways depended upon a combination of leading edge engineering, ground breaking architecture, demand from businesses and the creation of an increasingly literate and numerate population. All these themes will be explored over the ten weeks of this course.
New opportunity was created for businesses which allowed to them to grow and employ an increasing number of people. Cheaper and faster freight services outcompeted canals, and allowed for retail businesses to replace traditional markets, whilst a wider variety of better quality affordable food could be brought into the large towns and cities of Britain improving almost everyone's diet. National newspapers were created once the national network was approaching completion, which allowed everyone in Britain, many of whom could by then read to a good standard, to become aware of not only British, but also global news.
We will examine all of these topics on the course as well as how the railways were fundamental in the creation of a British favourite, fish and chips, and professional sport as well as democratising theatre.
Railways have often been said to have been the cause of economic growth and population change in Britain in the nineteenth century, but were they ? We will explore these generalisations to see if it was really what happened in Victorian Britain.
The railway companies were amongst the biggest businesses that the country had ever seen, but how did they care for their staff, if indeed they did, and who worked for the railways ? We will look at the working lives of Victorian railway people, both men and women to discover what it really meant to work for Britain's Victorian railways.
British society was impacted strongly by the arrival of railways although many places were bypassed by the earlier routes. We will explore what this meant to the people of those places, and what they did to improve the situation.
Find out what the Victorian railways really meant to Britain and its people.