John Betjeman on railways

[Darius43]

A few gems from Youtube and elsewhere, most likely previously posted.  If so, here they are again.

 

Evercreech Junction to Burnham on Sea.

 

Kings Lynn to Hunstanton

 

https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-john-betjeman-goes-by-train-kings-lynn-to-hunstanton-1962-online
 

Cheers

 

Darius

[D826]

Anything by John Betjeman on railways quality.  

 

The "lets Imagine a  branch line railway" linked above and the piece de resistance that is "Metroland".

 

The former used to be on  iplayer.  The latter, I'm not sure but I bought it on DVD years ago.

 

JB - a lovely laugh, a great raconteur and a passionate advocate of railways.

 

This is great too, some lovely shots of Whernside, but trespass to give operator's the collywabbles !

 

 

Edited October 28, 2023 by D826

[Oldddudders]

His excellent swansong series "Time With Betjeman" was lovely, but issues with permissions seem to have prevented it being put out onto transferable media. I believe daughter Candida is involved. 

[Not Jeremy]

1 hour ago, Oldddudders said:

His excellent swansong series "Time With Betjeman" was lovely, but issues with permissions seem to have prevented it being put out onto transferable media. I believe daughter Candida is involved. 

Was involved I should think.

 

Roger Hardingham (Kingfisher) made a DVD of the S&D prog in recent years. A really good film is “Men of steam” (or something like that) which features Bath Spa signal box, wonderful unedited footage of railwaymen talking about their experiences and sheep on the line at Freshford, this doesn’t appear to be as well known as his other films.

 

Air like wine!!

Edited October 28, 2023 by Not Jeremy
good food and steel steam

[Oldddudders]

41 minutes ago, Not Jeremy said:

Was involved I should think.

You are right. Deceased 2014. Since Wikipedia suggests she was very much part of various commemorative works re her father, I wonder what upset her about Jonathan Stedall's series. After all, Stedall had been a personal friend of Betjeman's, not just some opportunist.

 

For this teenager, 60 years ago, Betjeman's writings, sprinkled with railway references e.g.

"The old Great Eastern winding slow, to some forgotten country town" "Did this carriage really come from Waterloo?" or similar, brought Eng Lit to life. He and Auden remain my favourite poets, so I haven't progressed very far since.... 

[seahorse]

Try reading aloud "Parliament Hill Fields"

Rumbling under blackened girders

Midland bound for Cricklewood

[Andy Kirkham]

5 hours ago, Darius43 said:

A few gems from Youtube and elsewhere, most likely previously posted.  If so, here they are again.

 

Evercreech Junction to Burnham on Sea.

 

 

 

 

The Burnham-on-Sea one is lovely, and I could watch it again and again, but with multiple viewings I do notice a significant defect: he never properly explains the history of the Somerset & Dorset; he rather labours the point of the Somerset Central having been broad gauge and originally an ally of the Great Western, but never mentions the coup by which the Midland and the LSWR snatched it away; he talks about the Somerset & Dorset Joint Railway, but never explains for the benefit of non-enthusiasts what a joint railway is.

 

One thing I liked was to see the parcels being unloaded at Highbridge with "Airfix" printed on all the boxes: bound for Woolworths, no doubt.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Andy Kirkham

[Andy Kirkham]

1 hour ago, Not Jeremy said:

A really good film is “Men of steam” (or something like that) which features Bath Spa signal box, wonderful unedited footage of railwaymen talking about their experiences and sheep on the line at Freshford, this doesn’t appear to be as well known as his other films.

 

 

I recall a lovely scene, which must have been caught just by chance, of a steam train departing eastwards from Bath Spa, and then a westbound train arriving beind the BRCW prototype Lion.

[Nearholmer]

57 minutes ago, Andy Kirkham said:

he never properly explains the history

That’s a criticism that could be levelled at oodles of things that he wrote: that he eulogises or comments on things in a way that works perfectly for those who are familiar with said things, but probably isn’t very accessible to those that aren’t. It always makes me wonder how much of his poetry will last beyond the generations that can/could identify with what he is talking about. Some will, of course, because it gets to some ‘universals’ (death mostly!), but a lot seems more ‘parochial’. Mind you, he didn’t set out to be a documentary historian.

[Not Jeremy]

Indeed, not to mention a Princess Margaret look alike who is greeted by the smartly attired stationmaster off the "Blue Pullman", who is also seen ascending a spiral staircase to the elevated signal box where he also signs the train register, I think.

 

It is a really nice record, and one thing that really comes across is a lack of editing, no jump cuts and the talking heads do just that.

 

Sixty odd years later I wonder of Bath Spa will even get to keep its ticket office?

 

Sic transit gloria officium Aquae Sulis, et aliae.

 

You can blame the late Mr Vigor for that....

[Tom Burnham]

9 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

That’s a criticism that could be levelled at oodles of things that he wrote: that he eulogises or comments on things in a way that works perfectly for those who are familiar with said things, but probably isn’t very accessible to those that aren’t. It always makes me wonder how much of his poetry will last beyond the generations that can/could identify with what he is talking about. Some will, of course, because it gets to some ‘universals’ (death mostly!), but a lot seems more ‘parochial’. Mind you, he didn’t set out to be a documentary historian.

Yes, if you have to have footnotes to explain the allusions it rather destroys the effect.  The same may go for the contemporary references in Gilbert and Sullivan (well, Gilbert really).  We recently went to the ENO Iolanthe where Captain Shaw is mentioned as unable to quench the fire of passion in the Queen of the Fairies. Massey Shaw was the first head of the London Fire Brigade and would have been familiar to the middle class audiences of the period, as I believe he was quite publicity conscious.  The ENO got over it by having someone dressed as a fireman appear at the start, introducing himself as Captain Shaw and he also came on with a hose whenever fairy magic created flames.  

[Tom Burnham]

From 'Summoned by Bells':

Great was our joy, Ronald Hughes Wright's and mine,

To travel by the Underground all day

Between the rush hours, so that very soon

There was no station, north to Finsbury Park,

To Barking eastwards, Clapham Common south, 

No temporary platform in the west

Among the Actons and the Ealings, where

We had not once alighted.  Metroland

Beckoned us out to lanes in beechy Bucks -

Goldschmidt and Howland (in a wooden hut

Beside the station): 'Most attractive sites

Ripe for development '; Charrington's for coal;

And not far off the neo-Tudor shops.

We knew the different railways by their smells.

The City and South reeked like a changing-room;

It's orange engines and old rolling-stock,

It's narrow platforms, undulating tracks,

Seemed even then historic.  Next in age,

The Central London, with its cut- glass shades

On draughty stations, had an ozone smell -

Not seaweed-scented ozone from the sea

But something chemical from Birmingham.

[Nearholmer]

8 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

Not seaweed-scented ozone from the sea

But something chemical from Birmingham.

He’s spot-on with that, because the CLR got so much criticism about ‘foul air’ in early years that they installed huge fans to shove air in one end and out the other, and I’m pretty certain they installed ozone making plants too, although that may have been the Baker Street & Waterloo.

[Nearholmer]

28 minutes ago, Tom Burnham said:

Massey Shaw was the first head of the London Fire Brigade

Wasn’t there also a popular rumour/meme that Queen Victoria had a bit of a crush on him?

[Ian Hargrave]

You just beat me to it.Page57..So indulgently,I’ll add…..

 

   When,in a pause between the stations,quiet  

   Descended on the carriage we would talk  

   Loud gibberish in angry argument,

   Pretending to be foreign.

 

       If your early memories are of a boarding school education ( and mine are not ) the poetry will inevitably resonate. Even allowing for it being stuck in a time warp,his language still stirs my imagination and thoughts.That voice….
 

Many thanks for the Saturday morning Betjemania and for stirring me into a successful rummage for my age battered copy of Summoned By Bells.

[Andy Kirkham]

One of my favourites: Harrow-on-the-Hill

 

When melancholy Autumn comes to Wembley
And electric trains are lighted after tea
The poplars near the stadium are trembly
With their tap and tap and whispering to me,
Like the sound of little breakers
Spreading out along the surf-line
When the estuary's filling
With the sea.

Then Harrow-on-the-Hill's a rocky island
And Harrow churchyard full of sailor's graves
And the constant click and kissing of the trolley buses hissing
Is the level of the Wealdstone turned to waves
And the rumble of the railway
Is the thunder of the rollers
As they gather for the plunging
Into caves

There's a storm cloud to the westward over Kenton,
There's a line of harbour lights at Perivale,
Is it rounding rough Pentire in a flood of sunset fire
The little fleet of trawlers under sail?
Can those boats be only roof tops
As they stream along the skyline
In a race for port and Padstow
With the gale?

[Bernard Lamb]

I tend to remember his comments on places like Watford and Slough rather than the praise of the chocolate box landscapes. 

Bernard

[Andy Kirkham]

There's a delicious parody by Alen Bennett

 

Place Names of China

 

Bolding Vedas! Shanks New Nisa!

Trusty Lichfied swirls it down

To filter beds on Ruislip marshes

From my loo in Kentish Town

 

The Burlington! The Rochester!

Oh those names of childhood loos - 

Nursie knocking at the door

"Have you done your Number Twos?"

 

Lady typist - office party

Golly! All that gassy beer!

Tripping home down Hendon Parkway

To her Improved Windemere.

 

Chelsea buns and lounge bar pasties

All swilled down with Benskin's Pale.

Purified and cleansed by charcoal, 

Fill the taps in Colindale.

 

Here I sit, alone and sixty,

Bald and fat and fulll of sin.

Cold the seat and loud the cistern

As I read the Harpic tin.

Edited October 28, 2023 by Andy Kirkham

[Andy Kirkham]

35 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

Wasn’t there also a popular rumour/meme that Queen Victoria had a bit of a crush on him?

He also featured in the famous divorce case of Lady Colin Campbell "Victorian Sex Goddess"

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8008094-lady-colin-campbell

[Tom Burnham]

Nearly 30 years ago I was reading the John Betjeman letters and found one referring to a visit he'd made in 1944 to his friend George Barnes, who lived in a farmhouse named "Prawls", between Wittersham and Stone-in-Oxney.  He wrote "The Kent and East Sussex was rather cold but very beautiful."

 

Betjeman didn't get round to recording his journey in verse, so I thought I'd do it for him:

 

Shivering in a first-class carriage
Of the eleven twenty train
Sits JB, on faded moquette,
On his way to town again.

Church bells ring from great St Mildred’s,
(Rebuilt in eighteen sixty-four),
Then the ancient engine whistles,
The green flag’s waved and shut the door.

Faded signs pass by the window,
Suttons Seeds and Eiffel Tower.
As the train sets off for Headcorn
He hears the clock strike the half-hour,
And to him the church bell calls,
Come back again to us at ‘Prawls.’

[Oldddudders]

The last line of the Alan Bennett poem rang a bell. I am sure that That Was The Week That Was took a parody potshot at Betjeman, he being an establishment figure in their terms and thus fair game. But the rest of the poem didn't seem familiar, and I think their last line was "As I sit and read the Harpic tin."

 

Memory can be awfully faulty of course, at almost 75......

[Andy Kirkham]

Betjeman was a member of the Irish Railway Record Society

 

A Lament for Moira McCavendish

 

Through the midlands of Ireland I journeyed by diesel 
And bright in the sun shone the emerald plain; 
Though loud sang the birds on the thorn-bush and teasel 
They could not be heard for the sound of the train.

 

The roll of the railway made musing creative: 
I thought of the colleen I soon was to see 
With her wiry black hair and grey eyes of the native, 
Sweet Moira McCavendish, acushla machree.

 

Her brother's wee cabin stands distant from Tallow 
A league and a half, where the Blackwater flows, 
And the musk and potato, the mint and the mallow
 Do grow there in beauty, along with the rose.

 

'Twas smoothly we raced through the open expansion 
Of rush-covered levels and gate-lodge and gate 
And the ruined demesne and the windowless mansion 
Where once the oppressor had revelled in state.

 

At Castletownroche, as the prospect grew hillier, 
I saw the far mountains to Moira long-known
Till I came to the valley and townland familiar 
With the Protestant church standing locked and alone.

 

O vein of my heart! upon Tallow Road Station 
No face was to greet me, so freckled and white;
As the diesel slid out, leaving still desolation, 
The McCavendish ass-cart was nowhere in sight.

 

For a league and a half to the Blackwater river 
I tramped with my bundle her cabin to see 
And herself by the fuchsias, her young lips a-quiver 
Half-smiling, half-weeping a welcome to me.

 

Och Moira McCavendish! the fangs of the creeper 
Have struck at the thatch and thrust open the door.
The couch in the garden grows ranker and deeper 
Than musk and potato which bloomed there before. 

 

Flow on, you remorseless and salmon-full waters! 
What care I for prospects so silvery fair? 
The heart in me's dead, like your sweetest of daughters, 
And I would that my spirit were lost on the air.

[Darius43]

Cheers

 

Darius

 

[Nearholmer]

36 minutes ago, Andy Kirkham said:

Lament for Moira McCavendish

Am I right that this scans to The Rose of Tralee?

[Tom Burnham]

On 28/10/2023 at 12:30, Nearholmer said:

Wasn’t there also a popular rumour/meme that Queen Victoria had a bit of a crush on him?

One of the sources I looked at certainly suggested he was quite the social climber and a regular attender at titled ladies' parties.

The LFB had a fire boat named the Massey Shaw which saw a lot of use during the Blitz and was the subject of a Salvage Squad programme some years ago.  I expect someone will know where it is now.