The Great British Story: A People's History

In the story of the British people

we've reached the threshold of the modern age.

Through civil war and revolution,

the nations of Britain emerged in the 18th century

with their own identities,

while part of a union that made them all Britons.

Their tale is one of creativity, resilience and invention.

And never more so than during the industrial revolution

when Britain became the workshop of the world.

With their inherited skills and freedoms

the British became the world's first industrial nation.

Pioneers in engineering,

science and knowledge,

they laid a path that others would follow .

In the next chapter of The Great British Story:

The origins of empire and the industrial revolution.

Those who lived through the industrial revolution

saw that it would reshape humanity .

For some that offered liberation .

The poet Wordsworth marvelled how

"an inventive age had given birth, almost with the speed of magic,

to a new and unforeseen creation,

wielding her potent enginery to frame and to produce

with rests not night or day. "

Others, though, saw enslavement to the machine.

"Cruel works of many wheels I view," said the poet William Blake.

"With cogs tyrannic, moving each other by compulsion,

not in freedom. "

It was to be the issue of the age .

In 1700 Britain was a small island off the edge of Europe

with less than six million people.

Nothing compared with the power houses of world history at that time:

Ming Dynasty, China, Mogul India, the Ottomans.

But, in the course of the 18th century,

Britain became the world's first industrial nation

and acquired an empire which eventually became the greatest in world history.

And how it all happened

is one of the greatest stories in history.

The industrial revolution didn't come out of the blue.

It was driven by deep social and economic forces

working below the surface of society since the 13th century.

Local industries meeting basic needs -

heat, tools, clothing -

but now accelerated by invention .

William Clark came over from England in 1736

and started making linen right here at this very spot.

Beetling is where you hammer the cloth

to make it into a continuous cloth, as opposed to warp and weft.

That's before it's beetled, only it's wet. It's run through starch and it's wet.

As I keep putting it on and turning it every day

it goes on till it comes to this stage.

Across Britain and Ireland

traditional industries began to mechanise .

In the potteries, old manufacturers went into mass production

for the growing middle and working classes who no longer wanted wood on their tables.

Almost everybody that you knew from this area worked in the pottery industry.

These specialised industries gave rise to new skills and new communities.

How long have you been doing this?

This particular job, about 22, 23 years. Wow!

In the five towns of the potteries

they used local coal seams for the kilns

but the fine china clay came from Cornwall .

Some of the most famous names in world pottery set up here:

Doulton, Wedgwood, Spode and Minton .

Founded in the 1780s, Dudson's are still thriving.

They also made high-end pottery,

reflecting the growing international reach of British society,

depicting the ideals as well as the tastes of the new age.

Tell us about this black ware here, Alison.

This was originally fashionable in the 1770s.

But it had a renaissance in the 1870s

when Queen Victoria went into mourning on the death of Prince Albert.

So the potters obviously responded with a black range of pottery.

In the Black Country they had been makers of chains, nails, needles and blades

since the 14th century .

And now domestic production was organised on a new level

through a huge network of cottage workshops

with child labour .

I'm just going to knock this into the shape of a U now.

Hopefully.

This work was still all done by hand.

How do you know if it's hot enough to get out the fire?

By eye. You just watch the flames.

And it's like sparkly little bits.

Then, when you bring it out, it's really fizzing.

That's why you need to be standing back that far, because when I hit it, the sparks will fly.

In the 18th century, chains had many different uses.

And children this age would have made them .

Did you see how hot it was? Yeah!

One of the key factors in the industrial revolution was coal.

They'd mined it in Yorkshire and Durham since the Middle Ages.

And here in Gloucestershire you can see another factor that helped the rise of industry.

Freedom .

These are the Free Miners of the Forest of Dean.

Nobody's ever been able to find the physical charter

but the story is that Edward I or II, depending on which book you read,

gave us our rights right back in the 13th century or thereabouts.

And we obtained these rights by going to Berwick-upon-Tweed

and driving a tunnel underneath the walls of Berwick-upon-Tweed

and allowing the king to take the city.

And in his gratitude he gave the foresters the right

to mine coal, iron and stone

in the Forest of Dean for evermore.

The first mine I went down they dropped me down a shaft

120ft deep in a 40 gallon drum

with two hooks in the side on a hand winch.

I was 13.

The Forest of Dean actually was built on the minerals

that are under the ground.

Because at one time there was nothing here.

It was a hunting place for royalty. There was nothing here.

A tremendous amount of wealth had come out of the ground.

And that is how all the villages and towns and that sprang up,

because of what is underground.

Follow me down

Another key to the industrial revolution

was Britain's mineral riches:

Copper, iron and tin from Cornwall .

This land is barren and broken

Scarred like the face of the moon

Here at Levant mine

these children have come to see where their ancestors toiled

deep below the sea bed.

This shaft is about 2,000ft deep.

And under the sea

there are 70 miles of tunnels.

Will I find gold in the caves?

You were saying that your nan worked in the mines. Is that right?

Yeah. And how old is she now?

94. She's 94!

Where there's a mine or a hole in the ground

That's where I'm heading for

South Crofty mine was first dug in Tudor times.

Between the 18th century and the 20th, its vast caverns were expanded

to 2.5 miles across and 3,000ft deep .

Oh, that is just epic, isn't it?

Look at that!

So when was this dug out? Do you know, Chris?

I guess it was started at the beginning of the century.

Would this have been all hacked out by hand, then?

Yes, this was all done by hand.

We talk about the industrial revolution

as if it's something that happened rather swiftly

from the late 1700s onwards.

But these techniques existed for centuries here in Cornwall.

And what you see here is the product of a slow percolation of history,

of the endeavour of ordinary people working at a local level.

It's just astounding.

Where there's a mine or a hole in the ground

That's where I'm heading for...

So the industrial revolution came out of a perfect convergence

of ideas and industry

with a skilled and adaptable workforce .

Now, we're always taught that the industrial revolution

was an English phenomenon,

Coalbrookdale and Ironbridge and the Lancashire cotton mills,

and they were important,

but it all depends what you mean by origins.

As we've seen through this series,

our industrialisation was really a long, slow progress over time.

They were working metals in the Black Country and Sheffield

back in the 13th century.

So if you're going to look for a catalyst for these great events

in the early 18th century

how about not looking in England

but here in Wales?

This is Swansea Bay

and they'd been smelting metals here, especially copper,

since the 1600s.

It was out of these deeper roots that the great leap forward in history began.

From a long crystallisation

new technologies would remake society,

leading to the fateful transformation of humanity across the globe.

As Wordsworth had said,

"At social industry's command,

how quick and how vast an increase. "

And there was hope, too,

to build Jerusalem

in these dark satanic mills .

It's a new birthplace for the industrial revolution

here in the world's first industrial nation, Wales.

Originally the copper works were importing their ore from Cornwall

and in the late 18th century

from North Wales as well, from the mines on Anglesey.

But when those reserves ran out

they turned their sights to Cuba, to Chile, to South Australia,

and shipped in huge cargos of copper.

Some of the big uses of copper that made the industry take off...

First of all, the Royal Navy used copper

for sheathing the hulls of ships to protect them from degradation

when they were at sea for long voyages.

And shortly after that

came the development of coinage and the use of copper in coinage.

The Birmingham manufacturers Matthew Boulton were producing coins

and needed good, reliable supplies of copper.

So, at its height the Swansea valley must have been an amazing sight.

It wouldn't have looked pretty, I think we can safely say.

The coal industry, of course, was what made smelting so profitable in this area,

the availability of large volumes of coal near the surface

that could be mined and used for smelting.