£12.00
Andrew Swift
Publication Date: 2006
Format & Edition: Paperback, First Edition
Pagination: 295 Pages
Condition: New
Genre: Great Western Railway (GWR)
Status: In Stock
Synopsis
The Ringing Grooves of Change: Brunel and the Coming of the Railway to Bath by Andrew Swift.
Few people have had as great an impact on Bath as Brunel. He changed the face of the city and brought the coaching trade, the bedrock of its prosperity for almost two centuries, to an abrupt end. Far from opening up the city to mass tourism, the arrival of the railway accelerated Bath’s decline as a fashionable resort. West of the city, at Twerton, the effects were even more devastating: the village was cut in two by a high viaduct, and its weaving industry was decimated by an influx of cheap material from the North of England. In the east of the city, Brunel drove his line through Sydney Gardens, transforming a refined retreat for the upper classes into the most scenic railway cutting in the country.
The Ringing Grooves of Change tells the story of Bath’s invasion by an army of navvies, drinking, whoring and fighting in shanty towns on the edge of the city, while armed Chartists massed in the streets and local elections descended into drunkenness and anarchy. It was against this turbulent background that Brunel brought the railway to Bath.
With a section devoted to the building of Box Tunnel and a new Brunel Trail from Keynsham to Box, The Ringing Grooves of Change tells the gripping story of how a great man changed a great city for ever.
Chapters
Before the Railway
Brunel comes to Bath
A Practicable Object
Parliament Approves
Grand Undertaking
Digging Starts
Onward to America
People’s Charter
Navigators
Way of the Railroad
Sydney Gardens
Ornament to our Beautiful City
Open to Bristol
Fear and Loathing in Bathwick
Floods
Open to London
Drunken Election
Excursions
Riotous Assemblies
Narrowing of the Line
Decline and Fall
Story of the Box Tunnel
Brunel Trail from Keynsham to Box