Mrs Gaskell and her Cranford (From Basingstoke Gazette)

Mrs Gaskell and her Cranford

OVER the years, BBC television has produced many period dramas in which national events have been highlighted by the stories that have evolved in the series.

Elizabeth Gaskell, the novelist

The present one, called Cranford, on BBC1, is based on several stories written by Elizabeth Gaskell, and relates to events in a village during the Industrial Revolution of the 1840s, including the construction of the railway across the country.

The story deals with the life of a peaceful village called Cranford, where mainly elegant old ladies live with their quaint social decorum under the leadership of the Honourable Mrs Jamieson. The two chief characters are the two Miss Jenkyns.

Then the workmen arrive to bring the railway through the area.

The author of the original Cranford was born Elizabeth Stevenson at Cheyne Row, in Chelsea, London, on September 29, 1810.

The view from Holy Ghost hill across Basingstoke before the railway was built in 1839

Her father was, in succession, a teacher, preacher, farmer, boarding-house keeper, writer and keeper of the Treasury records.

Her mother died when she was a child, so Elizabeth was brought up by an aunt in the village of Knutsford, in Cheshire, (which became the "Cranford" of her future stories).

She grew into an attractive young lady with a sweet disposition.

In 1832, she married William Gaskell (1805-84), a Unitarian minister in Manchester, where she went to live.

They had four daughters and a son, but the latter died as a child.

Elizabeth was so distraught by his death that her husband suggested she take up writing to take her mind off the tragedy.

She wrote the story Mary Barton anonymously, which dealt with labour problems among the weavers of Manchester, but it was criticised by politicians who did not want such matters brought to the attention of the reading public.

But one man considered the book "well written", and that man was Charles Dickens.

He suggested to Elizabeth that she write other stories for his magazine Household Words, which she did, on several occasions.

Mary Barton, published in 1848, was followed by The Moorland Cottage in 1850, and Cranford in 1853. In the following years she also wrote several others.

Besides her novels, Elizabeth Gaskell also wrote The Life of Charlotte Bronte in 1857, who was a firm friend of hers. She had died just two years before, aged 39.

Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly at Holybourne, near Alton, in Hampshire, where she had lived for several years, on November 12, 1865, aged 55.

In those last years of her life, she visited Basingstoke at times to call on Charles Jacob, the bookseller in Winchester Street, to consult with him about the sales of her books.

Her body was transported to the Unitarian Chapel in Knutsford and buried in the cemetery there. When her husband died 19 years later, he was buried with her.

The Industrial Revolution of the early 19th century also affected Basingstoke, especially concerning the arrival of the railway.

The town had 3,500 people living here in 1831, when the Southampton ship owners, after seeing what the Liverpool and Manchester Railway had done for Liverpool in the way of trade, decided to apply for a railway between London and Southampton, with the result that the engineer Francis Giles carried out a survey across southern England.

His report resulted in the construction of a line between the two cities. It began with Nine Elms and Woking Common, in Surrey, but, due to his lack of construction experience with railways (he was a canal engineer), he resigned and Joseph Locke took over.

When the workmen arrived in the Basingstoke area, the "navvies" set about drinking dry the local inns, and (like the Cranford story) the crime increased ten-fold in the years that they spent digging out the ground for the railway track.

The line of the railway track went north of the town, but there were still upsets over the Holy Ghost hill being dug through, while the workhouse in Basing Road complained of the noise from the trains just yards from the building when the railway opened.

For Mr Whistler and his flour mill, near Norn Hill, his business came to an end a few years later.

Compensation was paid to those who suffered, but it was the stagecoaches that experienced the hardships of trade. After the railway line was opened between Basingstoke and London in June 1839, people preferred to travel by train rather than in a bumpy coach-and-horses.

The section to Winchester was completed a year later, due to problems in cutting through the hills and making the tunnels, so the stagecoaches were still used for that short journey during those months.

But for all the problems that the railway brought to Basingstoke, it was to bring trade and industry over the following years.

And, yet, if the original route of the line had been laid - passing through Alresford from London to Southampton - and had not curved up to Basingstoke, then life in the town may have been completely different.

Who knows?