Kevin Harrison
The tidal wave of the industrial revolution swept though Britain, changing it from an agricultural land to one driven by coal and growing crowded towns. Technological change may have been at the forefront and millions of pounds of capital backing was used as to back ambitious schemes, as well as the odd audacious one. But, more than any other factor, it was physically transformed shovel load by backbreaking shovel load by the navvies.
Alan Fearnley painting of Ribblehad Viaduct Construction
Reaching the three-quarter point in our programme of talks for the 2024/2025 season, we welcomed Kevin Harrison on Monday 17th February to the Methodist Church. That evening Kevin revealed the story of that lost tribe of workers, Navvies.
A name derived from navigator, this itinerant group played an essential role in the construction of canals, railways, tunnels, drainage and sewage systems, bridges and dams all over Britain and the world, for three centuries-the 18th, 19th and into the 20th.
During the nineteenth century, one out of every 100 people in the UK worked as a navvy. By 1850, 250,000 workmen - more than the Army and Royal Navy combined - had laid 3,000 miles of railway line across Britain. They came from all across the country, but particularly from Ireland, Scotland, Lancashire, and Yorkshire.
In the ninety years preceding the outbreak of the First World War, the construction of over 23,000 'route' miles of line provided work for the navvy in railway building somewhere in the United Kingdom. Certain periods, such as the late 1840s when the 'Railway Mania' collapsed, saw a catastrophic decline in the demand for labour and, bythe final decades of the nineteenth century, the navvy was compelled to find an increasing proportion of his employment in the fields of dock and reservoir construction.
Navvies working on railway projects often used hand tools and explosives. Steam-powered mechanical diggers or excavators (originally known as'steam navvies') were available in the 1840s, but were not considered cost efficient until much later in the nineteenth century, particularly in Britain and Europe, where skilled labourers were readily available and very inexpensive.
“Shanty towns” of squalid temporary accommodative formed the living quarters of many navvies employed to build railways in the early part of the 19th century. Initially, the housing "huts" were constructed quickly and meant to be temporary. As a result, little thought was given to comfort, let alone sanitation, which was actually a prominent issue for everyone during the Victorian era. Having a navvy community overtaken by cholera, dysentery or typhus was not uncommon.
It was not uncommon for engineering work to be abandoned during harvest season as Navvies skipped off their usual work for better pay and benefits helping a local farmer with his crops. Living a hard life for little reward and taking great personal risk, inevitably led the Navvies to search for some relief. Because of the transitory nature of their work, sport or regular hobbies were hard to pursue. Mostly, they took to drinking and brawling – something they were very good at, as the physical power generated from their work made them fearsome opponents.
These children are posing beside their hut at Newton Purcell, Oxfordshire, an example of a family living with a navvy as they travelled across the country
As they tramped through the country, often with families, they lived in harsh conditions regularly for years on end, in rough timber and turf huts alongside the bridges, tunnels and cuttings that they built. This lifestyle meant the development of a culture, and even a language, of their own. They gained a reputation for hard fighting, hard living and hard drinking. ‘Respectable’ Victorians viewed them as degenerate and a threat to social order, but much of that criticism was unjustified.
Into the 20th century and particularly after the first World War navvying was never quite the same again. Smaller scale public work projects were carried out. Men continued to work on the construction of branch lines, as well as roads, tram systems, water works, gas and electric services, but these schemes could not support tens of thousands of navvies moving from job to job across the country. The laissez-faire nature of navvy working life came up against the barrier of growing employment laws. Though even in 1931 there were more than 400,000 men listed as labourers, but these could not be cassed as the navvies of Victorian Britain who had been shunned by society and who lived in nomadic isolation, but settled workers who mostly inhabited the towns and cities where they earned their living.
Essentially, the British navvy was a short-lived product of industrial expansion and engineering achievements. Their lives may now be largely forgotten, but the legacy of their monumental efforts has forever changed the face of our landscape.
