The navvies who built Britain's railways

This is a short of account of the navvies – the men who did most of the hard work in creating the network of railway lines built by the Victorians in Great Britain.

Who were the navvies?

Some 20,000 miles of railway track were laid in Great Britain before the end of the 19^th century, using technology that was limited to simple block and tackle lifting gear and copious amounts of gunpowder for blasting through solid rock. The rest of the work was done by armies of men using picks, shovels and barrows. Many of those men were known by the generic term “navvy”.

The word is a contraction of “navigator” and harks back to the great construction projects of the previous century, namely the building of the canals, or “navigations”, which were now being superseded by the railways. Many of the new “navigators” were direct descendants of the canal-builders, and were proud to carry on the traditions that went with the job.

A special class of workman

A distinction needs to be made at the outset between the navvies and other labourers who contributed to the creation of the railway network. The latter were often agricultural workers who put in a spell on the railways when work was scarce on the land, drifting away when harvest or seedtime came around.

The true navvy tended to look down on the casual labourers who never did the most difficult and dangerous work, and failed to follow the railway as it moved on through the countryside. The navvy was a special type of workman, and he knew it.

Although navvies came from all over the country, the largest contingents were from Scotland, Ireland, Lancashire and Yorkshire. Their pride in their vocation was reflected in their dress sense. In his book "The Railway Navvies", Terry Coleman listed their “uniform” as “moleskin trousers, double-canvas shirts, velveteen square-tailed coats, hobnail boots, gaudy handkerchiefs and white felt hats with the brims turned up”. The true navvy belonged to a working-class elite.

Hard workers, hard drinkers

There were three things that marked a worker out as a real navvy. One was that he did the most demanding jobs that needed to be done, including blasting out tunnels and cuttings with gunpowder and working long hours in all weathers and seasons of the year. Another was that he moved along the railway as it proceeded, spending many months away from his family, camped out in portable huts or sleeping in barns and farm outhouses.

The third “requirement” was that he was as hard a drinker as he was a worker. It was not unusual for a navvy to down a gallon a beer a day, and many employers also paid wages partly in beer.

A navvy’s life consisted of long bouts of incredibly hard work followed by days of total inactivity. Wages were often paid in local pubs, so pay days were followed by drinking sessions that would render the navvies incapable of work for some time afterwards. They would report back for work when the money had all been spent.

It was possible for a local farm worker to qualify as a navvy, but it took about a year for them to gain enough strength, and beer-drinking capacity, to stand the working conditions and be accepted into the “guild”.

When a railway was being built in your locality it was not just the noise and disruption that had to be endured, it was also the presence of hundreds of navvies who were often drunk and caused fights and riots. Local farmers had to put up with their animals being stolen and killed and their crops despoiled, as well as their best workers been lured away with the prospect of better wages.

A dangerous job

Navvies were usually paid via a piecework system which meant that the longer they worked each day, and the more material they shifted or bricks or track they laid, the more money they earned. This had the effect that railway building was very rapid during the “railway mania” of the mid-19^th century, but it also meant that corners were cut and the safety record among the navvies was appalling.

For example, if the task involved blasting out rock to create a cutting, and the more material you shifted you more you earned, the temptation was to use larger charges of gunpowder and thus bring down more rock with each blast. The first recorded death of a navvy, on the approach to Liverpool in 1827, was the result of too large an overburden being brought down and the crushing of the man who had made this happen.

The death toll on the railways was enormous and there was also a huge attrition rate caused by poor diet and drunkenness. Very few navvies could expect to live beyond their forties.

The legacy of the navvies

Although the network of railways in Britain is far smaller today than at the close of the 19^th century, what remains is testament to the efforts and courage of the navvies. Nowhere is this seen to better effect than on what must be the most scenic railway in England, namely the Settle and Carlisle line, which was a relatively late addition to the network. This runs through some of the most dramatic and wild landscapes in the country and was built by manual labour between 1869 and 1875. 6,000 men worked on the line in all weathers, and the string of lineside cemeteries and memorials is evidence of the high death toll that it exacted.

For example, the magnificent Ribblehead Viaduct, a quarter-mile long and consisting of 24 arches 165 feet high, took five years to build and cost one life a week on average. Close by is Blea Moor tunnel, which is more than a mile long and took four years to dig out of solid rock. Many men were driven mad after months of working on it and were unable to work underground ever again.

The contribution of the navvies can perhaps best be appreciated by walking along some of the disused tracks which now form long-distance footpaths and cycle tracks through some of the remotest corners of the country. The massive cuttings and embankments that were needed to keep the gradients as gentle as possible were built by the sheer physical efforts of men who were far from home and had no prospects in life apart from carrying on till they dropped. The walker or cyclist who is spared a steep hill to climb, but who might fancy a nice pint or two at the end of the day, might consider that the gallon drunk by each navvy who built the route was nothing like enough compensation.

© John Welford