The railway navvies

Towards the end of the 19th century gangs of itinerant labourers worked away to create our county’s rail network. Stephen Roberts visits Surrey History Centre to find out more

- Stephen Roberts

They swarmed all over the countryside like industrious ants, a community in perpetual motion. They worked, lived, slept, ate and drank like there was no tomorrow, and for some of them there wasn’t. These were the so-called railway ‘navvies’, huge gangs of itinerant labourers doing the dangerous back-breaking toil that was feverishly creating a new transport infrastructure.

Among the Surrey History Centre’s many treasures is an album of old railway photographs, dating to 1884. There are 46 large-scale black and white pictures in total, that have a faded, sepia look about them, yet the navvies stare out at you with crystal clarity. It’s as though they’ve just stepped off a long shift and are giving you a questioning stare. Not one of them has ‘high-viz’. Incidentally, that word ‘navvy’ comes from ‘navigator’ (the navvies built the navigation canals in the 18th century before they built the railways in the 19th). A navvy was essentially a labourer employed in excavating and gave us the expression ‘working like a navvy’ (meaning toiling hard).

I’m interested in these pictures for several reasons. It’s unusual to find so many images of a railway line being constructed. Our interest is usually at the other end, when the route has been completed and the trains are running. The line the men were building is in Surrey too: The New Guildford Line between Surbiton and Guildford, which opened 135 years ago, in February 1885. This was the London & South Western Railway’s line, which ran from Surbiton to Guildford (via Cobham and Effingham Junction). At the same time the LSWR was also building the Effingham Junction to Leatherhead line (via Bookham). Both of these lines are still in use 135 years later, ferrying millions of commuters into work, and home again, every year.