[Music] 1788 and a company arrive at this very location to build something
new something groundbreaking and they insist that local workers are used the local workers
turn up but after a week or so of work here they realize that they can't earn a daily
wage compared to what they were already doing welcome to the most dangerous job in
history, 1760 it's said that the price of coal in Manchester pretty much halved
overnight the Bridgewater Canal was open it linked the Worsley coal mines to Manchester industrial
revolution had begun now whilst the Bridgewater Canal was very different in its formation to the
dozens that almost immediately followed, it didn't employ a contractor it was paid for by
one individual rather than the company well it did however pave the way forward for the first
generation of Canal builders James Brindley was the engineer for Lord Bridgewater and now Brinley
was very much in demand what I love about this era of canal building this era of History generation
one of canal building is that these Engineers they weren't really working to any blueprint
nothing like this had come before there was new problems that needed new Solutions new
technologies their work really shaped everything that was to [Music] come that Cur up a romantic
image of the time but of course there is a much darker side a side that gives us the title of this
video and in telling you today's tales and stories of the navvy be
walking along the Basingstoke Canal the abandoned section there's quite
a lot of Little Treasures to see the first is just around this
corner, Brindley loved the Contour of the land he loved using those Contours to weave his way
through the landscape but as he would learn this wasn't always possible if you wanted a profitable
Canal it's likely you're going to be moving coal but if you're moving coal you're not going
to be on flat terrain this would mean tunnels embankments and cuttings and moving earth like
never before so not only are the Technologies new but the workforce needed that too was new to this
world generation 1, 1760s and something like a dozen new Canal companies were given Royal Ascent
the newspapers from the time give us a flavor of what's to come 1767 and a contractor for
the Staffordshire and Worcester's can now put an advert out with a list of names of those who had
absconded from their work and threatening legal action to those who would potentially employ them
the Chesterfield Canal went to Great Lengths stating in their contracts that anyone found
absconding would be brought back and docked to the cost of doing so from their wages their work
was truly valued but the first visual treat today isn't that gorgeous access Bridge or whatever it
is the beautiful tree hanging over the scene in front of me it is just there there's an old Brick
Works, Up Nately brick works, Brick Works and in there is a submerged vessel come take a look at
this and I have a feeling perhaps by the amount of rain we've had over the few last few months we
might not see the treat I had in mind I think it's more of a once in five yearly event when
there's a drought yeah the canal is doing its job and holding water it's if it wasn't sometimes when
there's a drought you'd see just down there a submerged [Music] barge 1788 and the basing
Stoke Canal company are about to build this the basing Stoke Canal there we are a rope mark from
the horses pulling the barges along where it wees against the brick now the Reverend stebbing Shore
provided us with some notes at the time right here and those notes give us the first first biggest
clue that the navvy had arrived now the good Reverend noted that the basing Stoke Canal company
made a demand of the contractor that anybody who lived locally could come here and work should
they wish to he described them as the industrious poor and they did so they flocked here possibly in
their hundreds but after a week or so there was a problem none of them could earn any sustenance now
this wasn't because the wages were low in fact the opposite is true the implication is that
the navvy on site here was paid for the amount of Earth they moved so instead of the locals
working here the Navies from similar uh operations were brought in and they did indeed earn a good
living we can now see the type of person needed for this work the beam continued and the wages
Rose the Lancaster Canal reported that some navies earned 2 Shillings and6 per day at the time they
employed around 230 of them the late 1700s would see Canal Mania at its peak and the navvy would
flock in their thousands to the work but what exactly did they do and why was the job so
perilous so Brinley in his early Canal well he just utilized the contours of the land and
snaked his way through the landscape as time went on the engineers contractors wanted to take more
direct routes and for that you'd need all sorts of engineering let's take for example this this
is probably a maybe 10 or 15 M deep cutting and you'd have what was called the dreaded Barrow run
the wheelbarrow full of spoil from here and The Cutting itself your Barrow would then be attached
to a pulley at the top and it would be your job as a navvy to guide that Barrow Laden full of spoil
and Clays if you fell and your will fell well you need to make sure you're going a different
way to the Barrow and often that wasn't the case so when you do manage to move all that
cubic tonnage of Earth by the barrel load you can't just fill it with water and disappear the
next job is to make sure it's water TI and to do that you'd need maybe 18 in of a clay like
substance puddling was the technique a loom of soil and finer clay with mix with gravel and
sand in some cases in a large slate box water was added and it was mixed thoroughly truly
backbreaking work but not quite as backbreaking as what you had to do next let's jump in the
canal once you've got that mixture to the perfect consistency next comes a difficult job next Comes
The Stomping you need to make that at least 18 in thick evenly across the canal bed and
you then begin to stomp it in and of course your boots are now Laden with this mixture your legs
are heavy your back is aching and you've got a team of you doing stretches of This truly back
breaking work so now seem hugely dangerous just incredibly backbreaking now the next job if I told
you was perhaps one of the most dangerous where you might question my sanity is the opposite of
this The Cutting it's the embankment now often embankments were created using spoil from nearby
cuttings or even the cut itself that sounds like an ideal logistical solution and it was you see
we are still in the early days of canal building and if you just piled Earth on top of itself but
even without a bunch of rain and damp we are going to have collapse after claps and they
really did in those early days now there are dozens of other jobs we could be discussing
when talking about the dangers the navvy faced and perhaps an honorable mention should go to the the
technique of piling when you'd build a coffer Dam to uh support the uprights for your aqueduct for
example but perhaps we should be talking about the elephant in the room we should be talking about
this it took until 1815 for William Smith to publish his geology map the strata map
detailing the UK and its subsurface of rocks and geology if only the canal Engineers had access
to this and understood exactly the implications of it so this is the uh Western portal of the
Greywell tunnel on the basing Stoke Canal 1,280 yd long collapse which pretty much marked the end
of the use of the canal into basingstoke from here just 5 miles away hence the term the last
5 miles and I think I'm going to say the portal is not there the portal is more likely here 10
yards further this way cuz we got some lovely brick work on either side up there as well and
you'd have seen a huge almost Bridge like, front face that was very very indicative of the early
Canal era quite an intimidating thing especially if you're the one that's got to leg it through
there now when we talk about geology there are a couple of different issues perhaps not the obvious
one that you might think of inhospitable and cold damp environment and when I say the word damp I'm
referring to the quality of the air there are two types in essence one is the explosive type the
the gaseous methane would uh cause you significant problem should it come into contact with a source
of ignition and the second well that would be the one that would kill you probably without you even
knowing the choke or the white damp referring to perhaps a carbon monoxide or hydrogen sulfide it
would be present when you start mining certain rock types and coals that sort of thing those
were an ever present danger for the navvy and the laborer building these tunnels and then
there is the other aspect of geology dealing with the fact it's there mining through it
sapperton Canal tunnel is a great example of a will far greater than that technology available
at the time the desired length was 3,817 yards Not only was this longer than it ever gone before or
attempted before but also needed to be over 11 ft wide to accommodate the traffic I often struggle
with the numbers really on the sapperton canal tunnel because for me it really sums up everything
about navvy life the sheer number of those men working on site on one project they lived there
they worked there they drank there they fought there and in many cases they died there and
yes the pay was good clearly but imagine living with that trauma not knowing if you were going
to come home from the day's work or your friend wasn't coming home from your day's work quite
unimaginable 25 shafts were dug here plus the two portals that gave you 52 working faces come night
and day come rain snow you'd be lowered down into the dark in a custom made bucket attached to some
ropes attached to a gin a horse there on low you down using a winding mechanism from the top
utterly terrifying you're being lowered down an 8T wide shaft plunging into the darkness Reliance on
the gin and its many fixings all holding your life by the very Fred and you then meet up with your
gang maybe six to eight of you working on this front face and you'd be doing one of the many
jobs that was involved there from either right at the front face either blasting or chipping away
depending at the soil or removing the Earth away there might be rudimentary rails all in a very
confined space a pilot tunnel that would have been dug there and then the bucket full would be pulled
up the gin and taken up the maybe 30 40 m shaft right above you speaking of dangers we're right
now on top of the Greywell tunnel in fact that pond there sits right on top of highly likely one
of the uh the collapsed areas of the Greywell tunnel which obviously led to its um demise
and uh you wouldn't want to stand in there in a hurry even when the water's a lot lower in the
summer injuries were not always listed but at least until the railway day sufficed to
say accounts detailed the loss of Limbs Crush body parts you name it a newspaper report report in the
Gloucester Journal 1787 the 2nd of January one man was killed a few days ago due to the carelessness
of His companion who suffered one of the boxes used to draw the Earth up from the shaft to fall
back into the pit which killed the person at the bottom the men were brothers at the turn of the
century navies had a reputation that perhaps did them no favors at all numerous reports of stealing
petty crime fights f all followed them like a bad smell in every corner of the land and had done so
now for the last 30 years or so but things were about to change in perhaps the most dramatic Way
South Wales perhaps showed us why canals would often have small branches to connect towns and
wars or mines for coal that wasn't easy in the Hills of South Wales so instead the likes of
the Brecknock and Abergavenny Canal itself only 33 M long was littered with connecting tramways
some over 8 m in length the canals here were almost a victim of their own success they were
carrying goods from every corner of the valley here bottlenecks were happening at every possible
juncture it would take a Cornish engineer in 1803 to perhaps change the way the navvy would
work forever he traveled to South Wales with a steam engine different to every steam engine
that had previously been built because this one not only had Wheels but managed a trip of over 8
mil it successfully carried 10 tons of iron five wagons and 70 men the full distance in 4 hours
and 5 [Music] minutes the world of Mining and resources was changing rapidly because of this
new technology the tramways and the wagon ways and its new Reliance the likes of George Stevenson up
in North Northeast England doing tremendous work things were about to change for the navvy the
railway did provide similar work tunnels citing embankments even more so required to be hand dug
by the navvy but over half a century after the canal started well you'd have thought the lessons
May well have been learned and here we are on top of what is almost certainly the alignment of the
greywell tunnel and probably a spoil Heap from said tunnel in fact the lessons that should have
been learned over the last 50 or so years would continue to blight the seemingly groundbreaking
technology that the railway age was about to bring 1830 and the Liverpool and Manchester
railway's first tunnel casualty and Navi was alongside a 15t pile of clay being hauled by
a wagon when it toppled the local paper holding nothing back when it reported that it crushed his
bowels out of his body for me though perhaps the most poignant story of all comes from the
London and Southampton Railway opened just 8 years on in stages the middle section was the
last to open owing to the wallers Ash tunnel at 500 yards long it saw a shaft collapse within 2
years of opening the Navies and the laborers were repairing this when a further collapse happened
on the shaft at the southern end four men were crushed the seriousness of this case meant that
the initial jury selected for the inquest and hearing were considered poorly selected for such
an investigation he would therefore discharge the present jury immediately and issue another
warrant requiring the Constable to summon a class of persons more independent in station and
character come the mid 1840s we now have over 200 100,000 navies working across the UK now
compare that perhaps to the Armed Forces at the time the Army and the Navy combined just 160,000
but nothing really sums everything up as well for me as this one stretch of Railway below me
right now you see this is a stretch of Railway I've traveled on hundreds of times before huge
cutting there ahead of me and never really given it a second thought as to the amount
of work that went into making that happen shaping the way we live and work and travel
today hundreds and hundreds of navies would have been working here cutting through that
in the most dangerous working conditions oh just for a daily wage and often making
a sacrifice they never bargain [Music] for and that is why I feel the navvy is one of the if
not the most dangerous job in history I've been pulling if you like this kind of content give us
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mixture yeah
man