Author finds 20 previously unidentified graves of men killed building the Settle to Carlisle railway

Retired headteacher Sarah Lister has recorded around 20 previously unidentified navvy graves or those of their wives and children in the churchyard - there were previously thought to be only five - and has uncovered fascinating stories about how the quiet market town of Settle was transformed by the arrival of this tough, hard-living breed of men in the 1870s.

Her interest was sparked in part by her own family's railway connections - her husband's great-grandfather was a tunneller on the line, which traverses some of the most hostile terrain in Britain, and moved his wife and 10 children between navvy building projects.

Her new book adds colour to the lives not just of the navvies but of the women who ran their boarding houses, the doctors who treated them, the local entrepreneurs who profited from them and even the coroners who held the inquests into their deaths in gruesome industrial accidents.

The building of the Settle to Carlisle line was the area's very own 'Wild West' period - it spanned just a few years before the railway was complete, yet in that time brought great social change, tragedy and human drama to what had been remote rural communities.

When the navvies finally rolled out in 1876, they left behind the victims of a smallpox epidemic, a landlord murdered in a tavern brawl, and a trail of fraudulent invoices filed by a cheating gang leader - but also local men who had acquired wealth beyond their wildest dreams that would never have been possible without the influx of railway money.

"After I retired to Settle, I started researching the parish graveyard, and found some wonderful burials - suffragettes, aristocrats, paupers - which I wrote about in my first book. But I also found around 20 graves that dated from 1869-76, and they weren't local families. I wanted to trace these people and the Friends of Settle to Carlisle Railway offered to pay for their death certificates," said Mrs Lister.

"It had previously been thought that there were only four or five navvies buried at Settle, but I have identified over 20 graves of these men and their relations, their wives and children. Lockdown gave me the perfect opportunity to bury myself in research and finding out more about what life was like in Settle at this time.

"The disruption to Settle was massive - it had been a quiet town. It's a colourful, rich tale, grim in parts, about the whole area, and it adds to local social history. Nobody knew how many of these men were in the graveyard and I wanted to make sure they aren't forgotten. They did an amazing job in tough conditions."

The navvies had a reputation for drunken violence, in part fuelled by their itinerant lifestyle - many were single men who moved around the country in search of work. Mrs Lister wanted to look beyond this aspect of their character and learn more about their incredible appetite for hard manual labour, as well as their social structures.

She found out that most navvies were not actually contracted to a railway company - they were employed by a gang leader who would travel with his gang and hire them out as a group to building projects. She describes this system as being like 'Peaky Blinders' in that navvies were loyal to their gangs and often feuded with other gangs. They even wore distinctive clothing to identify their gang allegiance.

"There were fights between them - but if someone died, they would all come together to support that man's family."

Her writing does not shy away from the traumatic events endured by the navvy community, who were split between lodgings in the towns and temporary camps at the foot of structures such as Ribblehead Viaduct.

She investigated inquest reports, which tell of coroners and their jurors travelling to the railway to view the bodies of men killed in accidents, and recommending a 'dead house' be provided to store the corpses. One man buried in Settle was taken 12 miles by horse and cart to hospital with a thigh injury after falling off an engine, but did not survive.

She uncovered her very own unsung hero in Dr Edwin Green, who lived and worked in a navvy camp and who treated the victims of a smallpox outbreak that struck the temporary settlement. He lobbied the authorities for more resources and money before he was killed at the age of just 27 in a riding accident.

While a one-armed landlord running a pub in Langcliffe was killed at the age of 75 by a drunken navvy who punched him to the ground when he was asked to leave, resulting in a murder trial.

An entrepreneurial gang leader 'cooked the books' by fiddling his men's timesheets so that the railway paid them for jobs they had done for local people in Settle, and the number of stonemasons in the town trebled as they took advantage of the demand for their skills. A previously humble coal agent made his fortune from the railway company's needs and died a millionaire.

She has also brought the stories of the women to life - many ran 'huts' where they would provide food and lodgings for several single men who lived alongside their own families.

"They were bringing up children, even having children, among these rowdy young men. It must have been so hard.

"It was a time of opportunity, when people lived on their wits. There were winners and losers, some investors who lost everything, and others who took their chance and made a fortune."

Mrs Lister now plans to conduct further research in the graveyards of other churches along the line, and has already identified new navvy burials in Giggleswick.

She is also giving a free Zoom talk about the book organised by the Friends of Settle to Carlisle Railway on December 2 from 7-8pm. Email [email protected] if you would like to attend.

'The Navvies of Settle: The End of the Line' - with illustrations by local artist Teresa Gordon - is for sale in Settle at Limestone Books, The Folly and Settle Station's shop, and can also be ordered via the Friends of Settle to Carlisle Railway's online shop.

Copies are priced at £3 with all proceeds going to local charities, including Settle Parish Church. The research and publication have been funded by the Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust's Stories in Stone project.

The legacy left by the navvies

Remains of the shanty towns where the navvies lived can still be seen on the bleak landscape beneath Ribblehead Viaduct - now mostly reduced to piles of stones and foundations.

They were given deliberately ironic names - Belgravia, where the supervisors lived, evoked the genteel London district and Sebastopol paid tribute to a notorious Crimean War siege.

More than 1,000 men arrived at the construction camps in 1870, tasked with building the viaduct and Blea Moor tunnel. The area was bleak and isolated, and the single-storey wooden huts provided to accommodate the navvies - slang for 'navigators' - offered little protection against harsh Pennine winters.

Attempts at recreating civilisation were made - Batty Wife Hole had shops, pubs, a school, post office, library and hospital.

Sebastopol was more of an engineering base, with a brickworks and an engine house. In all, there were nine camps serving the Midland Railway's Settle to Carlisle line, and earthworks from three can still be seen today. Remnants of the Sebastopol brickworks, including rubble chimneys up to two metres high, are still visible, as well as remains of houses, shacks and a tramway.

Most of the workers were itinerants, who would move onto the next construction project without remaining in the area. Many of the camps would die when this exodus occurred.

In 2016, an ITV period drama based on life in Jericho, one of the camps on the route, was aired.

The project arose out of the Midland Railway's wish to build their own line from London to Scotland via Carlisle - meaning they would no longer have to run on their rival the London and North Western Railway's tracks. Midland passengers heading to Carlisle previously had to disembark at Ingleton Viaduct and walk a mile to the next station to catch a LNWR service.

There was a twist in the tale, as after receiving government permission to build the new line from Settle, the LNWR relented and allowed the Midland access to their line into Carlisle. The Midland tried to pull out of their financial commitment, but it was too late - the government insisted that the building of the route go ahead.

Instead, they commenced the recruitment of their navvies - construction would pre-date the introduction of mechanical diggers by only a few years, so it was the last major railway built by hand. The use of gunpowder to blast tunnels meant that 100 of the workers died during construction.

The railway camps soon developed a reputation for poor living conditions, though historians argued that ITV's depiction of Jericho as a dangerous place was inaccurate. Disease was, however, a big killer, and smallpox broke out in the Ribblehead communities.

Unmarked navvy graves are believed to be scattered across the moor.

Was it worth it? The first train ran over Ribblehead Viaduct in 1874, and the line survived a closure battle in the 1980s. Since then, passenger numbers have increased, and the viaduct, now Grade I-listed, still stands brooding over the Batty Moss bog, testament to a great feat of both engineering and fortitude in a hostile environment.