Winterstoke

by L. T. C. Rolt

  Landowners were now taking a more favourable view of railways, thanks to the immense sums they succeeded in extracting from the Companies, but the Great North-Western encountered intense opposition from its rivals in the field, notably the Midshire Union Canal and the London & Earlspool Railway. Railway Companies liked to regard the shires of England which they served as theirs by proprietorial right, and in the sombre mahogany splendour of their London boardroom the Directors of the L. & E.R. met in council of war to decide how they might repel so insolent an invasion of their territory. It was well known that the Great North-Western scheme had been fathered by an ambitious Company in the north-west which wanted its own direct route to London. The L. & E.R. had recently changed its hitherto high-handed attitude to that Company in the hope of persuading it to see reason and drop the project. But the Company had declined to succumb to these blandishments. Very well then, let it be war. The L. & E.R. Directors decided to form an alliance with that intransigent Company’s deadliest rival in the North, and before the Great North-Western Railway Bill was presented to Parliament the two Companies had obtained powers to amalgamate and declared war together under the name of the Grand Central Railway. But the Great North-Western faction refused to be deterred by this show of strength. Nor had they been idle as the Directors of the Grand Central discovered. When they tried to woo the Midshire Union Canal Company with the idea of using them as a pawn in their game they found to their intense chagrin that the Great North-Western had been there before them. The upstart had struck a bargain with the Canal Company’s shareholders whereby it had secured a controlling interest in return for the offer of a guaranteed dividend. So the Canal Company withdrew its opposition and the Grand Central Directors found themselves fighting almost alone. Fight they did at prodigious expense but to no avail. To add to the ignominy of their defeat, Parliament granted the new Company joint use of Winterstoke Station and running powers over the Grand Central from Summersend Junction, where the new line from the North would join it, to Ketton Junction where it would curve away southwards up the Lob valley.

  So it was that for the third time in its history the construction gangs descended upon Winterstoke but with the difference, as the local inhabitants soon saw for themselves, that since the London & Earlspool had been built, railway construction had become a very efficient and highly organized undertaking. Railway contracting was a ruthless and pitiless business which only the fittest survived. It had bankrupted hundreds of small contractors to leave only a very few powerful men of whom one of the greatest was Brassey, contractor to the Great North-Western. Like his predecessors, Brassey recruited a great army of local labour along the line of construction, but these were everywhere leavened by his own picked force of ‘navvies’ which represented what was probably the most efficient human machine which the world has ever seen. Wherever works of magnitude were involved, there the contractor concentrated this elite in the greatest number. Winterstoke was invaded in strength, for there was not only a tunnel to be driven under the headwaters of the Lob parallel with the old canal tunnel, but a great embankment and cutting to be constructed where the line would climb out of the flat fields of the Wendle valley and scale the escarpment of the Emberley Hills.

  These descendants of the old ‘navigators’ did not this time build themselves huts of stone and thatch. They were housed in two camps of wooden huts provided by Brassey, one established in a field near Emberley Hill Farm and the other near the grass-grown spoil mounds left by the builders of Ketton Tunnel. Amongst these picked men of Brassey’s there was a tremendous pride and esprit de corps. They could be recognized anywhere, not only by their stature and their muscled strength but by their invariable self-chosen uniform: a wide-awake white felt hat with upturned brim, square-tailed velveteen jacket, waistcoat of spotted scarlet plush, corduroy breeches buckled at the knee and high laced boots. They ate and drank prodigiously of red meat and whisky as well they might for they worked for anything up to sixteen hours a day with a speed and energy which seemed tireless. They organized themselves in ‘butty gangs’ of ten to twelve men, each of which contracted to shift so much ‘dirt’ or ‘stuff’ within a specified time. But they were more than highly skilled labourers with immense resources of strength and endurance; as the heirs to the experience of generations of ‘navigators’ they possessed considerable practical knowledge of geology, soil-mechanics and all the problems of natural drainage. Whereas it had taken the canal navigators seven years to complete the narrow bore of Ketton Tunnel, these men, working on the opposite side of the Lob, drove the double-line bore of Darley Bank Tunnel in under two years. The work of their fellows in the deep Emberley cutting was no less remarkable and in some ways more hazardous. Much of the soil excavated was used in forming the approach embankment below, but much more had to be drawn out of the deep defile by means of ‘barrow runs’. These consisted of a series of plankways laid down the precipitous sides of the cutting. A navvy would push his enormous barrow, loaded with anything from three to four hundredweight of spoil to the foot of a run, and attach it to a rope which ran over a pulley at the top and thence to the traces of a horse. He would then guide the barrow up the run as the horse pulled it—a most perilous proceeding.

  Wild and lawless though they were, and not seldom drunken and brutal, nevertheless the old proud independence and indomitable character of the English commoners found its last vigorous expression in the navigators. From what ranks they sprang no man can say. Perhaps their first parents were those ‘adventurers’ who, in the seventeenth century, embanked the fens under the direction of Sir Cornelius Vermuyden. When the Great North-Western Railway was completed they vanished from Winterstoke never to return. Their Thermopylæ was fought some years later on the bleak Pennine moorlands where, by Blea Moor and Hawes, they carved the Midland route to Carlisle—the last of the great main lines. Then they melted away as mysteriously as they had come and England has never seen their like again. They were the giants of those days and the work of their hands stands for all time as surely as pyramid or Roman wall.

  Local labour and local initiative was responsible for the only remaining work of railway construction which Winterstoke was to see. This was the six miles of single line from Summersend Junction to the small town of that name round the flank of the hill. Although this Summersend Branch was built by a locally formed Company it was worked from the outset by the Grand Central and ultimately absorbed into its system.

  When the Great North-Western was opened with the usual festivities it may have appeared to many that their victory was complete. But bloody though the heads of the Grand Central’s Directors might be they were by no means bowed as the unfortunate newcomer very soon discovered. In the joint station at Winterstoke the Grand Central recognized the Achilles heel of the new route and proceeded to wound it by every means in their power. Because they had secured a majority on the joint board which was set up to control the station, their unhappy rival was for a time almost powerless to mend matters except by countering force and guile with the same coin. Their locomotives were denied the right to take water at Winterstoke. Grand Central locomotives became mysteriously derailed in such a way that while they left their own running lines clear they effectually fouled the North-Western junctions at Ketton or Summersend. Pitched battles sometimes accompanied their removal by the aggrieved company. Even when these extreme measures were abandoned under the threat of legal proceedings it was always possible to arrange for the joint section to be occupied by a heavy goods or a dilatory ‘local’ whenever a North-Western express happened to be due. It always afforded the loyal staff of the Grand Central the highest delight to watch one of the proud eight-foot single ‘high-flyers’ of the North-Western come to a grinding standstill at Ketton Junction home signal and wait there, safety valves roaring impatient wrath, while a goods guard checked his train at his leisure or a locomotive crew took on water from a standpipe with the stopcock shut down to a trickle. On the station itself the North-Western staff lived i
n a perpetual state of siege. Timetables were torn down as fast as they could post them up, and on one occasion their booking office was raided and its stock of tickets scattered broadcast over the platform. In the goods yard it was only with the greatest difficulty that North-Western freight could be loaded or discharged. The North-Western countered this campaign by progressively cutting its fares and accelerating the times of its trains between London and the North, but the Grand Central took up the challenge. The ensuing battle was hard fought, for although the newcomer possessed the shorter route to London, it was heavily graded compared with the old straight levels of the Grand Central. When the North-Western cut the time of their best train between London and Winterstoke from three-and-a-quarter to three hours, the rival line replied by reducing their time by another fifteen minutes. It is doubtful whether the passengers by these flyers really appreciated such historic feats when they were hustled unceremoniously along the platforms and packed into the comfortless six-wheelers of these short, featherweight racing trains. Many, we may be sure, would gladly have accepted fifteen minutes or more of extra travelling time in exchange for a little more elbow room. Finally, when the journey time had been reduced to two and a half hours, tragedy intervened. The down ‘Cornet’ of the North-Western, flying down the grade from Darley Bank Tunnel, became derailed on Ketton curve. Fortunately the coupling between tender and first coach broke and the train remained upright, but the locomotive Tubal carried its unfortunate crew to their death. Plunging down the embankment, it came to rest, enveloped by a great cloud of steam, in the waters of the Lobstock Canal. The Grand Central greeted this calamity with ill-concealed jubilation, but it was short-lived. Only a fortnight later their up ‘Eclipse’ was derailed at excessive speed on the curve near Coltisham Station with much more serious results, fourteen passengers losing their lives.

  It was these two disasters and the public outcry they provoked which finally brought the two Companies to their senses and to agreement. Fares were stabilized and the journey time for the fastest trains between London and Winterstoke was fixed at two and three-quarter hours. The Grand Central ceased to dominate the joint board of control with the result that the bleak, ill-protected station which had been totally inadequate for the increased traffic was at last replaced. The new commodious joint station of six platforms with an all-over glass roof supported on slender trusses and pillars of cast iron was esteemed the architectural wonder of Winterstoke—as indeed it was. The old embargo on water supplies was lifted, and the Great North-Western built its own locomotive depot at Winterstoke adjacent to the Grand Central shed. So the two railways settled down fairly amicably as neighbours in Winterstoke although traces of the old rivalry survived for many years.

  The fierce loyalty of their respective staffs helped to keep it alive and so did the Companies’ timetables as those unfortunate passengers who were rash enough to change at Winterstoke from one Company’s line to the other usually discovered. A traveller from Lobstock for Westerport generally found that the Grand Central train for Westerport was booked to leave five minutes before his train from Lobstock was due in, or vice versa. Even where a connection was grudgingly made, neither Company would ever hold a train for the other in the event of late running, and its staff seemed to derive much smug satisfaction from informing stranded passengers that their trains ran on time.

  This story of the railways of Winterstoke, despite its tragic conclusion, is amusing to recall in retrospect, but the railway travellers of the time did not find it so funny. Nor is it so amusing when we realize that it was only one much publicized encounter in a bitter and completely unprincipled economic war which was going on all over the new commercial England. The battles between rival railways have been recorded in history because they were played on the open stage where the public were the pawns in the game. The stories of similar battles waged between rival factories, mills or ironworks in the markets of the world and the untold damage and suffering which they caused have never been recorded. We can only judge their cumulative effect by the legacy of bloody and exhausting international conflicts which they provoked. And, as the eventual agreement on fares between the rival railway companies shows, there can be only one conclusion to the anarchy of a trading policy dictated by the philosophy of complete individual freedom ungoverned by any moral sanctions. This is a process of agreement on terms dictatedby the strongest, which ultimately leads to a trade monopoly. Thus the nineteenth-century philosophy ensured its own defeat from the outset. For when such a monpoly is complete, that freedom, which was as earnestly argued and fought for by our ancestors as any article of religious faith, ceases to exist at all.

  Looking down upon Winterstoke from the height of High Hanger Down we can distinguish the stages of growth for which the canal and the railways were responsible as clearly as the growth rings on the sawn butt of a tree. Like the canal basin, the black, steaming bulk of the railway station soon produced its satellite growth: the locomotive sheds, the old roundhouse of the Grand Central and the saw-toothed, many chimneyed roof-line of the North-Western shed; the block of Blenkinsop’s new Railway Hotel, its square stucco façade and over-pretentious pillared portico confronting the station entrance; new streets, Station Road and Institute Road with their cross connections, all lined with new terrace cottages, pubs and chapels in variegated brickwork whose raw blues and reds and yellows were soon toned down by the all-pervading grime. And of course the marshalling yards extending their metal-meshed ash ballast where before there were still green fields: Central Yard where the two Companies interchanged traffic; Ketton Junction Yard which handled the Ironworks traffic; Hanger Lane Yard whence there came a continuous clash of buffers as tireless shunting engines, weaving this way and that like dogs harrying sheep, shuffled and reshuffled the rakes of empty and loaded coal wagons.

  But the coming of the railways which so changed the face of the town and inaugurated a fresh wave of expansion, spelt decline for some and disaster for others. So rapid now was the speed of industrial revolution that a man might think he was riding the crest of a wave of prosperity only to find himself outpaced and faced with ruin in a few years. Thus, despite the new flyboats, the canal basin was no longer so thronged with traffic as of old. There were vacant stalls in the stables of the ‘Navigation’ and the clatter of caulking mallets from the boatyard was no longer so insistent. Below the basin, a line of barges, some half sunken and dismasted, lay by the Wendle bank. On the turnpike it was not so much a case of decline as of swift extinction. In the yard of the ‘Hanmer Arms’ weeds began to sprout between cobbles where no weeds had grown before. The shrill whistle of Typhoon had silenced the fanfare of the Westerport and Coltisham coach forever. Old John Foster who had held the ribbons for twenty years was forced to acknowledge defeat. For a time he plied between Winterstoke station and Church Ambling, but the opening of the Great North-Western robbed him of even this traffic. So the old man opened a livery stables close to the station and, with a station bus and a small fleet of growlers, resigned himself to picking up such crumbs of traffic as his proud conqueror chose to let fall. The triumph of steam was complete.

  Chapter Nine

  WITHIN FIFTY YEARS of the coming of railways, the population of Winterstoke had again doubled itself. Many social historians have endeavoured to explain this phenomenal increase in population which marked the progress of industrial revolution. Enforced migration from the country to the iron and coal working area brought about the original growth of the town, but although this influx continued throughout the nineteenth century, the population figures for the whole country show that it could have accounted for only a small proportion of Winterstoke’s new population. The explanation favoured by most modern historians is a fall in the death rate due to improved medical knowledge, but there can be little doubt that the older theory of a higher birth-rate played a significant part in the growth of the new Winterstoke. Greater medical knowledge there might be, but it was many years before anything was done to improve living c
onditions in the fever-ridden courts of Hanger Lane or Darley Bank or to sweep away their noisome midden heaps and privies which the night-soil carts visited so infrequently. Few medieval villages could have had an infantile mortality rate higher than that of the mining colony at Hanger Lane, whereas its fecundity was unbounded. The demands of the industrial system and the efforts of the religious zealots had between them ensured that the poor had only two pleasures left to them, drink and copulation. The reformers would no doubt have robbed them of the first along with the rest had they been able, and in any case drink had to be paid for. But the pleasures of the bed were free and no reformer could interfere with them nor government tax them. Moreover, whereas we now regard children as an economic liability, in the Winterstoke of the early nineteenth century they were looked upon as an asset. The child of a smith or nailer began his education in the domestic smithy by blowing the forge or treadling the oliver almost as soon as he could walk and so made a contribution to the family revenue which was worth more than his keep. The same applies to the employees of the Darley Bank Company whose children were put to work in the mines or in the ironworks. Historians may say what they will about the effect of a falling death-rate; the fact remains that the growth of Winterstoke was most rapid during the period when living conditions were at their worst and when child labour was most freely exploited.