Navvyman

the long version

Navvyman, published in 1983, is the definitive history of navvying and navvies from their inception on the Bridgwater Canal in the 1780s to their final demise on the Haweswater dam in Cumbria in the early days of the Second World War. Navvies built canals, railways, dams and then the great Edwardian docks. They were a distinct and distinctive community, with their own way of life and dress, who lived together in specially built navvy settlements often in the remote countryside. They were itinerant, rough, and very hard drinking men. At their peak there were around a hundred and twenty thousand of them. The general public both feared and despised them.