175th anniversary of the opening of Summit Tunnel

Summit Tunnel - drawing by Tate 1844

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The Tunnel

The year 1841 saw the completion of a stupendous feat of engineering, the building of the Summit tunnel. The tunnel, 2869 yards in length was at the date of completion the longest railway tunnel in the world. It was 2lft 6in in height, 23 feet wide and contained 23 million bricks and 8,000 tons of Roman cement. It was ventilated by the means of 14 working shafts although No. 6 shaft had to be sealed against falling rock. Twelve of the shafts were worked by fixed engines and two by horse gins. The total cost of the tunnel was £251,000 and its completion took two years 4 months.

The completion of the tunnel was achieved against great odds. Financially it cost far more than was anticipated, it claimed 28 human lives, and the mountain proved much harder to penetrate than had been expected. At one point the tunnel had to pass under the Rochdale Canal and an aqueduct had to be built to carry the canal.

Work on the section of the railway from Manchester to Littleborough began on 18th August 1837. On January 29th 1838 Barnard Dickinson was appointed as assistant engineer for Summit tunnel at a salary of £400 per year.

Work on the shafts began almost immediately and the first brick was laid in No. 10 shaft in August 1838 by James Wood, the chairman of the Manchester and Leeds railway.

The progress on the driftway was very slow because of the hardness of the rock and on the recommendation of the Chief Engineer, Thomas Gooch, the contract with Evans and Copeland was cancelled. John Stephenson whose first work had been on the Stockton and Darlington line was appointed contractor to complete the driftway.

Although the progress on the tunnelling was speeded up Stephenson found himself losing money on the contract and he applied to the company for financial help.

Possibly the fact that the progress of the tunnel was behind schedule may have increased the pressure on contractor and workmen too much because during the period 19th February 1838 to 11th September 1839 there were 16 fatal accidents and by the completion of the tunnel this had risen to 28.

This tendency to accidents worried both company and engineer and extra precautions were taken to protect the men. Carelessness by the workmen resulted in their dismissal. A surgeon was engaged at £20 per month and a ‘Sick Club’ was constituted, every man contributing 1/- (5p) per fortnight. Sufferers were allowed 10/- per week until employment was resumed. In the case of death an extra 6d (2 ½ p) was added for the wife and family of the deceased after defraying funeral expenses.

Labour troubles also beset the workings and in February 1841, 16 of the labourers were brought before the magistrates charged with having intimidated a number of workmen and prevented them from following their employment. The men threatened were 32 men from North Shields, engaged by Mr. Stephenson for 6 months at 5/— per day, (1/- above the rate paid to the existing workforce). Six or seven of the accused were committed to hard labour for 3 months, some for 1 month and others were allowed to resume their work.

By November 1840 the completion of the tunnel was actually in sight and a grand opening was planned for 31st December 1840. However, the invert was found to be defective and it was not until March 1st 1841 that the grand opening took place. The work throughout the line was complete and the directors of the company and their guests embarked aboard the train at Manchester to the strains of band music. At the Summit tunnel another band joined the train and the ladies and gentlemen made their way through the tunnel to the music of the bands and the blowing of hunting horns by the red-coated guards. At Normanton they were regaled by a cold meal. The workmen were treated to a meal in the tunnel after the train had passed.

The Village and the People

The building of the Summit tunnel was a great engineering achievement and it is very easy just to consider it as such and to forget its effect on the people who lived in the vicinity. All railways had to pass over private land. Some landowners were willing to sell, others were not and as in the case of the making of the canal some thirty years previously this sometimes resulted in the plans having to be changed. Many landowners gained considerable sums of money on the transactions but these were the landowners not necessarily the occupiers of the land. In many cases both home and livelihood disappeared at one fell stroke.

One of the families affected by the building of the tunnel was the Crossley family, who were, like many others in the district farmers and colliers - there being quite a lot of opencast mining in the area. According to the historian John Travis, Mrs. Crossley died of a broken heart when the excavators began work on the Holme Meadow. The father and sons reconciled themselves to their change in circumstances (as tenant farmers they had little choice). Jimmy, the eldest son was a hawker of flannel and stocking yarn which was woven by Joseph the youngest son. The middle son Henry worked at Stansfield Print works at Caldermoor. Joseph was also the village barber.

Another family in the area were the Hamer’s of Chelburn, farmers and quarrymen. There would be no lack of work for them in the latter trade when the excavation of the tunnel began. Local brickmakers and stonemasons would be delighted with the work which the making of the railway brought.

The loss of land and grazing which affected the tenant farmers lined the pockets of the landowners who were well compensated. James Dearden, the Lord of the Manor claimed £30,000 for the minerals on his 18 acres of land in Caldermoor, Blatchinworth, Walsden and Todmorden. He also received £150 for loss of stone and £50 for timber.

It is hard to visualise the landscape at Summit in the days pre-railway. The hillsides were well wooded but the trees were felled for timber to build the railway and tunnel. The landscape was changed, the canal had to be diverted over an aqueduct, cottages and farm buildings were demolished, orchards and gardens disappeared or were greatly reduced. Even land belonging to the Independent Chapel was affected.

However, the villagers seem to have coped both with the rape of their land, loss of livelihood and invasion of several hundred strangers. Indeed the local traders and beer shops flourished. Although the company built some houses for the workforce the majority of the navvies lived in shanty huts built of sods or stone and roofed with sticks and clay. This was the normal practice, the navvies and their wives and children forming their own community, buying their food locally but keeping apart from the village.

No doubt there were plenty of fights between the navvies themselves. It is certain that the North Shield’s men hired by John Stephenson who were offered 5/- (25p) per day were not welcomed by the workmen already contracted and a dispute arose which ended with several men being taken before the magistrates. The navvies usually earned between 3/- and 4/- per day, stonemasons about 4/- and joiners 22/- per week. All the contractors had to pay similar wages otherwise the lesser paid may have defected to other contractors. Only 2-3 miles separated different gangs of navvies, the Gauxholme viaduct being the other last major construction to be completed before the line was fully opened.

No doubt the Summit Inn and similar beerhouses in the area did a roaring trade. Certainly drink was the downfall of a certain Philip Crowther, a shoemaker from Gauxholme and a Chelsea Pensioner who having collected his pension of about £3 from Rochdale was last seen the worse for drink near the shanty huts near Steanor Bottom Wood. Speculation that some of the navvies had murdered him for his money and buried him in Holme tip under the spoil proved correct, but only after 50 years had elapsed, when one of the perpetrators of the crime made a deathbed confession.

The contractor, John Stephenson obviously tried to foster a good relationship with the villagers. He is known to have donated £30 towards the erection of a place of worship.

The building of the tunnel obviously had a great impact on the lives of the people of Summit and Caldermoor and it is not surprising that John Clegg who became a prominent citizen of Heywood should record in his memoirs, his early days as a riveting lad working on the Summit tunnel.

Born in Rochdale in 1827 he began work at a wage of 2/6d (15p) for a 58 hour week and was engaged on the construction of the Summit tunnel. He states in his manuscript: “Fourteen shafts were sunk for the making of the Summit tunnel. I worked as a rivet lad at four of the shafts in all at separate times. Solid blocks of stone were carved out of the mountain for the shafts, and also the tunnel, large quantities being cut in sections. These were afterwards used as ‘chairs’ to carry the sleepers for the railway track, but afterwards these were discarded for wooden sleepers. Thousands of these stone sleepers now form part of the present promenade at Blackpool. They form the hulking from Bailey’s hotel to the Victoria Pier.”

What effect did the building of the Summit tunnel have on the village? Eventually, very little. The 1841 census produces no evidence that the contractors and their gangs had ever been there. The number of houses remained approximately the same, another place of worship was erected, and nature healed the scars. The woodlands however, were gone for ever, although in Walsden 150 years later trees have been planted which will eventually produce a similar landscape.

The Walsden census for 1841 produces a little more evidence of railway workers, presumably working on the Gauxholme viaduct, but except for the marvellous feat of engineering which is the Summit tunnel, no evidence of the railway navigators remained except in the memories of the people.

The building of the tunnel and the railway had opened up new horizons for future generations. Men and women who would never have left their native village were able to travel to the cities and ultimately the rest of the world.

The tunnel remained a monument to its builders, occasionally claiming a life, but it was not until December 1984 when a train carrying petrol tankers was derailed in the tunnel that doubts about its future arose. Flames rose high over the hillsides and burnt for days. The buildings in the vicinity were evacuated and news headlines were made in the national newspapers, and the accident was also covered by the TV media.

Eventually the tunnel cooled down, the tankers were removed and repairs to the tunnel commenced. An official enquiry was set into motion by the Department of Transport.

On August 17th 1985 Todmorden Rotary Club organised a walk from the Todmorden end of the tunnel to the Littleborough end. Thousands took advantage of this experience. On the following Monday the line was re-opened for traffic.

The tunnel had survived and in 1991 - 150 years later we are celebrating its completion and the opening of the entire Manchester - Leeds line.

Joan Higson.

Sources

Manchester Guardian
Manchester & Leeds Railway - Extracts from Minutes
Marshall, J. The Lancashire & Leeds Railway, 1969
Prince of Wales Almanack, 1876
Rake, H. Manchester & Leeds Railway - (Railway Magazine 1905/6)
Rochdale Observer
Rochdale Times
Rush, R.W. The Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway, 1949
Tait, A.V. - Views on the Manchester & Leeds Railway, l845
Travis, J - Notes: historical and biographical mainly of Todmorden and district, 1896

The photographs of the Summit Tunnel fire are reproduced with the permission of Greater manchester Fire Service Museum.

http://www.link4life.org/discover/local-history-online/trade-industry-and-transport/transport-travel/summit-tunnel-by-joan-higson