In the summer of 1843 a prospectus was published by a group of businessmen detailing plans to construct a rail link between Leeds and Thirsk at an estimated cost of £800,000. Parliamentary approval for the scheme was obtained in 1845 despite fierce opposition from the George Hudson lobby. The contractor appointed to oversee the construction of the section from Horsforth to Weeton that had to pass under the ridge separating Airedale from Wharfedale and over the River Wharfe was James Bray, an iron and brass founder from Leeds. He already had some experience having successfully completed the construction of Thackley Tunnel near Bradford.
Work began on the Bramhope Tunnel on 20 October 1845 with the sinking of Number 1 Airshaft. The start of the tunnelling operation proper took place later when James Bray symbolically laid the first stone of the tunnel wall in July 1846. In all, twenty shafts were sunk into which men were lowered by bucket to work in the tunnel by torchlight on a number of faces at the same time.
Three sighting towers were planned so that the engineers could keep a true line during construction of the tunnel but only two of these were ever built. The number of people working on the tunnel at any one time is not known with any certainty. However, one source reports that during the busiest periods there were about 2300 men and 400 horses in the area. Another source reports that 188 quarrymen, 102 stonemasons, 732 tunnel men, 738 labourers and 18 carpenters were employed in an attempt to complete the tunnel on time. The men, some with their families, lived in makeshift structures erected in the field opposite Bramhope cemetery.
Construction was not without its problems. The rock, particularly at the southern end of the tunnel, proved difficult and expensive to blast. Flooding and subsidence also presented a constant threat; it has for example been estimated that in total some 1,563,480,000 gallons of water were pumped out of the workings during construction. Tunnelling is a hazardous operation and the cost in human terms was heavy. In 1846, the first full year of construction, 5 men lost their lives, the following year a further 12 men perished. At this stage the decision was taken to keep detailed records of all accidents fatal or otherwise. This did not halt the fatalities and more men died before the tunnel was completed bringing the total killed to 24.
It was not until 27 November 1848 that a clear path was made through the tunnel and then it took until the summer of the following year before the tunnel was completed.
The tunnel is 2 miles and 243 yards long, 25 feet and 6 inches wide and 25 feet high. It has a gradient of 1 in 94 down from Horsforth to Arthington and at its deepest point, just to the north of Breary Lane, it is some 290 feet below the surface.
The final cost of construction was £2,150,313; almost three times the original estimate.
The first train to pass through the tunnel travelled from Arthington to Horsforth on 31 May 1849 containing officials of the Leeds and Thirsk railway; the contractor’s locomotive ‘Stephenson’ pulled it. An official ‘Grand Opening’ took place later that year on 9 July 1849.
Sixteen of the original twenty shafts were filled in but there are still four shafts to remind people of the building of the tunnel more than one hundred and fifty years ago. They are now used as ventilation shafts, one situated to the north of the Leeds-Otley A660 near the scout hut; one behind Park House; one opposite Camp House Farm and a fourth nearer to Cookridge/ Horsforth.
Then there are the two sighting towers that were actually built; one still visible in the field opposite Bramhope cemetery; the other long since demolished but formerly situated behind Dyneley Hall. The spoil from the tunnelling operations also is still much in evidence, some quarter of a million cubic yards of it strewn along the line of the tunnel. The tips include an area around the scout hut to the north of the Leeds-Otley road; the Knoll near to Parklands and on to the field facing Bramhope cemetery; and on land adjacent to None-Go-Byes Farm.
Finally, there are the entrances to the tunnel neither of which is easy to see close to; the southern entrance is plain but the northern entrance is a magnificent castellated portal that was for a time used as a residence for employees of the railway. A replica of the northern entrance was erected in Otley churchyard to the north of the ginnel to serve as a memorial to those unfortunate men who lost their lives while engaged in the construction of the Bramhope Tunnel.
The Human Cost
The first part of this article has dealt largely with the bald facts and figures relating to the construction of the Bramhope tunnel. This part deals with the human cost of the enterprise, particularly for the residents of the village and the ordinary people who came to Bramhope to help build the tunnel.
Parliamentary approval for the building of the railway tunnel under Bramhope had been granted in 1845 and the whole project was completed about 4 years later when the tunnel was officially opened in the summer of 1849. During that time it has been estimated that, at its busiest period, there were some 2300 men and 400 horses working on the tunnel and living in and around Bramhope, many of them with their wives and children. More than 300 wooden huts or ‘bothies’ were erected in the area to house the workers and their families; there were, for example, more than 200 of these ‘bothies’, together with the main contractors' offices and workshops of various sorts, in the field opposite the site of the present Bramhope cemetery. It was said that the small wooden huts housed as many as 20 people, sleeping ‘box and cox’ on a shift basis, in what must have been highly unsanitary conditions.
The navvies, often having experience only of farm work, came from many different parts of the country but more particularly from the Dales, the North-East, East Anglia and the Fen-lands as well as from Scotland and Ireland. The work was hard, it being common for the labourers to move up to 20 tons of spoil in a shift, but the wages, typically £1.50 a week as compared with around 50p a week for a farm labourer, compensated for this. Twelve-hour shifts were the norm, often for seven days a week, working by candle light always in wet conditions. Ventilation was poor and as a result the air was often foul and contaminated with gunpowder fumes; the danger of a roof collapse was an ever-present danger. Not surprisingly, accidents occurred frequently although no records were kept until 1847. In all, the authorities admit to 23 deaths of young men, but this may well be less than the true figure, and there were numerous other injuries of varying degrees of severity.Special grants were made to Leeds Infirmary, one of which was used to buy a ‘spring cart’ to convey the injured more comfortably to the hospital 7 miles away in Leeds.
Alcohol was readily available and cheap so that examples of disorder and misunderstandings between the navvies and the villagers were common. A railway police inspector, Jos Midgeley, was employed at a cost £1.25 per week to help maintain law and order but it was a thankless task. One attack on his person resulted in a group of men being remanded from Otley Town Court for trial at Wakefield. On another occasion, at Wescoe Hill on the other side of the Wharfe, a mini-riot ensued when the contractors tried to cut off the supply of ale. There was a mass brawl in which the navvies recovered their supply of ale but the disturbance had resulted in the death of one man.
Initially, drinking water for the settlements was transported from the village well opposite what is now the site of St Giles Church but the quality and quantity of the water diminished to such an extent that the villagers complained to the contractors. As a result, drinking water had to be pumped from a site near to the Dyneley Arms crossroads. Water drainage over the whole area was affected because the tunnel acted as a huge drain. Irate farmers, landowners and residents were forever complaining about the loss of or deterioration in quality of the water. Litigation instigated at the time was still proceeding many years after the tunnel was completed; mention of it is still to be found in many of Bramhope’s property deeds.
With the influx of workers’ children the educational system in the area was stretched to breaking point. At one stage, for example, there were 30 children attending the local school, only ten of whom came from the village itself. The Methodist Chapels at Bramhope (St Ronans, not the present building) and Pool were much used by the workers and their families throughout the week. The Leeds Mission was also represented in the settlements, being given a grant of £110 to help pay for its presence in the shanty-towns for each of the four years that the tunnel was under construction. Bibles were available at 10d each and New Testaments for just 4d. In addition, 500 tracts were distributed freely each week to the workers and their families.
The sadness of the harsh conditions of those days is captured by the simple epitaph on the gravestone of James Myers who is buried in the Methodist Cemetery at Yeadon behind the Town Hall. James was a married man just 22 years old who ‘died by an accident in the Bramhope Tunnel on the 14th day of April, 1848’. Next to him lies the body of his 3 years old daughter who died two weeks later of some unspecified illness.
Bramhope tunnel - the northern portal References: