I friction love Phil. He looked so scuffed when I first saw this show when I was in Australia in 2012. Now a days I feel he's a friend. Greetings from Denmark
Matt scored on the recreation role this episode. Bacon and beer for breakfast, Steak twice a day plus beer breaks and more beer throughout the day. But moving 20 TONS of muck is a tough tab...
Forgivme. It is so very much better than Midsommer Murders! It is real UK! I love all the people in the show, those who are behind cameras as well. I have learned about UK so much! Thank you all! Thank you for posting those videos! Thank you!
The contractor shops sound just like the company stores of the U.S., used by the workers laying railroad lines here. They're mentioned in the song 'Sixteen Tons', most famously recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford: 'You dig sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store.'
The way the navvies lived was not so different than our western pioneers. The countryside even looked like central Montana… similar feeling. Funny at the end there about the slag heap. Old industrial sites of all stripes can have a certain aesthetic allure. Imagine old black rusting mining headframes towering over the piles of old eroding spoils like man-made badlands stained red and yellow and purple from the minerals. Especially effective on a stormy desert day when clouds go dark gray. Every nation, every region, must have its industrial relics that seem to gain charm as they are reclaimed by nature.
The Irish built them the british government got their turn out of them while they drank wine ;; then they made a complete shambles of n ireland with thousands dead and injured .
The tunnel diggers union in New York city was full of Maggie's who immigrated. Some of them started family dynasties of such workers that continue to this very day.
The winch and accomodation dig is here on Google Earth: 54°17'58.6"N 2°21'36.9"W The tramway is clear here: 54°18'03.7"N 2°21'36.4"W The huge deposits of rubble are clear from space and the hillside shows the many terrace lines dug to prevent erosion.
When they talked about how they "scammed" workers was common then. I don't know what it was like in the UK but here mining companies would have a village with a company store where the workers were required to shop. They had to buy tools and explosive to work the coal and pay rent on the houses. Dole would lock his workers in once the shift started, this was in Hawaii, in New York, about 1912, a fire started in the Triangle Shirt-wast plant over 100 young women and girls died, many jumping out of windows, there was no other way to escape the fire.
i agree with francis, people with money want these things built, but they leave the actual work to the navvies, who have to hope that the architects havnt messed up with their planing, and what they want is actually achievable and not just a disaster waiting to happen, and then when their finished their just forgotten, and definitely not invited to dinner
Cant get over that as used to working outside in bad weather they are they never wear the the right clothes for it. We have a saying in norway: "theres no bad weather, just bad clothes" (sound better in norvegian, it rymes)...if your going to work outside in the rain wear clothes for working outside in the rain
Also they seem to have an insufficient amount of tents for their sites quite often. They obviously have a substantial budget, I don't know why they do so much work in the rain.
We have the same in Garmany and I too still can't believe that Brits often don't have propper rain clothes. And I already live hin Scotland for ten years...
Hubby's dad was a piledriver operator. For each new massive shipping dock or bridge he was to work on, the company would move his whole family. There would be a sort of enclave just of company families of the workers, with schoolhouses, playgrounds and all. When the project was over, the family and all their belongings would go to the next job. Not too different from these families, really - except hubby's family was being sent all over the world: Brazil, Nigeria, Australia, Spain, South Africa, Ireland, etc.
Just finished the story about the suicide. Helen tells the story, astonished that anyone would do that. But I have walked through the shadowed valley called "depression" for most of my life, and it can be a very, very tough walk. While I never seriously thought about suicide, I get how it can seem the best solution to the dreariness of the existence with severe depression.
I have probably been depressed my whole life I really can't tell honestly. But no matter all the things I've been through others would say terrible I will not check out early . That would be cheating the game I am playing 😮
I think Matt's pipe should have been upside down. Since navvies, etc. would have had pipes clenched in their teeth all day long, thereby wearing a distinctive groove in their teeth, they would keep the pipe upside down to rain and so on from getting in. Tightly-packed tobacco would still stay in the bowl, and would burn just as well as it would right-side up. The truck system sounds very like the 'company store' system in the States. The song 'Sixteen Tons' (best sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford) includes the lines: Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I cain't go. I owe my soul to the company store.
23:37 holy fuck that trowel's seen some action. I bet he's had that trowel 45 years man and boy. His old faithful trowel... only had 3 new handles and 2 new blades.
nice and for a change not -old - roman or Norman or Stoneage Villas and roundhouses. - BEERS - ONE person for sure would have liked that, Phil Harding that is? though in this weather the archaeologists had to work, they for sure were more interested in some hot tea with a few %% of something stronger in it? what surprised me though, or maybe not, that there were no italien -experts -there. because on all the main European railway building and special where tunnels and viaducts were involved, the majority were Italian workers. who were special experienced in building railways, tunneling or building viaducts. maybe though there was one big difference. those italian guys got PAID. and not such meagre wages as the navvies got. maybe THAT was the reason the Brit -Lords - used only local labor?
Interesting show regardless, they chose something with distinction and records to find. Just finished a documentary, now in post production about navvies, virtually no records exist or census until the 1870's hence this choice. The Irish were most disliked by everyone else, mainly due to working for less money, virtually all of the navvies scattered across the globe to Canada - Australia to name but two.
Ah, yes! The good old "Company Store". The real reason laborers like miners, mill workers, American share-croppers and canal and railroad workers on both sides of the pond could not get out of debt and improve their lot. The song "Sixteen Tons" covers it, they couldn't even afford to die (I owe my soul to the company store).
Would having a middle tunnel also help adapt to drifting whilst digging, especially if digging over a long stretch, hoping you have less than a few inches, than yards from planned meeting point.
If those guys love spoil heaps so much, they should come over to northern France: the mining industry left loads of huge "Terrils", many of which are now home to unique fauna and flora, as well as being an age-old testimony to 19th and 20th century engineering!
As an aside, don't get shocked at companies adding sawdust to food, because THEY STILL DO THIS! If you buy anything that has cellulose listed as an ingredient it may well be sawdust. I contacted the company from which I purchased shredded cheese and asked them about the source, and they had no shyness about saying, "TIMBER"! If you're a person who has seasonal allergies, you might find yourself sensitive to those foods which have this in it!!
Being a Navvie was apparently something you grew into. It's the Victorian era so work discipline would have been very strict, and they did seem to really need that high-caloric diet they were getting through by all accounts. Work days were probably also a bit longer than 8 hours.
@@DiggingForFacts btw I drink low alcohol high calorie beer by the quart when I blow glass so I'm echoingly familiar with high intensity workloads though not to the level of the victorian's of course. I just don't know that I believe that weight shuffle stat is all no disrespect to their badass work intended.
@@Moshe_Kraintz yeah I lived in Pennsylvania for twelve years and don't know that I believe those stats either given how braggadocious their steel working successors are.
If you dig deep ENUF! You'll find those MEN who died building this tunnel MY school friend farther WARKED on IT!.its between the snake pass and the woodhead from Manchester to Sheffield if want to see butiful countryside its wear Thay filmed dam busters !.
They could have used the boiler to provide steam heat for the buildings since it would have been running all the time. The fireplaces could have been for cooking not heating.
In those days, before “new pence” started in 1971, Pennie’s were identified as “d” (from the Latin denarius, I believe). There were 12d in 1s, and 20s in a pound. There were therefore 240d in a pound. So … 30d was indeed two shillings and sixpence, also known as half a crown. Nowadays, after the new money came in on the decimal system, there are 100p to a pound. Each new penny equals 2.4 old pence.
When human death is part of your job, as it was for me, you _do_ laugh as the alternative is to cry. It's rarely the laughter of simple humour, it's more commonly an escape from tragedy.
I love Matt. They put him through so much ad he remains so positive. What a trooper! He & Phil have always been my favorite.
They should have weighed M. before and after. How strong was the beer?
Matt's never had such a great excuse to drink all day on the job before, of course he's positive 🤣
I agree, but I have to add Carenza.
Raksha and Matt what great sports. This is relatively recent and it is amazing the progress we've made since then. Love this show, thanks.
Michael, I agree with you. We Michael Burgess(es) think alike!
3:56 Stewart Ainsworth is brilliant...the way he can literally 'read' a landscape is staggering.
@Scumfuck McDoucheface The combination of your username and aprofessed adoration for Turturro leaves me, well..., feeling unsettled... ;)
@@harbourdogNL Wut
Raksha gets the Intrepid Award. She's courageous, cheerful and brilliant. Hooray Raksha!
IDIOT
I friction love Phil. He looked so scuffed when I first saw this show when I was in Australia in 2012. Now a days I feel he's a friend. Greetings from Denmark
almost 150 yrs ago - definitely no different than any other site re: historical respect - thnx guys for taking Time Team here
Matt scored on the recreation role this episode. Bacon and beer for breakfast, Steak twice a day plus beer breaks and more beer throughout the day. But moving 20 TONS of muck is a tough tab...
Forgivme. It is so very much better than Midsommer Murders! It is real UK! I love all the people in the show, those who are behind cameras as well. I have learned about UK so much! Thank you all! Thank you for posting those videos! Thank you!
Francis said you have to treat the site like any ancient site and yet he didn't say anything about ritual.
I came to this one after the roman temples programme. Chalk & cheese
And yet both were made fascinating by the brilliance of the presentation. Superb
I love that spoil heap too... from a height it looks like dragonfly wings... very cool.
Yeah, I have the 'ooh, pretty!' response every time I see this episode. It's kind of like the Nazca lines, cool as hell from above.
I also thought of one of the Nazca figures in the Peruvian desert.
The contractor shops sound just like the company stores of the U.S., used by the workers laying railroad lines here. They're mentioned in the song 'Sixteen Tons', most famously recorded by Tennessee Ernie Ford: 'You dig sixteen tons, and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt. St. Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I can't go; I owe my soul to the company store.'
Hard, hard work. They ate well most of the time, it seems. Excellent presentation of this job. Best to you and yours.
if eating rotten meat and rotten potatoes is eating well, then yes they did!
Matt was a real sport. He must have enjoyed his living archeology.
Matt was such a good sport.
I think Naomi is the cutest ever and she is gets in and does her job just as much as anyone else
The way the navvies lived was not so different than our western pioneers. The countryside even looked like central Montana… similar feeling. Funny at the end there about the slag heap. Old industrial sites of all stripes can have a certain aesthetic allure. Imagine old black rusting mining headframes towering over the piles of old eroding spoils like man-made badlands stained red and yellow and purple from the minerals. Especially effective on a stormy desert day when clouds go dark gray. Every nation, every region, must have its industrial relics that seem to gain charm as they are reclaimed by nature.
The Irish built them the british government got their turn out of them while they drank wine ;; then they made a complete shambles of n ireland with thousands dead and injured .
The tunnel diggers union in New York city was full of Maggie's who immigrated. Some of them started family dynasties of such workers that continue to this very day.
The winch and accomodation dig is here on Google Earth:
54°17'58.6"N 2°21'36.9"W
The tramway is clear here:
54°18'03.7"N 2°21'36.4"W
The huge deposits of rubble are clear from space and the hillside shows the many terrace lines dug to prevent erosion.
When they talked about how they "scammed" workers was common then. I don't know what it was like in the UK but here mining companies would have a village with a company store where the workers were required to shop. They had to buy tools and explosive to work the coal and pay rent on the houses. Dole would lock his workers in once the shift started, this was in Hawaii, in New York, about 1912, a fire started in the Triangle Shirt-wast plant over 100 young women and girls died, many jumping out of windows, there was no other way to escape the fire.
We had that same system of working for a company and having to buy supplies at the company store, especially at coal mines.
Same up here in the Pacific North West USA in logging areas 😊
...and Big Rachel was 32 years old when that picture was taken. Life was a little rougher back then.
i agree with francis, people with money want these things built, but they leave the actual work to the navvies, who have to hope that the architects havnt messed up with their planing, and what they want is actually achievable and not just a disaster waiting to happen, and then when their finished their just forgotten, and definitely not invited to dinner
Such is life. If you don't want to do the grunt work, then you have to figure out how to become rich. Either way, you have to work.
It's funny, I was a truck driver doing international work for 26 years, going from one job to another, and that was known as " tramping".
And being a scooter tramp means biking across the USA itinerant style
Consider revelations in this episode about the conditions of Victorian labor, and you can put the writing of Karl Marx into context of the period.
Thomas Bougher i think Marx had it wrong...Beer was the opiate of the masses! 😆
Love the RAF Tornado screaming through the valley.
So refreshing to see a dig that’s not a Roman Villa.
Thanks for postimg
im suprised that phil didnt ask " where did they build the pub "
Cant get over that as used to working outside in bad weather they are they never wear the the right clothes for it. We have a saying in norway: "theres no bad weather, just bad clothes" (sound better in norvegian, it rymes)...if your going to work outside in the rain wear clothes for working outside in the rain
Had the same observations.
Also they seem to have an insufficient amount of tents for their sites quite often. They obviously have a substantial budget, I don't know why they do so much work in the rain.
Maybe just not very photogenic. If they can hack it that way, more power to them. Probably have great resistance and immunity.
We have the same in Garmany and I too still can't believe that Brits often don't have propper rain clothes. And I already live hin Scotland for ten years...
Cool saying, so what clothes should I wear in a tornado😂
Love that Jackson Pollock reference 🥰
Hubby's dad was a piledriver operator. For each new massive shipping dock or bridge he was to work on, the company would move his whole family. There would be a sort of enclave just of company families of the workers, with schoolhouses, playgrounds and all. When the project was over, the family and all their belongings would go to the next job. Not too different from these families, really - except hubby's family was being sent all over the world: Brazil, Nigeria, Australia, Spain, South Africa, Ireland, etc.
My grandpa was doing exactly this as late as the 1960s, between the mines and the railroad. You could have just asked me.
Oh well, no need for any science to be done ever, we’ll just call on mr. self important then. Twat.
a can of milk and 2 pints of beer, breakfast of champions lol
16:30 Like every single house in Sweden since the dawn of time :)
What a hard job to be done in those times !
And how many died.
Just finished the story about the suicide. Helen tells the story, astonished that anyone would do that. But I have walked through the shadowed valley called "depression" for most of my life, and it can be a very, very tough walk. While I never seriously thought about suicide, I get how it can seem the best solution to the dreariness of the existence with severe depression.
I have probably been depressed my whole life I really can't tell honestly.
But no matter all the things I've been through others would say terrible I will not check out early .
That would be cheating the game I am playing 😮
Keep fighting if for nothing else for a man who can not quit I'll need a friend in the end ok😊
Please keep on
"A man with a big nose". Descendant of the big-nosed pre-historic folks at that one cave dig?
Or of the big-nosed, skirt-wearing Turkish crossbowmen apparently depicted in the Bayeux tapisserie?
I think Matt's pipe should have been upside down. Since navvies, etc. would have had pipes clenched in their teeth all day long, thereby wearing a distinctive groove in their teeth, they would keep the pipe upside down to rain and so on from getting in. Tightly-packed tobacco would still stay in the bowl, and would burn just as well as it would right-side up.
The truck system sounds very like the 'company store' system in the States. The song 'Sixteen Tons' (best sung by Tennessee Ernie Ford) includes the lines: Saint Peter, don't you call me, 'cause I cain't go. I owe my soul to the company store.
From a hard core smoker it was probably not lit until a break and breathed thru for flavor and habit. 😊
Oh and a pipe bowl does not keep burning down ward the smoke and oils put it out easily tried it I do not recommend you do I'm a smoker. 😊😮
Wouldn't have been fun if Last of the Summer Wine had come across a Time Team dig!?
23:37 holy fuck that trowel's seen some action. I bet he's had that trowel 45 years man and boy. His old faithful trowel... only had 3 new handles and 2 new blades.
Not S16-E08...that's the Ice cream villa on the official Time Team Classic channel.
❤️ Raksha!
Not a bad job when you're getting beer and steak!
Take a read of the book 'The Railway Navvies' by Terry Coleman - probably the best written account of the British railway navvy.
any fanciful and far fetched stories like Helen's at 14:10 ?
This episode gives flesh and context to “The World from Rough Stones” by Malcolm Macdonald.
The 'man with the big nose' - could it possibly be the Witchsmeller Pursuivant..?
nice and for a change not -old - roman or Norman or Stoneage Villas and roundhouses. - BEERS - ONE person for sure would have liked that, Phil Harding that is? though in this weather the archaeologists had to work, they for sure were more interested in some hot tea with a few %% of something stronger in it?
what surprised me though, or maybe not, that there were no italien -experts -there. because on all the main European railway building and special where tunnels and viaducts were involved, the majority were Italian workers. who were special experienced in building railways, tunneling or building viaducts.
maybe though there was one big difference. those italian guys got PAID. and not such meagre wages as the navvies got.
maybe THAT was the reason the Brit -Lords - used only local labor?
Back in the day, the beer didn’t have the same alcohol count as our beer today does.
Its also not hard to metabolise 10 pints of beer if you're doing manual labour all day
Interesting show regardless, they chose something with distinction and records to find. Just finished a documentary, now in post production about navvies, virtually no records exist or census until the 1870's hence this choice.
The Irish were most disliked by everyone else, mainly due to working for less money, virtually all of the navvies scattered across the globe to Canada - Australia to name but two.
Ah, yes! The good old "Company Store". The real reason laborers like miners, mill workers, American share-croppers and canal and railroad workers on both sides of the pond could not get out of debt and improve their lot. The song "Sixteen Tons" covers it, they couldn't even afford to die (I owe my soul to the company store).
Matt is so funny lol
Would having a middle tunnel also help adapt to drifting whilst digging, especially if digging over a long stretch, hoping you have less than a few inches, than yards from planned meeting point.
If those guys love spoil heaps so much, they should come over to northern France: the mining industry left loads of huge "Terrils", many of which are now home to unique fauna and flora, as well as being an age-old testimony to 19th and 20th century engineering!
Phil and Matt wear the same gold bracelet?
Could those be copper bracelets?
Its amazing how much neolithic man achieved on these early railroads. The navvies are a credit to our long lost ancestors
For us Non-Englishmen, 17 stones equals 238 pounds. That was one large woman!!!
Tried the diet and without moving and burning it of it was hard 😊
Matt better have good tolerance for alcohol or he will get fall down drunk.
It's a Go! for Mike Mills!
Contemporary were the Chinese laborers building the railway in the Sierra Nevadas of California and Nevada!
As an aside, don't get shocked at companies adding sawdust to food, because THEY STILL DO THIS!
If you buy anything that has cellulose listed as an ingredient it may well be sawdust. I contacted the company from which I purchased shredded cheese and asked them about the source, and they had no shyness about saying, "TIMBER"!
If you're a person who has seasonal allergies, you might find yourself sensitive to those foods which have this in it!!
Lol all that beer!! Didn't they used to water it down? Or did they have to keep them drunk to keep them working?
@@thorsten9129 oooh, I bet they loved that.
It was a rather weak beer, otherwise they would have a lot more accidents on site.
I did stone masonry for twenty years and twenty tons seems a little unbelievable
Naomi Sewpaul seemed to be a fine young woman.
She's cute too
Faye is excavating, can't ignore her
I m curious how many of the navvies actually moved 20 tons a day. Definitely ten but twenty?!
Being a Navvie was apparently something you grew into. It's the Victorian era so work discipline would have been very strict, and they did seem to really need that high-caloric diet they were getting through by all accounts. Work days were probably also a bit longer than 8 hours.
@@DiggingForFacts all undoubted accurate I'm still not convinced lol
@@DiggingForFacts btw I drink low alcohol high calorie beer by the quart when I blow glass so I'm echoingly familiar with high intensity workloads though not to the level of the victorian's of course. I just don't know that I believe that weight shuffle stat is all no disrespect to their badass work intended.
Miners in Pennsylvania moved 16 tons, so 20 isn't so much more.
@@Moshe_Kraintz yeah I lived in Pennsylvania for twelve years and don't know that I believe those stats either given how braggadocious their steel working successors are.
You can see that spoil heap at 54.299397,-2.359492
3344yugdfds5yrgce
+Jeff Lanam Or 54°17'52.4"N 2°21'35.4"W converted to standard longitude and latitude.
I need to go on the Navvy diet.
Without the corresponding workload you would be a morbidly obese slug lol
"navvies" sound like a real bunch of "carnies"
Odd they never investigated the tunnel.
+Greg Bly The tunnel is still in use so maybe they weren't allowed access.
*Greg Bly*
Why should they? The dig was about the _navies,_ not the tunnel.
@@nicholasduckett4366 They weren't.
The Mach Loop
In mailing / printing you move this quantity in paper on some large jobs.
with twice the beer intake
@@phoule76 didn't drink until I started archaeology
Why were they called navvies?
Short for "Navigators."
They were the successors to the *_navigators_* who laboured on the canal navigations of the 18th and early 19th centuries.
If you dig deep ENUF! You'll find those MEN who died building this tunnel MY school friend farther WARKED on IT!.its between the snake pass and the woodhead from Manchester to Sheffield if want to see butiful countryside its wear Thay filmed dam busters !.
The red rose of Lancashire.
Close, but this is in the second best county -Yorkshire.
Gods own country
💚
Boring Dig. I don't like those Industrial Digs. I prefer Roman Digs most and than Castles..
this Geake thing reminds me of James May.
Why is the picture quality soo poor? 💩
Well. As a local to Lancaster, trusting the Lancaster guardian as a historical accurate source is stupid. Only good for lining your pets litter tray.
They could have used the boiler to provide steam heat for the buildings since it would have been running all the time. The fireplaces could have been for cooking not heating.
That would have ruined a very good opportunity to make some additional money for the contracter to sell the navvies fire food.
That would run contrary to many other Victorian sites but is possible all the same
That too. Company towns what we call it in the usa.
30p is 6 Shilling not 2 Shillings and sixpence, She's ripping herself off LOL
In those days, before “new pence” started in 1971, Pennie’s were identified as “d” (from the Latin denarius, I believe). There were 12d in 1s, and 20s in a pound. There were therefore 240d in a pound. So … 30d was indeed two shillings and sixpence, also known as half a crown.
Nowadays, after the new money came in on the decimal system, there are 100p to a pound. Each new penny equals 2.4 old pence.
29:40
S16E05
Oh dear, Tony is such a ninny, whines about everything.
Please read, find out why Tony is acting this way. It is part of the show.
Laughing about a suicide ? disgusting. :-(
When human death is part of your job, as it was for me, you _do_ laugh as the alternative is to cry. It's rarely the laughter of simple humour, it's more commonly an escape from tragedy.