Totley Tunnel Memorial, Crookes Cemetery

                  The Commemorative Plaque, Crookes Cemetery

We know when and by whom the plaque was placed and assume it has been placed in Crookes Cemetery rather than Dore Churchyard so as to be close to the traditional centre of the Sheffield Irish community based in the St. Vincent Quarter. This unattributed article appeared in Issue 50 of Dore to Dore in the Summer of 1998.

Tunnel Tribute
Members of Sheffield's Irish community gathered in Crookes cemetery in March to lay a wreath at a new monument to scores of Irish navvies believed to have perished during the building of the Totley Tunnel from 1888 to 1894. The navvies and their families lived tightly packed together in wooden huts and unsanitary conditions, ideal for the spread of disease and leading inevitably to deaths from smallpox and cholera. There were also an number of accidents and tunnel collapses. Historic records fail to reveal the extent of these deaths or tally with the stories about them that have been passed down through subsequent generations. It is possible that immigrant deaths were not recorded locally for administrative reasons, or possibly covered up by the companies or authorities involved. Anyone interested in the history of the period should read the book Totley and the Tunnel by Brian Edwards, available on loan from Totley Library.

The Winter 2002 edition of the Bradway Bugle carried an article on the tunnel in which it states:

The nomadic lifestyle of the navvies was not conductive to a good education or healthy practices. There was a smallpox outbreak in 1893, which caused deaths amongst this group, who had not been vaccinated. There are 17 entries in the Register of Burials at Dore Church between March and July 1893, which have S.P. after the name. Of these eleven were infants and children. Seven died at the Smallpox Hospital, Totley, which was sited at Green Oak. Whether all the deaths were actually recorded is in doubt given the number of casual Irish labourers at the time.

         One of several smallpox grave markers, Dore Christ Church

Other writers have mentioned the Irish navvies notably Dorothy A. Trott. In her biography A Tapestry of Life (1984) she says: 

The rather ugly row of workman's dwellings on Totley Rise had been constructed to house the Irish navvies recruited to build the Dore and Chinley Railway Tunnel, in 1897.

We know that from the early-mid 19th century there were considerable numbers of families from Ireland in Sheffield, particularly in the St. Vincent Quarter, and also in the Peak District where they had come to work in the lead mines and the building of the notorious Woodhead Tunnel (1839-52) and the extension of the Ambergate, Matlock and Rowsley Railway to Buxton (1848-52). Irish navvies had also been involved in the building of the Bradway Tunnel (opened in 1870), but are these stories of Irish navvies building the Totley Tunnel true or just myths? 

Perhaps we should first remind ourselves of the dates that the two major tunnels on the Dore & Chinley Railway were constructed. The Totley Tunnel was built between between 1888 and 1894 by Thomas Oliver & Sons of Horsham and the Cowburn Tunnel was built in 1891 by J B Edwards of Chester.

Curious then that the date given on the plaque (circa 1880) was four years before approval had been given for the route of the railway line at a time when alternative proposals held sway. Pauline Burnett's new book The Rise of Totley Rise has demonstrated that Bricky Row was built between 1879 and 1882, again well before the construction of the tunnel, and couldn't have been built to house Irish navvies.

In his book Totley and the Tunnel, Brian Edwards made many references to the navvies, to their working conditions and behaviour. But on their origins he said:

The tendency to think that all Navvies are Irish is not borne out by the facts. Of all the men featured in this book, none appear to be from Ireland (although later Mrs. Taylor referred to some as Irish). 

Rose Taylor, of Lower Bents Farmhouse, had evidently been told by her grand-mother that she would bake three-hundredweights of bread each day for the 'Irish' navvies.

Our Newspaper Archive contains more than 50 articles about the construction of the Totley Tunnel and the conversion of the pavilion at Victoria Gardens for use as a temporary smallpox convalescent hospital. There is no mention in any of them of Irish navvies. The smallpox epidemic was thought to have been brought into the area by navvies who had previously been working near Warrington, building the Manchester Ship Canal.

Clive Leivers has researched the occupations and origins of the navvies, no doubt using the 1891 census as his base source, as we have done ourselves (thanks to wishful-thinking.org.uk for the Padley/Hathersage records). We both have come to the conclusion that only a small number of those who built the Totley Tunnel were Irish and they were mainly living at the Padley end of the tunnel. Rather they came from very many places, especially the East Midlands, the Eastern Counties, the South West, South Wales and the South East. 

When the announcement was made that Thomas Oliver was recruiting at Totley, many hundreds of men turned up seeking work but Oliver was able to select individuals with specialist skills: quarrymen, stone masons, bricklayers, steel erecters, riveters, platelayers, engine drivers, miners, banksmen, pipelayers, explosive experts, drillers, electricians, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, horsemen, carters etc. Labourers were required but the 'steam navvy' did the digging of the miles of embankments. Most of those hired had previously worked on other large scale public construction projects connected with the railways, canals and reservoirs.

Irish navvies tend to be found working in places fanning out from their ports of entry in Liverpool and Glasgow. We suspect it is more likely that if they worked on the Dore & Chinley Railway they did so on the western section of the line from Chinley to Hope, including the Cowburn Tunnel, but have so far been unable to turn up any proof.