Steam train crossing Ribblehead Viaduct.
The song was written by Mike Donald from Skipton, he recorded it on his 1971 album, ‘Yorkshire, Songs of the Broad Acres’. I first heard this sung by Phil Birkby who I worked with at Monk Bridge Iron And Steel Company, Leeds during the 1970s. Phil Birkby, Maggie Sykes and myself sang together as the group Cocklety Bread for two or three years.
In the year of '69 they planned to run a train
From Settle to Carlisle, all across the mountain range.
They employed 3000 navvies to build this mighty road
And across the fells through Appleby that old steam engine rolled.
Chorus:
And it's up in the morning, lads
In wind, snow and hail
Hold fast to your hammers, lads
And lay another rail
It's 72 miles from Settle to Carlisle
Across the roughest country, boys, in the British Isles.
They said it would take 4 years, but it took 'em nearer seven
And the first 20 miles sent 400 men to heaven.
They set up shanty towns to protect them from the cold
Inkerman, Sebastopol and Batty Wife Hole,
And when they tired of women and the drinking of strong beer
They fought bare-fist style and they came from far and near
And when the winter came, it froze them to the floor
It blew them off the viaducts and it killed them on Blea Moor.
Some died of the smallpox, and some of cholera
Old Chapel and St Leonards has many buried there.
So if you ride this famous line across those heathered fells
When crossing Ribblehead viaduct remember the tale I tell.
There's Mallerstang and Aisgill and Dentdale's lovely wilds
And navvy lads a-slavin' from Settle to Carlisle.
Building Ribblehead Viaduct, painting by Allen Fearnley.
See UnionArt - Allen Fearnley for more of his work.
The Settle to Carlisle Railway runs from Settle Junction formerly, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, to Carlisle in the historic County of Cumberland. The 73-mile-long line crosses the wild windswept moorland of the Yorkshire Dales and the North Pennines.
The Midland Railways started planning and surveying for the line in 1865, and work on £2.3 million project began in November 1869, and It was to become one of the great engineering feats of the Victorian era, with 19 stations, 14 tunnels and 22 viaducts to build, it took 7 years to complete.
6000 navvies were employed to build the line, and they were housed, many with their wives and family, in 9 makeshift encampments along the length of the line. Some of the camps were given exotic names, like Belgravia, Inkerman, Sebastopol, Jericho, Jerusalem and Jordan. Many of the navvies employed had worked on building the Crimean Grand Central Railway during the Crimean War in 1855.
The largest shanty town was called Batty Green, where over 2000 people lived, and 130 horses were stabled, during the building of the section of line from Ribblehead Viaduct and Blea Moor Tunnel to Dent Station.
Batty Green not only consisted of residential huts, but a mission room, day and Sunday Schools, a public library, post office, shops, brickworks, hospital, stables, tramway and engine maintenance shed.
Gang of navvies working on the line
The Ribblehead Viaduct, spanning Batty Moss bog 100 feet below, is 440 yards long and has 24 arches of 45 feet span. Its foundations had to be sunk 25ft below the bog level to reach solid rock.
300 miners, bricklayers, and labourers were employed in building the one and half mile long tunnel which runs approximately 500 feet below Blea Moor, was the last tunnel to be solely dug by hand. Due to the bleakness of the moorland terrain, howling winds, frozen moorland ground, snow drifts and flooding of the tunnel, construction had to be halted for months at a time.
It is not known how many were killed or injured during the line’s construction, but many of the inhabitants of the shanty towns died due to an outbreak of smallpox. In Batty Green alone 80 people died due to a smallpox epidemic in 1871, and the Midland Railway paid to have the local graveyard extended to accommodate their burial.
The line opened for goods traffic in August 1875 and passenger train services started in 1st May 1876.
Mick Haywood is a traditional folk singer & folk song collector who has run and organised folk clubs and festivals for many years. He now lives in Whitby, North Yorkshire.
© Copyright 2025 Mick Haywood
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