Singing the Settle - Carlisle Line
A Brief History of the Line
This is a weekend learning songs about the men who built the Settle Carlisle Railway and singing them in two, three and four parts on the train, in the stations, in the pub and on a walk via the magnificient Ribblehead Viaduct and railway museum.
It took 10,000 men seven years to build the line - all of it by muscle power and dynamite. They lived in shanty towns high in the hills - over 400 of them died from accident and disease, half of them buried beside a tiny church in Chapel-le-Dale a couple of miles from Ribblehead. The Settle Carlisle Museum at Ribblehead station, where we'll be singing during the weekend, has a display about the men who built the line.
It was built so that the Midland Railway of 1869 could have its own route to Scotland and a greater share of the lucrative business of that time. It was a financial disaster from the beginning but they were committed by an act of parliament (some say it was a bluff to make the other companies lower their prices for using their lines - which went wrong). Different parts of the line were sold as contracts to local builders - the most difficult being the uphill section from Settle to Garsdale.
The railway is a monument to the glory of the men who built it: huge viaducts over 100 feet high over bogs and waterfalls, tunnels (one over a mile long), embankments and cuttings - all built by men unprotected from the ellements at a time when winters in the hills were much harsher than they are today - with regular blizzards freezing them on the hills, storms blowing them off the viaducts, and floods drowning them in the tunnels.
The chorus in one of Ken Pope's songs which we'll be singing includes the lines: "So swing your hammers boys, make the fellside ring, At home you were a pauper, but here you are a king".
Bill Mitchell, who'll be giving the talk at Chapel-le-Dale, has written several books which we're using as resources. You may be able to order these in your library or via the Friends of the Settle-Carlisle Line. They include How They Built the Settle-Carlisle Railway, and One Hundred Tales of the Settle-Carlisle Railway. Gerald Tyler has also written an excellent book, The Railway Years in Chapel Le Dale 1870-1877 which lists the names of the 200 navvies, miners and their families who are buried in the tiny graveyard there.
In the graveyard at Chapel Le Dale near Ribblehead, there's an epitaph on James Mathers' headstone (he ran the Welcome Home pub and was killed in a fall when his horses bolted): "When I was in the prime of life, it was through a fall I lost my life. No man in this world need boast of his might. He is alive in the morning and dead at night.".
The Songs
I've written a funeral song in four parts which includes the story of a man who was drying off some wet dynamite and blew himself up; the tale of a woman and child who died when they were travelling up to Sebastapool shanty town on the tram and the wagon they were in fell off the line and crushed them to death; the account of a man who got very drunk in the Welcome Home pub in the Batty Green shanty town and lay down on the tracks to sleep it off - the morning train cut him clean in half.
Most of the workers were killed by disease from the unsanitary living conditions in the Shanty towns and from the greed and carelessness of the bosses who cut costs by avoiding any safety precautions.
Mike Bettison, kindly sent me a CD of Dave Goulder's songs which include two we'll use on the weekend: Christmas Eve at Hawes Junction and The Settle-Carlisle Song, taken from a recording of the theatre production of Running Down the Line by Jim Woodland which is the story of how the government tried to close down the line.
We shall also learn some songs by Dentdale singer-songwriter, Ken Pope. These were used in the hit Dent show, Settle-Carlisle (last performed by Spellbound theatre at the Dent folk festival).
Teaching will be by ear - previous experience is not essential.
We'll be staying in the luxurious Dent Youth hostel situated half way between Arten Gill and Dent Head viaducts in Dentdale (duvets, central heating, log burning stoves, wheelchair access - youth hostels ain't what they used to be). Dentdale is in Cumbria and the Yorkshire Dales National Park near Sedbergh, 10 miles east of Kendal.
Although this is primarily a harmony singing weekend, those who play instruments as well are welcome to bring them to play on the train as well as songs and poems appropriate to the theme (i.e. trains, work, hills). There will also be a talk by local historian and author, Bill Mitchel, who has researched extensively the building of the line.
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