In the first of a two-part feature, STEPHEN COYLE highlights the vital contribution of Irish workers in developing Glasgow’s water supply
IN THIS feature I wanted to explore the experience of the navvies in the construction of part of Glasgow’s water supply at Craigmaddie Reservoir near the town of Milngavie in East Dunbartonshire in the late 19th century. It aims to shine a light on the lives and experiences of the predominantly Irish workforce, and their terrific battles with nature, several of whom lost their lives, for the sake of a daily wage and the greater good of the residents of Glasgow, who gained a clean water supply.
In the early 1800s, most Glaswegians lived in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. Sources of water were sparse. People had to fetch from wells, streams, or the polluted River Clyde. Death from waterborne diseases was rife. More than 3000 people died in the 1832 cholera out-break alone. This and other outbreaks of water-borne cholera highlighted industrial Glasgow’s need for uncontaminated and plentiful supplies of water.
The Town Council hired John F Bateman (1810-1889), a water engineer behind similar waterwork schemes in Dublin, Belfast and Manchester, to identify Loch Katrine as an aqueduct supply source. Parliament passed a Waterworks Act in 1856 despite initial opposition from landowners and the Admiralty, empowering the council to begin building the service reservoir at Mugdock near Milngavie, with its dams and tunnels. Hundreds of navvies and other workers, mainly Irishmen, flocked to work on the contract.
The Navvies
The railway historian Terry Coleman offered a way of defining the navvy. Firstly, there was the nature and severity of the work, which would involve excavating, or tunnelling, or blasting, or bridge-building on public work. While the main activity of this kind was on railways, between jobs navvies would work on canals, docks, reservoirs and roads. For work of that sort, the immigrant Irishman showed himself peculiarly fitted. It was unskilled labour of the rudest type, and lack of opportunity prevented him from aspiring to any form of craftmanship. His simple diet of potatoes and milk had given him a frame and sinews that wielded pick and shovel with ease and made light of bodily loads. An open-air life from infancy had inured him to the climatic vagaries of these latitudes. In a country where he had no roots migration was no hardship for him and hence, he moved freely wherever his strength was in demand.
Secondly, navvies were required to work and live together in encampments and be inclined or willing to move to new jobs.
Finally, the third requirement was an ability to drink and eat like a navvy. Two pounds of beef and a gallon of beer was considered acceptable. The dress was also distinctive. They wore moleskin trousers, double-canvas shirts, velveteen square-tailed coats, hobnail boots, gaudy handkerchiefs, and white felt hats with the brims turned up. They were often known to the contractor, and to everyone else, only by their nicknames such as ‘Moleskin Joe’ and ‘John the Mouse.’ Some took their wives and children with them.
The navvies shared a common experience of danger and privation and were united by a sense of injustice and exploitation. James E Handley, historian of the Irish in Scotland, stated that ‘while the work was unskilled in the sense that it did not require an apprenticeship and called only for brute strength, there were plenty of opportunities for acquiring knack and knowledge within its ambit.’ Handley considered Irish labour in Victorian Scotland to be more important than native labour.
Glasgow Corporation Waterworks Scheme
Glasgow’s Lord Provost, Robert Stewart (1810-66) was the driving force behind Glasgow Corporation Waterworks scheme, a colossal project to bring water to Glasgow from Loch Katrine. Mugdock Reservoir was completed in 1859 along with its 26-mile pipeline. It was one of the most ambitious civil engineering schemes to have been undertaken in Europe since Antiquity, employing the most advanced surveying and construction techniques available, including the use of machine moulding and vertical casting technologies to produce the cast-iron pipes. The scheme represents the golden age of municipal activity in Scotland and not only provided Glasgow with fresh drinking water, but also a source of hydraulic power that was indispensable to the growth of Glasgow's industry as a cheap and clean means of lifting and moving heavy plant in docks, shipyards and warehouses.
The second phase of the project was to build an adjoining reservoir to Mugdock called Craigmaddie Reservoir and its associated pipeline to Loch Katrine. This major expansion to the scheme began in 1886 and more than doubled Glasgow’s daily water supply. Building tunnels, aqueducts and infrastructure from Loch Katrine involved thousands of construction workers, ironworkers and mechanics. Due to financial and geological reasons, the second reservoir took ten years to complete, instead of the expected five. The geological limitations frequently made life difficult for the men building the reservoir. James Gale, Glasgow Corporation’s engineer, wrote of Craigmaddie: “In the construction of the adjoining Mugdock reservoir, which was completed in 1859, there had been no difficulty in getting a watertight foundation in the sandstone rock at a moderate depth, but the trench for the new reservoir turned out a very anxious and expensive piece of work.”
The watertight foundations referred to by James Gale was known as the ‘puddle trench,’ a deep ditch of puddle clay which had to be built round a reservoir to act as a seal to stop the water escaping. Rock fissures and other geological obstacles, however, made the excavation of the puddle trench here extremely difficult, especially at the north of the embankment, and in places the trench was 193 feet deep. After working for 18 months the first contractors, Messrs Robert Carlisle and Company of Belfast had to surrender their contract after they were unable to satisfy the Corporation as to the progress made. The enormous amount of rock that had to be excavated was of such a formidable and unpredictable character that the town council had to take over the responsibility for the work and had to have it completed at their own cost and risk. After the excavation, masses of concrete were poured in for trenching and the puddle wall. The whole enterprise was at last rounded off in 1896 at a cost of £337,000, more than two and a half times the original estimate.
The Puddle Trench
In the making of reservoirs for the storage of water it was, as mentioned, necessary to have a huge wall of puddle clay surrounding the reservoir to prevent the escape of water by percolation through the enclosing banks. In Craigmaddie Reservoir the new contractor Messrs Morrison & Mason were put to great trouble and expense to get a sufficiently sound foundation on which to build the puddle clay.
The following account describes the gruelling nature of the work involved in building the puddle trench: “The method adopted in cutting out the rock is boring and blasting, and the workmen at present, are nearing the completion of the deepest part—185 feet from the beginning of the rock, or 200 feet from the surface of the ground.
“It is almost impossible to convey in words an adequate idea of the appearance of the chasm which has been made. It’s like has not been seen anywhere. Looking over the edge one sees the smooth, solid rock stretching almost sheer downwards to the bottom. The workmen below look more like pygmies, and the depth at which they are working is so great that the clink of their hammers only reaches the surface in a distant echo.
“The sight from the floor of the cutting, however, is even more impressive than that. Clad in oilskins and sou’wester—all the quarrymen work in this garb—one scrambles down a serious of zig zag ladders through cataracts of falling water, until he is beside the workmen the sound of whose hammers now beats on the ear in the confined space with uncomfortable distinctness.
“The moisture percolating through the rock takes the form of a stream of considerable dimensions which flows to a certain point, whence it is drawn to the surface by a steam pump, which throbs with an energy that seems to make the whole place vibrate. The nerve and endurance needed to work in the claustrophobic conditions of these narrow trenches may now be only guessed at.”
The inhabitants of Milngavie took a great interest in the progress of the work, and hundreds used to visit the dam on Sundays to inspect the tunnels and gaze in wonder at the deep trench or cutting that was used to make the wall of the high embankment.
The Irish in Milngavie
The second statistical Account of Scotland published in 1840, describes Milngavie as a ‘prosperous manufacturing village’ engaged in cotton spinning, calico printing and bleaching. According to the 1861 census, 20 per cent of the population were born in Ireland with an additional 10 per cent being of Irish parentage. Unfortunately, the enumeration has rarely noted the county of birth, but five persons are shown as natives of Donegal, Dublin, Derry, Louth and Antrim.
In the 1891 census, the enumerator noted ‘the influence of the labouring class at present here owing to an extension in connection with the Glasgow waterworks.’ Many of the navvies brought their families with them and some of their wives worked in the local mills. The majority of people living in the huts were Irish-born with a smattering from different parts of Scotland and England.
Accommodation
The large influx of navvies coming to work on the construction of Craigmaddie Reservoir led to overcrowding in the village of Milngavie. It appears that in many cases, four, six, and eight lodgers were kept in addition to the members of the family. The inspector of common lodging houses was instructed to visit all houses where lodgers were kept, and to warn offenders that they would be prosecuted for overcrowding. It was agreed to press the contractor, to hasten the erection of huts for his workers, to relieve the pressure.
Many the navvies were housed in huts, the principal huts being situated on the level stretch of ground on the Strathblane Road below the high bank of the reservoir. Each hut was about 100 feet long and had double rows of single bunks built against the interior walls. There was a large hot plate, where most of the men cooked their food.
Entertainment
There was a reading room at the encampment which contained books, papers and magazines, with a few games such as draughts and dominoes. It was capable of holding 230 people. The room was always clean and well-heated.
A series of monthly concerts supported by local worthies, were put on for the workers and proved popular, as can be gleaned from this report: “A selection of Scottish and Irish songs was performed, including Barney O’Toole and His Auld Beard Newly Shaven, which heartily pleased the audience. O Steer My Barque to Erin’s Isle was also sung. Mr Shand, inspector of works, presided. The hall, which is getting too small for the accommodation required, is very comfortable and neatly got up, with an arched ceiling. The walls are covered with amusing and instructive pictures; warmth and light lend their enchantment to the hall, and it must be a pleasant change for the wearied workers after their day’s toil.”
The navvies took part in various popular sports and pastimes including football, draughts and tug of war competitions, which sometimes made the press, such as the Edinburgh Evening News, who wrote: “Football in Western Stirlingshire has been the rage during the summer months and matches and five-a-side competitions take place every week. At a game between Killearn and the Glasgow Corporation Waterwork Navvies, the latter discarded football boots as being too tight and prepared playing in their ordinary heavy footgear. Their opponents’ shins suffered severely.”
In researching this feature Stephen Coyle would like to acknowledge the help he received from the staff of the Mitchell Library, Glasgow City Archives, East Dunbartonshire Archives, Rev Father Pat Currie of St Joseph’s Parish, Milngavie and Dr Máirtín Ó Catháin
Stephen Coyle is a member of both the Scottish Labour History Society and the Irish Labour History Society
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