Thunder in the mountains

The Men Who Built Ribblehead

By W.R. Mitchell

The dramatic true story of hardship, violence and debauchery behind the building of Ribblehead Viaduct.

For years the dominant sounds at Ribblehead were the bleating of sheep and the croaky calls of grouse. Then came the railway engineers and their men, linking Settle with Carlisle. Thunderous noises, including a new-fangled explosive called dynamite, echoed in and around the mountains.

Ribblehead Viaduct, which symbolises the strength and durability of the Settle-Carlisle railway, was built by a Victorian work force. How that force was mustered and how its various skills were applied in a bleak high Pennine setting, are related in this book.

The railway settlement on and around Batty Green, at the headwaters of the Ribble, lived, throve and died in less than ten years. As men constructed the longest viaduct on the line, others were hacking and blasting their way through Blea Moor, warming dynamite in their pockets before use!

The Batty Green workforce, their wives and children, experienced earthquake, flood and an outbreak of smallpox. Read about their austere lives, about saints and sinners. A railway missionary preached the Gospel and organised "penny readings". Policemen and excise men snooped around the huts at night, detecting illicit drinking of beer that retailed at sixpence a quart.

The Settle-Carlisle line was built by a single enterprising company in a single feverish spell of activity and at an expenditure of almost £3.5m. This book has unlikely heroes. Job Hirst, sub-contractor at the viaduct, taught his building craft in his native Yorkshire, exercised it on the Bombay to Poonah railway, the first on the sub-Continent of India, then demonstrated it on the Pennines. Information about Job Hirst came from descendants living in America.

Harry Cox was among those who re-bricked the arches of Ribblehead viaduct before the First World War. In the 1980s, Tony Freschini was resident engineer when the celebrated viaduct was renovated.

Words and pictures relate how a railway was built across vacant, wine-red moorland.

PUBLICATION JULY 2009

Signed and dedicated bookplate offer - Signed by the author, WR Mitchell, with your name or a person of your choice to appear on the plate at the front of the book

“Anyone who loves railways will want this book in their bookcase.”
The Press (York), 26th September, 2009 Full Article

"This true-life drama is gripping from start to finish."
Patrick Stewart

They said it of Ribblehead...
"A monument to human industry still going strong over 120 years later … and to a tough nomadic community that lived on the very edge of society. This was the last of the great railway lines built by the navvies."
Tony Robinson
Time Team, Channel 4

"We refused to let this line die, not least because of its history. Not only did people die building the railway. It became the life of this community, and people lived and breathed this railway all the way from Settle to Carlisle."
Mike Harding

"There is no other viaduct quite like Ribblehead. A quarter of a mile long and built on a gentle yet majestic curve, its 24 arches soar 104 feet above the surrounding moorland. Yet it is set in such a vast landscape of high mountains that it is dwarfed to the extent of looking almost like a model, with the trains as mere specks against a backdrop of bleak and barren hills."
David Joy

'Thunder in the Mountains is a well-illustrated book that is largely anecdotal, matching factual accuracy with racy story-telling. The reader is introduced to a succession of fascinating people...Many more fascinating tales are told in the new book concerning the most talked about railway viaduct in the land.'
Yorkshire Post Magazine Sat 11th July 2009

'Arguably one of the most beautiful and dramatic railway sights, Ribblehead Viaduct has also been described as one of the great man-made wonders of Britain. Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the reprieve of the Settle-Carlisle line, this book is not only the story of a great feat of engineering, but also of the lives of the men behind this structure which took five years to build.'
Steam World - July
Link to Review