The Shanties of Ribblehead

I lived with my family in a railway house at Salt Lake, on the site of one of the former Shanty towns of Ribblehead. My daughter was born in 2001 and for many years each day I would walk with her in the moorland and limestone landscape that surrounded us. The Settle Carlisle railway ran alongside our home and day and night passenger trains and freight trains would travel up and down the line.

I had read that there were no known photographic records of the thousands of people who lived in the Shanty towns of Ribblehead when the Settle Carlisle railway was under construction in the 1870s. This captured my imagination.

The massive presence of the railway and the once present bustling communities of people who came to build the line became my main visual concern.

I was now seeking an elusive idea. I sought to make visually present something of the lives of the women, children and men who lived and worked each day in the Shanty towns of Ribblehead and to honour their contribution to our lives.

I knew something of the challenges of the place albeit from the comforts of the present day. The winds at Ribblehead can be fierce and there is little protection from the elements. I also knew its draw. I had grown to love its bleakness and openness and beauty.

I came upon this recorded sentiment spoken in the 1870s by one of the Ribblehead railway navvies and related keenly to his words:

Though many of the men had been engaged in railway making in rough and foreign countries, they seemed to agree that they were in “one of the wildest, windiest, coldest and dearest localities” in the world.

 The Midland Railway  Its Rise and Progress
F.S.Williams  (Bemrose 1875) Page 494

I drew and painted the landscape. I repeatedly walked along the lines of the railway and the tramways. I researched texts from the 1870s and contemporary writings.

I imagined and I drew and I read and I walked.

My main discipline is as a printmaker. I worked images into aluminium, zinc, steel and copper. The theme of the Shanties somehow suited the cuts and bites into metal which referenced the railway itself. Etchings and drypoints and screen prints started to form as I came upon ideas that moved me.

I created over 50 images with referenced text accompanying each one.  The exhibition toured the region. The show was launched at The Folly Art Gallery and Museum in Settle and then travelled to the Howgill Gallery at Farfield Mill in Sedbergh, the Yorkshire Dales National Parks exhibition space, Yoredale’ in Bainbridge and Skipton Town Hall Gallery and Museum.

The exhibition contained images and words working together to tell a story.