Life in the booming railway town

Before the arrival of the railways in Shildon, very few people lived there at all—it's hard to overstate the impact the burgeoning new industry had on the settlement.

A thriving new railway town needed offices, engineering works and other supporting infrastructure—but the growth in population and prosperity (at least for those running the railway) provided new business opportunities across the board.

CC BY-SA 2.0 © Mick Garratt (via Geograph)

Daniel Adamson's coach house—unassuming today—was built in 1831 for the Surtees Railway, which passed nearby. It's probably the oldest surviving railway coach house in the world.

Across the road is Adamson's public house, The Grey Horse, from which he ran a horse-drawn passenger coach service on the S&DR. 

The booming settlement also needed grocers, furniture retailers, hardware shops and more, attracting a plethora of trades beyond the railway industry itself.

The building of a goods shed, still standing today, attests to the town's increasing need for food and other merchandise as the population grew.

Locomotives of course needed drivers and firemen, but there were also signalmen, stationmasters and other workers keeping the railway running smoothly.

The S&DR's Shildon works and Hackworth's Soho works were major employers in the town, requiring labour to build a variety of industrial engines, including railway locomotives to run on the new line. 

Science Museum Group Collection

There was also the Soho (or Kilburn) shed—now the oldest surviving industrial building in Shildon—which was built in 1826 as an iron merchants' warehouse by Messrs Kilburn of Bishop Auckland. 

Blacksmiths, foundry workers and other skilled workers would have been in demand in the new railway town, which constantly needed metal working, machinery operating and parts producing and repairing. 

In Shildon at this time you could expect to encounter patternmakers, forgemasters, joiners, machinists, coachpainters, signwriters, tinsmiths and whitesmiths.

Away from the works floor you'd also find clerical workers, draughtsmen, foremen and managers taking care of the administration and finance, and making sure things ran smoothly.

What you probably wouldn’t see was many women at work—although the Industrial Revolution saw increasing numbers of women taking up work in factories, the workforce of the railway town remained largely male until much later, when the First World War took men away from their jobs.

As we've seen, railway work was dangerous, and the interests of the company didn't always align with those of its workers. Strikes—often violent—were common during this period and not tolerated by railway companies. The very early drunkenness of many railway workers probably also speaks volumes about their relationship with their work.

However, workers did organise to improve their working conditions, with varying success.

The first railway unions were formed around 1870, allowing workers to agitate more effectively. Strikes were generally resolved after mediation.

In 1911, the Knox's Strike led to soldiers arriving in Shildon in to stop the violence that was being caused around the town's railway infrastructure—the station, bridges, works and so on.

During this strike the station master, Mr Churchman, was chased by some engine drivers after he waved his fist at them. They apparently smelled of ale and threw stones at him and his house. The signalman and other passing trains were also targets for thrown stones during the violence.

Given the international importance of Shildon to the burgeoning Victorian railway industry, it's perhaps surprising that relatively little infrastructure survives from the town's heyday—the Mechanics' Institute shown above being one of a few notable exceptions.

Why are so few of these buildings still standing?

In short, it's because once they were no longer needed, they were demolished or converted. 

It wasn't until much later—into the 1960s—that thought was given to preserving industrial history for the future, and so many spaces and buildings were simply appropriated and reused over the years according to changing needs and priorities.

For example, Locomotion is on the site of the original S&DR sidings, and there is now an industrial park where Shildon Works once stood.

The lack of physical heritage is also partly a result of the sheer speed at which early railways developed. For example, early stone sleepers—originally used so that horses could walk along the tracks—soon became useless when trains became heavier and horses were retired from the railways.

These stones were then reused (like a more modern Hadrian's Wall) as building material, and if you keep your eyes peeled, some can be spotted around the site at Locomotion.

So, although it's not a famous metropolis like Liverpool or Manchester today, Shildon has been important to the history of the railways from the very beginning. 

As the home of Timothy Hackworth, but also the thousands of workers who kept the S&DR and other railways running, Shildon was the original railway town—the home and workplace of pioneering engineers and magnificent machines that were foundational to modern life as we know it.

Today, Shildon and the surrounding area is looking to the future, just as it was two centuries ago.

While Locomotion continues telling the story of the birth of the railways for new generations, just up the road in Newton Aycliffe is the Hitachi works, where innovative engineers are making future railways a reality.