page_title: Navvy
section_title: Living conditions
hierarchical_section_title: Navvy / Navvy culture / Living conditions
caption_attribution_description: English: The only surviving railway navvy housing in Britain
context_page_description: Navvy, a shorter form of navigator or navigational engineer, is particularly applied to describe the manual labourers working on major civil engineering projects and occasionally to refer to mechanical shovels and earth moving machinery. The term was coined in the late 18th century in Great Britain when numerous canals were being built, which were also sometimes known as "navigations", or "eternal navigations", intended to last forever.
context_section_description: Many of the navvies employed to build the railways in England during the early part of the 19th century lived in squalid temporary accommodations referred to as "shanty towns." Due in part to constructing through rural areas, and, in part, the navvies negative reputation, two-thirds of the railway construction sites had housing erected specifically for the navvy. Initially, the housing "huts" were constructed quickly and meant to be temporary. As a result, little thought was given to comfort, let alone sanitation, which was actually a prominent issue for everyone during the Victorian era. Shanties "were clearly unhealthy places in which to live, and it was not uncommon for a navvy community to be overtaken by cholera, dysentery or typhus."
  In addition to these unhygienic living conditions, navvies shared housing, some even sleeping on floors. The majority of navvies were Englishmen, with 30% of the group being Irish. While this ratio varied from navvy shanty town to shanty town, sleeping arrangements were segregated.  In at least one documented instance, a riot broke out between the two nationalities in one navvy shanty town, causing local magistrates to arrest 12 individuals. Though, this is not necessarily indicative of relations between the English and Irish in all navvy gangs.
  Over time, housing arrangements progressed positively, with the structures being built with more care, and even attached land being offered for use so navvies and their families could grow their own food.
caption: Wooden huts at the former Edmondthorpe and Wymondham railway station, the last surviving navvy housing in the UK and protected as a Grade II listed building.[9][10][11]
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