My Family and the Great Engineer

Further Info

This story was made at a weekly digital storytelling workshop with a Brunel theme for staff and volunteers at Bristol Industrial Museum, inspired by the life and work of Brunel. The stories were created both in formal sessions and in staff members’ spare time with support from Ruth Jacobs, Sarwat Siddiqui, Andy King, Chris Redford and Phil Walker, between Nov 2005 and Feb 2006. The project was supported by Bristol’s Museums, Galleries & Archives.

Transcript

Brunel has impacted on the lives of Bristolians and other in different ways, but there aren’t many families that can claim to have been employed by him for over 160 years.

My great grandfather William started working on the Great Western Railway (also known as “God’s Wonderful Railway”) about 1844, only three years after the Bristol to London route was finished, and became a plate layer working on the track.

The railway and my family soon expanded from Cornwall in the south to Chester and Wrexham in the north, and from London to the west coast of Wales.

William worked in Cornwall at St Germans and in Somerset at Clutton and Corston where he met and married my great grandmother, Elizabeth, and finally worked at Gloucester. This is where his son George, my grandfather, was born in 1880.

In the mid 1890s, George started work on God’s Wonderful Railway as an engine cleaner, soon to rise to Fireman working in London and finally to Driver of express freight trains. He was then sent by the railways to Wrexham to work.

In 1910, great grandfather William died after working for 64 years on the GWR. In 1911, George’s wife Sarah gave birth to my mother Winifred in Wrexham. George finally came back to Gloucester to work and lived in Bristol where I was born in 1944.

William and George had worked on God’s Wonderful Railway for 116 years, over a span of 100 years.

I never worked on the railways myself, but in 1996, over 150 years after great grandfather William started working for Brunel, I got a job working for Clifton Suspension Bridge, where I still work.

So, 150 years after William started working for the Great Engineer, his great grandson – that’s me – is still working for the great engineer.

Grandfather George taught me a lot about railways and when he died in 1950 he left me with a love of railways, particularly God’s Wonderful, a love of mathematics through playing cards and dominoes with me, and two chicken sheds full of chickens.

Credits

All media not otherwise credited created by the story author, or permission obtained, used under Public Domain licence.