The workforce employed to create Derwent and Howden reservoirs comprised up to 2,500 itinerant navvies, so-named after the navigators who built the canals during the 18th and early-19th centuries. Large numbers of navvies moved around the country working on such large engineering projects as canals, railways and dams.

Accommodation for some of the navvies was the specially designed and built village of Birchinlee, known as ‘Tin Town’ because the buildings were built from corrugated iron.

Housing comprised dormitories for single men, smaller huts for married men with families and separate huts for foremen. ‘Tin Town’ also had two hospitals, a school and mission room, Post Office, greengrocers, cobbler and hairdresser, clothier and drapier, confectioner and tobacconist, canteen (public house), bath-house, garden allotments, a recreation hall and a police station. It had piped water from a small reservoir, an incineration plant and a sewage system.

Archaeological plan of Tin Town

The settlement was laid out in formal rows separated by cobbled streets. At the centre was the recreation hall surrounded by most of the shops, Post Office and bath-house. Huts for families were situated in a group separated from the single dormitories. To the south, the houses of the policeman, village inspector and missioner were grouped together in a sort of suburban area. There was also a station for the adjacent railway with a pathway leading directly to the canteen’s beer cellar.

‘Tin Town’ was a model settlement provided with services deemed essential to the well-being of the occupants by the Water Board. It was laid out on very planned formal lines based both on a functional engineering basis and the belief that settlement organisation could improve workers’ morals and behaviour. It was abandoned in late 1912 and the huts were either sold-off or demolished over the next two years. Now only the foundations, terraces and streets remain. They are mostly hidden by vegetation but if you look carefully you can find the canteen’s beer cellar and other remains.

The remains of Tin Town as they survive today, platforms of married accommodation are on the left hand side with one of the original streets to the right hand side

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