Thomas Brassey

The unsung surveyor from Cheshire, who built railways and made friends across the world.

1805-1870

Queen Victoria 1837-1901

Introduction

The Victorian railway engineer Thomas Brassey (1805-1870) is not the household name that he perhaps ought to be, chiefly because he worked through agents and alongside partners. Nonetheless, his knowledge and business acumen lies behind much of the rail network in Britain, and helped start the railway revolution from France to Australia.

by Clay Lane

THOMAS Brassey, son of a prosperous Cheshire farmer, began his career in road-building as an apprentice to surveyor William Lawton, on Thomas Telford’s Shrewsbury to Holyhead road. Brassey rose from apprentice to partner, and Lawton and Brassey relocated to Birkenhead to make road-building materials.

It was in supplying stone for the Liverpool and Manchester Railway’s Sankey Viaduct that Thomas met George Stephenson, who subsequently employed him for Penkridge Viaduct on the Grand Junction Railway, and Brassey worked with George and with George’s son Robert and protégé Joseph Locke, on projects from Southampton to Chester, Sheffield and Glasgow.

In 1841, Locke awarded Thomas a contract to help construct the Paris to Le Havre Railway, one of France’s first railway ventures. A feature was to be the Barentin viaduct, for which Brassey was required to use local materials, but it collapsed during construction. Brassey rebuilt it at his own expense, this time sourcing the materials himself.* More French railways followed, including the line from Orléans to Bordeaux.

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Brassey’s rebuilt viaduct is in operation today, bearing the weight of a modern high-speed line. See a picture at Wikimedia Commmons.

Précis

Thomas Brassey was a Cheshire surveyor who began as a road-builder but went into railway construction at the suggestion of George Stephenson. In 1841, he was rewarded for his work on Penkridge Viaduct with a contract to work in France, where he demonstrated his superior engineering skills and knowledge of materials by rebuilding the collapsed Barentin Viaduct in Normandy.

Sevens

Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.

What was Thomas Brassey’s first major commission?

Suggestion

Penkridge Viaduct on the Grand Junction Railway.

Jigsaws

Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.

Brassey built Penkridge Viaduct in Staffordshire. George Stephenson asked him to. It was Brassey’s first major construction project.

Clay Lane The Copybook