A rather hasty and belated blog post, this week – was so waylaid with things that it wasn’t possible to write it sooner. We had hoped to have this out for Tuesday 21 April 2026 – the day that Portsmouth turned 100 as a city!
Given Railway Work, Life & Death project co-lead Mike is based at the University of Portsmouth, it seems like a good opportunity to flag some of the Portsmouth connections. Needless to say, Portsmouth appears in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database of accidents to railway workers. We’ve explored some of them already – with more to do, of course. Really this post is a means of directing you to our existing work … and a little taster of something interesting to come!
The ‘Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts’ project has researched around 30 railway workers in the Portsmouth area. A ‘micro-project’, we collaborated with the Havant Local History Group. The research and life stories are shared on the dedicated project page, and in-person via an exhibition (details of the locations are available here).
One of the first people we looked at in depth was Frederick Potter – a shunter who lost a leg in an accident at Portsmouth Harbour station in 1913. He returned to work for the railway in a new role. There’s more on Frederick’s story here.
By a quirk of fate – not arising directly from the project – we were fortunate to meet Chris Cornell. He has shared the story of his grandfather, Charlie Cornell, a railway worker of colour who joined the railway in Portsmouth around the time of the First World War. You can read about Charlie Cornell here, with thanks to Chris for writing the piece for us.
Recently, for ‘Portsmouth 100’ and to mark Women’s History Month, we researched some of Portsmouth’s First World War railwaywomen. A few of their stories are available here. We’re going to be coming back to them too – we’ve researched more than we’ve been able to share so far.
Also, we’ve just turned up a fantastic image of some of those railwaywomen! Here’s the tease … we’ll be sharing that image publicly early in May, with a bit of a story: watch this space!
Needless to say, we’ve barely scratched the surface of understanding Portsmouth’s past railway staff, their work, their accidents and their wider lives in the community. There are many more people in the database, and beyond, just waiting to have their stories and lives brought back into view. Hopefully as we go through the centenary year, and beyond, we can share more of them with you.