This page is one of a series introducing railway staff who worked on the south coast of England before 1939. They’ve been researched as part of the ‘Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts’ project – which you can read more about here, including accessing details of the other railway workers featured.
Research was undertaken from November 2024-July 2025, by a small group of volunteers from the Havant Local History Group, working with the University of Portsmouth’s History team. The work was funded by the University of Portsmouth’s Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation.
The workers featured were selected from staff who appear in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database of accidents to pre-1939 British and Irish railway workers.
Trayton Leonard Griffin was a genuinely railway family man. The family originated in Hambledon in Hampshire. From here they drifted to Hilsea, where several brothers were employed as agricultural labourers. Trayton was actually born in Wymering, although his family returned to Ramsdell, near Basingstoke in Hampshire, where he was baptised on the 10 October 1888. His father, his grandfather, several of his uncles and a number of his great uncles and cousins all worked on the railway.
From 1871-1911 several of the associated Griffin families lived at Portcreek, very close to Hilsea station. Other members were found at Wymering and Widley in various railway cottages, where Trayton with his parents and other railway workers resided for much of their working lives. In the earlier period his father worked as a platelayer on the railway, but before Trayton was born his father had been promoted to a signalman. By 1881 Trayton’s father was operating as both a signalman and a guard working for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, generally operating at or from Fratton Station.
Trayton’s railway life
Trayton started work as a cleaner on the London and South Western Railway on 9 March 1912. On 10 January 1913 Trayton joined the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants trade union as a porter at Portsmouth Town station. He was excluded in December 1921. Trayton married in 1915.
Following an injury on 26 January 1913 where he crushed the end of his finger, he was paid compensation of 9s 2½d per week. On 8 March, he was re-employed as a porter, initially on 17 and later 18 shillings per week. On 3 March 1925 Trayton joined the National Union of Railwaymen as a guard, but in 1926 he hit a problem and was sacked by the railway.
In 1939 Trayton is working as a plant worker in a tar distillery. Trayton Griffin died on the 28 July 1967. From 1925 until Trayton’s death the family lived at 72 Strode Road, Cosham.
Family addresses from Census Returns
1841 Hilsea
1851 Hilsea
1861 Stamshaw Lane, Portsea
1871 Railway Cottages Port Creek Wymering
1881 15 Elder Row, Brighton, Sussex
1891 Portchester Road, Wymering
1901 Port Creek Cottages, Wymering
1911 5 Port Creek Cottage, Cosham
1921 72 Strode Road, Cosham
1939 72 Strode Road, Cosham
1967 72 Strode Road, Cosham
Neil Spurgeon
One of the researchers for the Railway Work, Life & Death, Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts project, Neil is now on his third career, but he doesn’t get paid for this one!
Following 30 years in the Royal Navy culminating as a Chief Communications Yeoman training Saudi Arabian Mine Countermeasures crews for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, he retired taking up posts in the teaching and training industries with lecturing roles in Further and Higher Education, as an Advisor on Electronic Government Development to West Sussex County Council and ended as IT Manager at Fareham College.
He is now Chairman of the Havant Local History Group which meets informally each month at The Spring Arts and Heritage Centre to investigate local history and through which research projects such as Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts are investigated. This has led, in turn, to an annual Havant Heritage Festival each September for which Neil leads a consortium of local interested groups to offer insight into local history and heritage.
References:
1841 Census HO107 390/7
1851 Census HO107 1661
1861 Census RG9 633/84
1871 Census RG10 1155
1881 Census RG11/1086
1891 Census RG12/883
1901 Census RG13/1015-11
1911 Census RG14 92/1-3
1921 Census RG15
1939 Index 90/1 38 204-1
1967 National Probate Calendar