{"id":3653,"date":"2025-10-08T15:02:45","date_gmt":"2025-10-08T14:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3653"},"modified":"2025-10-08T15:11:57","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T14:11:57","slug":"community-collaboration-in-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=3653","title":{"rendered":"Community collaboration in action"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last year, the History team\u2019s Dr Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, has been working with a local history group to find out more about our region\u2019s railway workers. Here he reveals more about this exciting partnership \u2013 including where you can see what they\u2019ve produced.<\/em><\/p>\n

Increasingly over the last few years my research has become much more collaborative in approach. That\u2019s largely to do with my work as co-lead of the Railway Work, Life & Death project<\/a>. The project looks at accidents to British and Irish railway staff before 1939, working with teams of volunteers at the National Railway Museum<\/a>, the Modern Records Centre<\/a> at the University of Warwick and The National Archives<\/a> of the UK, and supported by the RMT Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Since 2016 we\u2019ve been transcribing reports of incidents, making them more easily available, researching the people and cases and sharing our work. To date we\u2019ve produced a free database of over 115,000 individuals and incidents, from 1855-1939. It\u2019s been a huge effort, and has seen those involved put in thousands of hours of work.<\/p>\n

Over the last year, I\u2019ve been involved in a new off-shoot of the Railway Work, Life & Death project, looking locally to us in Portsmouth. With funding from the University\u2019s Centre of Excellence for Heritage Innovation<\/a>, I\u2019ve been working with the Havant Local History Group, on the \u2018Portsmouth Area Railway Pasts<\/a>\u2019 project.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been researching the life stories of some of the railway workers in our area found in the Railway Work, Life & Death project database. We wanted to see if we could find out more about the individuals, beyond just the details of their accidents. Could we place them in their work, family and community contexts?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Over eight months we met regularly to establish shared principles and aims, to carry out research, and then to produce outputs to share our findings. I worked closely with Neil, Ann, Geoff and Alan \u2013 to whom I owe a particular debt of gratitude, for their tireless work, dogged determination in chasing down elusive details, expertise and local knowledge, and for their friendship.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also been brilliant that as part of the research we\u2019ve been able to work and share details with some of the descendants of the workers we\u2019ve explored. Whilst some of the descendants are still in our area, some have ended up quite some distance away \u2013 including in Australia!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We\u2019re now able to share more about the likes of Portsmouth-based porter James Pearce. Born in the countryside north of Portsmouth, he moved from agriculture to the railways in the 1860s. Working as a porter, loading and unloading goods, his leg was broken in an accident in 1884 at what\u2019s now Portsmouth and Southsea station. It disabled him permanently; the loss of income appears to have thrown James and his family into the workhouse, where he died in 1889.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

These life stories are being made available in a few ways. We\u2019ve co-created a travelling exhibition, \u2018The south coast\u2019s forgotten railway workers.\u2019 It\u2019s currently on display (until 9 October 2025) at The Spring Arts and Heritage Centre<\/a> in Havant. This will then come to the University, in the exhibition space in Park building, from 13 October-17 December 2025<\/strong>. There\u2019s more on the exhibition here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re taking bookings for the exhibition for 2026, so please get in touch if you\u2019re interested. We want to see it shown widely and reaching as many people as possible.<\/p>\n

Early feedback has been very positive:<\/p>\n

\u2018Very interesting and informative. Brought history to life\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018As a family historian it was very pleasing to see the results of research into those who died on the railways. No longer just a name on a long list, they became real again to the reader\/ descendants\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Very interesting. Vividly highlights the dangers of working on the railways in past decades\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019ve also worked with our local Community Rail Partnership, Hills to Harbour<\/a>, to feature the railway workers and their stories on posters in our local stations. So far these have appeared at Havant station, and we\u2019re working on plans for Petersfield, and in the future Portsmouth.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve produced a leaflet<\/a> to share some of the workers, and all of the life stories are being added to our project webpages, too. In addition, Neil, Alan and I are giving an online talk for Hampshire Archives Trust<\/a>, on 19 November 2025, about the project.<\/p>\n

Overall, it\u2019s been hard work to work collaboratively and co-productively, ensuring that the different expertise and experience we all brought to the project was valued and recognised. But it\u2019s been tremendously rewarding to do, and has produced something really interesting that wouldn\u2019t have been possible otherwise. It\u2019s<\/span> gratifying to see the results of our work reaching the public \u2013 do have a look!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last year, the History team\u2019s Dr Mike Esbester, Senior Lecturer in History, has been working with a local history group to find out more about our region\u2019s railway workers. Here he reveals more about this exciting partnership \u2013 including where you can see what they\u2019ve produced. Increasingly over the last few years my research has become much more collaborative in approach. That\u2019s largely to do with my work as co-lead of the Railway Work, Life & Death project. The project looks at accidents to British and Irish railway staff before 1939, working with teams of volunteers at the National Railway Museum, the Modern Records Centre at the University […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,4,1],"tags":[754,557,859,76,17,438,336,75,98],"class_list":["post-3653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-public-history","category-research-in-focus","category-uncategorized","tag-community-history","tag-exhibitions","tag-havant-local-history-group","tag-national-railway-museum","tag-nineteenth-century","tag-railway-history","tag-railway-workers","tag-railways","tag-twentieth-century"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91PlX-WV","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3653"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3661,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3653\/revisions\/3661"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}