Nowells Again!

I see that it was in March 2007 that I last blogged about the Nowell family and how I was trying to connect a family of civil engineers with my own tree. safarisue.blogspot.com/2007/03/nowells-of-dewsbury.html

I have failed to do that and have laid aside the Nowells until now. With my interest in civil engineering families revived with the Brindley group - safarisue.blogspot.com/2020/11/ia-genealogy.html - I have spent some of the weekend updating the Nowell family tree. I am still looking for links to my own family but realise that is very unlikely that I shall ever prove the link.

Still it's interesting looking at families. Come the 19th and 20th centuries the Nowells were doing quite well for themselves and were professional people but few of them married and so lines died out. They also moved away from their traditional base in Dewsbury and came south to London and the home counties. They were still involved in civil engineering works but now for the railways rather than canals where they had originally made their name.

One branch of the family who had quarries in the village of Idle near Bradford, specialised in paving stones which they brought to London to their yard on the canal at Warwick Road in Kensington. They also brought granite quarries at Enderby in Leicestershire and became the contractors for the repair of London Parish roads and the construction of roads and sewers.

The Kilsby Tunnel was one of the great works the Nowells were involved in. The tunnel was opened in 1838 as a part of the London - Birmingham Railway It is the 18th longest railway tunnel in Britain and was natable for the difficulties in construction.

The Nowells were responsible for the stonework of the piers of the Britannia Bridge which was opened in 1850. Another feat of engineering designed by Robert Stephenson, as was the Kilsby Tunnel. It originally featured wrought iron tubes which the trains ran in.