We Have a Date

click image to enlarge

Who would have believed it?   Thanks to the dedicated work of paper conservator Stephen Allen the fragments of printed material found below layers of limewash on the inside of one of the cladding boards has yielded a date.

1878

The image is difficult to read but the date of the newspaper is very clear.   Not only was there lime-wash on top of the printed paper, there is lime-wash below it.   This presumably means that the paper was stuck onto the wall that had already been lime-washed at least once - meaning that the shed dates from earlier than the date on the newspaper.   The navvy huts would have been built at any time from 1869 onwards.   Although the line opened to passenger trains in 1876 there was still much work to do so the huts, or at least some of them,  would still have been in use in 1878.   The branch line to Hawes from Hawes Junction was not opened until 1878 and at least two of the stations were not built until after 1878.

This dating evidence is an amazing find.   Stephen Allen is still working on the conservation of the paper but thanks to his painstaking work we have the most compelling clue to support the case that the Appleby shed was originally a navvy hut.