"I’m a navvy, short for navigator, working on the Severn Tunnel: some of my ancestors dug the canals.  My old granddad came here from Cornwall, where he had worked in the tin mines.  
You’ve got to be tough to do our job – long hours hacking through rock and clay.  On earlier jobs the engineers didn’t want the cost of providing us with decent housing, sanitation or safe working conditions but Thomas Walker has built good houses for us and it is safer here than in most places."