A navvy mission room at Helmdon, Northamptonshire, circa 1897. Although by the 1890s navvies had shed some of their reputation for being fierce and unruly, Victorian moralists still considered them to be drunken and ungodly. Mission Halls could therefore be found along the route of the London Extension, and both navvies and their families attended services. This one was erected for those at work on Contract No. 5 (Woodford to Brackley built by Walter Scott & Co. of Newcastle upon Tyne).
