Shops underneath Church street

MissInformed · 12-15-2006

Nope...no answer as yet....

**GhostSearch** · 12-15-2006

Very interesting

**ChrisGeorge** · 12-15-2006

Originally Posted by MissInformed

Nope...no answer as yet....

Just knock on the table, and if there are three knocks back....

**ianw** · 12-28-2006

Friday, 25 October, 2002, 01:14 GMT 02:14 UK
The enigma of Liverpool's labyrinth

A section of the tunnels is now open to the public

By Christine Jeavans
BBC News Online

Tycoon Joseph Williamson dug a vast, bizarre network of tunnels under Liverpool almost 200 years ago. Were they the city's first job creation scheme, a rich man's whimsy or a shelter from the end of the world?

At ground level there is little clue to the secret harboured deep beneath the surface of Liverpool's Edge Hill area.
A church, a school, a police station and student accommodation for the nearby universities compete for space with a railway cutting and roads leading down to the city centre.

Lynn Podmore: "We still haven't explored all the tunnels"

But tucked away on a side street is the entrance to a warren of tunnels hollowed out by an eccentric millionaire in the early 19th century.

They have been the stuff of Merseyside legend for decades but the truth is stranger than any fireside story.

Now with the opening of a section of tunnels, the public can for the first time gain access to the underground kingdom of Joseph Williamson, tobacco magnate, philanthropist, recluse and "mad mole".

Gothic arches

The portal to this subterranean realm is almost mundane: a wide, arching tunnel, looking rather like a French wine cellar, hewn out of sandstone and partly lined with brick.

But there is an eerie drip, drip of unseen water ahead and lights pick out gothic arches in the distance, giving the whole place something of a church crypt atmosphere.

In pictures: Williamson's tunnels
Click here for more images
Stepping forward through the gloom, the space opens out into a cave-like room which drops away beneath a platform.

It is a barrel-shaped tunnel with a beautifully constructed arch of sandstone blocks as the ceiling.

Earth is still piled up on the floor, far below the scaffold gantry that visitors pass along.

Who was Williamson?
Born 10 March 1769 in Warrington
Moves to Liverpool aged about 11 to seek his fortune
Finds work at tobacco and snuff firm of Richard Tate
Rises through the ranks and marries the boss's daughter, Elizabeth, in 1802
In 1803 buys the family firm and builds mansions in Edge Hill
As construction work finishes he turns to building tunnels
Napoleonic Wars end in 1815 and Williamson takes on unemployed soldiers
Elizabeth dies in 1822 and he immerses himself in the tunnel project but it saps his fortune
Williamson dies aged 70 in 1840 from water on the chest
Volunteers have so far removed tonnes of soil, rubble and 160 years' rubbish out of the tunnels - and there is still a long way to go.

Between 1805 and his death in 1840, Williamson employed thousands of men digging out a network underneath land that he owned in Edge Hill.

It seems to have started logically enough - a few cellars and ground level arches behind the mansions that he was building so that the back gardens could be extended despite the sloping terrain.

But while these constructions had a purpose, the next are a puzzle.

Williamson set his gangs of men burrowing in all directions but most of the tunnels lead nowhere.

Some just come to an abrupt halt, others intersect another part of the labyrinth. There are even tunnels within tunnels.

Maze

One of these double-decker tunnels makes a spectacular feature at the section of the network newly opened to the public.

The tunnels were hacked out by hand - as the pickaxe marks reveal

According to the site's Heritage Manager, Lynn Podmore, there are even more unusual constructions to be explored.

"We still don't know where each one leads, and we are finding new tunnels all the time," she says.
"There is a triple-decker tunnel under the carpark here and a completely different section has just been found up the road."

Click here to see a map of the tunnels
Back within the barrel-shaped chamber, the tunnel twists, turns, narrows and changes level.

Smaller tunnels and chimneys head off into the darkness.

Mapping the maze has not been easy. Williamson was notoriously secretive about his creation and no contemporary plan of the whole network survives.

Philanthropy

The lack of documentary evidence has prompted endless speculation about why the tunnels were built.

One popular theory is that he was *****ed by social conscience.

In the early 19th century, men who had been fighting the Napoleonic wars were flooding back to Britain - and were in need of jobs.

More than 100 years of rubbish was found in the tunnels

Williamson, it is said, responded to the poverty around him by creating work, whether it really needed doing or not.

Another story puts the tycoon as a member of an extreme religious sect that believed that Armageddon was on the way.

The tunnels therefore were a place of sanctuary for Williamson and for fellow believers to flee to and emerge from to start a new city once God had wreaked his vengeance on the world.

A more prosaic image is of a man obsessed by his project, who, when his wife died in 1822, withdrew ever deeper into his subterranean empire, even building living rooms and a banqueting hall down there.

Some people find the lack of answers frustrating but others, like Lynn Podmore, enjoy the idea of an enigma with no solution.

"We're so certain about everything these days - it's good to have a mystery," she says.

"But of course we are still trying to find out as much as we can about Williamson."

Secret legacy

That job is not made any easier by the fact that his housekeeper sold all his personal documents after he died aged 70 in 1840.

Lynn is hopeful that some records will turn up or that the people of Liverpool may have a vital piece of oral history passed down through the generations - although she admits that Williamson may be spinning in his grave at the thought.

"He would be mortified if he knew that we had found all this and people were tramping through - he tried to keep it secret all his life," she says.

The Williamson Tunnels and heritage centre are open daily except Mondays 1000 - 1700.

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hope this was usefull to you, ian.

**Kev** · 12-28-2006

Thanks for your first post Ianw

. More info on The Mole of Edge Hill can be found: Here

**Ged** · 01-03-2007

I have the Frank Carlyle dvd's and indeed he is shown at the entrance to a bricked up tunnel under the Town Hall and mentions others that ran to the Mersey that too are bricked up.

My dad worked as the Foreman in St. George's Hall throughout the late 70s and early 80s and used to take me and my mates to places usually unseen such as a very cold underground room known as the Drs. Rooms - there is also a cats grave down there complete with tombstone and vase of flowers and there were many drops. He then took us down a passage where you could see daylight streaming in - he told us to look up and were were looking up at the underside of the grids that face out up to Lime St on the Planteau.

There were many old pre decimal pennies down there and bar six and spangles wrappers and the likes that had been dropped or discarded over time. We used to go on the main roof too which still had a WWII air raid siren but in all our explorations down by the main boilers etc (and even during the time the Lime St loop underground was getting built - which put paid to our visits) Although there were strange little openings that you had to stoop down in order to access, they all ended up in rooms and we never came across any real mysterious open or bricked up tunnels.

The Walker Art Gallery, also where he worked, Brougham Terrace and The Education offices in Sir Thomas Street also had interesting basements/cellars but all whitewashed and too 'normal' - used as storage areas.

MissInformed · 01-03-2007

grrrrrrrrrrr i am so jealous!!!!! you haven't got any pics have you?

**Ged** · 01-04-2007

Unfortunately not. Being in my early teens, capturing it on camera just didn't strike me, wish my dad had thought of it though. The good news, it's still there ha ha, just try getting into it though.

**Ged** · 01-04-2007

On another one of my early teens adventures, me and my mates were being legged by some gypsies who'd said 'come here' in an agressive tone so we gave them the finger and were promptly chased. Anyway, we were down by Pall Mall so we scaled this wall and dropped, it was the wrong thing to do because there were gypsy caravans down there on some waste land. Anyway we lost them but found this tunnel entrance. There were a few of us so we felt brave and entered in. For what seemed like an hour and miles (but we found out later it wasn't) we delved further and further into it, we knew we must have been going uphill as the light at the beginning of the tunnel as we looked back was getting smaller towards the arched entrance.

Along the way we could hear water dripping and make out damp patches up on the brick arched tunnel ceiling and walls as light was streaming in up ahead, just like a square block of light (in a sort of beam me up scotty fashion but square) My mates foot went down the edge of a hole so we stopped, picked up a little stone and dropped it down the hole, after a few seconds we heard it hit water. That worried us as we wondered how deep and if there were any more of these holes. We carried on up the light, the idea being we'd get out somewhere up here. When we got to it and looked up we could see Fontenoy Gardens landings and stairwell above us and loads of old rubbish like bike frames, prams, mattresses, cushions and bags had been dumped down there. We knew we were at the Byrom Street railway cutting now but the walls were sheer, there was no way out at this point.

We decided to walk on a bit further and saw another shaft of light beaming down, a smaller round stream of light. We got to it and looked up, it was a shaft and we could see the clouds moving across it. Up ahead we could see nothing but blackness, behind us the original tunnel entrance had well vanished but of course we could still see the previous light coming down from Byrom Street. We retraced our footsteps, very carefully and that night we got our Liverpool A-Z out and realised that we'd walked through the old Waterloo goods line that once went from Waterloo dock up to Edge Hill and the smaller shaft of light turned out to be a ventilation shaft that still exists behind the newish Norton street coach terminus but of course that wasn't there then, just a load of old delapidated property.

bunf · 01-04-2007

excellent!

**mottman** · 02-13-2007

My first proper job was with a Company called Bearings NW which was situated at 50 Renshaw Street. I was told that there was a system of tunnels underneath it which extended up to Lime Street station?

True or false, I never found out, but behind the shop fronts of Renshaw Street were [still is] many alleyways leading to small holdings / stables etc like a lost village.

MissInformed · 02-13-2007

that is amazing!
i am sure jona will be having a little look!!

theninesisters · 02-13-2007

Originally Posted by mottman

My first proper job was with a Company called Bearings NW which was situated at 50 Renshaw Street. I was told that there was a system of tunnels underneath it which extended up to Lime Street station?

True or false, I never found out, but behind the shop fronts of Renshaw Street were [still is] many alleyways leading to small holdings / stables etc like a lost village.

Spot on and true! I was down one of these alleyways a few years back dropping through one of the man hole covers which was in Kwik Fit. It was obvious that the alleyway pointed in the direction of Lime Street and I'm sure if I was to contact more shops with cellar access, they'd come across more of em.

**knowhowe** · 02-27-2007

There was certainly a warren of subterranean streets under Exchange Flags, containing homes and shops. This is recorded in some detail by Herman Melville (of Moby **** reknown) in, I think, his youthful work, Redburn, His First Voyage (1849).
A wonderful book, incidentally, that recalls the author's adventures crossing the Atlantic as a poverty-stricken boy sailor in 1837 and spending six weeks, while his ship was berthed in prince's Dock, wandering the streets of Liverpool and writing in great detail of all he experienced. One of the finest books about Liverpool I know and highly recommended reading- but I don't know if, unlike his better-known stuff, it was ever reprinted in modern times.