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Thread: Tunnels Under Liverpool

  1. #31

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    I expect it would be long buried by other work. That said, the main north dock sewers and storm drains run underneath the strand, which is where the waterline would've been then...


  2. #32
    theninesisters
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    Quote Originally Posted by knowhowe View Post
    There is reputed to be a still-extant tunnel running down James Street from the site of Liverpool Castle (now Queen Viccie's Monument) to the river.
    This seems feasable as such features were a standard part of castle design in order to enable access for men and supplies during times of seige. Examples are known to exist at, for example, the Tower of London and at Chester Castle.

    http://www.bwpics.co.uk/castle.html

    if it does still exist, where it emerges at the riverside is anyone's guess...
    I do recall that one of the managers of the 'LIVERPOOL' bar on James Street once said that when it's been raining and there's a high tide, his barrels of ale float around in the celler! Maybe worth contacting him...over a pint

  3. #33
    Senior Member verdi's Avatar
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    Greetings, I was working in Lydia Anne Street last year, didn't see any old tunnels though. Arced cellars in the basements otf the old whare houses. I once worked on Padington Gardens, in the 80's, an excavation was discovered, wasn't a tunnel, the echo came and photographed it, about forty feet from the Bears Paw going south.

  4. #34
    Senior Member fortinian's Avatar
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    I'd just like to clear up some confusion about JW and his 'local church'. His 'local' church would have undoubtedbly been St Mary's in Edge Hill.

    The reason that some people get confused with St Thomas' church is that Williamson payed for a pew there so that he could have voting rights in the district. It may also be that the Tate family (as in his wife's family) had a history with St Thomas church and so used the church for all major functions and special occasions (weddings, baptisms, funerals etc...) and Williamson may have attended St Thomas as a young man when he was living in the city centre.

    It does, however, seem unlikely that Williamson would travel all the way to the other end of the city (as it was then) to go to church on a Sunday when he had a perfectly decent church just up the road. In short, St Marys would have been his regular Sunday church (just for the convinence) but St Thomas' would have been his 'original' church.

  5. #35
    Cadfael
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    Quote Originally Posted by fortinian View Post
    I'd just like to clear up some confusion about JW and his 'local church'. His 'local' church would have undoubtedbly been St Mary's in Edge Hill.

    The reason that some people get confused with St Thomas' church is that Williamson payed for a pew there so that he could have voting rights in the district. It may also be that the Tate family (as in his wife's family) had a history with St Thomas church and so used the church for all major functions and special occasions (weddings, baptisms, funerals etc...) and Williamson may have attended St Thomas as a young man when he was living in the city centre.

    It does, however, seem unlikely that Williamson would travel all the way to the other end of the city (as it was then) to go to church on a Sunday when he had a perfectly decent church just up the road. In short, St Marys would have been his regular Sunday church (just for the convinence) but St Thomas' would have been his 'original' church.
    Sorry to disappoint but St Thomas' was JW's 'local' church and was for his entire life. With JW living in Duke Street with his mother (not many people know that), St Thomas was his local church from up until the time he moved to Mason Street in 1802.

    St Mary's wasn't constructed till 1813 and before that, he also attended St Jude's church (on the site of the Uni Hospital) as he gave stone freely to build the church.

    There is no evidence as yet to prove that there is a tunnel system to St mary's, even by documentation by James Stonehouse (1846) and Charles Hand (1926) who only speculate.

    There has been no records of JW connected with St Mary's at all, and you have to remember that all through his life, JW has been strongly connected with St Thomas, both with the family vault, his pew, his wedding and his death. You also have to remember that he had lots of church neighbours who didn't worship in St Mary's either.

  6. #36

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    I know there is a tunnel leading from the North face of the Crown street railway cutting. The entrance is about 6ft off the floor and its about 4ft high.

    Not sure where it goes but its quite long I know that much - I went there as a kid. Very scary!

  7. #37
    Senior Member fortinian's Avatar
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    I see what you are saying Cad and I agree - St Thomas would have been main church of the Tate family who lived in Duke/Parr Street and so would have been the church that JW attended whilst he was living there and would probably return to for big events.

    How do we know he lived on Duke St with his mother? I was under the impression that people don't know anything about his family as there are no records. The FoWT site doesn't mention any family that is known of.

    I knew that St Judes was supposedly built from Williamson sandstone and so it was likely that he worshipped there. Couldn't it be possible that he used all three churches as and when he felt like it?

    As for the people who lived on mason street and didn't attend St Judes, I was under the impression that people like Revs. Raffles and Hull were dissenters and so would not attened a CofE church anyway.

    It's facinating that JW has so many links to different churches in Liverpool yet seems quite unmotivated by the evangelical revival of the 1800's that kicked off so much philanthropy. Indeed, Williamsons attitude to the Bible seems most offhand in some of Stonehouses stories.

  8. #38
    Cadfael
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    Quote Originally Posted by fortinian View Post
    I see what you are saying Cad and I agree - St Thomas would have been main church of the Tate family who lived in Duke/Parr Street and so would have been the church that JW attended whilst he was living there and would probably return to for big events.

    How do we know he lived on Duke St with his mother? I was under the impression that people don't know anything about his family as there are no records. The FoWT site doesn't mention any family that is known of.
    .
    Joseph Williamson's mother was called Sarah and she lived in Duke Street - records from Williamson's Tobacco holdings show the number of the house and a seperate research lists Sarah in the family tree above Williamson so I'm 99% assuming that it was his mother. There are no records to show he was from Warrington, it is assumed that he was from Warrington - spoken by James Stonehouse first, and everyone else has latched on to that since.

  9. #39
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    Taken from Victoria County History of the County of Lancaster, Vol 4:


    A rock-cut passage still runs under James Street, from somewhere near the position of the castle, towards the river. It was entered and examined in May 1862 by Mr. P. M. Coogan (Rep. in vol. 2, p. 132 of the Misc. Rep. in the City Engineer's Office), and a plan and sections were made, showing that it varied in height and width, averaging about 8 ft. in height, and has in its floor on the south side a channel, which, when lately sounded on the suggestion of Mr. Robert Gladstone, junr., has proved to be as much as 7 ft. 6 in. deep. It was again examined by the city engineer in 1908, and a new plan made. That it had some connexion with the ditch of the castle seems possible, and its depth is said to be sufficient to allow the river water to reach the ditch at high water

    From: 'Liverpool: The castle and development of the town', A History of the County of Lancaster: Volume 4 (1911), pp. 4-36. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rep...p?compid=41370. Date accessed: 24 July 2007.

  10. #40
    Senior Member ChrisGeorge's Avatar
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    Thanks, Steve. Very interesting. I edited your intro to the quote slightly to make clear that it is from the Victoria County History.

    I am going to copy your post to the Liverpool Castle thread as well.

    Chris
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  11. #41
    Senior Member steveb's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by ChrisGeorge View Post
    Thanks, Steve. Very interesting. I edited your intro to the quote slightly to make clear that it is from the Victoria County History.

    I am going to copy your post to the Liverpool Castle thread as well.

    Chris
    Thanks Chris.
    It is worth pointing out that this site is a gold mine about the History
    of Liverpool, a lot of hard reading, but will answer most queries.

  12. #42
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    Default Hi

    I know this isn't in Liverpool but it is just over the water there is the Tranmere Tunnels

  13. #43

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    Hi all
    found your forum yesterday, fascinating to me since i left Liverpool some years ago.

    When i was a kid growing up in Woolton Village, beside Reynolds Park, i discovered (I wasn't the first of course) a tunnel which ran for about 15 feet before turning right and running for another ten feet at which point it had been blocked off.
    The tunnel is located near the base of the small quarry which can be found over a seven foot wall which runs along the left side of the entrance path from the gates on Woolton Hill Road.
    i've looked for the quarry on Google Earth but it's completely obscured by a canopy of trees.

    there's another oddity in Reynolds park which looks almost like a concealed entrance at the top of the field at the Woolton Park entrance.

    Anybody here know anything about this or has anybody else seen the tunnel?

  14. #44
    DaisyChains
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    Quote Originally Posted by theoc View Post
    Hi all
    found your forum yesterday, fascinating to me since i left Liverpool some years ago.

    When i was a kid growing up in Woolton Village, beside Reynolds Park, i discovered (I wasn't the first of course) a tunnel which ran for about 15 feet before turning right and running for another ten feet at which point it had been blocked off.
    The tunnel is located near the base of the small quarry which can be found over a seven foot wall which runs along the left side of the entrance path from the gates on Woolton Hill Road.
    i've looked for the quarry on Google Earth but it's completely obscured by a canopy of trees.

    there's another oddity in Reynolds park which looks almost like a concealed entrance at the top of the field at the Woolton Park entrance.

    Anybody here know anything about this or has anybody else seen the tunnel?
    wow fascinating stuff!
    I hope someone can shed some more light!

  15. #45
    Senior Member fortinian's Avatar
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    Default Just noticed this...

    On the Williamson Tunnels Website; it was posted a while ago but sounds interesting:

    Was Joseph Williamson a Yorkshireman?
    Thursday October 11th, 2007

    Very little has ever been known about Joseph Williamson’s early life and what information we have had has come from the writings of the somewhat unreliable 19th century local historian James Stonehouse.
    Stonehouse tells us that Joseph Williamson was born on 10th March 1769 and that he left his home in Warrington at the age of 11 to lodge with the Tate family in Liverpool who gave him employment in their tobacco & snuff manufactory.
    Stonehouse also relates that Joseph married Elizabeth Tate and eventually took over the Tate business.
    In May 2007 a small team from the Williamson Tunnels Heritage Centre, frustrated by the dearth of information about Williamson, resolved to make a concerted effort to learn more.
    Since then much information has been unearthed but the most significant breakthrough came quite recently.
    Senior researcher Sian Roberts has uncovered evidence that Joseph Williamson was actually born in Yorkshire and that Joseph’s father and Elizabeth Tate’s grandfather were both glassmakers in a small village near Wakefield.
    It appears that following the decline of small-scale glassmaking in Yorkshire in the latter part of the 18th century several members of the Tate family moved to Liverpool and we believe that at around the same time the Williamson family moved to Warrington.
    The Heritage Centre research team is still following several leads, which may lead to more information about Joseph Williamson and are planning to display their work at the Heritage Centre in due course.
    thats off http://www.williamsontunnels.co.uk
    I always knew that the Mole of Edge Hill was not from Liverpool but there were never any specific details (apart from one mention of Warrington). You'd think they'd write a proper book or something about him but I suppose with information so scarce it'd be hard.

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