Back in the mid-Seventies, I worked in the City Engineer's department structures section. The head of the department told me that back in the 50s he had been asked to visit the site of the new Corn Exchange then under construction in Drury Lane.
The Contractors had found a tunnel and when the engineers inspected it, they found that it extended some way and that there were actually four levels of tunnels. They were narrow and had cages, like cells, built in along one side.
Apparently, nobody knew how far these tunnels extended or what they had been used for. There was speculation that they followed the old streets of the town and that they had been used for imprisoning slaves following the abolition of the slave trade - but there was no evidence for that.
One of the engineers who had seen the tunnels told me that they had found an old oil lamp. When they went to pick it up, it collapsed into dust.
The engineer's advice to the contractors was to collapse in the top tier of tunnels and fill it in.
I wrote to Jim Moore about this some years ago and he said that he might research it for an update of Underground Liverpool.
Two other underground features that I found out about when I was working there were the concrete bridges constructed across Georges Dock. In this case they actually had the site photographs dated 1907.
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The bridges carry Water Street and Brunswick Street from the Strand between the Three Graces to the Pier Head. They are massive structures and are still there (the Brunswick Street one can be seen if you go on the Mersey Tunnels tour). Photographs taken before the Cunard Building was built show the Brunswick Street bridge to be quite an ornate structure with a viaduct of four-centred arches supporting the road and a similar viaduct, at a higher level supporting the footpath. The Water Street bridge is just a box.
The engineers had been inside the Water Street box and found it to be partially flooded. When they tested the water, they found it to be identical to tap water.
Although their existence is well documented, there is some mystery in just why they were built. It would have been much cheaper just to have filled in the dock - so presumably they were part of some civic project that got shelved when the Liver and Cunard Buildings were constructed.
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