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posted by martyb on Saturday September 05 2015, @04:37PM   Printer-friendly
from the beware-the-balrog dept.

The BBC has an interesting piece on the recently rediscovered tunnels beneath the city of Liverpool.

The air is still. It's quiet. Occasionally, the sound of a water droplet bursting feebly onto stone echoes through the chamber. Somewhere, somehow, moisture is getting in. But for the most part, it's dry. And were it not for the smattering of electric lights, this 200-year-old tunnel beneath the streets of Liverpool would be very dark – and very lonely.

The number, depth or purpose of the tunnels is largely a mystery. Over time, they were filled with waste or used for storage and fell into history.

The patron of the tunnels, tobacco merchant Joseph Williamson, was extraordinarily secretive about their purpose. Even today, no one is sure exactly what they were used for. Nor does anyone know for sure even how many of the tunnels there are, scattered underfoot beneath the Edge Hill district of Liverpool in northwest England.

After the tunnels were rediscovered in 2001, a small group of volunteers have spent time excavating them.

Over the last 15 years teams of volunteers, digging up to twice a week, have removed more than 120 skips [dumpsters -Ed.] of waste material. They have revealed forgotten cellar systems and, in several cases, multiple levels of tunnels – some with stone steps leading down to deeper caverns. There are also some debris-filled passages branching off in odd directions; it's not clear how far they go or to where they ultimately lead.

The piece goes on to talk about the large number of items that have been found in the tunnels, the amount of work that goes into their restoration, and some theories as to why they were constructed.

Note: I'm submitting this in the hopes that some Soylentils find this as interesting as I, or in the hopes that anyone has ever seen or entered these tunnels.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by frojack on Saturday September 05 2015, @05:33PM

    by frojack (1554) on Saturday September 05 2015, @05:33PM (#232672) Journal

    The sheer amount of brickwork/stonemasonry involved would have taken gangs of men months or years to complete.

    They must have been cutting the stones for the arches from the site, because buying that much stone would be enormously expensive.
    You couldn't carry on such a large building project without the local government (such as it might have been back then) being aware of
    it, giving some form of approval.

    According to the wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamson_Tunnels [wikipedia.org] (oddly missed in TFS)...:

    Williamson's own explanation was reputed to be that his workers "all received a weekly wage and were thus enabled to enjoy the blessing of charity without the attendant curse of stifled self respect", his prime motive being "the employment of the poor".

    If labor was dirt cheap, could the value of the land reclaimed above have ultimately paid for the investment in shoring it up?

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  • (Score: 1) by Francis on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:57PM

    by Francis (5544) on Saturday September 05 2015, @06:57PM (#232702)

    It's hard to say, but it sounds a bit like what H. H. Holmes did when constructing his death hotel for the Chicago World's Fair. I doubt it was anything that sinister, but people moving things about seemingly randomly could be a jobs program or it could have been an effort to distract from whatever his real purpose was in constructing the tunnels.

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:15AM

      by frojack (1554) on Sunday September 06 2015, @01:15AM (#232822) Journal

      Yeah, I doubt you have to reach to anything sinister, although he may have had some sort of financial interest in the land above the old quarries, and if he could make the land stable enough to build on, the wages would not be an issue.

      It just depends on whether the buildings above were built before or after his projects, and also if the buildings above were built with stone from below.
      The quality of the construction suggests it was no rip and run project, and was built to last.

      I wonder what kind of stone was take from those areas? Chalk, limestone, was in high demand for making cement, and even under London there are tunnels into chalk deposits.

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