liverpool, england —
It’s an unassuming entryway into what is said to be the world’s greatest underground folly, a centuries-old mystery buried at least 60 feet beneath the streets of Liverpool, England, and extending over perhaps more than a square mile.
Only the Georgian house’s peeling, graffiti-covered façade remains above ground, its front wall supported by steel beams and unglazed windows framing a rectangular blue sky.
A small plaque on the left side of the wall declares that this is the former home of Joseph Williamson (1769-1840), ‘Edge Hill Mall’, and that the land is under the care of the Friends of Williamson Tunnel.
Sunday afternoon tour groups gather at the construction trailer that is now the excavation site, donning hard hats and yellow high-visibility jackets.
We are about to enter one of England’s most unusual tourist attractions. It is a multi-layered network of tunnels and rooms. The tunnel was dug in the early 19th century at the direction of tobacco merchant Joseph Williamson and was built beneath his home and surrounding area.
Filled with rubble and rubble, the tunnel was lost to the world for more than a century, until it was rediscovered in the early 21st century and painstakingly excavated.
The mission of volunteer miners, including tour guide Tom Stapledon, for decades has been to answer one question. That’s why they were built.
Outlandish theories have surfaced over the years, ranging from that it is used to smuggle contraband to that it is home to an apocalyptic cult.
“We’ve been struggling with research for 30 years trying to understand this story, but it’s been very difficult because he was a very secretive person and the things he was doing were very strange and very insane,” Stapledon said as we prepared to descend.
But they eventually arrived at what they believe to be a solid theory. “Good luck if you can find even better information than what we have.”
Explore the mysterious tunnels beneath Liverpool
Workers have uncovered a hidden labyrinth of 19th-century tunnels stretching 60 feet underground in Liverpool’s Edge Hill. The challenge now is to figure out why they were built.
We walk to the Paddington site. This is the largest of the dozen or so known sections of undiscovered tunnels.
“In 1999, we were looking for a way to get into the long-lost basements beneath these long-lost buildings,” says Stapledon, “and with the help of construction crews building student housing on an adjacent property, we managed to find a way in.”
We enter by a ladder into the first of a series of large rooms, hand-carved from local sandstone and carefully finished with vaulted brick ceilings. Dry, bright and very comfortable, like an elegant wine cellar.
A portrait of Williamson and his wife Elizabeth – he a round-faced man with a quizzical gaze, hers a soft expression and cloud-like silver hair – greets us at the end of the room.
Williamson was born in Yorkshire, but moved to Liverpool at the age of 11 to train as a tobacco merchant with Elizabeth’s father, Richard Tate. Williamson took over the business in 1803 and amassed considerable wealth through this and other ventures. However, although he and Elizabeth had no children, there were no heirs to inherit the estate.
It quickly becomes clear that calling this labyrinth the “Williamson Tunnel” has a negative impact on this underground world. There are three routes you can take in this room alone. A narrow, pitch-black cul-de-sac reminiscent of a prehistoric burial chamber, a staircase leading to more rooms below, and our first route through a room displaying 19th and 20th century crockery, bottles, and creepy little doll heads.
All of this was discovered during excavations that began after the tunnel was rediscovered in the 1990s. The exhibits, and even the tunnel itself, give us a window into the past.
In the early 19th century, Liverpool was a rapidly growing maritime city, but its wealth belonged to the merchant class, and temporary jobs often meant a hard life around the docks. It was a time of mass unemployment, as artisans lost their jobs due to the mechanization of the Industrial Revolution, and the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 brought in a large influx of retired soldiers.
Liverpool’s grand history can still be seen in the city’s vast public spaces and impressively diverse architecture since the Georgian era. When Joseph Williamson purchased the Edge Hill property in 1806, his intent was to create a middle-class suburb in what was then an undeveloped area two to three miles from the city.
He “built a house along this street,” Stapledon explains, “but he also quarried sandstone, because it’s solid, good, hard, red sandstone that we have everywhere under our feet here.” “And he spent 34 years here, having his men dig out the sandstone and, in many cases, build houses on top of it.”
However, this decades-long construction project proceeded in complete secrecy. Williamson has never spoken publicly about his plans, is not known to have invited anyone to see what was going on, and left behind no documents or maps that might reveal the tunnel’s purpose or even its extent.
“People who worked for him were probably” instructed to remain silent, Stapledon said, and “it wasn’t until years after his death that what was going on underground was discovered.”
“A few years later, everything was filled with trash and demolition materials from the buildings above, and it was all forgotten and lost in people’s memories.”
Interest was revived just over a century ago, after a series of articles by historian Charles Hand sparked an official inquiry in 1926.
The Joseph Williamson Society was formed in 1989 and eventually, somewhat confusingly, two separate groups were born that preserve the site today.
There is the Friends of the Williamson Tunnel (FoWT) and just down the road in the stables built after the merchant’s death is the Williamson Tunnel Heritage Center.
FoWT has far more attractions and longer tours, but its rival boasts a smaller visitor center. Both operations offer tours at different times, so completionists can maximize their experience by visiting both.
Of all the tunnel sites identified and discovered, the most spectacular so far is the FoWT’s 7 meter high ‘banquet hall’.
We enter this cathedral-like space from the top floor, descending scaffolding stairs to explore the vast space below 65 feet long, our voices echoing through the Gothic arches overhead.
The floor we’re standing on isn’t even a floor, it’s a thick layer of rubble that Friends of the Williamson Tunnel estimates will be six feet deep at its thickest point. Excavation of this room alone required decades of painstaking work by volunteers.
The banquet hall’s name comes from a story, likely false, that Williamson once invited wealthy guests to his home, but served them a modest meal of bacon and beans. He is said to have treated his loyal visitors to a grand banquet in his banquet hall, after many left in disgust.
“The source of many of the epic stories about Williamson is a man named John Stonehouse,” says tour guide and volunteer Billy Moran, what we today call a “pop historian,” as he leads a tour of the two- and three-story tunnels at the Williamson Tunnel Heritage Center.
These stories range from claims that he attended church with a horse with its hooves on his shoulders (an amazing feat of interspecies acrobatics) to colorful encounters with railway workers building the West Coast Main Line, which ran through the site of Edge Hill from what is now Liverpool to London.
This was the 1830s, when locomotive transport was still in its infancy. “I think the railroad workers got a little worried and a little superstitious and thought they were digging too deep and getting too close to hell, and they end up in a strange tunnel that they weren’t expecting,” Moran says.
A team of Williamson’s men lay waiting, “and they jumped out, covered in mud, screaming, and finally Joseph Williamson came out and shook people’s hands and started saying, ‘Welcome to Edge Hill. If you want to know more about the tunnels, we can give you a lesson.'” Moran continues. “He was a strange man in many ways.”
So what was he doing? The conclusions reached by both Williamson organizations are the same. The most likely explanation for the endless tunnel construction is philanthropy. That means providing men with honest work and skill building during a time when life was tough.
“He got to a point in his life where all he wanted to do was keep men busy, men who needed work busy, who otherwise would be hanging around the streets, getting into trouble and eventually going to jail and not being able to provide for their families,” Stapledon said.
As his buildings were constructed on Edge Hill, his men continued to dig deep beneath the hard sandstone rock that provided stability where other tunnels could collapse. Sometimes the men were simply digging a hole and filling it again.
Stapledon said it took volunteers years to clear these tunnels before they realized the depth of the maze and worked out the solution to this centuries-old puzzle.
“I couldn’t imagine it being a commercial proposition at that point. It was just too stupid.”
Mr Moran noted during the tour that the local church in Edge Hill has baptismal records dating back to the time of Joseph Williamson, and that many grateful families have named their children in his honor. “He was doing a lot for people who had no better option than digging holes for local weirdos,” Moran says.
In Italy, there is a slang term for retired men who gather at construction sites to watch the construction workers work. Universally, over the centuries, tunneling and excavation have held a deep fascination for many people.
The atmosphere at the Friends of Williamson’s Tunnel Construction Trailer is upbeat, with volunteers meeting weekly to share their passion for the project and local history. Two members of the team, Mike Rogers and Claire O’Keeffe, brought a cake to share with the group. Rogers is known for “Great British Bake Off” level cupcake innovation.
The Williamson Tunnel Heritage Center is open on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, but offers tours for visitors every Wednesday and Sunday.
As Stapledon told visitors during the tour, in the early 19th century, Williamson’s tunnels were a way to keep people entertained. But, he added, “it’s true that he still keeps the men busy.”
