The Williamson’s tunnel system must be one of the most mysterious engineering projects in Liverpool’s history. One entrance into the tunnels was found in the basement of their patron’s former house PHOTO: Chris Iles

The Williamson Tunnels are a labyrinth of tunnels and underground caverns under the Edge Hill district of Liverpool in north-west England. They were built in the first few decades of the 1800s under the control of a retired tobacco merchant called Joseph Williamson.The purpose of their construction is not known with any certainty. Theories range from pure philanthropy, offering work to the unemployed of the district, to religious extremism. Although some of the tunnels have been lost over the years, a lot of them still exist today, under what is now a residential area. One section of the tunnels has been cleared and renovated and is open to the public. The remaining parts of the labyrinth are closed, with many suspected tunnels yet to be rediscovered.

As time went by, the tunnels passed from knowledge to myth.

“A lot of people knew about the tunnels, but that was as far as it went – they just knew about them or heard about them,” explains Les Coe, an early member of the Friends of Williamson Tunnels (FoWT). “It was just left at that. But we decided to look for them.”

Tom Stapledon, a retired television engineer and shopkeeper, is one of the regular excavators. He explains how early tests with metal rods, plunged down into the coke-like rubble had revealed the unexpected depth of the chambers. “They put a 10ft (3m) rod in and they didn’t hit the bottom. Then they put a 15ft (4.6m) rod down and didn’t hit the bottom,” he says. Only a 20ft (6m) rod eventually struck the solid floor – at 19 feet (5.8m) down.

As they excavate, the volunteers methodically document any artefacts they find. So far, they’ve uncovered ink wells once used by schoolchildren, bottles that held everything from beer to poison, jam jars, ceramics from Liverpool’s Royal Infirmary, oyster shells, chamber pots, animal bones and hundreds of clay pipes – a tapestry of household bric-a-brac that tells social history of Liverpool over the last two centuries in a way no other collection can.

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