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Underground (Miscellaneous: Tunnels, Roads, Bunkers Etc.)

Secrets of Ramsgate's wartime underground tunnels
12 January 2014 Last updated at 00:29 GMT

Most people think of Dover as being the most important town on the front line during World War Two, but nearby Ramsgate also played a significant role in the defence of the UK.
Yet many of the town's wartime secrets lie buried and forgotten deep below the ground.
Sixty feet underneath the town of Ramsgate lies a network of tunnels extending for three and a half miles.

The tunnels were dug in just nine months at the beginning of World War Two, using mostly picks and shovels.
During World War Two they became a refuge, a secret underground town providing shelter from air raids for 26,000 people.

Famous visitors included Prime Minister Winston Churchill who came to Ramsgate to inspect bomb damage but was forced to descend into the tunnels for shelter during an air raid.

The tunnels were abandoned for 75 years but now Phil Spain and the Ramsgate Tunnels' Team have been working on a project to restore them.
Inside Out meets Phil to hear about the forgotten history of Ramsgate's underground wartime labyrinth.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-25403900

I worked out of Ramsgate for a season in '85, and the topography of the place lends itself to tunnels, as most of the town is built on the clifftop.
 
Disused Rosudgeon mineshaft opens under main road

Part of the main road between Helston and Penzance in Cornwall has been closed after a disused mineshaft opened up.
It left a 10ft (3m) hole at the side of the road on the A394 at Rosudgeon.
Mining historians say the area is "riddled" with such workings.

Cornwall Council contractors have set up traffic controls in order to excavate the hole, see how deep the mineshaft is and to deal with it.
"Once we open up the feature, we'll have a good idea of what different types of remediation we can employ," engineer Brian O'Connell told BBC News.
"If it's a shaft feature we can look at using a concrete plug maybe, or even a structural slab," he added.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25931637

From the photo, the hole at the surface is only about 3' across.
 
Kondoru said:
Hole found in Cornwall.

Slow news day.
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Ha ha! Yes, looking at the OS map of the area, it is littered with disused mines and shafts.

But this new hole is at the edge of a road, so clearly has to be dealt with before it decides to swallow a passing heavy goods vehicle...

..or a bus with rynner aboard, heading for Penzance! :shock:
 
Another one!

Camborne house collapses into street

Part of a semi-detached house has collapsed in a Cornwall town.
No-one is reported to have been injured in the collapse on the ground and first floor of the house in Tehidy Road, Camborne, at about 05:00 GMT.
The BBC believes the family who live there were moved out on Tuesday when cracks began to appear. The road is closed both ways due to rubble.
A former mining adit is reported to have opened up several years ago in a neighbouring garden.

Tony Bunce, who lives nearby, said he believed heavy rainfall in the area had affected the house.
"It doesn't look like a mineshaft has collapsed," he said.
"It looks like water has got into the stonework."

Engineers from Cornwall Council and contractors Cormac have started inspecting the area.
No-one was available for immediate comment from Cornwall Council.

The collapse follows a hole in the road appearing at Rosudgeon in Cornwall, revealing a deep mine shaft beneath on Tuesday.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25942266

The local TV news interviewed a mining engineer. He reckoned the problem with old mines is the age of the wooden pit-props, which are slowly rotting away. After heavy rain, the weight of the saturated ground above can no longer be sustained, and the pit props give way.
 
rynner2 said:
Camborne house collapses into street

Part of a semi-detached house has collapsed in a Cornwall town.
No-one is reported to have been injured in the collapse on the ground and first floor of the house in Tehidy Road, Camborne, at about 05:00 GMT.
The BBC believes the family who live there were moved out on Tuesday when cracks began to appear. The road is closed both ways due to rubble.
A former mining adit is reported to have opened up several years ago in a neighbouring garden.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25942266
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Camborne family whose house collapsed thank double glazing company for saving their life
By WBJLock.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014

A FAMILY from Camborne whose house collapsed into a disused mine earlier this month has thanked a double glazing company for saving their lives.

The Williams’ household in Tehidy collapsed after a huge crack appeared on the side of their home.
Mike Williams said if it was not for double glazing company, Dawes and Windows, he may have been inside at the time the house came down.
Dawes and Windows had made adjustments to the front door but had been called back three times by the Williams.
They then found that the door had subsided by 25mm, sparking concern that the house was subsiding.

Mr Williams said: “After fitting a beautiful door the level of aftercare was superb, they came back on numerous occasions with no fuss and ended up being the ones who discovered the house was in danger.
“They practically saved our lives as we beat the house collapse by two days.
“I can’t praise them enough and would never go anywhere else to get any work done.”

Phil Dawe, Director of Dawes and Windows said: “Mr & Mrs Williams contacted us as their door required some adjustment, which is very unusual for our company.
“We dutifully went out and made the necessary alterations and everyone was happy, but over the next five months we had to return three more times.
“It was when we revisited the installation in January this year that we realised something more sinister was causing the issues.”

A structural engineer was appointed by the insurance company who confirmed the house was subsiding and would require some remedial work.

A few days later the whole left side of the house collapsed, but luckily the family had been moved to a Premier Inn and were not in the property at the time.

http://www.westbriton.co.uk/Camborne-fa ... story.html

But this story will probably worry a lot of people with a stuck door or window... Alternatively, they might just put it down to the wet weather, and ignore something that should have been checked... Life's never easy! :shock:
 
Winnie the Pooh teddy among objects found in Scottish sewers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-26195258

Winnie the Pooh teddy in sewer

A Winnie the Pooh teddy bear was found dumped in a manhole in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire

A large Winnie the Pooh teddy, a bike, a fax machine, jeans and a snake were among a host of bizarre items found in Scotland's sewers last year.

Scottish Water said it dealt with more than 40,000 blockages in the drains and sewer network.

Most were caused by people putting things such as cooking oil, nappies and baby wipes down sinks and toilets.

It is running an awareness campaign to highlight the issue, which it said creates costs of more than £7m a year.

A series of television and radio adverts will urge householders to dispose of kitchen and bathroom waste responsibly.

jeans in sewer
A pair of jeans caused a blockage at Strathblane in Stirlingshire
The adverts will also highlight the importance of saving water by doing simple things such as turning off taps while brushing teeth.

Scottish Water said cooking fat, oils and grease coupled with bathroom waste such as cotton buds, nappies and baby wipes created "a perfect storm of solidified fat and material that cannot break down easily in large clumps beneath Scotland's streets".

It warned the blockages can often lead to flooding and expensive repairs.

Chris Wallace, of Scottish Water, said: "The waste water drain which runs from your house to the public sewer is usually only about four inches wide, which is less than the diameter of a DVD.

"This drain is designed to take only the used water from sinks, showers and baths and pee, poo and toilet paper from the toilet."

The firm has also released a list of some of the more unusual items discovered in the sewer network.

Some of these - including mobile phones, jeans, false teeth, pants and toy action figures - were flushed down toilets.

However, other more bulky items - including a pink ladies bicycle, a fax machine and a large Winnie the Pooh teddy found in East Kilbride in South Lanarkshire - had been dumped down manholes.

bike and fax machine in sewer
A pink bike and fax machine were also dumped in an East Kilbride drain
The Scottish Water campaign to tackle blockages and encourage more responsible waste disposal also involves leaflets and school visits in the Stirling and Dumfries areas and will run for seven weeks.

Iain Gulland, director of Zero Waste Scotland, said: "I welcome the launch of this new initiative by Scottish Water to raise awareness of how to keep the sewer system clear of waste.

"Waste is a resource and there are significant environmental and economic benefits for Scotland if we work together to manage it more efficiently."
Click to expand...
 
It's amazing what gets dumped down sewers these days, just lift up a access cover (I can't say "manhole" anymore, in this politically correct society) & dump your rubbish down......

Sadly more common with those in social housing, as they aren't goanna' be paying the plumber's bill.
 
FelixAntonius said:
It's amazing what gets dumped down sewers these days, just lift up a access cover (I can't say "manhole" anymore, in this politically correct society) & dump your rubbish down......

Sadly more common with those in social housing, as they aren't goanna' be paying the plumber's bill.
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Is that a quote straight from the Daily Mail? I can see the headlines now.

PC Gone Mad, Can't Say Manhole Anymore

Benefit Scum Drop Litter Down Manholes and Taxpayers Have to Pick Up The Tab.

Bulgarian Immigrants, Will They Be Climbing Up Your Toilet and Use Our NHS?
 
Hmm yes.....

I won't be paying the bill as I'm insured, doesn't mean I'll be shoving down down the nearest drain.......
 
Plans approved to open Mail Rail 'secret Tube' as ride

Plans to open The London Post Office Railway - known to many as Mail Rail - as a tourist ride have been approved by Islington Council.
Visitors will be able to ride 0.6 miles (1km) of the tunnels under central London from 2020.

A new postal museum will open at Mount Pleasant, in central London, in 2016.
The British Postal Museum & Archive (BPMA) still needs to raise £0.5m and plans to launch a public appeal later this year.

The team also expects a decision to be made in May on its application for £4.5m funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

Mail Rail was approved by an Act of Parliament a century ago, and during its heyday its driverless trains carried 12 million postal items daily on the line stretching from East End's Whitechapel to west London's Paddington.
In its prime, 220 people worked on the line, which runs beneath Oxford Street in central London - at one point within a few feet of the Bakerloo Line.

But by the 1990s, Royal Mail built a new hub in Willesden, west London, and by 2003, only three of eight Mail Rail stations still worked
That year, Royal Mail said the line cost five times as much as using roads and the network was mothballed.

Ray Middlesworth, who has worked as an engineer in the tunnels for 27 years, said: "It's the holy grail for underground explorers - a hidden part of the rail network.
"Some people called it the Post Office's best-kept secret."
[Video by Dan Curtis: Explore the darkness of London's Mail Rail with engineer Ray Middlesworth. ]

BPMA director Adrian Steel said: "It is a fantastic opportunity that Islington borough council has given us - the green light to open up these unique tunnels to the public and reveal the captivating story of Mail Rail."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-26534175
 
Never understood what was secret about it. It used to be covered as a matter of course in books on railways. Unless by 'secret' these days we mean anything the public isn't allowed to go and vandalise.

Nor was it ever called 'Mail Rail'.
 
Charles Stross, who writes the Laundry Files series of Cthulhu/espionage stories(with tongue firmly in cheek) used that little railroad in one of his stories.

It was run by zombies(the Laundry gets a lot out of the employees).

I don't reveal which one because they are all good, and Charlie could use the money. The Laundry books are homages to various spy fiction authors and series, including Modesty Blaise. and James Bond.

I hope they do open it, but from the description the good Mr. Stross gives, it might not be fun for a lot of folks-low overhead? Of course, with no zombie staff.....

Good reading.
 
Yes, I hope they open it too. It's never going to be exactly a fairground ride, and the scenery ain't great, but technically its very interesting.
 
krakenten said:
Charles Stross, who writes the Laundry Files series of Cthulhu/espionage stories(with tongue firmly in cheek) used that little railroad in one of his stories.

It was run by zombies(the Laundry gets a lot out of the employees).

I don't reveal which one because they are all good, and Charlie could use the money. The Laundry books are homages to various spy fiction authors and series, including Modesty Blaise. and James Bond.

I hope they do open it, but from the description the good Mr. Stross gives, it might not be fun for a lot of folks-low overhead? Of course, with no zombie staff.....

Good reading.
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Great stuff.

In the Modesty Blaise homage, The Apocalypse Codex , the tongue slipped a bit from the cheek. Pretty good horror/spy fiction with a vein of dark humour.
 
Isn't it strange that such large projects can be so quickly forgotten?

Many people worked on them, lots of money was spent, they had a purpose, now, they are a mystery. Or at least, mysterious.

Pharonic Egypt was a great power and an economic powerhouse for thousands of years. Then, it slipped into the mists of time-in a generation or two. The huge projects of the great dynasties were soon attributed to the work of devils, or ascribed to strange sources.

By the 1700s, Egypt might as well have been the Moon, and all sorts of crazy magical thinking was used to explain what was visible-and the sands concealed much of what remained.

So profound was the state of ignorance about Old Egypt that it became a favored location for horror/supernatural stories, and much of it was reputed to be haunted.

So today, we have a branch of science(Egyptology)that studies what was left behind-and mummy movies still get made.

(for those who might care, all the mummy movies were inspired by the discovery of Unknown Man 11, aka the Screaming Mummy. It was thought that he might have been buried alive for some crime. Curernt thinking is that he is indeed a traitor, Prince Pentaware, a son of Rameses III who was part of a plot to murder and usurp his daddykins. The dirty sod got what he deserved-the sheepskin he was wrapped in was possibly to dishonor him in the afterlife. His mother, who dreamed the whole thing up may have been burned alive. Ditto for her!)
 
Repairs end on mine-damaged Troon homes

A £1.5m project to underpin a number houses following the collapse of a mine in a Cornish village has been completed.

In October 2013 part of a street in Troon, near Camborne, fell into an underground shaft used to clear water from mines.
The subsidence happened after water became blocked in the shaft.
The old shaft has now been cleared to avoid a repeat of flooding and subsidence, said Cornwall Council.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-27358195

There's more technical detail in this earlier article:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-25426779
 
Strange that no one has ever mentioned the "underchalk":

When I purchased both copies of Open Verdict at £2 a shot a shop assistant began a conversation that incorporated topics as diverse as Report From Iron Mountain and the ‘Bristol hum’. Poetry Field Club investigators believe the latter is caused by a rent in the underchalk, where wind escapes into the void. If this rent can be located then our thesis that all landscape is synthetic will be vindicated.
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http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/reaction/re08.html
 
Long and interesting article, with photos:

Nottingham: The city where they keep finding caves
By Neil Heath, BBC News, Nottingham
Nottingham's 544 caves have been used as everything from dungeons to bomb shelters throughout history but 100 of them were only discovered in the past four years. Take a look at how many of the caverns are still in use today

...

Archaeologist Dr David Strange-Walker, project manager of Nottingham Caves Survey, has been mapping the city's caves for the past four years and has recently discovered scores more than were previously known. The work has also led to the development of a new smart phone app to allow people to explore the city's caves from above the ground.

He said cave dwelling had been an intrinsic part of the city's history, particularly during the Industrial Revolution when an influx of people arrived to find work.
"The upshot was there was a great crush in the city," said the archaeologist. "[And] slum landlords were housing families in caves, which is all fairly horrific."

Despite the 1845 Enclosure Act, which made it illegal for people to live in caves within Nottingham, many still had to find somewhere to live.
"Areas outside the city had caves [and they] became like shanty towns," he said. "Some caves had proper frontages, others had a sheet of metal over the front, no fresh air, sanitation, nothing."

...

Many caves around Nottingham were created for brewing, and storing, beer and ales due to their consistently cool temperature all year round.
The owners of the Hand and Heart, in Derby Road, use their ancient structure as a restaurant and said their customers love the novelty of dining in the caverns.

The road is a hotbed for caves and some are still being discovered. Property developer Paul O'Shea bought a 150-year-old building in Derby Road, in January, to convert into student apartments, when he found a trapdoor leading deep into long forgotten chambers.
Mr O'Shea, who is looking at turning his caverns into a bar, said: "It was a bonus [discovering it] and everyone has been amazed by what's down here."

He contacted Dr Strange-Walker who at first thought it was probably a cave he knew about but a shock was in store.
He said: "I had a good look at all our records and found no record of it whatsoever, so for us it's a brand new cave, number 544. A new cave is always very exciting."
Dr Strange-Walker believes it was used as a cellar for a long lost pub known as The Old Milton's Head which dated back to the 1840s.

He added: "It's a really good example that there are lots of other caves around the city that we don't know about and there aren't any records for.
"They do keep turning up and something we want to do is look for more of these caves so we can boost numbers up to 600, 700, who knows."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-no ... e-26816897
 
Thanks for posting that. A linked article describes the earthquake swarm that has troubled the region recently. It seems to have stopped.

Tremor Decline article.

" . . . James Lawson, from the town, said in January that the quakes sounded like "something was trying to get through" with his son likening it to a "monster"."

I don't wish to alarm anyone but maybe these new caves are new and the thing has stopped digging because it is out! :err:
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I don't wish to alarm anyone but maybe these new caves are new and the thing has stopped digging because it is out! :err:
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:eek!!!!:
 
I posted this here before, but this gem is still worthy of attention:

http://amasci.com/hum/lofst1.txt

Since the destination for the nearest tunneling machine - which I
by then had named Nidhog after the mythical worm that gnaws the roots of
the World Tree Yggdrasil in the Edda poem Voluspa - did not necessarily
have to be under the center of the mountain, there was still some margin
of uncertainty. Therefore I took my divining rod for a walk.
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A couple of nights ago, I watched a made-for-tv movie from the seventies called The Night Strangler. I found it quite entertaining - more so than most of the X-Files it supposedly inspired.

The story involves an eccentric - and rather annoying - reporter who finds weird connections between crimes committed generations apart. The source of the weirdness may lie in the streets of Underground Seattle!

A fascinating history of the city on that site, which keeps its powder dry, so far as images are concerned. But searching for Underground Seattle on Google Images dredges up some very pleasing stuff. :)
 
I posted this nearly twelve years ago but it is only this year I got to see the tunnels which had exercised a strong pull on my imagination since the 1980s:

JamesWhitehead said:
No harm done. My post did give the corrected and working link for
the BBC feature, which is a good one with a second page of pictures.
It also has links to some of the Williamson sites which have been on
the web for some years:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2342183.stm

I knew about the tunnels by rumour when I worked in the Edge Lane
area of Liverpool some years ago. Since then, they have occasionally
featured on the BBC North West programmes. This new wave of
publicity comes because, for the first time, some of the caves are
open to the public. :)
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I visited them a few weeks back and they are worth a look, if you are in Liverpool. The start of the project is less mysterious than it used to be: Williamson was creating arches over old open sandstone quarries, which interfered with his plans for a housing scheme. He continued with his tunnels, it is believed, as a work-creation scheme to keep idle hands from fomenting Napoleonic dreams. The tour guide we had was extremely knowledgeable about this eccentric builder and the yet-to-be-excavated extent of his workings. The sections so far uncovered are a small part of the complex but it is intriguing that the Willamson Tunnels are within yards of the Wapping or Edge Hill Tunnel of 1830 - the first to be bored under a city. The tour guide gave some account of an encounter between Williamson and the railway tunnellers - but I don't think their paths crossed literally! :)
 
That movie was 'The Night Stalker', it took place in Las Vegas, and was the most successful TV movie to date.

The one in Seattle was the sequel. Not as good.

Then Kolchak-the reporter protag-went on to series TV, where script ideas grew thin.

Fun while it lasted.
 
From todays Daily Telegraph, maybe in a thousand years time, they will wonder if it was some sort of ritual depositing Or sacrifice!:-

London's trail of buried diggers.

By Alice Philipson

Property experts estimate there could be up to 1,000 JCBs buried underground because they are cheaper to bury than lift to street level following basement extensions

Wealthy home owners who have extended their homes by adding new basement floors are leaving a trail of entombed diggers around London because they are cheaper to bury than lift to street level.

Property experts estimate there could be up to 1,000 JCBs buried under sand, gravel and concrete, close to some of the capital’s most expensive houses.

Developers told the New Statesman that the machinery is becoming an increasingly big obstacle as they revisit homes that have already been extended underground.

Kensington and Chelsea alone has seen 800 planning applications for basements in the five years to 2013.

But although it is reasonably easy to get a digger into the rear garden of a home, it can become almost impossible to get it out after it has become nestled at the bottom of a building site.

In the past, developers would have used a large crane to scoop up the digger – a costly and time-consuming process.

The new method, now considered standard operating practice, is to cover the digger with “hardcore”, a mixture of sand and gravel, with a layer of concrete poured over the top.

However, in some of the newest conversions of London's luxury homes, basement conversion specialists have encountered difficulties as they try to tuck “sub-basements” beneath the existing basement conversions.

They say they are increasingly coming across abandoned diggers from the last round of improvements.

A basement conversion can add anything up to 25 per cent on the price of a multi-million pound house.

Following the building of the Channel Tunnel, tunnel boring machines used on the English side were buried clear of the tunnel. On the French side, the machines were dismantled and removed.

Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/pro ... ggers.html
 
I didn't know diggers were disposable, I thought you could reuse them? Wouldn't reusing them save more money than buying a new one every week?
 
I just checked up on used JCB prices & you can get one for as little as £8500. See here:

http://plant.autotrader.co.uk/used-plan ... excavators

If your doing a multi million pound cellar conversion then that's just pocket money, plus added to the inconvenience & cost of a large, long boom crane.

It makes me think if a children's book from the 1950's, of a digger that digs itself in & becomes the new central heating boiler!

"Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel" here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mulli ... eam_Shovel

Childrens fiction becomes reality...............
 
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