‘There are secret tunnels under here, you know.’ Wherever you go, people will tell you there are hidden routes through their town. It’s an exciting thought, that years ago, people went on mysterious errands below the streets, through dark, dripping passageways. Maybe holding a burning torch. It is hardly ever true. Why do we continue to believe it? Why do these ideas resonate with us? Maybe part of the reason is that we have all been reared on adventure stories where plucky kids find an underground lair, where travellers find the Centre of the Earth, or where smugglers hide contraband in caves. Those images stay with us, even when we are older. They hover around in our heads, and pop up if they can find a way.
On a deeper, mythological level, ways into the Earth represent portals to an underworld, a secret realm. They are a vector for that feeling human beings have that there is something else going on, just out of sight, just where we can’t hear… There is an ancient tradition of stories from all over the globe about another world inside this one. Usually referred to as ‘Hollow Earth’ stories, these tell of other civilisations, or other creatures living their lives far below the surface, right under our feet. People as far apart as ancient Buddhists and 20th Century Nazis believed there were subterranean worlds. The way to visit them is, of course, through a tunnel. ******* There are real tunnels. In some places, where the rock is soft enough, people can carve out short tunnels and grottos with relative safety. Hawkstone Follies in Shropshire is a good example of this. Between 1700 and 1800, the landowners turned their grounds into a fanciful landscape full of exciting mini-buildings, passageways and staircases. It is a great day out. Nearer to home, we have atmospheric Dale Abbey, where, the story goes, a baker was inspired to become a hermit, and carved his own cave from the sandstone. In the Peak District you can see Rowter Rocks, which an 18th century parson called Thomas Eyre carved into mysterious shapes. All these places are wonderful, in every sense of the word, and not very far away. ******* Sometimes the tunnels are secret. More often they are just disused and forgotten.
Glasgow has a massive network of communications tunnels built in the mid 20th century.
In the early 19th century, Joseph Williamson, a wealthy businessman, built large tunnels in the Edge Hill area of Liverpool. Nobody knows why, although there are several theories. He may have been illegally quarrying the sandstone, inventing work for the unemployed, or capping existing holes so he could build on top.
In March this year, electricians working for Western Power unexpectedly found an underground passage near Tintern Abbey. There was no record of it and no local people knew it was there. The electricians moved out and the archaeologists moved in.
******* Here in Belper, people tell stories about secret tunnels. They say there are tunnels under the top of King Street, under St John’s Church, under the Parks, and under Strutts. There is danger, effort and expense involved in building a tunnel. It is not easy, and the reward for such an undertaking would have to be very high indeed to make it worthwhile. Belper is not very likely to have secret tunnels. It does have:
Culverts
Disused cellars
Old ice houses
Underground reservoirs
The remains of air raid shelters.
The area at the top of King Street is interesting because this is where you would find the cellars from the old Green Hall, home of Jedidiah Strutt II. On Bridge Street, the Lion also has extensive cellars. Cellars provided both storage space and room for work. There were once many more industries and workshops in Belper, and some of them used underground rooms. Mr A sent this description of the house he occupied as a teenager. Although his old cellars are blocked off now, his recollections show what a variety of spaces sometimes existed below houses:
‘The cellar was accessible from outside, down a flight of stone steps. The door opened directly into the middle of the first cellar room. There are three rooms. The first, which you entered from the steps down is about 4m by 4m and mirrors the room above. In the corner diagonally opposite but to the left of the entrance door is a standard door opening to a passage. The passage is about 1.5 m long. To the left of the end of the passage there is a room about a quarter the size of the one just described, with a stone slab, which was used for storing salted pork. Immediately at the end of the passage the height reduces to about 1.3 m and it becomes a tunnel about 2 to 3 m long. You have to crouch very low or crawl to get through it. However it opens into a room as large as the first one with a domed brick ceiling in which you can stand up again. Beyond that is a reservoir mainly beneath the front garden from which Mr. F took his water for malt manufacture. It is fed from the small stream which is now culverted. When we lived there, we had electric light in the cellar and kept coal and firewood down there. You may also be interested to know that as we (three boys) became older we had a couple of teenage parties down there and took straw bales in for seating.’ In 1980, an old farm building was demolished in Openwoodgate. The team discovered what looked like a mysterious old passage, 25 feet long, 7 feet high and 5 feet wide. The mystery was solved when they were told that 200 years earlier, the building had been a brewery and public house. The ‘secret passage’ had been industrial space. When they are no longer useful, underground structures are sealed off and may be forgotten. People are discouraged from visiting them, because they are dirty and potentially dangerous. Anything forbidden automatically becomes interesting. This does not mean that our towns have no secret places. In the heady fervour of the 16th and 17th centuries, the devout, most notably Roman Catholics, needed hidden places to practise their religion, when it was out of favour with the monarchy. In old Belper, people were more likely to need a secret place to indulge in a bit of coining. Extending a cellar for a bit of extra storage, workspace or nefarious activity, would not have been as complex as building a tunnel. Knocking through to make a way into another, already existing, cellar would have been similarly achievable. There is an underground Belper. Just not an Indiana Jones style one.
References Explore mythology, by Bob Trubshaw Glasgow Live 22nd March 2021 BBC News 4th March, 2021 Belper News, May 15th 1980
