JOSEPH WILLIAMSON & His Unique Underground Project By Margaret Brecknell For nearly two centuries few outside the Edge Hill district of Liverpool knew of the existence of a network of tunnels and underground caverns, hidden far out of sight underneath the city’s streets, until in the last decade of the 20th century a group of volunteers began a painstaking excavation project to uncover them.
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uch is the scale of the task that the project is still ongoing today and many questions remain as to why they were constructed in the first place. However, thanks to the work of those dedicated volunteers, the tunnels have now become a popular tourist attraction and even featured in the most recent series of the popular BBC TV sci-fi drama, Doctor Who. The man responsible for this mysterious underground network of tunnels was Joseph Williamson, an early 19th-century Liverpool businessman and philanthropist. Details regarding his early life remain sketchy, but research undertaken by the Williamson Tunnels Heritage Centre suggests that he was born in March 1769 in a small village close to the Yorkshire town of Barnsley. Whilst he was still a young child, the Williamsons moved to Warrington.
Above: The remains of Joseph Williamson’s house. Photo Credit: Kyle May/CC BY-SA 4.0
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