[Monolith]

I really didn't know much about Joseph Williamson and his tunnels until recently. I'm not even really much a 'tunnels man', but there is something a tad fascinating about a man preoccupied with scooping out great mounds of earth to make an underground labyrinth.

http://www.williamsontunnels.com/

I must take that tour some day, and if you're in the region, so must you.

[underground]

Wow! That is unreal- I'd never come across those tunnels before, but I will definitely pay them a visit in the near future. There's something quite beautiful, and rather humbling about that sort of project acheived back in a time when ingenuity, hard work and time were the important factors and yet such work was acheived. It wasn't constrained by project timescales or budget.

Give me intricate brickwork and proper physical engineering over steelwork and cladding any day.

[SA Chris]

Amazing stuff. The Catacombs in Paris (and Rome?) and the Cistern System in Istanbul are also pretty cool.

[Obi-Wan is lost...]

The Catacombs in Paris are also pretty cool.

And also full of bones. What do you do when all the cities cemeteries are full? Dig them all up, shove the bones in the catacombs and start again. Obvious really! Cool, but highly macabre. [shiver] Being french they have not just piled the bones in a heap, they have 'written' things with them. A bit like some of the 'urban art' stuff, except with skulls. I spose thats what you call a 'body' of work. 

[SA Chris]

Yup, i like the way they have sorted them; skulls in this pyramid, tibiae over there.......

[Pemb]

I visited to the Williamson tunnels about a year ago. It was very interesting but the section open to the public was very small. There are loads more to be excavated, some of the tunnels are meant to lead right into the city center. Williamson's men met up with the men building Lime Street Station at one point I seem to remember hearing.  They have done a great job so far but it's unlikely that all the tunnels will ever be opened as they are lacking funding to excavate them.

No-one really knows why he started building the tunnels. They began when he was building some sort of a garden terrace for a row of houses and just continued from there. The most common theory is that he was a local philanthropist but my favourite is that he was building some sort of shelter for an impending Armageddon.

Definitely worth a visit if you are in the area.

[Monolith]

Another interesting piece of miscellany about Liverpool is that temple with the deceased guy inside. Can't remember the name of the church or road it's on, but there's a guy seated inside at a poker table (with his dog I think) with a killer poker hand. What a mystic city.

[BenF]

Another interesting piece of miscellany about Liverpool is that temple with the deceased guy inside. Can't remember the name of the church or road it's on, but there's a guy seated inside at a poker table (with his dog I think) with a killer poker hand. What a mystic city.

Tom, that's my favourite bit of local trivia and great to see it on UKB at last.  It's the wrecked church on Rodney Street by the way.  The pyramid tomb is clearly visible as you pass and apparently (or so I was told by someone who'd been on a history walk round the city) the guy was a local businessman or accountant who wanted to be buried at his desk.  Fuckin' weird, wanting to be buried at your desk if you ask me.  I mean I could understand wanting to be buried at Pex or summat, but not at your desk. 

Edit:  I think I prefer your version of the "dead guy at table" story.  And I vaguely remember being told that too.

[Monolith]

Haha, I love local trivia! Being buried at your desk, jesus what a terrible prospect! Perhaps said man was a leeetle beet insane. Either that or he was into self-directed Schadenfreude!   

[Pemb]

Excellent trivia. I walk past that church all the time and never knew that!

[Pemb]

A further piece of trivia about Rodney Street that I have just remembered is that William Gladstone was born in number 62.

I was told this while on a tour of Edward Chambre Hardman's house and photography studios also on Rodney Street. Quite an interesting place and Chambre was a decent photographer but after 2hrs 40 minutes I had pretty much lost the will to live!

[soapy]

also, adolf hitler's half brother is rumoured to have live here


as you were

[Pemb]

This is very interesting.

My brothers lecturer and Hitler expert Ian Kershaw reckons that this is total bollocks and he was in Vienna during this time. However according to Hilter's half-brothers wife's memoirs he did did stay in Liverpool for six months. Ironically, he house the was meant to have stayed in was destroyed by a German bomb in WW2.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/beyond/factsheets/makhist/makhist8_prog10b.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/legacies/myths_legends/england/liverpool/user_1_index.shtml

[BenF]

And whilst we're on the Liverpool triva theme...  Don't forget that Emperor Haile Selassie spent some time living in Aigburth whilst exiled from Ethiopia.  I've even been told exactly where he stayed.  A friend claims so have (or had) a relative who knew the God King himself; he lodged above or below said relative.  Allegedly.

[fatneck]

Going back to the tunnels, I'm sure I heard that the guy had no real plan for the tunnels, but it provided work for local poor folk and he ran it as a charity.

[Monolith]

Yeah Si, that's the original story my dad told me. Apparently he was a philanthropist that wanted to make people feel like they were going out and earning their money rather than receiving it without doing anything. Hmmm, what to believe??

[Johnny Brown]

In the middle of the junction where Mathew st and Button st meet is a manhole cover. Underneath wells a spring that was covered when the city's sewerage system was built in victorian times. It is said to be the source of the 'pool of life' on which Liverpool is founded, the fountainhead for the 'Liver' or 'seat of life'.
In 1983 Bill Drummond orchestrated an event whereby he was stood on the manhole cover whilst Echo and the Bunnymen played Rekjavik and The Teardrop Explodes played Papua New Guinea, the idea being that this would energise a giant leyline focused on Liverpool. Genius.