It is just possible that the Beatles might not be the coolest thing about Liverpool, England. Certainly, they are not the only cool thing, though I suspect your list might run dreadfully short after the Beatles and… Gerry and the Pacemakers. Don’t feel bad- few Liverpudlians could come up with a long list of cool stuff about Rochester. Sure, Liverpool is doubtless a lovely place in a post-industrial way. But now you can take the high road and add the Williamson Tunnels. That’s right- Liverpool is swiss-cheesed with man-made tunnels.

Joseph Williamson, a co-founder of Leigh & Williamson, made a lot of money for himself around the beginning of the 19th century. He started building in the Edge Hill District: houses, gardens, and tunnels. Then, he kept digging tunnels. Some of which were huge as banqueting halls. Some dead-end. Some are beautifully finished with stone work. Not being the record-keeping type, no one really knows what Williamson was thinking, but the most popular theory is that he was providing unskilled work to soldiers freshly returned from the Napoleonic Wars. Suggestions of more unsavory pursuits are less likely when considered against the fact that the tunnels were never made secret. No one ever liked using them, however. By the 1990’s, virtually all the excavations were filled with trash and debris.

Nowadays, when you make your pilgrimage to the Cavern Club to see the place where the Beatles got their start, you can spend spare time touring some re-opened passageways, courtesy of the Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels. And while you’re standing there in the Cavern Club, soaking up the atmosphere, you can lean over to a companion and say, “You know, this used to be an air raid shelter. And before that, it was a man-made cavern…”

February, 2007