Liverpool is now home to The Tardis.
Doctor Who’s newest series has the Time Lord, a Time Lord of 2,000 years, arrive in Merseyside.
Not being a Whovian myself, I can’t say I’ve been completely following the plot. I was most interested in a scene that took place in 1830s.
Joseph Williamson was a Scouser who had been asked about the mysterious tunnel network he and his workers created in Edge Hill.
Doctor Who is, of course, fiction: but Williamson certainly wasn’t.
Chamber of secrets: Some of Williamson’s tunnels in Liverpool
His tunnels are not only impressive with the steep staircases and large chambers they contain, but also feature a corridor that stretches a quarter of a mile and was excavated by his laborers from underneath his home and throughout much of the surrounding area.
Williamson, in effect became an architect spec builder.
Although he passed away in 1840, it was nearly a century since his passing. However, there is an underground history that only just began to be discovered.
Unfortunately, what he didn’t bequeath to posterity was an explanation for why he dug his labyrinth at all.
It was actually quite hidden and he never revealed its purpose. People were suspicious.
What makes a man so wealthy to invest his time and money into such a project? Once known in Liverpool as the ‘Mole of Edge Hill’, did he, as some believe, simply want to create work for the unemployed?
It’s a philanthropic thought, and he may well have been a generous man who believed in the Protestant ethic of honest toil being good for the soul.
However, there were better jobs than forcing men to labor in darkness by candlelight for hours on end.
Why bother with the perfect brickwork for the underground arches if nobody will ever see them?
The Pyramids at least were places of rest for gods.
Williamson could have also been trading the stones his employees had chiseled out from the ground for bricks that he would use to construct houses on his land.
That’s possible, too. The man reportedly became strict and scrutinized all who lived in the homes he constructed.
No riff-raff in the Mole’s houses.
It is possible that he was a religious extremist and thought Armageddon was around the corner. So he set out to find refuge with his friends.
Jodie Whittaker plays the Doctor with John Bishop and Mandip Gill as her companions.
This may explain why there are so many Gothic-inspired features in these tunnels.
His wife, who died 1822, made him a little odd. After that, he spent most of the time in his cellar (some call it his Banqueting Hall), and then he slept in the cave which was his bedroom.
This led to the idea that he was simply a rich lunatic who thought he was digging some kind of Necropolis-on-the-Mersey.
If The Beatles had known about his endeavours in 1960, they might have started their careers in one of his actual caverns — not the Cavern Club, that smelly old fruit cellar near the Pier Head.
Jodie Whittaker will play the Doctor and John Bishop, the Liverpudlian actor, Dan. They’ll come up with an explanation of the caverns and stop the evil plans of some terrible-looking alien beings from outer space.
But, personally, I’m more of a functionalist than a fantasist. Everything has a purpose, and Joseph Williamson was alive during a time of great development. Entrepreneurs were pragmatic.
Born in 1769, he moved to Liverpool with his family at eleven years of age. They had a tobacco and snuff business.
Joining the firm as an office clerk, he excelled to the extent that he married the boss’s artist daughter, Elizabeth, and eventually took over the running of the company.
He bought Long Broom Field, an undeveloped ridge on Edge Hill, in 1805. He constructed a house and an orchard in his garden that overlooked the Mersey. Other houses were built along the same route.
There was an ever-increasing tide of business success. By then wealthy, he decided to build first one mega-basement, then another, under his house and garden: much as the super-rich do these days in London’s Notting Hill.
Soon that wasn’t enough and he began further excavations in other parts of Edge Hill. He was cutting into the hills close to his house using the red sandstone rocks.
George Stephenson, the railroad engineer was assigned to this project as part of a larger plan that included the construction of the first rail line linking Liverpool’s port with Manchester’s spinning mills.
Stephenson’s success was such that any person who traveled to Liverpool within the next 140 year will be able to recall passing through this cutting just before they reached Lime Street Station. Some of Williamson’s tunnels were inside the rock on either side of the line.
Dr Who: Going Underground: Steve Oram plays Joseph Williamson
Rather less successful than the cutting was the railway’s first trial.
It was 1830 and such a big event, and with Williamson already knowing Stephenson, it is highly likely that he would have been present when Stephenson’s first engine, the Rocket, was tested on the line.
It was only 10 mph in speed but fast enough to overtake and kill William Huskisson (a Member of Parliament from the area).
Williamson was now moving on. We can assume that Williamson spent the remainder of his life extending his labyrinth after he sold his tobacco and snuff businesses.
He died of ‘water on the chest’ (pleural effusion) in 1840.
He was buried with his wife, in the Tate family vault of the local church. His house and other belongings were also sold. He was not married.
Rumours about the ‘Mole of Edge Hill’ circulated for a few decades in Liverpool but, as the area became poorer and less attractive, the arches and tunnels he had so carefully built became a dumping-ground for builders’ rubble, old household crockery and implements.
In 1936, his house was torn down — apart from its front door and wall. The walls and front door are still there, propped up by the side like an old Hollywood street.
The area was discovered by amateur archaeologists who spent their weekends in the field. The work was dangerous, dirty and sometimes hazardous. There wasn’t a map, no arches to guide you, and tons of trash to clear.
But slowly, the scope of Williamson’s imagination became clearer. The explorers now call themselves the Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels, have more than 1,400 members and are a registered charity.
For the benefit of pop artists and the general public, some chambers were reopened.
Joseph Williamson, while eccentric and perhaps even crazy, was a true genius. He left behind an unsolved mystery, which not even Time Lords will ever be able solve. It’s possible he liked it.