Over the last few weeks we have been very busy with both the Heritage Open Days and Members visits. We had a lot of visitors, some of whom visited Paddington for the first time. Yet we also had many of our members who were making their Annual pilgrimage to Paddington, the Banqueting Hall and  the Wine Bins under Williamson’s House site.

I think it’s safe to say that everyone enjoyed themselves, visiting the seldom seen Tunnels entrusted to the care of the Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels. If you have not visited yet, why don’t you consider coming to see us at Paddington?

Today, saw Skip 157 filled and quite a few visitors too. They saw just how our team of volunteers work, shifting bucket after bucket of infill from the depths of Paddington into the skip on the surface. The digging that is currently taking place in the Gypsum Chamber will, once finished, see Paddington completely empty. We have today uncovered even more of the Sandstone Bedrock floor with the Timber flooring that had been laid in place, similar to what was found in the Ash Chamber some months ago.

We are doing so well, we estimate that we only have maybe 3 or 4 skips of infill to remove from Paddington. So what then?

Well we have lots of things in the pipeline, we will need to remove the Wooden Temporary staircase from Paddington’s Level 3 down into Level 4. This will need to be replaced with a metal staircase and hopefully a viewing gallery too. We are also planning the Paddington Phase 2 dig, more details on this at a later date.

We have negotiated with Liverpool City Council, that once the paperwork is finalised we will be able to start to dig on Joseph Williamson’s House site, Mason Street. This will enable us to dig out the Banqueting Hall, Wine Bins and Sandstone Arch. Hopefully a few mysteries will be answered in the process. More exciting days expected in the future.

Also today, Peter Goodwin (Website) one of our long term members and supporters who has made a few video’s over the years for FoWT, including our last DVD visited today. If you would like to see some examples of Peters Videos of the Williamson’s Tunnels, you can take look here, “A Brief History of the Williamson Tunnels” and “A Strange Place”.