We recently had a visit from a group of urban explorers from Burnley who were introduced to us by Martin Zero who has made a couple of very interesting and popular YouTube videos about the tunnels with us. They were given the full tour of our sites and were particularly interested in the long shaft we call “The Caver’s Squeeze” at the Williamson house site. These lads have no fear of tight spaces, and went in to take a look with video cameras. They were fascinated and full of questions just like us about what the shaft might have been for.
They were so intrigued that they wanted to take another look, so last week they came back with the intention of having a dig where the shaft is blocked more than 30 metres in. We were very happy for them to have a go, of course.
This time they were keen to know what lay beyond the blockage and although the shaft is a tiny space to get into, they went in with tools and buckets and managed to clear some soil and bricks out and remove it down the full length of the shaft, which is quite a feat, crawling backwards all the way. From measurements taken on the surface, and what we could see on their video footage, we now believe they got all the way to the Triple Decker Tunnel which lies under the lower ground behind the house site. At this point, the long horizontal shaft ends, and we believe a vertical shaft drops down to possibly join into all three levels of the Triple Decker. They managed to establish that a paving slab appears to have been placed carefully over this vertical shaft and can clearly be seen in the video footage they took during their clearance work.
The lads have told us they’d be happy to come back any time to explore difficult places we might uncover. Thanks once again to Bruce, Boff and Kipper, the Northern Monkeys for their useful exploratory work and for permission to use their video footage. You can find the video from their second visit on their YouTube channel at:
Check out the Nothern Monkeys on their YouTube Channel or on Facebook
You might also like to browse FoWT’s own YouTube channel where we now have over 30 videos to view, some old, some new at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdOOqkXNOck83yOPiYAHLkw