Mysterious Blue Plaque appears at Williamson’s house

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Wiliamson’s house front, with the mystery Plaque

A very strange thing has happened. On opening the Mason Street gate onto the house site for the first dig of 2020, we received quite a shock.

Up on the wall of Joseph Williamson’s house façade is a new blue plaque, not one of the official English Heritage Plaques, but never the less a nice blue oval plaque with details about the house front and FoWT.

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The mystery Plaque

The mystery is, we have no idea who created or even fitted the plaque. The plaque appeared sometime during the Christmas & New Year break. Of course, we are delighted to see it in place and would love to know who put it there, we send our thanks to that anonymous, mystery person.

Members meetings 2020 – Important Announcement

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Members-Visits-image-IMPORTANT-ANNOUNCEMET

A few weeks ago, we announced that we had changed the location of our monthly members meetings to give easier access for our members attending our meetings.

We agreed with the owners of Grand Central Hall on Renshaw Street, Liverpool to hold our meetings in Bar Racine. Sadly, we have been contacted by the owners, just over a week before the first meeting, with the news that they had sold Bar Racine and that we can no longer hold our meetings there.

This is devastating news, which leaves us more than a little panicked to get a meeting location confirmed.

In the interim, we have arranged for the February and March meeting to be in the The Quaker Meeting House, 22 School Ln, Liverpool L1 3BT. See the location map of the Quaker Meeting House

We are urgently seeking a replacement venue for our meetings, so please watch this space for news on future meetings.

The Trustees and volunteers apologise for unavoidable problem.

Our History is a Hit, with the History Guy…

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Dan in Paddington

FoWT were delighted to welcome Dan Snow, Historian and Patron of the Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels on 1st Feb 2019. Dan came to catch up on our progress digging out the tunnels and to film in both the Paddington and Mason Street sites for Dan’s History Hit TV channel https://tv.historyhit.com/.

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This was Dan’s second visit and we were thrilled that Dan found the time to come to see us whilst he was in Liverpool performing his Dan Snow on Live Tour 2019 show, “An Evening with Dan Snow”.

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Dan and Gordon, our Chairman
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Dan emerging from the new tunnel

 

Booking a tour with FoWT

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We have been receiving a growing number of glowing reviews on Trip Advisor from visitors. Thanks to all those wonderful reviews, we have made the Top Spot, No 1 of “Places to visit in Liverpool”. This has resulted in being awarded a certificate of excelence. Now Even more importantly, is our amazing Liverpool Tourism Award 2019 

As you can imagine, this has created quite a demand for visits, well beyond the numbers we have been used to in the past. We have been getting visitors from not only Liverpool, but from much further afield in the UK and amazingly abroad too. we are becoming a truly International phenomenon.

Head to our “Visit the Tunnels” page to book your tour on-line.

Whether you are a Non-member wishing to visit our amazing Cathedral like Paddington site.

Looking down into the amazing Cathedral like Chamber in Paddington

Or,

If you are a Member, or would like to become a member of FoWT, you can continue to do the Extended tour of the Tunnels. This includes in addition to Paddington, Joseph Williamson’s house, with its newly exposed Kitchen and surprising features, as well as its subterranean secrets below. These include the Wine Bins, the Sandstone Arch, the Gash and the famous Banqueting Hall.

This amazing View down into the nearly empty Banqueting Hall

You will find information on becoming a member on our web site Membership page or you can download our leaflet here.

One thing that hasn’t changed though: tours of our Paddington Site are still Free, whilst Members can visit as often as they like, in the year of their membership, also Free of Charge.

We do, however, welcome donations to enable our team of dedicated volunteers to continue their vital work in saving this important piece of Liverpool’s History & Heritage.

New Tunnel update…

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You will no doubt have read that we recently discovered a new rock cut tunnel within the Banqueting Hall. This small tunnel leads from the trench in the Banqueting Hall floor, through the bedrock wall and into yet another chamber. We have long suspected that there could be another chamber or passage alongside the Banqueting Hall. So the discovery of this was very exciting indeed. Joseph Williamson’s long lost subterranean World continues giving up its secrets.

The rock cut tunnel is around 3ft deep, extending into the bedrock wall of the Banqueting Hall. We have managed to get just inside this chamber, though we were initially asked not to dig the infill out from within the chamber until it was established that the brick built arched roof was complete and of course safe. We are delighted to report that we have completed the required method statement and risk assessments to enable us to dig out the infill in a safe and controlled manner so that the arched roof can be examined for safety. Once we know that the roof is complete and safe, we will of course aim to empty the chamber.

However, first impression suggests that the arch is intact and safe. We sent a GoPro camera up to the top of the roof on a long pole to get a good look at the roof and to our surprise, there is yet another nice sandstone arched tunnel as can be seen in the video.

So where might this arch take us? Well we would like to think it will take us to the long lost Great Tunnel. It is possible, given this chamber’s depth of approximately 37ft below ground level. Time will tell…

It will take us quite a while to empty the infill from inside, giving us full access to the chamber. Though we will of course update you with news on this dig as and when we have it. So stay tuned to Twitter, Facebook and of course right here for updates.