26 C O N T E X T 1 0 9 : M A Y 2 0 0 9 five bricks thick, so Williamson built to last. However, this land is privately owned, and the owner periodically expresses an interest in building there.Tunnels beneath the land directly alongside the heritage centre are similarly threatened by an extant planning application for the building of flats where the old Lord Mayor’s Stables stood. Any incoming developer is almost certain to demolish these decaying 1860s stud stables, purpose-built to manage Liverpool Corporation’s fleet of heavy draught horses, and thereby deny access to yet more of Williamson’s tunnels. A collaboration agreement was signed recently between the Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels and the Joseph Williamson Society to provide a united front. This should facilitate any negotiations with Liverpool City Council, which owns much of the land in Edge Hill, and with other public bodies. Over the years, the limitations of the use of listing have been investigated. Preliminary discussions with English Heritage resulted in their deemingWilliamson’s tunnels to lack sufficient national interest, and they did not support a listing application. This probably saved a great deal of expense, but it took no account of the friends’ nationwide membership of close to 1,000, nor of the 6,000 who responded to the first heritage weekend at the tunnels in the late 1990s. Listing, based as it is on drawing a finite legal boundary around the property in question, becomes fraught when faced with a multiplicity of property owners on the surface and as yet indeterminate size and form below ground. But it is this very scale and complexity of Williamson’s workings that enhances their interest and makes them a most special part of Liverpool’s history. The desire is to explore, clear, and present to future generations the structures, as they were the day they were constructed. Many tunnels are filled with rubble as subsequent occupants of the land sought to build anew on this difficult ground in the timehonoured fashion of back-fill, flatten and forget. This was occasionally followed by surprise as strange holes appeared in the ground or buildings began shifting on their foundations. This year, a 20th century interwar cottage-style dwelling on Mason Street has been demolished due to subsidence. It was built where Williamson erected a house for his friend the artist Cornelius Henderson. This house was reputed to have had an extensive deep cellar area where the floor above was supported on large stone columns, and no kitchen. Edge Hill presents a dip-and-scarp form, underlain by sloping beds of Triassic sandstones, with the steeper scarp edge facing towards the city. Wherever outcrops occurred, the stone was quarried. It would seem that much of the stone produced fromWilliamson’s earlier diggings was used for houses he built and to re-line the tunnels underground. Rough-hewn stone was used for massive boundary and supporting walls like those that can be seen at the side of an industrial warehouse on Mason Street. The early writings of local historians James The put-holes in the side walls of the ‘Banqueting Hall’ supported formers during the construction of the brick arches. The ‘Banqueting Hall’ chamber under Williamson’s house, with rubble fill A finely-finished sandstone arch under Williamson’s house, and a rough-hewn block wall on the right
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