Preserving Our History – Williamson Tunnels

Last weekend me and Comrade Ricky went on a tour of the Williamson Tunnels, a network miles long, dug out of the sandstone that Liverpool sits on. Dug by men returning from the Napoleonic war for eccentric tobacco merchant Joseph Williamson.
This is just a small part of its history, which you can learn more of by visiting the tunnels yourselves, but you may only have one year to do so.

Leaseholders Sanderson Weatherall raised what was a peppercorn rent for the charity looking after the tunnels to £20,000 a year, or they could buy the lease for the meagre sum of £270,000.

As they are open only 3 days a week and charge £5 entry, 100 visitors a day could not even provide that amount of money.
Fortunately, thanks to generous public donations, the rent has been paid for one year. It shouldn’t have come to this, though.

I emailed SW to ask why they had raised the rent and what they planned to do if it could not be raised. Seeing as they have not replied in the two weeks since, I can only repeat what I was told at the visitor centre, that the lease was to be sold to a property devoloper.

The irony is not lost on me that Williamson himself was, amongst other things, a property developer. But he also had a social conscience. The people he paid to dig cellars and waste chutes for his new houses continued to be employed by him, eventually building a vast network of tunnels that still haven’t been fully excavated by the groups of dedicated students and volunteer archaeologists who look after the place.

Another irony is that these tunnels are in Liverpool’s “Knowledge Quarter” which is made up of university campuses and privately owned student accommodation.
If the land is purchased by a developer, it may well be used to build yet more flats and Tesco Expresses for the increasing population of students. Students engaged in commercial education, rather than the genuine local knowledge that the tunnels provide.

A friend of my family volunteered here, and she wrote an essay on the tunnels which got her into Oxford to study history. Gaining local knowledge which impressed Oxford dons who had not even heard of the place!

The Williamson Tunnels are an important historical resource, they are also a testament to what human labour can produce and they need to be preserved and be accessible to both visitors and researchers.

As socialists, we don’t agree with charity. It is unsustainable. Though Williamson did a good thing by employing the hundreds of men to dig for him, a planned economy would ensure those able to work would always have something productive to do. The same applies to the kind donations that are keeping the historical tunnels open for another year. The council needs to step in to save them from predatory speculators. I have emailed Cllrs. Harry Doyle (member for wellbeing and culture) Mike Wharton (member for business and investment) and our Metro Mayor Steve Rotherham asking what their plans are for the future of our tunnels, but apart from an automated message, I have had no response.

Chris Haws
June 2025