Williamson's Tunnels
— — rooms the city forgot it had.
Not only on a wall.
“A Liverpool tobacco merchant named Joseph Williamson spent the last thirty years of his life directing crews to dig sandstone arches, vaults, and passages beneath his houses on Mason Street. Nobody is sure why. He died in 1840. Most of the tunnels were filled with rubble during the Victorian century. Volunteers have been clearing them again since 1995.
Williamson's Tunnels, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Williamson's Tunnels lie beneath the Edge Hill district of Liverpool, England, about a mile east of the city centre. They were excavated between roughly 1810 and 1840 by labourers in the employ of Joseph Williamson, a wealthy tobacco merchant and property developer. The system runs at multiple levels through the Sherwood Sandstone bedrock and includes brick-vaulted chambers, arched passages, and irregular caverns. The total extent is still unknown; estimates range from one to several kilometres of underground space, most of it unexcavated, and new chambers continue to be opened.
The tunnels are cut into Triassic Sherwood Sandstone, the same soft red bedrock that underlies much of central Liverpool. Williamson's masons used hand tools and dressed the stone into Gothic arches, barrel vaults, and chambers up to roughly ten metres high. Some passages are lined with handmade brick laid by the same crews; others are bare sandstone showing the original tool marks. After Williamson's death in 1840 much of the network was used as a Victorian rubbish tip, and volunteers have removed over 120,000 tonnes of refuse and rubble since the 1995 excavations began.
Two charities run public access: the Williamson Tunnels Heritage Centre at Smithdown Lane and the Friends of Williamson's Tunnels at Mason Street. Both offer guided tours on weekends and selected weekdays, with extended hours in summer. A visit lasts about an hour and descends two or three levels; hard hats are issued at the door. Excavation continues alongside the tours, and new chambers have been opened as recently as the 2020s. Joseph Williamson himself is buried in the churchyard of St Thomas's, Toxteth.