Friends of Williamson's Tunnels

Williamson and the Grand Tour?

One of FoWT's trustees took a holiday in Turkey recently and saw some features which resembled Williamson's works.

“Each time I have climbed down the ladder to the Banqueting Hall at Mason Street I have felt that this part of the system is much older than any of the other Joseph Williamson works. The stone blocks which make up the wall on the left as you descend look much older and are quite different from any of the tunnels. Both ‘the gash’ and the Banqueting Hall look as though they have been there far longer than two hundred years.

I was on holiday in Turkey last month and one of the sites I visited was Ephesus - an abandoned Roman City. As I walked across the area which was formerly the market place, there in the hillside were tunnel entrances which would not have looked out of place in Edge Hill!. They were apparently warehouses. In another building (the former public latrines) was a bricked up arch of which there are numerous examples in Edge Hill.

I am not suggesting that Williamson got his ideas from the Romans or that the Romans excavated the Banqueting Hall, but the similarities were striking. Perhaps he did the Grand Tour and visited some of the famous classical sites? I have a copy of ’Memorials of Liverpool’ (published in 1875) which states that ‘Smithdown Lane is probably the most ancient road
about Liverpool and is the only relic of the ‘Esmedune’ of Domesday Book’. The area obviously has a long history going back way before Joseph Williamson appeared on the scene. Who knows what we yet have to find?”

Ephesus is said by some to be the world’s finest preserved classical city and one can indeed easily imagine it featuring in the itinerary of many a 19th century grand tour of the continent. For those who could afford it, and Williamson certainly could, these long trips to the cities and historical sites of Europe were considered a means of completing an Englishman’s education.

We have long held the view that Williamson

indulged in the tour. Our on-going research of his business affairs is beginning to paint a picture of success and riches beyond even previously presumed levels. His and his relatives’ adherence to religion, along with his evident fervour for grand construction must also support this view.

Thus equipped with both the means and the end, Williamson must surely have succumbed to the temptation to visit the likes of the Roman ruins of Italy and the stone-carved city of Petra. An inspiration for him to copy? Perhaps nothing so ‘ideal’, but rather a simple case of an enthusiast going and enjoying looking at how others had done it before him.

We certainly can’t dismiss the possibility that there were subterranean structures underneath Williamson’s ‘domain’ before he took over Mason Street. In Issue 9 we looked at the 1803 Horwood map showing the street already comfortably built-up; it is known that there were old quarries and mining structures in the sandstone-rich area and tunnels which possibly pre-date Williamson are beginning to crop up.

None of this is to detract from the vastness of his undertaking. That he oversaw the creation of a vast array of original structures below and above ground is beyond doubt. One has only to read James Stonehouse’s oft-quoted description of the complex maze of Williamson structures he saw from Smithdown Lane just five years after Williamson died. Suffice to say that it is possible that pick-axe had already struck stone under Mason Street before The King of Edge Hill began his design.