PARK TUNNEL,
NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND
G'day folks,
I am always looking for odd things to post. This might be one of them. An engineering error ensured this cavernous 350-foot-long subterranean thoroughfare was never used as intended.
An unlikely entrance in an office parking lot leads to a cavernous
hidden sandstone passage beneath the city. The tunnel was built in 1855
as the main access to an exclusive Victorian residential area, though
thanks to a mistake, things did not end as planned.
In the 19th century, the Duke of Portland, who owned nearby Nottingham
Castle, wanted to convert some of his sizeable backyard into an
exclusive residential development of palatial dwellings for Nottingham’s
burgeoning middle class. To the west of the rapidly industrializing
city and known as “The Park,” many impressive residences were
constructed in the neighborhood by Nottingham’s competing architectural
prodigies, Watson Fothergill and T.C. Hine.
The Duke commissioned Hine to excavate a tunnel through the city’s soft
and crumbly sandstone substrate, creating a grand and impressive
approach to the wealthy new neighborhood from Derby Road, a main city
thoroughfare. He specified a maximum incline of 1 in 14 along the
tunnel’s length to allow the heavy horse-drawn carriages of the day to
pass. Unfortunately, after the project’s completion the incline was
found to be 1 in 12, making it too steep for even the strongest horses
to haul a carriage, so the tunnel was abandoned.
An alternative road entrance was created for The Park, leaving the
tunnel to languish forever as a little-used but incredibly grand
subterranean footpath accessed by steep Victorian staircases, its
crumbly sides held up by high brickwork. Today, after many decades of
urban development, this ultimately doomed, yet startlingly grand,
infrastructure terminates in the most unlikely manner at a parking lot
shared by a convent and office buildings.
Clancy's comment: Amazing, eh? Cool looking tunnel though.
I'm ...
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