Secret tunnels under Manchester

[Tom]

Manchester Underground...REPORT 9/7/07 - UK Urban Exploration Forums

I'd love to know how they got in. They're not telling

 

[TdC]

stuff like that never fails to fascinate and amaze me
you even been on an urban exploration hike Tom?

 

[JingleBells]

Impressive stuff Tom.

For those of you who don't know, there are a load of tunnels under manchester city centre, an amazing piece of history TBH.

 

[mank!]

urbex stuff is awesome, love it. nice find tom

 

[Starman]

Aye stuff like that is cool - With my job at EDF Energy Networks - (aka Old Eastern Electricity Board) I do get to see some strange things always interesting

 

[TdC]

take pics next time Starman!

 

[Whipped]

Looks like something out of Half Life

 

[Tom]

stuff like that never fails to fascinate and amaze me
you even been on an urban exploration hike Tom?

Yes, I posted one about Carrington Power Station on that site just recently

As well as tunnels, there is also a disused canal, the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal.

Subterranea Britannica: Sites: manchester_salford_jct_canal

 

[Tom]

I think the tunnels are near the canal I just mentioned. All posts about them have been deleted.

Paranoid or what.

 

[TdC]

I love the old views you get Recently I was in an abandoned UK fighter base in Germany, and took some pics. It's all above ground ofc, but it will give you a sense of what I mean

 

[Tom]

Yep the tunnels aren't far from where I thought. They may or may not connect to the canal, but they're certainly underneath Victoria Station, Hanging Ditch, and Manchester Cathedral, possibly extending up to Corporation Street.

I may spoil their fun and head over one day, taking pictures of the entry points and bricked up toilet entrances

Its a great website and amazing pictures, but the 'important' people on that forum are like spoilt children, they consider themselves arbiters of knowledge and history whereas in reality they're just trespassers

 

[mank!]

house i'm moving to is right by an abandoned RAF camp, i shall have fun exploring that

 

[TdC]

take pics Mank

 

[ECA]

house i'm moving to is right by an abandoned RAF camp, i shall have fun exploring that

You say abandoned, I say secret vampire storage warehouse!

PROVE ME WRONG!

 

[Doh_boy]

I didn't really look too closely at the nuclear bunker site but I know of one entrance to the bunker right near the apollo. I had an interesting chat to an ex-BT engineer in a pub once; apparently it's huge. Ardwick to salford 'wasn't the half of it' he told me.

Granted you need to take that with a pinch of salt, he was drunk after all.

I also heard somewhere, that they were selling storage space in it.

 

[mank!]

take pics Mank

you can be sure that i will. i just hope it's not secretly guarded by alsatians or something

 

[Tom]

Amazing. For asking too many questions, and on another forum suggesting that I might pursue a television programme based on this kind of exploration, I have been IP banned from the 28 days later forum. I can't even view it without using proxify or similar. Totally paranoid.

Oh well, heres what they don't want you to know:

Look under the bridge, look for a....door and 2 bricked up windows.....then look on the left, for the window above....

www.darkplaces.co.uk :: Album

Now all I asked them was if this network was connected to the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal, and they deleted my post.

I hesitate to say it, but they're extremely guarded about these things. They're happy to post their trespasses, but not so happy when people start figuring out how they did it. They were mortally offended that someone like myself might consider it suitable material for television. I happen to know that a similar idea has been pitched recently, but it failed as the legalities would be difficult, and because the pitch didn't contain enough story.

 

[TdC]

apparently they attempt to guard their secrets well, and only the inner council knows all, or some other idea of dubious worthfullness. you'd expect them to be pleased that someone was taking an interest. ofc they are trespassing, so there is a certain element of law breaking involved, but I'm not particularly inclined to think that MI5 is tracking the buggers down one by one just because they looked about some place that has been disused for yonks

 

[Tom]

Well look what I found:

 

[cHodAX]

There is a huge nuclear bunker very deep under the old post office depot behind Picadilly Station in Manchester by all accounts. It was constructed in the early 60's and is still classified as top secret even though half of Manchester knows it exists. Supposedly it was designed to take a couple of thousand people mainly polititians, doctors and engineers etc in the event of an escalation of some situation that might quickly develop into a nuclear war.

 

[Tom]

Manchester City Council: Libraries: Manchester Local ImageCollection

Put 'victoria arches in the search box'

 

[cHodAX]

Great forum that btw, got me hooked.

 

[cHodAX]

Manchester City Council: Libraries: Manchester Local ImageCollection

Put 'victoria arches in the search box'

Some old images there, nice to see that they haven't be lost or binned.

 

[Kryten]

Interesting finds and a good thread. Not normally my cup of tea, but it does strike a sense of wonder and curiousity about the subject.

I spent a little while looking into the series of tunnels and walkways underneath Northampton that served as secretive transportation dating back to the medievals times, maybe previous - linking various parts of what was Northampton Castle, churches, church cellars etc in case of attacks or the other sort of bible bashing These tunnels are however much less secretive.

 

[Draylor]

Amazing. For asking too many questions, and on another forum suggesting that I might pursue a television programme based on this kind of exploration, I have been IP banned from the 28 days later forum. I can't even view it without using proxify or similar. Totally paranoid.

Ban evasion for beginners:

1. Clear cookies relevant to that site.
2. Visit from a new IP - proxy or whatever works fine.

Solved. 1 step without the other wont work

 

[Calaen]

Very nice pictures, they do all seem like children on that site as well. It would be amazing to get down than and have a good old explore. Even if it was to just piss of those geeks who are saying it will never be done again.

 

[Jimmae]

they dont want people to know where these things are in case some idiots on a jihad or whatever go underneath and start blowing up manchester. i doubt they have cctv coverage of everything down there, so wouldnt see it coming until it was too late

 

[Tom]

Oh deary me. They've really got their knickers in a massive knot.

I created a wiki page with some basic information, as historically these chambers are quite interesting. Only for certain 'parties' to instantly start vandalising the page.

Talk about picking your toys up and flouncing off.

Anyhow, heres the page they dislike so much:

Manchester Cathedral Steps - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Such a pity that the vandals have now been banned for a bit.

 

[Tom]

Very nice pictures, they do all seem like children on that site as well. It would be amazing to get down than and have a good old explore. Even if it was to just piss of those geeks who are saying it will never be done again.

All you need is a rope I think thats what they did. They're acting as though it took ages to work out, but personally I think they just came down on a rope, through the hole in the picture above, and had a look around that way.

Then you invent a story of 'how difficult and secret it was'. Bollocks.

 

[Draylor]

To be fair Tom its their pics from inside that make it seem so obvious. Without those theres more effort involved.

Still its not like they are the first folks in there: the list of names/dates scratched in the dirt on 1 of the signs proves the point.

BTW the wiki page needs a minor tweak:

During the second world war, the stages and the tunnels surrounding them were used as air raid shelters (photographs on the afore-mentioned images website show this clearly)

Nothing earlier in the article links to or references anything relevant.