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Tunnels under Sheffield


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Shame my old mans not still with us, as a kid he used to play on the fields that is now Woodthorpe School, it was originally Woodthorpe Hall.He told me many tales of him and his friends playing in the the tunnel that led from the back of the hall and split into 2, 1 smaller tunnel going down to the Old Queens Head and the other coming out somewhere at Darnall behind the Greenthorpes Garage where the allotments are. Apparantly many of the miners who lived in the area used the Darnall tunnel to get to work at the "Nunnery Pit" site when the weather was bad.I lived on the Woodthorpe for a few years and we found a brick lined tunnel in our garden when we were building a patio area.I contacted the N.C.B who after visiting the site, confirmed that it wasn't constructed by the Coalboard .They were unsure what the purpose of the tunnel was .I wish I had explored it a bit more thoroughly now.There was a lady on our crescent who was something of a local historian and she had some knowledge of the Woodthorpe Hall.I'm not sure if she's still alive but I will make some enquires to see if I can shed any more light on the Hall and its tunnels

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Shame my old mans not still with us, as a kid he used to play on the fields that is now Woodthorpe School, it was originally Woodthorpe Hall.He told me many tales of him and his friends playing in the the tunnel that led from the back of the hall and split into 2, 1 smaller tunnel going down to the Old Queens Head and the other coming out somewhere at Darnall behind the Greenthorpes Garage where the allotments are. Apparantly many of the miners who lived in the area used the Darnall tunnel to get to work at the "Nunnery Pit" site when the weather was bad.I lived on the Woodthorpe for a few years and we found a brick lined tunnel in our garden when we were building a patio area.I contacted the N.C.B who after visiting the site, confirmed that it wasn't constructed by the Coalboard .They were unsure what the purpose of the tunnel was .I wish I had explored it a bit more thoroughly now.There was a lady on our crescent who was something of a local historian and she had some knowledge of the Woodthorpe Hall.I'm not sure if she's still alive but I will make some enquires to see if I can shed any more light on the Hall and its tunnels

that's really interesting, it's only when you look back that you realise what a find that really was!

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Why oh Why oh Why did Sheffielders not go down and take a proper survey of what was / is actually down there? After reading some of these posts you would think that there was enough interest to go to some of the places mentioned, dig about abit and see what you find! There must be loads of things we have forgotten about our great city that should be unearthed and explored, documented and only then brick up again after making sure we had every bit of history squeezed out of it.

I have only been able to read afew of the many posts on this thread so if anyone does know a book or anything that goes into detail on this subject please tell me because I would be facinated to do some exploring for myself!

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  • 1 month later...

I live in Sydney, Australia and was at one time a Sheffield resident and employed by Sheffield University.

The "tunnels under Sheffield" discussion is interesting in that I can make a comparison with the city of Sydney. We have very old tunnels originally dug to carry water. This project was called the "Tank Stream" and was operational until fairly recently. This project pre-dates the tunneling for the City Circle rail line.

Interestingly, we are still tunneling Sydney, this time for under city and under harbour roads.

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