SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds

I am new to this but here goesAm I the only person in Leeds who remebers the old tunnels that used to run under the old quarry just off Blue Hill Lane in Leeds?The new Windmill estate is situated on it nowIf yes, what exactly was it and where did it go?

Dunno bout any tunnels in Wortley mate but if your a postie my heat goes out to you after i had to endure working for them for 10yr! ;-(

Interesting bit of history you've brought up there Postman, and welcome to the forum!That used to be Wortley Fire Brick Works and by the look of it that tunnel was what's known as a "Day Hole". A mining term for a drift mine or adit.(A drift mine or adit is one that goes into a hillside, as opposed to a shaft, which goes straight down. A day hole, or day eye, was possibly called that because you could usually see a spot of daylight if you looked back.)Anyhow, that quarry had a day hole in it. The quarry appears to have had a tunnel leading from the quarry face northwards to the fire brick works themselves. Whether this was the extent of the day hole, who knows? Presumably the tunnel was to move the fire clay to the works from the quarry. There was a capstan there as well.Mining records in 1908 show 5 workers below the ground and 1 above. Looking at those new houses in the Windmills a lot of landscaping must have gone on recently. Makes you wonder what stabilisation was done on anything underground there and if the new residents know what they are living on top of!

Old thread - but I've just been reading the book "Wortley de Leeds" published in the 1920's by the Thoresby Society and it reports a tunnel between a house and the churchyard of St John the Evangelist on Dixon Lane - does anyone know if this tunnel still exists? Mentioned it lay between Greenhill house and the graveyard - no reason was given for it's existance.

On another point - I recall a tunnel under the Whitehall Road that use to take cattle from the trains to the Cattle Market though I can't see any sign of it today.

Postman wrote: I am new to this but here goesAm I the only person in Leeds who remebers the old tunnels that used to run under the old quarry just off Blue Hill Lane in Leeds?The new Windmill estate is situated on it nowIf yes, what exactly was it and where did it go? RickJ is on the ball.Blue Hill Colliery was both a coal and fire clay mine and oddly enough was also called a "quarry" although I am not sure it was that as well!Day Holes did indeed run into mines, but usually into hillsides, if the tunnel running into the mine went "downwards" it was more correctly called an "incline". Quarries tend to be the hacking of stone from a stone face either on a hillside or a false hillside created by digging down.But technical terminology and extractive industry PC correctness aside Rick is bang on.

There is a letter about the tunnel in Wortley on page 15 of today's YEP.

Can anyone scan a copy of the letter and add it to S.L?I don't have tonights edition, and my scanners Kaput anyway!

Hosted from flickr.com herehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/phill_dvsn/*Thanks to Leodian for mailing me this scan. Cheers!     

I wouldn't have posted these here yet if there was anything interesting to look at A.S.A.P.But i can't see anything worth getting excited about really. I'm thinking this is the area the guy in the letter is talking about, if it is, then the crater he refers to can still be viewed on aerial images.That piece of land is also raised up. So what to make of that? I'm not quite sure. Anyone got a 1906 map of the area? Or any useful info?Images hosted from flickr.com herehttp://www.flickr.com/photos/phill_dvsn/