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SecretLeeds - History, culture and architecture in Leeds • Kirkstall Abbey tunnel. - Page 6
Page 6 of 7

Posted: Fri 24 Sep, 2010 12:22 am
by Leodian
Just to clear a point up I don't believe there ever was anything like a Kirkstall Abbey tunnel that is envisioned here, but I get an impression from reading some posts that it is thought that I might believe there is. I would love though to be proved wrong!

Posted: Sun 10 Oct, 2010 8:43 pm
by chameleon
Leodian wrote: Just to clear a point up I don't believe there ever was anything like a Kirkstall Abbey tunnel that is envisioned here, but I get an impression from reading some posts that it is thought that I might believe there is. I would love though to be proved wrong! But... were does Chrism really live then??

Posted: Sun 10 Oct, 2010 9:28 pm
by Leodian
chameleon wrote: Leodian wrote: Just to clear a point up I don't believe there ever was anything like a Kirkstall Abbey tunnel that is envisioned here, but I get an impression from reading some posts that it is thought that I might believe there is. I would love though to be proved wrong! But... were does Chrism really live then?? Good question. Probably in tunnel so secret that we don't know about it, yet!

Posted: Mon 25 Feb, 2013 10:09 pm
by String o' beads
Just to put on record yet another rumour:I finally remembered to ask the fount of all Leeds knowledge [my Dad] if he'd ever heard of a tunnel. Straightaway he said that the rumour when he were a lad was that a tunnel went to the Abbey from under the building next to what is now M&S on Briggate. Used to be the Rialto. Next door used to be Thornton's rubber manufacturers. That's where he meant.

Posted: Tue 26 Feb, 2013 12:45 pm
by Chrism
Leodian wrote: chameleon wrote: Leodian wrote: Just to clear a point up I don't believe there ever was anything like a Kirkstall Abbey tunnel that is envisioned here, but I get an impression from reading some posts that it is thought that I might believe there is. I would love though to be proved wrong! But... were does Chrism really live then?? Good question. Probably in tunnel so secret that we don't know about it, yet! I didn't realise I was being gossipped about here.

Posted: Wed 27 Feb, 2013 12:59 am
by BarFly
Well... I went down to the woods today and found the door. It doesn't look like a waterway to me because it passes under at least one and the door looks like it's meant to keep people out.The passage is surely too thin for an explosives store and it's also very wet.I'd guess perhaps an entrance to the sewer that seems to go through the wood but that is deeper.I don't think it does lead to the Abby but is it worth working out where it did lead and why?

Posted: Sun 31 Mar, 2013 3:22 pm
by jonleeds
A few weeks ago myself and a bunch of people off the UK urbex forum got together to try excavate the iron door of the 'Kirkstall Abbey Tunnel' contender in Hawksworth Woods, unfortunately due to the snow / rain the entranceway and tunnel were flooded. However rather than go away empty-handed I took it upon myself to squeeze through the doorway - which had been prised open furthur than it was a few years ago. I waded along the flooded tunnel up to my chest in freezing water and mud. The tunnel beyond the iron doorway continues underground for approximately 15-20 foot before turning 90 degrees to the left where it then terminates after about 3-4 feet in a dead-end. Its definetely a strange place, the tunnel is only about 4 foot high so impossible for an adult to stand up in, I had to shuffle along all the way so it was very dark and claustrophobic. I only had a handheld torch to see where I was going. At the end of the tunnel there was what looked like a cast iron drainpipe which came through the ceiling and went straight down through the floor - although I couldnt see this as most of the tunnel was submerged by water. The masonry walls of the inner part of the tunnel looked to be very roughly carved out of stone and the construction reminded me of a drystone wall, i.e, without mortar between the stones. Anyway thats blown the chances of this been the legendary 'Kirkstall Abbey Secret Tunnel'... Have a look at the thread / photos from the little explore we did:http://www.ukurbex.com/index.php?/topic ... eeds-2013/

Posted: Mon 01 Apr, 2013 11:11 am
by BarFly
That's a shame, it looks so promising. I'd still be interested to know what it was used for, though I suppose a store of some kind for thee quarrying operation is the most likely now?

Posted: Mon 01 Apr, 2013 2:20 pm
by reuben
i know its a bit late.but their was/is a tunnel in bramley fall woods between the river aire and the canal just left of the locks near st benedicts school used to be.i went down it with my mates one day about 25 years ago dont know how far it went because we got scared and climbed back out as i recall we were only armed with a box of matches and a stick.dont know if this was anything to do with monks or kirkstall forge which was at the other side of the river.

Re: Kirkstall Abbey tunnel.

Posted: Tue 20 Jan, 2015 3:38 am
by Speight
I am not sure how old the houses at Amen Corner were, but it's my guess they were probably built in the early 19th century...and so the legend that Amen Corner was named because the monks could be heard at prayer has to be a myth. It is possible that the houses were built with stone robbed from the destroyed Kirkstall Abbey though. However, regarding the tunnel stories...my great grandfather (born around 1880) lived in the end house at Amen Corner and my father (almost 90 years old) remembers that in the cellar there was, what appeared to be, a bricked up passageway. What it was or where it led nobody knew, but it cannot have had any association with the abbey that was destroyed by King Henry VIII.

I remember the tiny house very well from my childhood. One room downstairs with a big Yorkshire range the sink on one side and a cupboard on the other. There was a cellar. The stairs were narrow and turned a corner and there were two bedrooms. The toilet was outside and it fascinated me as a child that it was a wooden plank across two toilets, side by side, with two holes in the plank! Of course there was no bathroom, but a zinc bath hung on the wall in the cellar. It would have been a once weekly affair, as water would have to be boiled in the wash boiler to fill the bath that you would have, in those days, in front of the fire!

My great grandfather's name was William Nettleton.......perhaps somebody might remember him.