Tunnels from City Station

Phill_d · Post by **Phill_d** » Tue 09 Oct, 2007 9:49 pm

Very interesting Martyn. I wanna know more but value my life too much. There will be loads of lost cellars & passageways under our feet. Love to find them

Brandy · Post by **Brandy** » Wed 10 Oct, 2007 1:06 am

very intriguing martyn you must tell us more???

gledhowvalleysally · Post by **gledhowvalleysally** » Wed 10 Oct, 2007 11:32 pm

as any pupil of the old city of leeds (in town) school will tell you there were tunnels connecting the school to the surrounding buildings. maybe the civic theatre etc. think they were for steam heating or something. maybe from the old school across the road as its only a couple of yards.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Thu 11 Oct, 2007 8:31 pm

I was a pupil at City of Leeds, (It was Central High School then, in the sixties) along with my brother and cousin. My female cousin was a pupil at Thoresby next door and none of us ever heard of any tunnels. There can't have been any tunnels from Central High as it didn't have a basement.I'll do some more digging. Sorry, no pun intended.This can't be that old as I've looked on the 1898 OS map and Central High is shown but this building isn't, there's a wood yard and smithy where it is now.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Mon 29 Oct, 2007 10:26 pm

I went to Thoresby today to see if I could get some more pics. Apparently there's another chamber in the basement with another bit of the tunnel in it. anyway, it all went pear shaped as my accomplice turned up missing so I couldn't get in. The caretakers don't like going in the basement, they reckon there's the ghost of an old cleaner down there. I'm in town next Monday, I'll try another lunchtime foray.

electricaldave · Post by **electricaldave** » Thu 29 Nov, 2007 8:19 pm

Ref - Some of the tunnels under LGI.I worked there for a number of years in a maintenance role so I had to go into these places quite a lot.There are proper tunnels linking various parts of the LGI, laundry was moved through them, along with equipment, empty beds and the like.They linked between the Generating Station, which used to house the laundry, Clarendon wing, LGI main site, and the Dental School.None went up to the University, however there were several service conduits that carried cables, from the main power lines through to data cables that did go up there, things did chang with the building of the Jubilee Wing as this cut off some of the tunnels temporarily, and when they were reconnected some could not be used by trolleys as you had to use fixed ladders to get down there - you used to get into them either by lifts or by long descending ramps.There are lots of services channels round about and under the LGI linking various parts up and you can readily walk down them but they are no use at all for general traffic.Originally when Clarendon wing was built this was going to be phase one of a three phase project, and the start of the tunnels to the planned phases two and three were put down, but it was cancelled, the empty tunnel stubs were used as storage areas.(I think they did actually use one when Jubilee wing was put up)I remember watching them build Jubilee wing, there wer several folk who took daily and weekly photos so they must have a pretty reasonable slide show of the whole thing.When the foundations were dug, several wells were discovered, and in the top layers of soil you could see the foundations of buildings, these looked like they belonged to fairly substantial town houses.They dug those foundations deep, including under the old dental school which had been demolished years before and there was no old tunnel work down there, a few old gas pipes and lead water pipes, not much else.

simonm · Post by **simonm** » Fri 30 Nov, 2007 10:34 pm

electricaldave wrote: They dug those foundations deep, including under the old dental school which had been demolished years before and there was no old tunnel work down there, a few old gas pipes and lead water pipes, not much else. The original Dental hospital / school were in Great George street. It was on the site where Brio (the restuarant) is now.

electricaldave · Post by **electricaldave** » Sat 01 Dec, 2007 12:45 am

I know of some sort of tunnel just across from the railway station.There used to be a generating station next to 'Soapy Joes' on Whitehall Road.The capacity of that station was tiny by modern standards, and demand soon outstripped supply, so it was used as a training centre by the CEGB, it apparently had a chain grate boiler according to a colleague who did his apprenticeship there - I have no idea what a 'chain grate boiler' is BTW.I was doing further education at Leeds Met, probably one of the oldest students there I should think, and there were three others on the same course who were part of the newly privatised Yorkshire Electricity - they worked in one section.Their business was something to do with maintaining a data network that monitors the equipment, and they were always talking about how they had been called out and had to restore links, by 'jumpering' things - no clue what that means.They would regularly have to go down to that area, there is some sort of conduit, channel or whatever, substations and some major part of the networks that had lots of data monitoring kit.I'm sure they described this conduit as being a couple hundred yards long, this would be at the power station end of what was a large open lot.My guess is that there would be some high voltage cables running through it, once a network is installed like this, even if you demolish buildings and the like, you still can't easily remove the cables - you still need the service they provide and you can't really go around Leeds digging up the whole town centre just to put them somewhere more convenient, so they stay where they are.This type of cable tends to live in large ductworks, everything has to be built to take this into account.Even though there has been a lot of building work there, that cable duct will still be there.It's seems odd to those not used to high power networks to find that the power stations are temporary, but the cables connecting them up to the grid are permanent.You can see the power station here in the middle left of the imagehttp://www.leodis.net/display.aspx?resourceIde ... SPLAY=FULL

Post by **chameleon** » Sat 01 Dec, 2007 11:57 am

Someone was asking about this in an earlier thread but I couldn't find any pictures of the power plant then. That came about from an enquiry about the strange looking cylidrical 'bollards', one on Queen Street and another on Northern Street who's job it was to ventilate the ducts running from the Whitehall site and are listed structures I believe.There is a large modern substation on the Whitehall Road site now so it does indeed seem likely that there would still be live services running along there, certainly there is a large underground substation in Queen Street which these may service.

big s · Post by **big s** » Sat 01 Dec, 2007 6:21 pm

electricaldave,chain grate boiler,the grate of the coal boiler moves by a chain drive ststem,passing the burning coal to the rear of the boiler leaving room for fresh coal to fall onto the bed/grate.