Heritage under threat: Liverpool’s Edge Hill Cutting
Publicity for the planned 2025 bicentenary celebrations of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the world’s first public steam-hauled passenger line, is gaining momentum by the week. At the same time, priceless remains of the world’s first inter-city main line, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which opened five years later, have not only been forgotten but are now under threat, writes Anthony Sawson.
Publicity for the planned 2025 bicentenary celebrations of the Stockton & Darlington Railway, the world’s first public steamhauled passenger line, is gaining momentum by the week. At the same time, priceless remains of the world’s first intercity main line, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, which opened five years later, have not only been forgotten but are now under threat, writes Anthony Sawson.
One of the most spectacular, but little known engineering feats of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway (L&MR) is the ‘Grand Area’ – as James Scott Walker dubbed it in 1830 – at Edge Hill.
Here were the portals to the Wapping Tunnel and the short Crown Street passenger tunnel, the famous Moorish Arch which housed the two Stephenson winding engines, and the towering 105ft tall chimneys dubbed the ‘Pillars of Hercules.’
In 1830, the Wapping Tunnel was considered a wonder of the world. It burrows for 1½ miles under the streets of Liverpool, emerging on to the docks at Wapping where Park Lane goods station used to stand.
Brilliantly illuminated by gas, visitors were admitted to the tunnel upon payment of a modest fee. One of the most famous visitors was William Huskisson MP in August 1830.
George Stephenson wrote: “We had a grand day last Friday – Huskisson visited the greater part of the line with the Directors – of course I was one of the party ... at Olive Mount we were met by the
Locomotive Engine (Twin Sisters) which took the whole party, amounting to about 135, through the deep cutting at the rate of nine miles an hour to the great delight of the whole party.
“The Engine really did well. He next went to the Tunnel, where a train of waggons was in readiness to receive the party. Many of the first families in the Country were waiting for him to witness the procession, which, accompanied by a band of music occupying one of the waggons, descended in grand style through the Tunnel which was brilliantly lighted up, the gas lights being placed at intervals of 25 yards. The whole went off most pleasantly and without the slightest accident … Huskisson expressed himself to me highly delighted with what he had seen.”
Reaction
L&MR publicist James Scott Walker recorded how “the spectator marvels that it is the work of human industry, and is lost in the calculation of the millions of blows with the pickaxe, the amount of human toil, and sinew, and skill, that must have been exerted to remove so prodigious a mass of material”.
Walking through the tunnel and Grand Area, otherwise known as Cavendish cutting, on September 16, 2020, 190 years to the day since the first public train left Liverpool Crown Street station for Manchester, a sense of history abounds, but also decay and sadness, like exploring some lost and forgotten ancient temple.
Wisteria, brambles and nettles have reclaimed and made wild what was once industrial and man-made.
Here are ghosts of George Stephenson and his Rocket…and glimpses of the majesty which so inspired early travellers.
Walker described in 1830 how on a clear day “light may be seen at the top of the Tunnel at Edge-Hill from the bottom of the inclined plane below.”
There were “groups of gaily-clad pedestrians” promenading “to and fro” and “no great stretch of imagination was required … to entertain the pleasing delusion that he traversed the splendid passages of a magnificent eastern palace” or had descended into the realm of Hades itself!
Walking through the tunnel today, the scale of the work – all done by hand – is striking, chisel marks still being visible in the tunnel walls.
And, of course, it was from the ‘Grand Area’ that the opening train, carrying the Duke of Wellington and other dignitaries – including the ill-fated William Huskisson, who a short time later became world’s first widely reported railway passenger casualty as he was run over and fatally wounded by Rocket
– departed for Manchester on September 15, 1830.
Today, instead of the smart dresses of ladies, there are the burned-out remains of a car.
The Liverpool & Manchester line, now the Chat Moss Route, is still a key part of the UK network 190 years later. Passenger trains were diverted away from the ‘Grand Area’ in 1836 when Liverpool Lime Street opened, but Crown Street yard remained in use as a coal yard until 1972.
Goods trains continued to work Wapping Tunnel by gravity until the 1890s when locomotive working was introduced. Park Lane Goods closed in 1972 and, like Crown Street, was demolished. The cutting and its tunnel portals is now overgrown, subject to fly-tipping and vandalism.
Examination
A limited scheme of archaeological excavation was held during 1974-80, led by Paul Rees from Liverpool Museums, which identified the foundation of the northernmost, or No. 1, engine house of the Moorish Arch.
Also located were the foundations for the machinery for working the endless rope down Wapping Tunnel. The various rock-cut openings, which once housed boilers, staff offices and even a stable, were surveyed.
The Edge Hill Railway Trust opened the site to visitors in 1980, but thereafter interest in the ‘Grand Area’ waned.
It is now a forgotten backwater of railway history – barely visible behind high brick walls from street level.
Peering over the parapet of the Chatsworth Street bridge, one gets a glimpse of a tatty, overgrown railway cutting that no one could possibly love or have any historic interest in.
And it is one important piece of early railway history which could be lost forever.
Running through the southern side of the cutting is a doubletrack headshunt from the modern Edge Hill station, at one time used by Mersey Rail, although this line is now little used.
However, the idea of returning the Wapping Tunnel to railway use has never gone away.
In 1970 it was proposed to utilise Stephenson’s Wapping Tunnel as part of Mersey Rail’s Northern Line, so trains could run between the Northern and City lines.
Thankfully this plan did not come to fruition.
However, in 2016, a new plan was published which would put the Wapping Tunnel and the ‘Grand Area’ back on the network to boost city-centre rail capacity, and Transport for the North (TfN) carried out a feasibility report which noted there were no major technical barriers to the project, but clearances were a concern.
As a 2005 structural survey revealed, Wapping Tunnel itself is in reasonable condition, and concluded that it “deserves a better fate than to be allowed to decay. Indeed this cannot be permitted to happen” – especially due to the negative impact it would have on the built environment above the
tunnel. The use for the tunnel and ‘Grand Area’ as part of ‘light rail or some other transport channel’ was also raised.
No historical objections were included in the TfN study, despite a 2011 document prepared by the University of Manchester noting that the Wapping Tunnel and ‘Grand Area’ area are of international significance.
Lime Street has been part of the Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City World Heritage Site (WHS) since 2004, and some other components of the railway heritage (including parts of the Wapping and Waterloo Tunnels) are within a buffer zone created to protect heritage on the fringes of the WHS.
In 2004, it was recommended this zone be extended to include the ‘Grand Area’ – but no such extension has taken place.
Recognition
As long ago as 2011, it was noted that a long-term strategy for the Wapping Tunnel and ‘Grand Area’ was required.
This was in order to protect the fragile archaeology, and to recognise their significance through statutory protection, such as listing and inclusion within the world heritage site.
The ideal outcome was to bring the tunnel back into use in a way which preserved its history, and also promoted and protected the railway history of Liverpool.
Fast-forward to August 2020. As part of its Covid-19 economic recovery plan, Liverpool City Region Combined Authority included the use of Wapping Tunnel and ‘Grand Area’ as part of the proposed link on Mersey Rail, which will cost £500 million.
A proposal exists to link up the Northern and City lines by building new track from Edge Hill via the disused Wapping Tunnel.
A report presented to TfN’s board stated: “If four to eight trains per hour were diverted away from Lime Street via Wapping Tunnel, this would provide significant opportunity for Lime Street station to become a dedicated inter-city and interregional hub for the city region.”
While a boon to the modern commuter, this would damage or destroy the historic fabric of the 1830 tunnel and the ‘Grand Area’ at Edge Hill.
A spokesman for Liverpool City Region Combined Authority said of these plans: “It is the ambition of the combined authority to have a dedicated HS2/NPR (Northern Powerhouse Rail) multi-modal transport hub. We do not support options for the further expansion of Liverpool Lime Street to accommodate HS2/NPR services and hence the potential relocation of other City Line services.’
In other words, the cramped city centre location of Lime Street – built to replace Crown Street, the first passenger terminus in the city which took passenger traffic away from the ‘Grand Area’ – means that in order to increase capacity, traffic may once again run through the Edge Hill Cutting and, in a cruel twist of fate, damage or destroy the heritage of the cutting and tunnel which have slumbered for more than 40 years.
Not everyone is happy with these proposals. Thanks to the efforts of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway Trust, at the end of 2020 the Edge Hill Cutting was recognised as a key site of historical significance in Europe.
It has been included in a list of endangered railway heritage by the European Federation of Associations of Industrial and Technical Heritage (EFAITH).
This comes at the start of European Year of Rail (2021), and recognition of the historic value of the cutting should add further weight behind any listing applications made in Britain. As yet, the historic cuttings receive no statutory protection.
Sadly, any funding and other opportunities which would have been open to promote and celebrate the history of the cutting as part of European Year of Rail have been lost since Britain left the EU.
The Liverpool & Manchester Railway Trust was established in 2015 to further the study of the L&MR and promote its history, as well as protect heritage features on what is still a modern main line railway.
The trust regularly monitors the state of the cutting. Trees which were shrubs and saplings four years ago are now 40ft high. Root action has collapsed and damaged several of the rock-cut openings. Graffiti and fly-tipping, and a burned-out car, disfigure what should be a World Heritage Site.
While Liverpool Road station in Manchester has been beautifully restored as the home of the Science & Industry Museum (see News, page 43), Liverpool has nothing quite as grand or meaningful – but it should have.
The trust has plans for a transport museum in Liverpool and to get the cutting – currently in the care of Network Rail – handed over to the council and get it listed and therefore protected, so that the location where the modern main line railway can be said to have begun on September 15, 1830, is saved for future generations.
Future
For Network Rail, there is neither the money nor time to maintain what is a rarely-used headshunt.
Even fencing off the headshunt to allow the non-rail-used northern third of the cutting – where the original rock-cut rooms and boiler houses survive the best – to be gifted to the council to allow maintenance worthy of the site would be a major improvement.
Yet, if Mersey Rail has its way, the Wapping Tunnel and the unique heritage of the ‘Grand Area’, already being irreparably damaged, may be lost for good.
The trust’s vision for the future is to see, in 2030, once again visitors flocking into the ‘Grand Area’ and to have a demonstration line where a replica of Stephenson’s later locomotive Northumbrian and the special carriage built for the Duke of Wellington could give public passenger rides.
Could we ever see a rebuilt Moorish Arch as a museum and interpretation centre? It would certainly make a spectacular venue and reinforce the historic significance, and restore some of the lost majesty of what James Scott Walker quite rightly termed the ‘Grand Area’ at Edge Hill.
If any location can be said to be where main line railways began, it is Edge Hill, Liverpool.
➜ The Liverpool & Manchester Railway Trust can be found at www.facebook. com/TLMRT and at https://twitter. com/lmrailway