been played and the agreeable surprise in store for them. Another good story is told of Mr. Williamson. He possessed some property at Carlisle which gave him a vote at the elections. Sir James Graham’s committee sent him a circular, as from Sir James, soliciting his vote and interest. On receipt of this letter Williamson flew into a violent passion, went down to Dale-street there and then, took a place in the North Mail, proceeded to Carlisle, obtained one of Sir James Graham’s placards from the walls, and posted back to Liverpool without delay. On his arrival at home he enclosed the obnoxious circular and placard in a parcel which he addressed with a most abusive letter to Sir James Graham, in which he charged him with such a string of political crimes as must have astonished the knight of Netherby, winding up the abuse by asking how he dared to solicit an honest man for his vote and by what right he had taken so unwarrantable a liberty.
CHAPTER X.
In the last chapter of my “Recollections” I spoke of the man—Joseph Williamson; the present will be of his “excavations.” In various parts of the world we find, on and under the surface, divers works of human hands that excite the wonder of the ignorant, the notice of the intelligent, and the speculation of the learned. Things are presented to our view, in a variety of forms, which must have been the result of great labour and cost, and which appear utterly useless and inapplicable to any ostensibly known purpose. Respecting many of these mysterious records of a past age, page after page has been written to prove, and even disprove, the supposed intent of their constructors; and it cannot but be admitted that after perusing many an erudite disquisition, we are sometimes as well-informed, and as near arriving at a conclusion as to the original purpose for
which the object under discussion was intended, as when our attention was first engaged in it. In some instances, those who have discovered uses for the strange remnants of, to us, a dark age, have exceeded in ingenuity the projectors of those relics.
Could we draw aside the thick veil that hides the future from us, we might perhaps behold our great seaport swelling into a metropolis, in size and importance, its suburbs creeping out to an undreamt-of distance from its centre; or we might, reversing the picture, behold Liverpool by some unthought-of calamity—some fatal, unforeseen mischance, some concatenation of calamities—dwindled down to its former insignificance: its docks shipless, its warehouses in ruins, its streets moss-grown, and in its decay like some bye-gone cities of the east, that once sent out their vessels laden with “cloth of blue, and red barbaric gold.” Under which of these two fates will Liverpool find its lot some centuries hence?—which of these two pictures will it then present? Be it one or the other, the strange undertakings of Joseph Williamson will perhaps, some centuries from now, be brought again to light, and excite as much marvel and inquiry as any mysterious building of old, the purpose of which we do not understand, and the use of which we cannot now account for. They will be seemingly as meaningless as any lonely
cairn, isolated broken piece of wall, or solitary fragment of a building, of which no principal part remains, and which puzzles us to account for at the present time.
Mr. Williamson’s property at Edge-hill, was principally held under the Waste Lands Commission. His leases expired in 1858. It commenced adjoining Miss Mason’s house, near Paddington, and extended to Grinfield-street. It was bounded on the west by Smithdown-lane, along which ran a massive stone wall of singular appearance, more like that of a fortress than a mere enclosure. Within this area were some of the most extraordinary works, involving as great an outlay of money as may be found anywhere upon the face of the earth, considering the space of ground they occupy. In their newly-wrought state, about the years 1835 and ’36, or thereabouts, they created intense wonder in the minds of the very few who were permitted to examine them. During the last few years, I believe they have been gradually filled up and very much altered, but they are still there to be laid open some day. Few of us know much of them, though so few years have elapsed since they were projected and carried out, since the sounds of the blast, the pick, and the shovel were last heard in their vicinity. Now what will be said of these minings, subterranean galleries, vaults and arches, should they suddenly be discovered a century
hence, when their originator as well as their origin shall have faded away into nothing like the vanishing point of the painter? Here we behold an astonishing instance of the application of vast labour without use, immense expense incurred without hope of return, and, if we except the asserted reason of the late projector that these works were carried on for the sole purpose of employing men in times of great need and depression, we have here stupendous works without perceptible motive, reason, or form. Like the catacombs at Paris, Williamson’s vaults might have been made receptacles for the dried bones of legions of our forefathers. Again, they might have been converted into fitting places for the hiding of stolen goods, or where the illicit distiller might carry on his trade with impunity.
I hardly know in what tense to speak of those excavations, not being aware in what state they are at present. A strange place it is, or was. Vaulted passages cut out of the solid rock; arches thrown up by craftmen’s hands, beautiful in proportion and elegant in form, but supporting nothing. Tunnels formed here—deep pits there. Yawning gulfs, where the fetid, stagnant waters threw up their baneful odours. Here the work is finished off, as if the mason had laboured with consummate skill to complete his work, so that all the world might see and admire, although no
human eyes, save those of the master’s, would ever be set upon it. Here lies the ponderous stone as it fell after the upheaving blast had dislodged it from its bed; and there, vaulted over, is a gulf that makes the brain dizzy, and strikes us with terror as we look down into it. Now we see an arch, fit to bridge a mountain torrent; and in another step or two we meet another, only fit to span a simple brook. Tiers of passages are met with, as dangerous to enter as they are strange to look at. It must ever be a matter of regret that after Mr. Williamson’s death, some one able to make an accurate survey of the property did not go through and describe it, because it has been greatly changed since then by the accumulations of rubbish that have been brought to every part of it. All the most elaborate portions of the excavations have been entirely closed up. In one section of the ground (that near Grinfield-street), where there was of late years a joiner’s shop, the ground was completely undermined in galleries and passages, one over the other, constituting a subterranean labyrinth of the most intricate design. Near here also was a deep gulf, in the wall sides of which were two houses completely excavated out of the solid rock, each having four rooms of tolerable dimensions.