Friends of Williamson's Tunnels

13/10/2026

It's that time of year again! 👻🎃💀

Halloween will soon be upon us, and once again we are running special family friendly Halloween tours of Paddington, with 4 levels of tunnels spookily decorated.

We're running special tours over 3 days.
Sunday 25th and Wednesday 28th October, and Sunday 1st November.

Tours are at 11am, 12:30pm and 2pm.

For these special days we will be charging £10 per family.
Each child will be given a goody bag and a Mini Mole Certificate.
There will also be prizes for the best fancy dress outfit on each of the tours.

So we encourage all visitors to get dressed up for this event (yes, even the grown ups). 🎃

E-mail: [email protected]
Or our website https://williamsontunnels.com/visit-the-tunnels/

Please note, the tours will be geared towards Halloween fun for children, and not the normal historical tours.

04/10/2026

It's that time of year again! 👻🎃💀

Halloween will soon be upon us, and once again we are running special family friendly Halloween tours of Paddington, with 4 levels of tunnels spookily decorated.

We're running special tours over 3 days.

Sunday 25th and Wednesday 28th October, and Sunday 1st November.

Tours are at 11am, 12:30pm and 2pm.

For these special days we will be charging £10 per family.

Each child will be given a goody bag and a Mini Mole Certificate.

There will also be prizes for the best fancy dress outfit on each of the tours.

So we encourage all visitors to get dressed up for this event (yes, even the grown ups). 🎃

E-mail: [email protected]

Or our website https://williamsontunnels.com/visit-the-tunnels/

Please note, the tours will be geared towards Halloween fun for children, and not the normal historical tours.

23/09/2026

Join us on Monday 5th October 2026 for our monthly meeting.

Our guest speaker this month is Keith Edwards, who will talk about “The secret life of an amateur film-maker”.

About the Speaker

Keith has given us a talk once before, on his main activity – Caving.
Keith in his own words is “An under-achiever, and proud of it” He is a “caver, film-maker, Meccano enthusiast and fan of Thomas the Tank Engine”. Keith has been an amateur film-maker since 1978, making award-winning films both above and below ground.

About the Talk

This time his talk is titled “The secret life of an amateur film-maker”. This promises to be a very entertaining presentation for all, amateur film-makers and everyone else.

As usual, the talks will be followed by an update on the latest Williamson Tunnels news with lots of opportunities for questions and answers.

Our monthly meetings are open to everyone.

If you’re already on our mailing list we’ll e-mail you with the Zoom link close to the date. If you want to be on the invitation list, or you’re unsure whether you already are, just fill in the form on our website (link below) and we’ll do the rest.
https://williamsontunnels.com/get.../fowt-monthly-meeting/

FoWT Monthly Meeting
Monday 5th October 2026 7:00pm
Zoom (link will be e-mailed a few days before)

The Friends of Williamson’s Tunnels hold regular monthly meetings online using Zoom, where members and Non-Members alike, can get together to chat and get updates on our progress. We normally…

20/09/2026

This weekend was the second of our Heritage Open Weekends.

Both weekends have been hugely popular and we've welcomed nearly 200 visitors, showing them around the tunnels under the House Site.

Many of the visitors are looking to come back and visit the Paddington Section soon, and we've signed up a number of new members.

Thanks to everyone who came to see us, and also a big thank you to all the volunteers who gave up their weekends, and helped make the event a great success.

The photos are some of the guides in costume on their tours.

Now Heritage Open Days are over, we're back to our normal tours every Wednesday and Sunday.

13/09/2026

This weekend was the first of our two Heritage Open Days weekends.

This is when we open the normally members only House Site section for free tours.

The tours were booked up so quickly this year we didn't even get chance to post about booking places on here!

The volunteers were extremely busy, as we welcomed nearly 100 visitors. The visitors were not only local but from all over the world, including Canada, USA and Australia.

A number of the volunteers also got into costume for the event, and of course we couldn't resist taking some re-enactment photos. 😁

The second Heritage Open Days weekend is next weekend, and with it being completely booked up, it's going to be another busy weekend for us.

06/09/2026

This October, spooky Halloween family tours are coming back... dates to be announced soon.... 👻

30/08/2026

All members are welcome to join us on the 21st September at 7pm for our AGM.

Members of FoWT should have received an email invite, please check any spam/junk mail folders, if you haven't.

The meeting will be held at:
The Quaker Meeting House (Friends Meeting House)
22 School Ln,
Liverpool
L1 3BT

We will be using the small meeting room, which is located on the first floor. A lift is available and also toilets on the same floor.

The meeting room should be clearly signed.

Our guest talk this time will be by Derek Arnold , "Yesterday's Naughty Children" The story of Britain's first reformatory ship, HMS Akbar,

Free light refreshments provided.

Members, we need your vote!
Whether or not you can attend, we would be very grateful if you would vote on the annual re-election of a number of the Trustees. You should have received an AGM email with the link (please check your junk folders if not).

Please see their summaries and cast your vote by 5:00pm on Sunday 20th September. It only takes a moment.

Please note the AGM is only open to FoWT Membership holders.

23/08/2026

Today, amongst our visitors, we welcomed Maureen, a journalist from CNN.

Maureen is doing a feature for CNN about us. As well as joining one of the tours, she also got to interview a few of the volunteers, and got to see what we do and how we operate.

Which also meant drinking tea and eating cake (like a true volunteer! 😁)

Great to meet you today Maureen, and look forward to seeing the results.

16/08/2026

With the new display board installed last week, it's prompted another delve into the photo archives. So here's another then and now photo.

We're in Level 3 of Paddington.
It shows the Boote Chamber which you step into from the stairs down from Level 2. And also the Lomax Chamber just to the right of the stairs.

The 'then' photo, shows the scene as it was in Feb 2013. A few months after digging had started.

You can still very much touch the ceiling at this point. And the Lomax Chamber is still completely filled in, and being used as a makeshift display for some of the artifacts we were starting to discover.

The second photo was taken in August 2026.
All the spoil has been removed, you now have to walk down a staircase to reach the floor, and the Lomax Chamber is now completely empty.

And you can't touch the ceiling any more!

09/08/2026

Last week we finally installed our new display board on Level 3 of the Paddington section.

This display board compliments the other boards we have on other levels.

It showcases the history of FoWT's excavation of both Level 3 and Level 4, from first discovery, to final emptying.

As well as the tunnels, it also shows some of the hardworking volunteers involved in the digging, some of whom are sadly no longer with us. And for the rest of us... sadly wishing we still looked that young!

It helps give an idea to visitors on the tours of the challenges we faced, and the tremendous effort in rediscovering Paddington's deepest and most impressive levels.

Thanks to Chris Iles and Mike Rogers for the photos (and for Mike having the unenviable task of designing the board, and having to decide what photos to include!), and to John Morrison and Tom Stapledon for the installation.