Forums Forums Wirral History : Chasing the Past History Information Request Bebington to Speke tunnel

For 300 years, until the Reformation, much of what was then South Lancashire was owned by the Cistercian monks from Whalley Abbey near Clitheroe, and Stanlawe Abbey in what was then Cheshire, on the Wirral Peninsular. There are local legends that the monks once built a tunnel from Speke, under the River Mersey to Bebington on the Wirral, and these may indeed have some basis in fact. The Wirral, like Liverpool, is also riddled with underground passageways and caves, many of these are natural, but many are also man-made.

Whether there are tunnels there or not it can not be dismissed on the lack of technology or know how. The Romans, Babylonians, Greeks and Egyptians built tunnels at a much earlier date.

The Romans and other civilisations did build tunnels and some of them fairly complicated but im sorry there is no possible way that a group of monks had the technology or know how to build UNDER the mersey in those times here in Wirral.

Also you would have to ask yourself why ? In the 1500 Wirral was still fairly desolate and heavily forrested. One quote says that a squirrel could jump from tree to tree all the way from one end of the peninsula to the other. Why would the monks needs to build a secret passage over to liverpool. Im fairly sure that most people could travel off the track without being seen if they wanted in those days.

Also who would pay for this this enormous civil engineering feat ? and how would a project of that scale be kept secret.

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