hi not posted before hope im where i should be...anyway was talking with my bloke the other day about caves tunnels etc he was telling me about the wormhole caves and the bidston tunnels he has been down both of them....anyway it turns out he fancys himself as a self styled cave guru haha...no(seriously)he tells me that he believes there is a cave under victoria gardens new brighton on the site of the new flats....he takes me down there and showed me the fenced off building site he then pointed to an old 'hut'which one side was made up of the original red brick wall that used to run along virginia road and said that he thought there was a cave underneath this single storey building.strangely it was smothered with scaffolding (this was 2 days ago)since then the scaffold has been taken down but he is adamant that there is some kind of cave under there....must admit it is a bit strange the way that section of wall has been preserved and at the time of writing still exists....does anybody know anything of this?

Almost exactly half-way between Balmoral Road and Victoria Parade?

exactly there..... do you know anything of this as my bloke is a bit militant and hes banging on about the council saying nothing and covering them up for another hundred years

Time to get the tools out and find out

Is it these?

http://www.hiddenwirral.org.uk/smugglers-tunnels-new-brighton/4588234919

I vaguely remember visiting what must have been the Wormhole with a group, I think it might have been the youth club. The entrance was in someone's back garden.

That's in the back garden of a house in Wellington Road, overlooking the Red Noses.

Treasure ... where is the treasure ????

I guess there is a chance that it is another entrance to the Palace Amusement tunnels, it would be beyond belief that tunnels that size would only have one entrance, but I didn't think they headed in that direction.

But it may simply be something to do with utilities, if it had just been another isolated tunnel it would have been capped instead of rehashing the building that was over the length of that wall.

Noo they're the wormholes these are the other end my fella said he'd seen a sketch of the cave entrance around 1830 he recons its bang on where that hut is

Think the foundations for the new flats at the bottom of Victoria Road took some sorting, I heard they pumped many tonnes of concrete in which kept dissapearing, putting the project back and the costs up.

Maybe they have been filled in for good?

K

There were buildings where the flats are getting built (the infamous Ham & Eggs Parade) but they were built on reclaimed land and they probably didn't have the ten year settling time for the land like we do these days. They were demolished around 1907.

And don't forget the 'Devil's Nest'...

it just seems strange that the wall was demolished ions ago and that part has been kept ive looked over the very secure fence and it seems the foundations have been poured around this 'hut'also the ground is far lower on site,my bloke recons it goes under the road which is solid sandstone in the direction balmoral road

do you mean THIS red-bricked structure??? i'm sure there's not much in there, the mini golf course used to be up there and if i remember rightly the kiosk where you paid and got clubs was in them, i THINK they're not much more than storage and the like rather than entrances to some caves...

Yes, but while the building used to go most of the length of that wall, they have only retained a middle section so the building must have some function. https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.4394443,-3.0381425,74m/data=!3m1!1e3

what is left of the building is breeze blocked either end by the look of it.......like i said before it did have scafold on it..all over it (dont know why its tiny)think the cave goes under the road and pavement....curiously the pavement on that section is behind the security fence

Never heard of an entrance there before, If there is something there access-wise then it was definitely in the back yard of one of the Ham & Eggs properties:


(Ignore the red outline on the property in this image).

Thanks for the map Ian, do you have a date for it? I lived at 7 Mason Street, all the other houses are now gone and number 7 is the only house in the street.

cheers

Where is mason street? I lived in Virginia rd
Back of the palace.. No.23... How far from where I am talking about??

Not quite - the mini golf was between the Floral Pavilion and the Palace, where the extension to the Floral is now. You can see it here. I think the other side where this structure is used to be gardens with flower beds (Victoria Gardens?), but they were sacrificed to make the car park for the Floral, possibly in the 1970s. Unfortunately can't remember what the building was actually used for though, have been trying to find old photos but not much luck so far...

So found this, dated c1915. It was Victoria Gardens

The rows of seats in front of the bandstand were where the Floral is now, so our red-brick structure was originally the open-fronted shelter to the left of the picture.



(image from the Francis Frith collection)

Before the builders moved in it looked like this.

Glad you found the map useful Mike, about to post another from 1939. Cheers

(Ignore the red line around nearby buildings.....).

Hi Willow, Mason Street comes out onto Victoria Road and where it does Belmont Street is directly opposite. Bit of a story behind Mason Street, it was rerouted in the 1980's to snake round behind a bus stop/ lay-by, and like Mike says there is only one house left standing on Mason Street nowadays. The guy who owned that last Mason Street property at the time of the CP0's in the street fought his corner/ wouldn't move out. The council ended up having to build the new road layout 'around' his house! This is what I heard anyway, but hey, I don't want to go off topic!

hi again....did a bit of digging only to find it was the power station to the old floral and apparently when they built the new one they wired that into there..haha thanks everybody anyway...must admit looking at the drawing which is from 1830 there is a definate cave entrance around the area.....it looks a bit like the stone archway at rock villa but square not arched

Thanks for the follow-up.