One room even features a secret entrance — hidden inside a rocket by the pool. — Ey — pshhh! :-)
I used to live in the inner city of Leipzig during my university days, and we had a door in the basement that led to wartime tunnels connecting it to other houses. It wasn't like a massive maze, just a hub with three other paths, each leading to another house nearby. From there, however, if they'd unlocked their doors, you could travel farther.
I was on a mission back then to befriend and convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors and get some kind of network going, but I didn't meet with much enthusiasm.
"In the end, the 2022 contest saw Reading beaten to the post by Dunfermline, Bangor, Douglas, Doncaster, Wrexham, Colchester, and nearby Milton Keynes. "
A lot of sources seem to cite Reading as 'England's largest town' but maybe that is by area, rather than population? Also depends on where you put the boundary.
For Cray, the excavation project is more than a simple diversion. "I work when I'm at home," he recently told a visiting scientist. "I work for three hours, and then I get stumped, and I'm not making progress. So I quit, and I go and work in the tunnel. It takes me an hour or so to dig four inches and put in the 4-by-4s. Now, as you can see, I'm up in the Wisconsin woods, and there are elves in the woods. So when they see me leave, they come into my office and solve all the problems I'm having. Then I go back up and work some more."
Yeah, I though it was 15 meters of length, not that impressive... but it is 15m underground and '... 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms'.
Homes need more whimsey. I recently discovered one of my interior doorways is actually a stone archway that someone had squared off, drywalled and installed a cheap hollow door for no apparent reason. Working with a stonemason to re-point/parge it and bring it back to glory. Will I ever see a return on this investment? Probably not but fuck it it'll make my house just that much cooler.
Nobody can afford whimsey anymore because if you are doing anything invasive enough to involve permits then any sort of deviation from the "megacorp cookie cutter" aesthetic becomes a scrutinized liability.
Anyone interested in this might also be interested in Kala on TikTok. She's been building a tunnel system under her house and documenting it for a couple of years.
Hm i dont know ,if they were MY tunnels i would be ok with them there.Someone elses tunnels just rub me the wrong way , like stepping in someone elses house with the furniture still there.
UK money. Still that works out to about $400k in us dollars. You can find better deals in the US, but probably none with tunnels - and unlikely to be places you want to live though not bad places (bad places in the US that would be around $120k)
Check the pictures, this doesn't look like a house to me. 2 levels of workshop areas and an office area.
Also the swimming pool is in the front yard, thats a weird one.
And if they were permitted you'd still have the liability. It's not like the permitting authority is gonna say "aw well we let you do it this is on us" if something happens.
"Real" liability of the "if something happens I'm on the hook" kind is not what's driving down the value here. What's driving down the value is that now that there's a bunch of pictures floating around the internet the tunnels are worthless because some government inspector could choose on a whim to force you to fill them in at your expense (which you would presumably fight, expensively, in court).
Reminds me how rich people in historic areas of London took on the habit of extending their properties downwards, keeping the above-ground parts intact due to conservation laws.
well I (the submitter) messed up and wrote 15M in the submission title (note the cap) in error just to add to the confusion (now fixed, soz.) … I thought “best” just to repeat the article title
No worries, I take issue with the person who concocted the original title. I got here after the capital-M change and it was still confusing that they didn't mention the space that was dug out at this depth, instead paint a picture of a system of tunnels under a normal house(?)
sorry for the capital M … I have fixed in the title to 15m as in metres
that’s ~ 45 ft underground, I believe … perhaps not that impressive, but quite funny since I would hesitate to undermine my own house and surely this makes it worth less
Says it’s vacant. Says guy started in the 80s. Going to deduce he is/was older and moving on for any number of normal reasons. Why is the reason so important?
Ha I came to see if anyone had posted her. I love her Instagram, so much of it is the logistics of moving all the rock out and supplies in. Fascinating problems to solve on a small scale.
One room even features a secret entrance — hidden inside a rocket by the pool. — Ey — pshhh! :-)
I used to live in the inner city of Leipzig during my university days, and we had a door in the basement that led to wartime tunnels connecting it to other houses. It wasn't like a massive maze, just a hub with three other paths, each leading to another house nearby. From there, however, if they'd unlocked their doors, you could travel farther.
I was on a mission back then to befriend and convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors and get some kind of network going, but I didn't meet with much enthusiasm.
Reading (the largest town in the UK btw) has other tunnels … for example https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/14492484.sneak-a-pea... and there is a rumour of secret escape tunnels from the (medieval) abbey.
Swindon has a significantly larger population than Reading.
dang … guess I am stuck in 1961 https://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/census/EW1961PRE/1?utm_so...
fwiw I just threw this in since many on HN probably don’t know much about Reading
red face
Swindon has been growing like crazy. ~92,000 in 1961 to ~233,000 in 2021. Passing Reading's population in the 90s.
>many on HN probably don’t know much about Reading
Maybe it is better that way. ;0)
It's a city that can be annoyingly hard to Google. If, for example, you search for "Reading Library" you basically get ALL THE LIBRARIES... :)
It's still a town (despite efforts to the contrary).
I thought it was made city status a while back too!
Nope.
"In the end, the 2022 contest saw Reading beaten to the post by Dunfermline, Bangor, Douglas, Doncaster, Wrexham, Colchester, and nearby Milton Keynes. "
https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/25782760.reading-not...
A lot of sources seem to cite Reading as 'England's largest town' but maybe that is by area, rather than population? Also depends on where you put the boundary.
Underground kiez would kill in Berlin
The listing of the property on the auction site:
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...
It includes many more photos than the article, as well as floor plans for the subterranean areas
I claim 1% commission if anyone on HN buys it
Has the potential for an "EMP resistant server farm"? Is that a common thing that realtors need to find for their clients?
ChatGPT give me some bullet points for my listing
i dunno but i certainly am more intrigued now
it seems as though it hath been hugged to death
lowercase m. 15 meters, not 15 million tunnels :D
If you're interested in secret tunnels, check out Colin Furze on Youtube!
Relatively secluded and private, Seymour Cray was also a tunneler... he wouldn't have been making videos about it
The story about him in Time at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20080521163217/http://www.time.c...
And an article someone wrote later... https://michael-starobin.squarespace.com/blogcontent/digging...I wasn't impressed by the 15 metres, but it turns out that is the maximum depth reached, not the length of a tunnel.
Yeah, I though it was 15 meters of length, not that impressive... but it is 15m underground and '... 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms'.
It's very UK to give depth in metric and area in imperial
Small areas in Imperial, then you move on to number of tennis courts, then number of football pitches, and then to fractions/multiples of Wales.
not 15 million tunnels :D
That traditionally would be described as “a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”
Thank you. I definitely read this as million.
If you’re instead interested in a book about a house with 15 million tunnels, read House of Leaves!
This is a very scary horror, tho the book (like other books by the author) is published in a very quality way.
I read it as 15 million tunnels too, was very confused. Thank you!
I figured 15 meters tunnel is not worth mentioning, so had to be 15 miles.
The most important comment on this article.
That is still an impressive water table. I wish ours was that low :-)
oops … sorry … now fixed
I, too, one day dream of using my children as labor for my underground tunnel system. To fight the ant, you must become the ant
I'm joking, but it's heartening to see quirky hobbies by qualified people (he was a civil engineer).
Homes need more whimsey. I recently discovered one of my interior doorways is actually a stone archway that someone had squared off, drywalled and installed a cheap hollow door for no apparent reason. Working with a stonemason to re-point/parge it and bring it back to glory. Will I ever see a return on this investment? Probably not but fuck it it'll make my house just that much cooler.
Nobody can afford whimsey anymore because if you are doing anything invasive enough to involve permits then any sort of deviation from the "megacorp cookie cutter" aesthetic becomes a scrutinized liability.
If I had 6 children, I would probably take up tunnelling.
The children yearn for the mines
Researching what the article meant by "rocket" (I assumed it was a Britishism), I found this article that includes more pictures.
https://www.aol.com/articles/unassuming-bungalow-hides-netwo...
aol wtf
AOL has never done me dirty, asked for me to buy cloud data, auto deleted emails. Aim account still going strong for email
Anyone interested in this might also be interested in Kala on TikTok. She's been building a tunnel system under her house and documenting it for a couple of years.
https://www.tiktok.com/@engineer.everything?lang=en
Hm i dont know ,if they were MY tunnels i would be ok with them there.Someone elses tunnels just rub me the wrong way , like stepping in someone elses house with the furniture still there.
Freestanding house with a pool for 300k? That is incredibly cheap. Perhaps I should move there.
UK money. Still that works out to about $400k in us dollars. You can find better deals in the US, but probably none with tunnels - and unlikely to be places you want to live though not bad places (bad places in the US that would be around $120k)
Auction pricing.
It'll start out at £300k (to market it attractively) and end up selling for £500k+.
Check the pictures, this doesn't look like a house to me. 2 levels of workshop areas and an office area. Also the swimming pool is in the front yard, thats a weird one.
There's a bunch of potentially unpermitted tunnels under the property. Quite the liability.
And if they were permitted you'd still have the liability. It's not like the permitting authority is gonna say "aw well we let you do it this is on us" if something happens.
"Real" liability of the "if something happens I'm on the hook" kind is not what's driving down the value here. What's driving down the value is that now that there's a bunch of pictures floating around the internet the tunnels are worthless because some government inspector could choose on a whim to force you to fill them in at your expense (which you would presumably fight, expensively, in court).
It does seem cheap for a house in Reading, even factoring in that it is a bungalow. Maybe they factored in increased subsidence risk?
Suspiciously cheap. There are no detached (what we call 'freestanding') properties on Right Move in the area under £400k. The cheapest is £450k
EDIT: oops, forgot to select the 'Bungalow' filter too (ugh). 2 properties: £375k and £350k (very small, 60m2). Still...nothing detached around £300k
EDIT2: ohh auction...230m2...yeh won't go for £300k, way more
Reminds me how rich people in historic areas of London took on the habit of extending their properties downwards, keeping the above-ground parts intact due to conservation laws.
Then everyone acted surprised when entire streets started sinking, or whole buildings collapsed into the ground: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/03/london-stree...
Can't access this site - wants me to enable some form of tracking that my DNS doesn't allow. Alternate source?
That 15 meters underground, not 15 million tunnels.
The title is "not even" clickbait, just very confusing.
"The unique complex contains more than 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms - and even a hand-built railway."
(Edit: I mean the original article, not the submission)
well I (the submitter) messed up and wrote 15M in the submission title (note the cap) in error just to add to the confusion (now fixed, soz.) … I thought “best” just to repeat the article title
No worries, I take issue with the person who concocted the original title. I got here after the capital-M change and it was still confusing that they didn't mention the space that was dug out at this depth, instead paint a picture of a system of tunnels under a normal house(?)
sorry for the capital M … I have fixed in the title to 15m as in metres
that’s ~ 45 ft underground, I believe … perhaps not that impressive, but quite funny since I would hesitate to undermine my own house and surely this makes it worth less
Cool! Here's another example of a tunnel house: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens
What are those dark brown cylinder shapes in the sides of the roughly hewn tunnel (first image on the right)?
My hunch: Sound-deadening baffles.
This misses the most important question.
Why is it for sale?
Says it’s vacant. Says guy started in the 80s. Going to deduce he is/was older and moving on for any number of normal reasons. Why is the reason so important?
Looking at the pictures, my best guess is that the maintenance has been an issue for some time.
300k in Tilehurst for a house with a pool is incredibly cheap.
[Looks at interior photos]
Ah. Anyway.
Curious how he got planning permission. Or if he got planning permission.
So you just go digging under neighbours properties? What about underground infrastructure?
I don’t think it extends beyond property limits.
would love to see the radon measurements in those tunnels/basement.
Is that an issue in the UK?
In granite bedrock areas such as Cornwall, yes, radon is a significant concern that requires measurement and usually remediation (extraction fans).
The chalk bedrock in Reading isn't generally susceptible to radon.
UK radon mapping data: https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps
It is in some areas with a lot of granite, such as Cornwall. I'm not aware it is a factor in Reading.
Granite tends to contain Radon as it's in the decay chain of Uranium, which is often found in Granite.
It comes out of the ground. UK has some of that I think.
Tunnels and basements just trap it so it can't blow away.
Very much so.
15 meters deep underground in 4 levels, not just a 15 meters long tunnel.
15m is… almost nothing?
The masculine urge to dig...
It's got a lot of interesting qualities, but it looks like a dungeon… Not quite put the lotion in the basket type.. but close.
15 meters is a tragedy. 15 million is a statistic.
Colin Furze has entered the chat.
That was my first thought. Then I wondered why it was talking about Reading rather than Lincolnshire.
Maybe I missed it through all the ads, but it's pretty disappointing that there is no direct link to the listing?
This is the listing. You can click through pictures of it all. The rocket entrance is amazing.
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...
sorry for the ads … but this made me smile
You'd probably be interested in this person's work: https://youtu.be/6CLF4QrYmYg
Ha I came to see if anyone had posted her. I love her Instagram, so much of it is the logistics of moving all the rock out and supplies in. Fascinating problems to solve on a small scale.
oh yeah! tunnel merch
The online versions of local British Newspapers are almost unreadable now with all the chumbox ads and continual page repainting. Ugh.
I didn't see a single ad. Why not use an ad blocker, or just use Brave?