Inside mysterious 250-year-old ‘street beneath a street’ & tiny homes hidden underneath modern office blocks
AN UNDERGROUND lost street of tiny homes has been revealed to be part of a wider network of tunnels.
The lost street was rediscovered in Stockton-On-Tees, County Durham, in 2016 during refurbishment works by Jeff Highfield, 56.
But the underground street in North East England might be a small part of a larger hidden underground tunnel system throughout the area.
The secret tiny homes are now thought to lead to other parts of the town, after the cellars showed a tunnel leading off in different directions.
This network of secret underground tunnels allegedly runs throughout the town, along the High Street and even reportedly down to the river.
Jeff Highfield uncovered the tunnels during a £1 million refurbishment plan to build luxury offices on the site. The tunnels are thought to be around 250 years old.
They found the dwellings during a large refurbishment of a Grade II listed Georgian townhouse in the city centre.
The tiny 5ft high underground homes feature wooden window frames, solid doors, shelves and even cavities to hold candles. An old larder can even be seen in the living quarters.
Fascinated by what he discovered, Jeff set about finding out more, speaking to local historians to understand the original purpose of the mysterious street.
He told the Sun: “This is in the cellar where people used to live, so effectively it’s the street beneath a street, if you like. Obviously as time has gone on the land has been built up.”
Stockton-on-Tees is an old market town and Church Road, the terrace of Georgian townhouses where the street was found, used to be known as “Paradise Row”.
It was home to well-off Stockton residents during the town’s agricultural and livestock trading days, before it became a busy industrial centre.
The tiny rooms have been left underneath the building, which was turned into 60 offices.
“We still have the original cobbles downstairs on the ground”, Jeff explained. “We didn’t want to seal them in, to cover up what was beneath.”
“They have put some pumps in, because we are near the river. So they get flooded.”
But the tiny hidden rooms don’t stop there. Jeff described how the tunnels continue on throughout the town, as they go into the main road.
He said, “This is what we have gleaned from other sources: you can see them pointing where they used to head towards the river, straight underneath where the Hilton is now. They go left and right and used to go up and down Church Street.”
“We think they went between the police station and the pubs, going down to the river” .
There is also a suggestion it went between “the Stockton Masonic Hall and Trinity Church.”
Residents have suggested that these tunnels lead between pub cellars around the town in a buried network of passages.
Jeff explained: “At the North Eastern Pub they can allegedly still get down there. And there are reports of people in the 60s being able to walk along. But a lot of them have been backfilled now.
There are many theories about what these mysterious tunnels were used for.
Jeff says it is believed they were used to “move around the old gentry, walking to different areas of the city right along the high street.”
“But we also believe it was used for smuggling” he stated, as the route of the tunnels lead to and from the river.
“All the tunnels would be around five and a half foot. People were smaller 200 years ago.” He continued, “you can see the old formation with the brick and brick arches.”
Yet the tiny homes beneath Church Road, according to Jeff, could have been used “as a storage pen for animals and larders”.
Some residents think these tunnels are just cellars, or the spaces are too small for humans and would have been mainly occupied to store food.
However, tracking down any written evidence for these theories has proven difficult.
What do you think these tunnels were used for, and how far do they go?