What is it about a tunnel that excites us so? Last week’s story about the secret one in a New York synagogue fascinated the world, despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that no one knew why the thing had been built in the first place. Police attempted to close it, and indeed fill it with cement, leading to fights with a group of young men trying to defend the tunnel, which went under the street and led to at least one other nearby building.
Maybe it’s the word ‘secret’. Of course that explains our interest in Tom, Dick and Harry, the three tunnels dug during the Great Escape. Roger Bushell, who masterminded the exit from Stalag Luft III to ‘make life hell for the Hun’, insisted everyone use the code names for security’s sake, threatening to court-martial anyone who even said the word ‘tunnel’. Shored up with wooden slats from the prisoners’ beds (fewer than half remained to support each mattress), and lit by candles made from fat skimmed off the top of their soup, it was Harry that eventually got the nod. After the escapees were recaptured and killed, a fourth tunnel was started but ultimately abandoned. It was called George.
Meanwhile back in Blighty, London Underground tunnels acted as bomb shelters, and, in the case of those at Aldwych station, as a safe place to store the Elgin Marbles. Fifty years later the Prodigy used the same tunnel in the video for ‘Firestarter’. We owe the Tube system to James Henry Greathead, inventor of the ‘tunnelling shield’, which allows you to excavate without disturbing the ground – the first two lines (Metropolitan and District) had necessitated digging up the street, laying the tracks, then covering them up again.
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