Victoria Underground / Walkers Croft, Manchester - Feb 2012

Millhouse · (#1)

Explored with Gone, Fishbrain, Morse, AndrewB and Yvonne

This is one of those places that I’ve been meaning to see for a while, but until now never got round to going. We’d all met up in town and were looking for things to do, and after deciding on Walkers Croft we were soon making our way into the tunnels that reside beneath Victoria rail station.

Info:

The ‘Walkers Croft’ tunnels are located beneath Manchester Victoria railway station, and are currently used by the railway station for storage. Part of the station was built over Walkers Croft cemetery (in particular Platform 2), and in January 2010 human remains were discovered very close to the platform’s foundations during building work. The cemetery was the burial ground for workers from the nearby workhouse, many of whom died from cholera.

The system consists of a system of tunnels and basements, once used as storage by mills in the early 1800s, and a cattle bridge that crosses over one of the city’s large culverts (known within the urban exploration community as ‘Optimus Prime’) which carries the River Irk. The bridge used to link Long Millgate and Walkers Croft.

Stored within one of the underground chambers is the damaged front panel of a Pacer train (number 142059), which rolled away from Edge Hill station and crashed into the buffers at Liverpool Lime Street. The basements also contain such curiosities as a dried up artesian well and a huge slab of sandstone.

We had a good laugh in here creeping around the corridors of the station, passing windows that overlooked the platforms and numerous rail workers and the BTP offices.