Victoria Tunnel to be reborn as a heritage highlight

Apr 21 2009 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

A SLICE of Newcastle’s hidden history buried deep beneath the city is to be reborn as a heritage highlight for people to enjoy.

The listed Victoria Tunnel, opened in 1842 to transport coal from Spital Tongues colliery to the Tyne, runs for more than two miles under the city’s streets and highways.

During the Second World War it served as an air raid shelter for up to 9,000 people. It was forgotten at the war’s end, but now a 700-metre stretch of the tunnel between Ouse Street in the Lower Ouseburn Valley and the Tanners arms at the top of Stepney Bank is being re-opened for several tours a week led by heritage volunteers.

An audio system will recreate the sounds of rolling coal wagons and air raid effects.

Declassified documents revealed a few years ago that the tunnel was on a list of proposed nuclear shelters and this has fed into a sound and lights installation by artist Adinda van t’Klooster.

The tunnel entrance in Ouse Street, behind the Hotel du Vin, has survived because it was on private land in the garden of a now demolished house. The entrance has been landscaped and features a visitor shelter with information panels which tracks the tunnel’s route from Spital Tongues to Claremont Road, passing the former Hancock Museum and Civic Centre, through Northumbria University to Shieldfield then down to the Tyne.

Occasional tours were run by the Ouseburn Partnership but the tunnel had to be closed when it began to show signs of structural strain.

Funding from the Tyne Wear Partnership and Newcastle City Council covered the cost of repairs and a grant of £205,500 from the Heritage Lottery Fund has enabled Newcastle City Council to re-open the tunnel. Work started on the tunnel in 1839, four years after the Spital Tongues, or Leazes Main, colliery opened.