Inside a long abandoned tunnel under the River Clyde

Directly below the River Clyde is a once-bustling thoroughfare that is now only accessible to a select few.

There are two circular rotunda buildings, one of which is in the shadow of Glasgow’s famous Finnieston Crane and marks the entrance to a long-abandoned Victorian tunnel.

It was in the 1890s that the Glasgow Harbor Tunnel Company began digging with the promise of a new means of crossing the river.

At the time, the city was in the midst of a tunnel-building frenzy, with workers excavating “low” underground platforms for the subway and central station.

The Harbor Tunnel Company built not just one, but three parallel tunnels on the site between Finnieston and Mavisbank Quay.

Two were for horse-drawn carriages using the one-way system, and the third, located a little closer to the ground, was reserved for pedestrians.

The New York company supplied six hydraulic cage lifts that lower horses and carts down a 24-meter (78-foot) shaft before rattling down a 5-meter (16-foot) wide passage.

When the tunnel opened in 1895, the Otis Elevator Company reported that “horses were generally very kind to the elevators and had no trouble getting up and down.”

Pedestrians were less than positive about the experience. Access to them is through a long wooden staircase, and the footpath tunnel has developed a reputation for being slightly leaky.

By the 1930s, pedestrians were instead sharing vehicular tunnels and now also using “motors.”

An Evening Citizen columnist described the elevator descent in 1932.

“Choosing horse and truck over automobile, I soon found myself descending smoothly and quietly through a bewildering jumble of wheels and cables, from which I found myself descending smoothly and silently through a bewildering jumble of wheels and cables. “I could see the mouth of the old passenger, the tunnel we passed through on the way,” he wrote.

“At the bottom, water was seeping out of the iron sides of large tubes that were not completely watertight. In one place, a single stalactite a foot long hung from the roof.”

The tunnel was not as financially successful as the tunnel company had hoped, and bridges and “horse ferries” proved to be the more popular means of crossing the river. City authorities began subsidizing them during World War I and completely requisitioned them in 1926.

It was used again as a safe passageway for longshoremen and shipyard workers during World War II, but in 1943 city officials, fearing rising maintenance costs, ordered the lifting equipment removed. did. This metal is said to have been necessary for the war effort.

The pedestrian tunnel was reopened in 1947 and remained in use until 1980, when it was finally closed to the public. It was a convenient route for fans heading to Ibrox, but in 1988 the Bells Bridge footbridge offered an alternative way to get some fresh air.

By this time, the two vehicle tunnels had been filled in and might have met a similar fate had a sidewalk not been built to pass them through.

It has provided a convenient route for water mains since 1938 and is still maintained by Scottish Water, which sends out regular inspectors.

For Glaswegians who still remember using the tunnels, the eerie passageways with surprising drips falling from the tiled sides are often a childhood memory.

Colin Duncan has fond memories of using the bridge as a teenager to enter the city center from the south.

“I loved it. The stories about it being scary because of the rats were completely untrue. It was bright and kind of warm,” he recalled.

But he had doubts about the stairs. “If someone had peeked over the wooden staircase wall, they would have crept up there.

“The stairs seemed to be hanging out of nowhere and were very much down into the darkness.”

The domed rotunda is now a listed building and has been used for a variety of purposes over the years. The north rotunda is now a casino and restaurant, and is slated for redevelopment again.

This rotunda on Govan’s south coast was the venue for a Nardini ice cream shop pop-up, puppet show and ‘Discovery Dome’ during the Glasgow Garden Festival, before being extensively renovated as offices for the Scottish Marine Engineering Group. It has been used. Marine.

Helena Fischer, Marin’s director of marketing and business development, said the building is home to a marine engineering and transportation company whose history can be traced back to the same era “with the common purpose of transporting cargo safely.” I feel it’s appropriate that it is.

At last year’s Doors Open Day, the company welcomed the public into the rotunda. Although they were not allowed into the tunnel, Helener filmed a walk-through video to show visitors what the tunnel was like.

A small metal staircase, replacing the old wooden treads, descends into the shaft, and then a concrete staircase leads into the tunnel itself.

“It was a pretty steep descent, so I felt a little nervous,” she recalled. She said, “I remember there were tiles on the wall with the name of the company that built the tunnel.”

“I think I had imagined that the tunnel itself would be quite unpleasant, like a dank underground passage, but given that it was built by hand, it was in such good condition and this I didn’t expect it to have such a precise finish.”

Walking under the River Clyde, she jumped over several shallow pools of brown water. Some subway-style tiles have fallen off the walls, but the cast iron pieces supporting the roof remain solid.

“It was a very awe-inspiring experience,” Helener said.

“When you’re actually there, you realize this is a 130-year-old piece of engineering and almost everything is in its place.”