Local History

Make sure your volume is on: "John's adventures underground"

Show transcript

Now that was where we used play. We used to catch newts and frogs. And one day we found a great big iron water tank. It can only be described as a railway watering tank where they used to fill the steam engines up from, at the side of the track, which had eventually been disused when the diesels came in and just thrown into the river. Well we got if floating, so we had a ‘boat’ there, and it would hold about six children. And this particular day, the tide was just normal, we cleaned it all out. But the following day we went down and it must have been a bit of a higher tide and we were able to float on it.

Now the entrance to the tunnel was where we used to catch the newts, it was deeper and deeper. Very few people had ever approached that area. You could approach on a piece of baulk timber and get almost to it. And because when you’ve got a tunnel, and children used to shout down the tunnel, the echo comes all the way back, don’t it. So we used to stand at the entrance and shout down there.

Now this particular day there was about six of us and we went INTO the tunnel. And nobody really wanted to go into the tunnel but ‘cos we were floating on a nice stable thing, we had old broomstick pushing ourselves along. And we were up to the roof ‘cos we were in what they call a culvert. And we got in there and then cor it was getting dark … you get to the first bend and it’s getting dark – you could only just see the light coming through the outside. So we decided that we would come out now, like. And a few bigger boys than me started to come out.

But what we hadn’t realized, we were being taken in because the tide from the Thames tidal was coming in! And don’t matter what we did, we couldn’t get back out! And the tide was coming up, so eventually we only had about THAT much room at the top of the tunnel. So what we were doing in the end was scraping our hands trying to get out, but whatever we did, we couldn’t get out. So all of a sudden the tide just let go, we couldn’t hold it any more, so we said “At least we might be able to come out the other end…gawd knows…we’re all gonna drown!” And that was it, we were all at the bottom of the boat crying, ‘I want me Mum, I want me Mum’

And the next thing we went – bang –up against some metal rods which was a grating in front of the thing. And we see a little light up top, and we’d come into another chamber. So we thought, ‘Oh, get out here’ … got out… and there was a ladder going up about 20 foot. So we all clambered up, and one of the bigger boys pushed the manhole cover up. And when we got out we was in the middle of Platform 14 in Stratford Station. And as this tunnel had been built under the railway, it was going back out the other side til it came back to the Hackney Marshes.

So we all ran back across the railway lines. Of course by the time we got back to the top of the tunnel, all the mums was there. “Where’s our boys?!” Because by that time the water had completely covered the tunnel. They’d all thought we’d gone and drowned. But we all come back over the top, all sort of, you know, you know. The mums was going mad, boys was being clipped round the ear, you know…Fire Brigade had been called…everybody was worried about us. But we appeared like sort of Jesus coming back over the top.