Lyova Arakelyan
Lyova (or Levon) Arakelyan dug a storage cellar under his house on the edge of
Yerevan
Yerevan ( , , hy, Երևան , sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia and one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and i ...
in 1985.
When completed, he continued to dig and kept at it for some 23 years, constructing an extensive complex of tunnels, rooms and stairs which extended deep into solid rock.
Arakelyan stated that he received directions for his work in dreams and visions.
The underground spaces were transformed into a museum, called 'Divine Underground', after his death in 2008.
Arakelyan never made any money from his tunneling in life, and the museum provides some income for his family.
William Lyttle
![Moleman House, De Beauvoir Town (2005) (98091571)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Moleman_House%2C_De_Beauvoir_Town_%282005%29_%2898091571%29.jpg)
In the mid sixties,
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
civil engineer
William Lyttle dug a wine cellar under his
Hackney property.
Having done so, he said that he had "found a taste for the thing" and kept on digging, for some forty years.
Eventually, several tunnels on multiple levels led in all directions, under the property and surrounding grounds, some of them long.
After complaints by neighbours, a power supply interruption and a
sinkhole
A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are locally also known as ''vrtače'' and shakeholes, and to openi ...
in the pavement, the borough had a survey carried out that revealed the extent of the tunneling.
Lyttle was evicted and the tunnels were filled with concrete.
William Schmidt
![Tunnel south entrance](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Tunnel_south_entrance.JPG)
William "Burro" Schmidt was an American miner who spent 32 years drilling a tunnel through solid
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
.
He claimed to be building a shortcut from his mining operation to the
smelter.
When a new road was constructed, rendering his shortcut obsolete, Schmidt carried on his work regardless.
He used simple handtools and occasionally explosives for tunneling, carrying out the debris in a wheelbarrow or on the backs of his two donkeys.
Michael Altmann
Between 1958 and 2008
Austria
Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...
n Michael Altmann dug two tunnels of combined.
At first, he wanted a cooling cellar for a cafe he was to open, but upon completion he could not get a permit.
In 1965 he took over another bar, but kept his digging as a hobby. Altmann would mainly use a pickaxe for digging and occasionally explosives, after passing an explosives handling examination at the fire department.
He dug a second tunnel branching off from the first one, using a tunnel boring machine he designed and built himself.
In 1962, he installed steel doors on the tunnel system and added a store of emergency rations, with the intention of making it usable as a
nuclear bunker.
In 2008 Altmann reached a block of granite and, considering his age, gave up tunnel digging.
Baldassare Forestiere
In 1904
Sicilian immigrant Baldassare Forestiere bought a plot of land in
Fresno
Fresno () is a major city in the San Joaquin Valley of California, United States. It is the county seat of Fresno County and the largest city in the greater Central Valley region. It covers about and had a population of 542,107 in 2020, maki ...
for
horticulture
Horticulture is the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation. It includes the cultivation of fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, sprouts, mushrooms, algae, flowers, seaweeds and no ...
.
The
hardpan
In soil science, agriculture and gardening, hardpan or soil pan is a dense layer of soil, usually found below the uppermost topsoil layer. There are different types of hardpan, all sharing the general characteristic of being a distinct soil layer ...
soil however, was unsuited for the fruit trees he intended to plant. While working elsewhere Forestiere dug a maze of underground and below ground spaces to escape the summer heat of the
San Joaquin Valley
The San Joaquin Valley ( ; es, Valle de San Joaquín) is the area of the Central Valley of the U.S. state of California that lies south of the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta and is drained by the San Joaquin River. It comprises seven ...
.
He opened up ceilings to let in light and below he planted the fruit trees he wanted in the first place. The complex consists of bedrooms, living spaces, patios, a fish pond and hallways.
After his death in 1946 some of the land was sold off and some tunnels filled in, but currently about have been saved. It is known as the
Forestiere Underground Gardens
The Forestiere Underground Gardens in Fresno, California are a series of subterranean structures built by Baldassare Forestiere, an immigrant from Sicily, over a period of 40 years from 1906 to his death in 1946. The gardens are operated by member ...
and has a listing in the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...
.
Glen Havens
Glen Havens of
San Diego
San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the eighth most populous city in the United State ...
, US constructed a maze of tunnels and caverns under his house.
[Thomas Baumann's Kensington-Talmadge 1910–1985](_blank)
book review in the ''San Diego Reader'', 16 May 1985'. Havens started out in 1949, enlarging his barbecue pit, but ended up digging roughly of tunnels and underground rooms.
Havens enlisted the help of his son and other children in the neighbourhood, who earned pocket money in the process.
[Caves are not for claustrophobics](_blank)
''San Diego Uptown News'', 17 January 2014. The underground complex was large enough to hold his daughter's wedding reception in 1960, with some 200 guests attending.
Havens ignored building regulations and never got any permit. Local authorities recommended that people not to go inside, but took no further action. A local restaurant is named the "Haven Pizzeria" in Havens' honor.
John Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland
![Welbeck Abbey - Picture Gallery by George Washington Wilson (died 1893)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7a/Welbeck_Abbey_-_Picture_Gallery_by_George_Washington_Wilson_%28died_1893%29.jpg)
The
5th Duke of Portland is known to have been a hobby tunneler, although he did no digging himself but rather had workmen build his tunnels. An extensive network of underground spaces was constructed at his
Welbeck Abbey
Welbeck Abbey in the Dukeries in North Nottinghamshire was the site of a monastery belonging to the Premonstratensian order in England and after the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a country house residence of the Dukes of Portland. It is o ...
estate in the 19th century, with a total length of around .
[Eatwell, Piu (2015); ''The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse: An Extraordinary Edwardian Case of Deception and Intrigue'', New York. Retrieved throug]
Google Books
6 June 2020. It included hallways, a ballroom, a billiards room, a library and a tunnel from the mansion to the riding house, wide enough for several people to walk in side by side.
Some of the spaces were lit by
lightwell
In architecture, a lightwell,light well, light-well sky-well,skywell, sky well or air shaft is an unroofed or roofed external space provided within the volume of a large building to allow light and air to reach what would otherwise be a dark or ...
s and at night by
gas lighting
Gas lighting is the production of artificial light from combustion of a gaseous fuel, such as hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, propane, butane, acetylene, ethylene, coal gas (town gas) or natural gas. The light is produced either directly ...
.
Most of the spaces that are known as 'underground' are, more correctly, 'below ground', constructed in a
cut-and-cover
A tunnel is an underground passageway, dug through surrounding soil, earth or rock, and enclosed except for the entrance and exit, commonly at each end. A pipeline is not a tunnel, though some recent tunnels have used immersed tube cons ...
technique.
Few of the tunnels and rooms were ever used for their intended purpose. Towards the end of his life, the Duke lived as a recluse and very few people got to see him. Spaces that were intended for social gatherings, such as the ballroom, were never used. But the Duke did frequently use the tunnels that allowed him to move about his property mostly unseen.
Others
Costa Rican miner Manuel Barrantes has built an underground family house, consisting of hallways, bedrooms, conference rooms and a bathroom.
The complex, totalling , is used as a home and a museum.
In
Butler, Pennsylvania
Butler is a city and the county seat of Butler County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is located north of Pittsburgh and is part of the Greater Pittsburgh region. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 13,502.
History
Butler was n ...
, US man Ron Heist created a 50-room dwelling made of salvaged materials from abandoned places in the vicinity. It includes several tunnels Heist dug out and reinforced himself. A documentary film was made about him, entitled ''Mole Man''.
In 1984 Russian Leonid Murlyanchik had the plan of digging a tunnel towards the house of his beloved Ekaterina.
However, after Ekaterina's son objected to the liaison, he changed his intention into building a subway system for his home city of
Lebedyan
Lebedyan (russian: Лебедя́нь) is a town and the administrative center of Lebedyansky District in Lipetsk Oblast, Russia, located on the upper Don River, northwest of Lipetsk, the administrative center of the oblast. Population:
Histo ...
.
For 27 years Murlyanchik spent most of his hours, and his pension money, on the project.
At his death in 2011 he had completed of tunnel, which was subsequently closed off.
In late 2003
steeplejack
A steeplejack is a craftsman who scales buildings, chimneys, and church steeples to carry out repairs or maintenance.
Steeplejacks erect ladders on church spires, industrial chimneys, cooling towers, bell towers, clock towers, or any other hi ...
and television personality
Fred Dibnah
Frederick Travis Dibnah, (29 April 1938 – 6 November 2004) was an English steeplejack and television personality, with a keen interest in mechanical engineering, who described himself as a "backstreet mechanic".
When Dibnah w ...
began to dig a replica coal mine in the back garden of his home. Using traditional shaft-sinking techniques and the labour of mining friends Alf Molyneux and Jimmy Crooks, the shaft was sunk to a depth of 20 feet (6.1 m) and lined with brick. The work had been undertaken without planning permission, and, when the council eventually found out what was happening, they insisted he apply for planning permission. Dibnah died in 2004.
In 2015 a tunnel was discovered in a
Toronto
Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...
park. After a few days of speculations in media, the use as a terrorist hideout being among them, young construction worker Elton McDonald came forward as its builder.
Asked for the purpose of his digging, he answered "Honestly, I loved it so much. I don't know why I loved it".
YouTube personality and inventor
Colin Furze
Colin Peter Furze (born 14 October 1979) is a British YouTube personality, stuntman, inventor, and filmmaker from Stamford, Lincolnshire, England. Furze left school to become a plumber, a trade which he pursued until joining the Sky1 programme ...
has constructed an underground bunker and tunnel system under his home and workshop in Stamford, Lincolnshire,
initially in 2015 as part of a promotion for Sky television's ''
You, Me and the Apocalypse
''You, Me and the Apocalypse'' (working title ''Apocalypse Slough'') is a British-American comedy-drama miniseries. The series was green-lit on 8 January 2015. It debuted on Sky 1 on 30 September 2015 and on NBC on 28 January 2016. Sky 1 said ...
'' series. The construction process is detailed in a multi-part YouTube video series which has received millions of views.
Press coverage
Several
urban legend
An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...
s or even
hoaxes involving private tunnels have appeared in media. One such a story is about an Irishman who dug a tunnel from his bedroom to his local
pub
A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...
, without his wife noticing.
In one version of the story, that did the rounds at least between 2014 and 2018, the tunneler is said to have used a spoon for digging.
When a tunnel in
Calgary was discovered in 2016, a local newspaper ran a
do it yourself tunneling manual as a story.
How did he do it? Building a backyard tunnel is no easy task
''Calgary Herald'', 12 April 2016.
The 1997 novel '' The Underground Man'' is loosely based on the life and tunneling of the 5th Duke of Portland.
References
{{Reflist
External links
Glen Havens' tunnels on YouTube
in a program by local television station KNSD.
* I
GoogleMaps
a string of lightwells betrays the presence of a tunnel on the Welbeck Abbey estate. Patterns like these can be seen around the manor as well.
* British YouTuber
A YouTuber is an online personality and/or influencer who produces videos on the video-sharing platform YouTube, typically posting to their personal YouTube channel. The term was first used in the English language in 2006.
Influence
Influe ...
Colin Furze
Colin Peter Furze (born 14 October 1979) is a British YouTube personality, stuntman, inventor, and filmmaker from Stamford, Lincolnshire, England. Furze left school to become a plumber, a trade which he pursued until joining the Sky1 programme ...
shows how he built a tunnel i
DIGGING A SECRET TUNNEL part 3
Tunnel construction
Hobbies