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A reminder of the grubby Surge tube.
I sat in the rain for a while wishing i'd chosen to go in, but went home happy that I'd won the cleanest hands and shiniest waders award of the day
Great set of pictures T.
Cheers!
these photos are amazing
I had been really eager to see these tunnels ever since @tallginge put a report up, which also led me to the original ones by @FreshFingers. The main appeal was the rusty metalwork still in place in these tunnels, but I was also intrigued by the way in which sounded fun in itself. The chance came last September when I was briefly in Stockport - I visited these with @Alley, @FreshFingers and a non member, all of who have all been here multiple times but were kind enough to give me the tour.
These tunnels were situated, as the name suggests, under the Stockport Electricity Works beside the river Goyt. They form an extension of Stringers tunnels and provided water to cool the workings above. I'll start with some old photos, all of which are from http://old.stockport.gov.uk/sia. Some vintage UE photos from 1930s show the electricity works in operation, with the switchboard and generators looking nice and shiny.
The power station itself was demolished between 1981 (when the cooling tower fell) and 1983 (when the rest was flattened) - first pic by Roger Ball and second by J. A. Turner.
And pictures dated 1929 show what appears to be the construction of the tunnels themselves, or at least some alterations in progress.
An although I can't vouch for the accuracy of the dates, this next pic is dated 1957 and again shows the tunnels undergoing some kind of maintenance.
If you squint at the background of that last pic above you can just make out a round hole, with a light above. This is, I think, where the tunnels connect to Stringers tunnel, and also where we entered, after a bit of a wiggle and a slide.... The next pic shows the point of entry - a bit of a flat-on-the-back affair on a dirty plastic sheet, underneath the wedged metal sluice.
Once inside, however, things open up nicely and we were met by the spacious brick tunnel.
Water, from what I remember, was below welly height throughout... This is looking back to the entry point.
Approaching the penstocks, with a concreted over outfall to the right...
Onwards, and although it's not a particularly long tunnel there's plenty to see. Penstocks to the left lead to small cooling chambers. That 'rope' hanging down is actually a tree root that's found its way down to the water from the ground above. Cheers to @Alley etc for lighting things up nicely.
Inside one of the chambers...
Rusty...
This was the end, where the water got stinky an we could go no further...
And back out the way we got in...
Thank you! I might have misremembered how deep it actually was in that case!
This is true, and with crawls etc. however some climbs can also be challenging!
