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06
Jun
For generations, imaginations have run wild in this abandoned Harrogate railway tunnel
It’s 2003 and I’m deep down a dank tunnel underneath Harrogate with two school friends. The sunlight has slowly become a dot in the distance and I can feel my heartbeat pounding. It’s pitch black. There is water dripping somewhere, or is that my nervous sweat?
“Did you hear that?”
We all stop like statues.
“...No.”
“Shut up, there’s definitely something there.”
After a tense pause, we leg it back towards the light, racing to the tunnel exit as our imaginations pursued us.
We retreat into the safety of daylight somewhere near Hornbeam Park, out of breath and relieved. All three of us burst into laughter.
Brunswick Tunnel
The Victorians called it Brunswick Tunnel but it was only used for rail travel for 14 years and the last train trundled through in 1864. Ever since then, it’s been a subterranean secret for generations of Harrogate youths with a sense of adventure. It's also well known around town as ‘The Darkie’, named so due to its lack of natural light once you’re far down inside.
On an online forum for railway enthusiasts, nobody even knows who owns it. Network Rail and LNER are discounted. Does it even exist? Harrogate Borough Council was sending an engineer down to inspect it as recently as the 2000s but North Yorkshire Council denied it was their property when asked by the Stray Ferret.
More shots inside Brunswick Tunnel. Pictures: Lost Places & Forgotten Faces.
The 400-yard tunnel was put back to use during the Second World War as an air raid shelter. The entrance was near the Park Drive roundabout on Leeds Road, and you can imagine games of cards being played under torchlight as sirens rang out above ground.
The air raid shelter is located at the far end of the tunnel, where a room was created by building two brick walls across the tunnel. Getting to this point is the achievement for explorers.
The entrance at the other end is often sealed up with metal bars. Then it’s opened up again by someone wanting to go inside before it’s eventually blocked up again. It’s gone on like this for decades.
‘Core memory of friendship’
The tunnel runs directly beneath Langcliffe Avenue and it was built to keep smoky trains out of sight from Harrogate’s affluent townsfolk.
It served Brunswick Station, Harrogate’s first railway terminus, which has long passed from the living memory of any Harrogate residents. The timber station was on a section of what is now the Stray, north of Trinity Road.
Pictures: Lost Places & Forgotten Faces.
I asked some of Harrogate’s online residents about their memories of ‘The Darkie’ and what it meant to them.
Sarah Gibbs said:
My friends and I used to go there from Hornbeam woods along the top path (now blocked off). It felt like we were in The Goonies on an exciting adventure! We never got in very far but my memories of it were darkness, and damp dripping sounds echoing, which was really eerie. My mum told stories of rats the size of cats! It’s definitely a core memory of friendship, nature connection and risk-taking - in a good way!
The tunnel has become a place for mischief and activities that might not have been allowed above ground. Chris Antram recalled this story from October 1981 during a half-term holiday.
He said:
We were letting fireworks off in The Darkie. Airbomb Repeaters were great as they’d echo all down the tunnel. However, our dear friend, the late Mike Nelmes RIP, had a firework to beat all others, I think it was called a Landmine. He placed it about 10 yards into the tunnel and lit it. I think 45 years on, my ears are still ringing.
This thing was immense and literally blew a crater into the tunnel invert, with smoke billowing out of the entrance. I think the poor man whose garden was above must have wondered what on earth had just happened! Needless to say, that was our cue to exit very quickly! Happy memories.
Short lived
When the current Harrogate station opened in 1862, Brunswick Station was surplus to requirements and it closed.
A century later in the 1960s, Julie Peel Clark went down there as a child when living at Oatlands. She said:
My brother Ian Burl and his mates took me down there. Mostly to frighten the hell out of me, as I was younger. I think we used candles. It was scary at about 10 years old.
Similarly, Paul Lee remember enjoying the tunnel when growing up on Wheatlands Grove:
As a young un in the 70’s, I would scamper along a tall brick wall to access the ravine leading to the tunnel. It was a scary place and we were always on the lookout for Oatlands kids invading from Hookie woods.
Brunswick Tunnel has had a long afterlife that has extended well beyond its years as an active railway tunnel. It’s a strange netherworld beneath Harrogate that many residents have no idea exists. One person replied to me that they even lost their virginity down there.
Harrogate author Keith Cados set part of his 2020 novel The Search for Orion in the Brunswick Tunnel after hearing tales from friends at St Aidan’s who’d explored it. In the story, the mysterious tunnel becomes a portal to other worlds for its young, adventurous protagonists.
While that book is fiction, there is something true about it, too. It’s often said that Harrogate hasn’t always offered much for young people to do, but many have found their own entertainment deep inside The Darkie, where they can explore their imaginations.
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