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samstress 1 days ago [-]
One room even features a secret entrance — hidden inside a rocket by the pool. — Ey — pshhh! :-)
I used to live in the inner city of Leipzig during my university days, and we had a door in the basement that led to wartime tunnels connecting it to other houses. It wasn't like a massive maze, just a hub with three other paths, each leading to another house nearby. From there, however, if they'd unlocked their doors, you could travel farther.
I was on a mission back then to befriend and convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors and get some kind of network going, but I didn't meet with much enthusiasm.
fwiw I just threw this in since many on HN probably don’t know much about Reading
red face
hermitcrab 1 days ago [-]
Swindon has been growing like crazy. ~92,000 in 1961 to ~233,000 in 2021. Passing Reading's population in the 90s.
>many on HN probably don’t know much about Reading
Maybe it is better that way. ;0)
dcminter 1 days ago [-]
It's a city that can be annoyingly hard to Google. If, for example, you search for "Reading Library" you basically get ALL THE LIBRARIES... :)
hermitcrab 1 days ago [-]
It's still a town (despite efforts to the contrary).
dcminter 1 days ago [-]
I actually lived there for a few years, I guess I'd forgotten that the millenium bid fell through :)
Edit: By the by I do intend to visit again at some point if only to see the DEC exhibition at the town museum (if that's still on) and perhaps swing by Sweeney's pie shop (if that's still open).
Oh, and now I see from a sibling comment that there was another bid in 2022! It gives me a twinge of national pride that British rules on City-hood are so weird!
choult 1 days ago [-]
DEC exhibition closed 10 months or so ago, but the museum is still worth visiting for the copy of the Bayeux Tapestry.
Sweeney Todd is still open :)
dcminter 17 hours ago [-]
> DEC exhibition closed 10 months or so ago
Damnit.
rbanffy 14 hours ago [-]
The important question is where did the exhibit go.
16 hours ago [-]
philipallstar 1 days ago [-]
I can't imagine Swindon being a better town to know than Reading, though.
hermitcrab 1 days ago [-]
I know both Reading and Swindon quite well, and prefer Swindon. Subjective, obviously.
happymellon 5 hours ago [-]
Interesting. If it wasn't for the outlet mall I would put Swindon on par with Slough.
librasteve 21 hours ago [-]
when I worked in Swindon (Intel fwiw), HR told all the Americans “draw a circle 15 miles radius around Swindon station and live outside it”
shermantanktop 19 hours ago [-]
I heard similar about Croydon.
MomsAVoxell 17 hours ago [-]
Instructions unclear, living 15 miles out to sea.
jimlikeslimes 1 days ago [-]
I thought it was made city status a while back too!
hermitcrab 1 days ago [-]
Nope.
"In the end, the 2022 contest saw Reading beaten to the post by Dunfermline, Bangor, Douglas, Doncaster, Wrexham, Colchester, and nearby Milton Keynes. "
A lot of sources seem to cite Reading as 'England's largest town' but maybe that is by area, rather than population? Also depends on where you put the boundary.
mootothemax 1 days ago [-]
> town
That's where the problem lies. I spend too much of my life screaming into the void about UK addresses and what is and isn't a town :)
It's just about possible to create dataset of towns, cities, villages from mixing and matching and cutting up other geographies from the ONS (e.g. their Parished and Unparished data (though Unparished is its own nightmare), then the ONS Built-Up Areas dataset but... that one cuts out all the non-built parts so Milton Keynes is bunch of big blobs around the residential areas).
But if you frankenstein it, you lose all of the formal connections that define other links, and if you try to cheat via geospatial join, you will link police forces to areas they don't actually serve.
For Swindon, you're kinda stuck glueing together (going from memory here - please correct me if I'm off) the Parishes of Central Swindon, South Swindon and West Swindon. But these will overlap with some villages so it's not a true count.
And that's a natural moment to lead on to the next critical point: how're we measuring population? (I always get that Father Ted speech scene in my head thinking about this, start speaking - then twelve hours later "And now, we move on to liars")
hermitcrab 24 hours ago [-]
>how're we measuring population?
The UK census seems as good a measure as any.
mootothemax 23 hours ago [-]
>The UK census seems as good a measure as any.
Agreed, and it's a reasonable first reach for residential counts.
Problem is, it was last taken during 2021 - at the height of covid - and their estimates have been paying the price of it even since. Anything that touches on workday or employment they actively warn you away from, nowadays.
But then there's the elephant in the room: what if you're looking at somewhere like the City of London (the square mile one) where residential population is somewhere between 8,500 and 9,000 people?
EDIT: it slipped by me!
There is no single UK-wide census. NRS do Scotland's, last in 2022. NISRA handle Northern Ireland's census, last in 2021. And the ONS for England and Wales, last in 2021.
19 hours ago [-]
globular-toast 10 hours ago [-]
Well, "largest town" changes all the time anyway. Milton Keynes is "larger" than both by more than one metric, but it became a city in 2022.
The whole city status thing is a bit silly. It should definitely be based on more than population, but Milton Keynes getting it firmly established population is all it takes now.
manarth 10 hours ago [-]
What could possibly be more definitive than the monarch's whim?
zeristor 10 hours ago [-]
It ascended.
onion2k 14 hours ago [-]
Swindon is even shortlisted for UK City of Culture 2029, despite not being a city.
m4rtink 18 hours ago [-]
The city of Znojmo in Czech Republic has 4 levels of catacombs and underground passages, 27 km in length:
What happened to the waste when the village lived under ground for more than few days ?
m4rtink 5 hours ago [-]
The city is on a hill - or more precisely, on a ridge flanked by a river canyon on one side and a valley carved by a smaller stream on the other.
Due to that, the Znojmo catacombs are always above the water table & there was never really issues with drainage. There are a couple natural springs and overflowing wells in the catacombs & they are drained by the so-called Jesuit aqueduct, that collects all the water and drains it into the moat of the city fortification system. Nowadays that part is also underground & it just flows in the the Dyje river.
So during an emergency, the could get rid of the sewage with the aqueduct outflow & store solid was in some sections not in use I guess.
ChoGGi 3 hours ago [-]
Shitty concrete?
Honali 2 hours ago [-]
I love that you basically tried to start a neighborhood underground transit network and the only thing standing in your way was getting the neighbors to cooperate.
m463 22 hours ago [-]
lol, might be like trying to get the doors between adjacent hotel rooms open with strangers.
> convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors
Would definitely work with kids. if there were a bunch of 10yo kids there would definitely be an underground kids mischief network.
lukan 6 hours ago [-]
Leipzig is a bit more progressive/alternative, so I can see such a initiative to work out in the right place, but I doubt that today this is still a big thing? Lots of construction and modernisation going on in the city.
pluc 1 days ago [-]
Underground kiez would kill in Berlin
cowlevel 1 days ago [-]
aren't there some abandoned U-Bahn tracks?
Gerard0 12 hours ago [-]
Hey! Where exactly was this? Grüße!
Onavo 12 hours ago [-]
There's this British YouTuber who also dug a giant bunker underneath his house. I wonder how on earth did he get the zoning approval.
esskay 7 hours ago [-]
Quite easily, even retrospectively. It has no impact on his neighbours, doesn't create an eyesore, etc. He had the planning folks round, had them speak to his architect. It's all legit and done the correct way.
physicsguy 12 hours ago [-]
Colin Furze - and at least for part of it he didn’t! The council sent him an enforcement notice and he had to get it done retrospectively
hdgvhicv 9 hours ago [-]
His underground garage however has planning permission- you can find it on the council’s planning portal
esskay 7 hours ago [-]
tbf all of it now has planning permission it was just retrospective, the docs are still published the same way
In my mind it is nice but in the video the reality looks quite creepy!
pseudohadamard 3 hours ago [-]
It's not creepy, plenty of MoD buildings look like that.
Admittedly you don't expect to see one in a random suburb.
There's a story, not sure how true it is, of a contractor being brought in to renovate a recently-vacated government office building of something like 7 storeys. They came back and said "OK, we've looked at the 7 storeys above ground, what about the three below ground?" / "What 3 storeys below ground? There aren't any below ground".
librasteve 1 days ago [-]
I claim 1% commission if anyone on HN buys it
Hamuko 1 days ago [-]
Has the potential for an "EMP resistant server farm"? Is that a common thing that realtors need to find for their clients?
4 hours ago [-]
pupppet 1 days ago [-]
ChatGPT give me some bullet points for my listing
Terr_ 15 hours ago [-]
I'm no chalk-expert, but I'd question whether anything there is deep/shielded enough to qualify.
Even then, it might be far cheaper to build an "EMP resistant" structure aboveground.
YuccaGloriosa 24 hours ago [-]
Depends on how close you are to the nearest nuke factory
derpyzza 1 days ago [-]
i dunno but i certainly am more intrigued now
mindslight 1 days ago [-]
No, but it's the kind of narrative that will help bring an above market price by casting its uniqueness as a feature, rather than the default of being a liability for differing from a plain beige box </realtalk>.
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fusslo 1 days ago [-]
I, too, one day dream of using my children as labor for my underground tunnel system. To fight the ant, you must become the ant
I'm joking, but it's heartening to see quirky hobbies by qualified people (he was a civil engineer).
spyspy 1 days ago [-]
Homes need more whimsey. I recently discovered one of my interior doorways is actually a stone archway that someone had squared off, drywalled and installed a cheap hollow door for no apparent reason. Working with a stonemason to re-point/parge it and bring it back to glory. Will I ever see a return on this investment? Probably not but fuck it it'll make my house just that much cooler.
GJim 9 hours ago [-]
> I recently discovered one of my interior doorways is actually a stone archway that someone had squared off, drywalled and installed a cheap hollow door for no apparent reason.
£50 to a spat out smartie says that was done in the 1960's, when the fashion was for everything to look smooth and modern.
We had a home with marvelous 1830's wooden panneling that was hidden behind thin sheets of plywood (presumably in the 1960's) that had been nailed over it to provide a smooth look.
pseudohadamard 3 hours ago [-]
Look up Barry Bucknell, a.k.a. Bodger Bucknell, he's responsible for a lot of this stuff. He was a nice guy and meant well, but he also caused an awful lot of damage.
cucumber3732842 1 days ago [-]
Nobody can afford whimsey anymore because if you are doing anything invasive enough to involve permits then any sort of deviation from the "megacorp cookie cutter" aesthetic becomes a scrutinized liability.
cogman10 23 hours ago [-]
While I get that, it's not like there's not a number of safety concerns with an underground tunnel. Flooding and collapse come to mind as some of the biggest potential problems.
Unfortunately, whimsy and safety are often in conflict with one another.
ramesh31 24 hours ago [-]
>"it it'll make my house just that much cooler."
To you it will. To the next buyer it's a liability. In a world where paying off a mortgage was a possibility, this was fine. Now you're beholden to the median desires of the real estate market with every decision you make on your house.
robocat 21 hours ago [-]
There are two types of homes:
ⓐ: A financial asset where you landlord yourself, always worrying about the valuation by others. Think rectiliniar greige.
ⓑ: Your home, lived in and modified to your wants and whimseys. Often over or under capitalized.
The first home we buy is usually a financial instrument type ⓐ.
If you can buck your initial programming/conditioning, you can get ⓑ with effort and luck.
ramesh31 19 hours ago [-]
Indeed it depends where you're at on the ladder. First time home buyer hoping to move up lands squarely in A if you have any sense at all. The goal of course being B when you're in deep equity after decades.
randomNumber7 16 hours ago [-]
> being B when you're in deep equity after decades
For elderly people a big house can be a liability. It makes a lot of work and you don't need it once the children move out.
robocat 2 hours ago [-]
However your comment is confusing because you are replying to a sentence about ⓑ, but you're talking about ⓐ.
A big house is sold to people as an investment in future value (ⓐ).
More importantly a big house is often driven by a not-so-hidden desire to show off to others a massive status symbol (a tragic McMansion), and high status is also ⓐ.
Of course a big house can be ⓑ: but it is less common to see crazy money spent on large whims (assuming having enough wealth to be able to burn pointless dollars).
Sorry if I'm mansplaining - but I just don't understand why you'd say something so obvious, while implying something so disconnected.
A ⓑ house can have a high valuation. The thesis of the dichotomy is about intent, not about outcomes. And we often have mixed intents so it isn't as black&white as I stated it.
spyspy 21 hours ago [-]
How is the stone wall that's been holding up my house for over 100 years a liability? You know it's still there even when it's covered with drywall right?
hermitcrab 1 days ago [-]
If I had 6 children, I would probably take up tunnelling.
WithinReason 1 days ago [-]
The children yearn for the mines
looperhacks 1 days ago [-]
lowercase m. 15 meters, not 15 million tunnels :D
If you're interested in secret tunnels, check out Colin Furze on Youtube!
shagie 1 days ago [-]
Relatively secluded and private, Seymour Cray was also a tunneler... he wouldn't have been making videos about it
For Cray, the excavation project is more than a simple diversion. "I work when I'm at home," he recently told a visiting scientist. "I work for three hours, and then I get stumped, and I'm not making progress. So I quit, and I go and work in the tunnel. It takes me an hour or so to dig four inches and put in the 4-by-4s. Now, as you can see, I'm up in the Wisconsin woods, and there are elves in the woods. So when they see me leave, they come into my office and solve all the problems I'm having. Then I go back up and work some more."
> In psychology, incubation refers to the unconscious processing of problems, when they are set aside for a period of time, that may lead to insights. It was originally proposed by Graham Wallas in 1926 as one of his four stages of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.
> ...
> The experience of leaving a problem for a period of time and then finding that the difficulty evaporates on returning to the problem, or, even more striking, that the solution "comes out of the blue" when thinking about something else, is widespread. Many guides to effective thinking and problem solving advise the reader to set problems aside for a time.
Freak_NL 1 days ago [-]
I wasn't impressed by the 15 metres, but it turns out that is the maximum depth reached, not the length of a tunnel.
tecleandor 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, I though it was 15 meters of length, not that impressive... but it is 15m underground and '... 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms'.
mrwh 1 days ago [-]
It's very UK to give depth in metric and area in imperial
alexfoo 1 days ago [-]
Small areas in Imperial, then you move on to number of tennis courts, then number of football pitches, and then to fractions/multiples of Wales.
shagie 22 hours ago [-]
Just like with pints, a British football pitch is 1.3 times larger than the American one.
Honali 2 hours ago [-]
To be fair, 15 million tunnels would make the £300k asking price an absolute bargain
Hobadee 12 hours ago [-]
> check out Colin Furze
I'm waiting for his house to come up on auction in ~50 years or so when he eventually kicks the can. Will certainly be interesting to see how that auction goes, with the entire process being documented so well.
pseudohadamard 3 hours ago [-]
He won't kick the can, it'll be something involving a 25-metre trebuchet and rocket motors at the very least.
curiousObject 1 days ago [-]
not 15 million tunnels :D
That traditionally would be described as “a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”
wincy 1 days ago [-]
If you’re instead interested in a book about a house with 15 million tunnels, read House of Leaves!
wafflemaker 1 days ago [-]
This is a very scary horror, tho the book (like other books by the author) is published in a very quality way.
hidelooktropic 1 days ago [-]
Thank you. I definitely read this as million.
hommelix 23 hours ago [-]
> Thank you. I definitely read this as million.
A small letter `m` would be for milli, aka 10^-3, if it is suffixed by a unit. A `m` alone is the SI unit for length. A capital `M` is the prefix for Mega, aka 10^6.
Please use the normalized units. The starting price for this auction is 300 k£ or about 400 kUS$.
GJim 9 hours ago [-]
All too frequently we see references to milli bits of memory.
hypertexthero 24 hours ago [-]
And if interested in underground in general, I can recommend Underland by Robert Macfarlane.
Scubabear68 1 days ago [-]
I read it as 15 million tunnels too, was very confused. Thank you!
kzrdude 1 days ago [-]
I figured 15 meters tunnel is not worth mentioning, so had to be 15 miles.
foobarian 1 days ago [-]
That is still an impressive water table. I wish ours was that low :-)
choult 1 days ago [-]
It's on a hill, which helps :)
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
The most important comment on this article.
librasteve 1 days ago [-]
oops … sorry … now fixed
analog31 13 hours ago [-]
... or 15 milli-tunnels. -)
squirly 8 hours ago [-]
What is it with Brits and digging tunnelsystems underneath their houses? William Lyttle ("The Mole Man of Hackney"), "I'm just a man who loves to dig".
My grandfather had a kind of similar situation in Genk, Belgium where he bought a house and discovered a whole basement system that spanned a good part of the neighborhood.
gadders 8 hours ago [-]
There is a lady on TikTok based somewhere in America who is currently digging under her house [1] (old article)
She is a unique person. She knows tons about engineering, concreting etc but then just did a pivot into streaming e-girl.
In my teens I had enjoyed a book series "Tunnels" by Roderick Gordon & Brian Williams. The story cranks the mole fantasy up to 12 & surprise, surprise... it is set in some london downtown.
Anyone interested in this might also be interested in Kala on TikTok. She's been building a tunnel system under her house and documenting it for a couple of years.
I've been following her since the beginning. I'm really skeptical 4 years later whether or not it's real at this point because it feels like it's pretty dangerous and expensive and I find it hard to believe she got the permitting necessary to keep digging below the house like that. But I still follow her.
The weird part is her onlyfans-style alternate account which is kind of strange...
ghostbrainalpha 18 hours ago [-]
I don't know how close you have been following but she did get shut down.
And she had to do a lot to get it permitted and set back up.
profdevloper 18 hours ago [-]
"she"
orbital-decay 17 hours ago [-]
Makeup and fingernails with pickaxes and minecarts. Yeah I totally believe it... Even those experimental archaeology influencers with an excavator working between the cuts were more genuine than that.
salt-thrower 17 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't it be pretty easy to get made up for the short videos, but not be made up during 99% of the actual work?
I wouldn't be surprised if it's BS but I also don't think makeup and fingernails are the smoking gun.
orbital-decay 16 hours ago [-]
It would be pretty easy and also pretty unconvincing for anyone who did any manual labor in their life, let alone as backbreaking as mining with a pickaxe.
runako 1 days ago [-]
Researching what the article meant by "rocket" (I assumed it was a Britishism), I found this article that includes more pictures.
AOL has never done me dirty, asked for me to buy cloud data, auto deleted emails. Aim account still going strong for email
Honali 2 hours ago [-]
This isn't a house, it's a Bond villain's starter home
munksbeer 4 hours ago [-]
For a number of years I lived near "Mole House" in Hackney, London. The tunnels the guy dug there were ultimately illegal (no consent) and filled in. I wonder what the story for this house is, how he obtained permission to do this.
ZiiS 6 hours ago [-]
You can hide an entrance behind a bookcase because bookcases are common. If you stick a 23ft rocket on something you are not hiding it.
I wonder how much water ingress is an issue and what measures have been taken to prevent the tunnels filling with water? Perhaps something about the geology prevents it from happening, but I’d normally expected some sort of sump pump evening for a lot of cellars.
artisinal 1 days ago [-]
Freestanding house with a pool for 300k? That is incredibly cheap. Perhaps I should move there.
manarth 1 days ago [-]
Auction pricing.
It'll start out at £300k (to market it attractively) and end up selling for £500k+.
philjohn 6 hours ago [-]
Especially as it has planning permission for two dwellings - a 5 bed house where the pool currently is, and a three bed house where the workshop is located.
elcritch 5 hours ago [-]
Hopefully its not bought just to be turned into apartments and the tunnels sealed off with concrete.
aeyes 1 days ago [-]
Check the pictures, this doesn't look like a house to me. 2 levels of workshop areas and an office area.
Also the swimming pool is in the front yard, thats a weird one.
rlpb 18 hours ago [-]
As far as I can tell, the actual house is missing. This is the outbuildings and tunnels and associated non-dwelling rooms only, and planning permission exists to build a house on this land. I suspect you won't get planning permission to use what is there as a house, but instead are required to replace this with a house according to the approved plans.
Perhaps they split the previous house out into its own plot and sold it separately.
Swannie 12 hours ago [-]
Correct.
It looks quite clear that they have split/subdivided their plot. In Australia this would be called a battle-axe property. The listing talks about "land associated with 123 Street Address".
They are basically selling off the far back garden of the main house. A long thin access road, the pool, the glasshouse/conservatory, the workshop, the tunnels, and the planning permission.
bluGill 1 days ago [-]
UK money. Still that works out to about $400k in us dollars. You can find better deals in the US, but probably none with tunnels - and unlikely to be places you want to live though not bad places (bad places in the US that would be around $120k)
overfeed 21 hours ago [-]
> You can find better deals in the US, but probably none with tunnels
I once came across a middle-of-nowhere midwestern house auction listing by the US government. It came with a detached 5-vehicle garage, and an attached multistory underground hole I assumed was a missile silo. I can't remember the exact starting price, but it was significantly lower than $400k IIRC.
artisinal 19 hours ago [-]
I think you can find a freestanding house in former DDR for less than 300k but it will certainly not come with a pool! Maybe a mud puddle if you are lucky.
PaulDavisThe1st 13 hours ago [-]
I know people who bought an entire train station in the former DDR for less than 100EU ...
hermitcrab 1 days ago [-]
It does seem cheap for a house in Reading, even factoring in that it is a bungalow. Maybe they factored in increased subsidence risk?
yourusername 1 days ago [-]
There's a bunch of potentially unpermitted tunnels under the property. Quite the liability.
seanhunter 1 days ago [-]
How this works in the UK normally is when you're knee deep in the purchase process you have to get legal searches and a survey and the lawyers or surveyor will find the tunnels have no permissions and then you will not be able to borrow money to buy the property because no bank will lend when there is an adverse survey or there are legal questions associated.
You can get these types of things sorted (eg apply for retroactive planning permission) and the council will send a surveyor and give you an opinion but you are running the risk that they insist you either make it good (remedy anything they don't think was done right) or (worst case scenario) tell you to put it back like it was before the unpermitted work was done. This happens more often than people think.
That's why the house has been reduced in price so much - to find someone who feels like the headache is worth it. I have my doubts to be honest.
rlpb 18 hours ago [-]
Planning permission isn't required if what is there has been established for over ten years without objection. I suspect that's the case here.
However, I think you're right that no bank will lend. They expect only a cash buyer who can "regularise" it and sell it on at considerable expense. Hence the price.
Apparently they have planning permission approved already to build houses on this land.
cucumber3732842 1 days ago [-]
And if they were permitted you'd still have the liability. It's not like the permitting authority is gonna say "aw well we let you do it this is on us" if something happens.
"Real" liability of the "if something happens I'm on the hook" kind is not what's driving down the value here. What's driving down the value is that now that there's a bunch of pictures floating around the internet the tunnels are worthless because some government inspector could choose on a whim to force you to fill them in at your expense (which you would presumably fight, expensively, in court).
gib444 1 days ago [-]
Suspiciously cheap. There are no detached (what we call 'freestanding') properties on Right Move in the area under £400k. The cheapest is £450k
EDIT: oops, forgot to select the 'Bungalow' filter too (ugh). 2 properties: £375k and £350k (very small, 60m2). Still...nothing detached around £300k
EDIT2: ohh auction...230m2...yeh won't go for £300k, way more
artisinal 19 hours ago [-]
Germany uses freistehendes Haus, hence my use of "freestanding house".
Detached sounds funny, as if the house was previously attached to another but not anymore. Like how you can only be divorced or widowed after being married to someone.
1 days ago [-]
mayowaxcvi 8 hours ago [-]
It’s always fun finding these.
You have asbestos awareness, unknown utilities, and yeah some random person has just been digging tunnels…
Where does that go in the risk assessment?
That 15 meters underground, not 15 million tunnels.
rzzzt 1 days ago [-]
The title is "not even" clickbait, just very confusing.
"The unique complex contains more than 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms - and even a hand-built railway."
(Edit: I mean the original article, not the submission)
librasteve 1 days ago [-]
well I (the submitter) messed up and wrote 15M in the submission title (note the cap) in error just to add to the confusion (now fixed, soz.) … I thought “best” just to repeat the article title
rzzzt 1 days ago [-]
No worries, I take issue with the person who concocted the original title. I got here after the capital-M change and it was still confusing that they didn't mention the space that was dug out at this depth, instead paint a picture of a system of tunnels under a normal house(?)
dotancohen 1 days ago [-]
To add to the confusion, my nation is today fighting against an enemy which did on fact dig hundreds of kilometres of underground tunnels under homes.
librasteve 1 days ago [-]
sorry for the capital M … I have fixed in the title to 15m as in metres
that’s ~ 45 ft underground, I believe … perhaps not that impressive, but quite funny since I would hesitate to undermine my own house and surely this makes it worth less
whiterock 17 hours ago [-]
If anyone wants to see someone dig tunnels under their house I strongly suggest checking out Colin Furze on Youtube!
meindnoch 1 days ago [-]
Reminds me how rich people in historic areas of London took on the habit of extending their properties downwards, keeping the above-ground parts intact due to conservation laws.
That's because London is on clay. The Reading guy was mostly on chalk (and was himself an engineer). It sounds like the water table was a long way down as well. Soft clay or waterlogged sand are more like digging a hole in a bowl of custard. There are a lot of things that can go wrong - in the case of clay, even if you don't collapse the hole the clay can expand for years afterwards ("heave").
The map shows Reading does have some radon. Probably not at such a level most people do anything about it, but for a basement you'd definitely be better safe than sorry.
hermitcrab 1 days ago [-]
It is in some areas with a lot of granite, such as Cornwall. I'm not aware it is a factor in Reading.
wafflemaker 1 days ago [-]
Granite tends to contain Radon as it's in the decay chain of Uranium, which is often found in Granite.
jvanderbot 1 days ago [-]
It comes out of the ground. UK has some of that I think.
Tunnels and basements just trap it so it can't blow away.
louthy 1 days ago [-]
Very much so.
WalterBright 14 hours ago [-]
Although the claim was that chalk was self-supporting, I wouldn't be comfortable in those tunnels without shoring up the ceiling.
Havoc 19 hours ago [-]
>EMP resistant server farm
They sure know their target audience - online prepper crowd
Luc 1 days ago [-]
What are those dark brown cylinder shapes in the sides of the roughly hewn tunnel (first image on the right)?
zulux 1 days ago [-]
My hunch: Sound-deadening baffles.
sam0x17 9 hours ago [-]
I thought it meant 15 million underground tunnels
rzerowan 1 days ago [-]
Hm i dont know ,if they were MY tunnels i would be ok with them there.Someone elses tunnels just rub me the wrong way , like stepping in someone elses house with the furniture still there.
ModernMech 4 hours ago [-]
Anyone else seen “Barbarian”? Might have to start an Airbnb…
It is kinda nice to be copying based because it's highly reliable (against paywalls, blocking, IP bans, .onion services and other domain name thingies). It would be cool if there was some sort of reputation system. Obviously on top of the promise above.
Archive.today is great, except for the Google captcha. It's no small feat to run an archiving service especially against copyright law–the archive.today guy seems a bit crazy–I still have mad respect for him.
Something that the people who keep submitting these links get wrong, is on Hacker News you're supposed to submit the original link and then the archive / bypass in the comments. Hacker News is not against against Nongraph or something, most archive.today mirrors are also banned for post submissions.
aeve890 1 days ago [-]
15 meters deep underground in 4 levels, not just a 15 meters long tunnel.
WillAdams 1 days ago [-]
>1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms - and even a hand-built railway.
manarth 10 hours ago [-]
That hidden underground complex definitely has "growth" potential with "green" credentials
traxler 1 days ago [-]
This misses the most important question.
Why is it for sale?
conductr 1 days ago [-]
Says it’s vacant. Says guy started in the 80s. Going to deduce he is/was older and moving on for any number of normal reasons. Why is the reason so important?
b3lvedere 1 days ago [-]
Looking at the pictures, my best guess is that the maintenance has been an issue for some time.
1 days ago [-]
werdnapk 1 days ago [-]
So you just go digging under neighbours properties? What about underground infrastructure?
Sharlin 1 days ago [-]
I don’t think it extends beyond property limits.
1 days ago [-]
1 days ago [-]
spankibalt 5 hours ago [-]
Hopefully the next proprietor(s) doesn't indulge in some Fritzl type shit.
rendall 18 hours ago [-]
This is a link to the auctioneer page, which has all of the same information but is not pay walled.
15 meters is a tragedy. 15 million is a statistic.
contingencies 22 hours ago [-]
128sqm below ground level is merely similar to a relatively small apartment: not a lot of area. I think you could get more genuinely usable area from renovating a garage in many cases. That's partly because it's more likely to have fresh air, light, and both level and long item (eg. furniture) access. Not to mention ceiling height and structural stability.
hdgvhicv 9 hours ago [-]
128m is a large house
contingencies 8 hours ago [-]
Apologies. I am from Australia we have the largest houses in the world, or used to. Even bigger than the yankees, historically. These days you'd be lucky!
phendrenad2 1 days ago [-]
Some people really love tunnels. Personally I always wanted a house with two basements. Or maybe more. Probably inspired by the 2002 movie Resident Evil.
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
15m is… almost nothing?
wackget 21 hours ago [-]
By all means, show us the endless network of cavernous tunnels you've hand-dug under your own home, then.
gpjt 22 hours ago [-]
Depth, not length
dyauspitr 22 hours ago [-]
Ah that changes everything.
globular-toast 1 days ago [-]
15 metres? Given that your average two storey house is much less than 10m tall in total I wouldn't say 15m is "nothing".
dyauspitr 1 days ago [-]
I mean that’s a hallway not a “subterranean network”.
hdgvhicv 9 hours ago [-]
You have a 15m high hallway?
Simulacra 1 days ago [-]
It's got a lot of interesting qualities, but it looks like a dungeon… Not quite put the lotion in the basket type.. but close.
1 days ago [-]
andai 1 days ago [-]
The masculine urge to dig...
harvey9 1 days ago [-]
Fans of Wind Rose (the band) maybe?
dgrin91 1 days ago [-]
Maybe I missed it through all the ads, but it's pretty disappointing that there is no direct link to the listing?
thorin 1 days ago [-]
This is the listing. You can click through pictures of it all. The rocket entrance is amazing.
Ha I came to see if anyone had posted her. I love her Instagram, so much of it is the logistics of moving all the rock out and supplies in. Fascinating problems to solve on a small scale.
1 days ago [-]
librasteve 1 days ago [-]
oh yeah! tunnel merch
hermitcrab 1 days ago [-]
The online versions of local British Newspapers are almost unreadable now with all the chumbox ads and continual page repainting. Ugh.
tejohnso 1 days ago [-]
I didn't see a single ad. Why not use an ad blocker, or just use Brave?
467593457091 1 days ago [-]
[dead]
b800h 1 days ago [-]
Can't access this site - wants me to enable some form of tracking that my DNS doesn't allow. Alternate source?
I used to live in the inner city of Leipzig during my university days, and we had a door in the basement that led to wartime tunnels connecting it to other houses. It wasn't like a massive maze, just a hub with three other paths, each leading to another house nearby. From there, however, if they'd unlocked their doors, you could travel farther.
I was on a mission back then to befriend and convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors and get some kind of network going, but I didn't meet with much enthusiasm.
fwiw I just threw this in since many on HN probably don’t know much about Reading
red face
>many on HN probably don’t know much about Reading
Maybe it is better that way. ;0)
Edit: By the by I do intend to visit again at some point if only to see the DEC exhibition at the town museum (if that's still on) and perhaps swing by Sweeney's pie shop (if that's still open).
Oh, and now I see from a sibling comment that there was another bid in 2022! It gives me a twinge of national pride that British rules on City-hood are so weird!
Sweeney Todd is still open :)
Damnit.
"In the end, the 2022 contest saw Reading beaten to the post by Dunfermline, Bangor, Douglas, Doncaster, Wrexham, Colchester, and nearby Milton Keynes. "
https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/25782760.reading-not...
A lot of sources seem to cite Reading as 'England's largest town' but maybe that is by area, rather than population? Also depends on where you put the boundary.
That's where the problem lies. I spend too much of my life screaming into the void about UK addresses and what is and isn't a town :)
It's just about possible to create dataset of towns, cities, villages from mixing and matching and cutting up other geographies from the ONS (e.g. their Parished and Unparished data (though Unparished is its own nightmare), then the ONS Built-Up Areas dataset but... that one cuts out all the non-built parts so Milton Keynes is bunch of big blobs around the residential areas).
But if you frankenstein it, you lose all of the formal connections that define other links, and if you try to cheat via geospatial join, you will link police forces to areas they don't actually serve.
For Swindon, you're kinda stuck glueing together (going from memory here - please correct me if I'm off) the Parishes of Central Swindon, South Swindon and West Swindon. But these will overlap with some villages so it's not a true count.
And that's a natural moment to lead on to the next critical point: how're we measuring population? (I always get that Father Ted speech scene in my head thinking about this, start speaking - then twelve hours later "And now, we move on to liars")
The UK census seems as good a measure as any.
Agreed, and it's a reasonable first reach for residential counts.
Problem is, it was last taken during 2021 - at the height of covid - and their estimates have been paying the price of it even since. Anything that touches on workday or employment they actively warn you away from, nowadays.
But then there's the elephant in the room: what if you're looking at somewhere like the City of London (the square mile one) where residential population is somewhere between 8,500 and 9,000 people?
EDIT: it slipped by me!
There is no single UK-wide census. NRS do Scotland's, last in 2022. NISRA handle Northern Ireland's census, last in 2021. And the ONS for England and Wales, last in 2021.
The whole city status thing is a bit silly. It should definitely be based on more than population, but Milton Keynes getting it firmly established population is all it takes now.
https://znojmoregion.cz/cs/znojemske-podzemi-znojmo# (switch language to English)
Due to that, the Znojmo catacombs are always above the water table & there was never really issues with drainage. There are a couple natural springs and overflowing wells in the catacombs & they are drained by the so-called Jesuit aqueduct, that collects all the water and drains it into the moat of the city fortification system. Nowadays that part is also underground & it just flows in the the Dyje river.
So during an emergency, the could get rid of the sewage with the aqueduct outflow & store solid was in some sections not in use I guess.
> convince random neighbours across the street to open their access doors
Would definitely work with kids. if there were a bunch of 10yo kids there would definitely be an underground kids mischief network.
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...
It includes many more photos than the article, as well as floor plans for the subterranean areas
Admittedly you don't expect to see one in a random suburb.
There's a story, not sure how true it is, of a contractor being brought in to renovate a recently-vacated government office building of something like 7 storeys. They came back and said "OK, we've looked at the 7 storeys above ground, what about the three below ground?" / "What 3 storeys below ground? There aren't any below ground".
Even then, it might be far cheaper to build an "EMP resistant" structure aboveground.
I'm joking, but it's heartening to see quirky hobbies by qualified people (he was a civil engineer).
£50 to a spat out smartie says that was done in the 1960's, when the fashion was for everything to look smooth and modern.
We had a home with marvelous 1830's wooden panneling that was hidden behind thin sheets of plywood (presumably in the 1960's) that had been nailed over it to provide a smooth look.
Unfortunately, whimsy and safety are often in conflict with one another.
To you it will. To the next buyer it's a liability. In a world where paying off a mortgage was a possibility, this was fine. Now you're beholden to the median desires of the real estate market with every decision you make on your house.
ⓐ: A financial asset where you landlord yourself, always worrying about the valuation by others. Think rectiliniar greige.
ⓑ: Your home, lived in and modified to your wants and whimseys. Often over or under capitalized.
The first home we buy is usually a financial instrument type ⓐ.
If you can buck your initial programming/conditioning, you can get ⓑ with effort and luck.
For elderly people a big house can be a liability. It makes a lot of work and you don't need it once the children move out.
A big house is sold to people as an investment in future value (ⓐ).
More importantly a big house is often driven by a not-so-hidden desire to show off to others a massive status symbol (a tragic McMansion), and high status is also ⓐ.
Of course a big house can be ⓑ: but it is less common to see crazy money spent on large whims (assuming having enough wealth to be able to burn pointless dollars).
Sorry if I'm mansplaining - but I just don't understand why you'd say something so obvious, while implying something so disconnected.
A ⓑ house can have a high valuation. The thesis of the dichotomy is about intent, not about outcomes. And we often have mixed intents so it isn't as black&white as I stated it.
If you're interested in secret tunnels, check out Colin Furze on Youtube!
The story about him in Time at the time: https://web.archive.org/web/20080521163217/http://www.time.c...
And an article someone wrote later... https://michael-starobin.squarespace.com/blogcontent/digging...> In psychology, incubation refers to the unconscious processing of problems, when they are set aside for a period of time, that may lead to insights. It was originally proposed by Graham Wallas in 1926 as one of his four stages of the creative process: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification.
> ...
> The experience of leaving a problem for a period of time and then finding that the difficulty evaporates on returning to the problem, or, even more striking, that the solution "comes out of the blue" when thinking about something else, is widespread. Many guides to effective thinking and problem solving advise the reader to set problems aside for a time.
I'm waiting for his house to come up on auction in ~50 years or so when he eventually kicks the can. Will certainly be interesting to see how that auction goes, with the entire process being documented so well.
That traditionally would be described as “a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”
A small letter `m` would be for milli, aka 10^-3, if it is suffixed by a unit. A `m` alone is the SI unit for length. A capital `M` is the prefix for Mega, aka 10^6.
Please use the normalized units. The starting price for this auction is 300 k£ or about 400 kUS$.
My grandfather had a kind of similar situation in Genk, Belgium where he bought a house and discovered a whole basement system that spanned a good part of the neighborhood.
She is a unique person. She knows tons about engineering, concreting etc but then just did a pivot into streaming e-girl.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/lifestyle/tiktok-tunnel-gir...
https://www.tiktok.com/@engineer.everything?lang=en
The OG tunnel influencer is, of course, Colin Furze: https://www.youtube.com/@colinfurze
https://www.youtube.com/@Tornado_Dave/videos
The weird part is her onlyfans-style alternate account which is kind of strange...
And she had to do a lot to get it permitted and set back up.
I wouldn't be surprised if it's BS but I also don't think makeup and fingernails are the smoking gun.
https://www.aol.com/articles/unassuming-bungalow-hides-netwo...
[Looks at interior photos]
Ah. Anyway.
Curious how he got planning permission. Or if he got planning permission.
The answer lies in your first sentence:
> 300k in Tilehurst for a house with a pool is incredibly cheap.
The YouTube video is insane
https://youtu.be/_Vj6FZZc4SE?si=mnSwcELl-hPWRSft
It'll start out at £300k (to market it attractively) and end up selling for £500k+.
Perhaps they split the previous house out into its own plot and sold it separately.
It looks quite clear that they have split/subdivided their plot. In Australia this would be called a battle-axe property. The listing talks about "land associated with 123 Street Address".
They are basically selling off the far back garden of the main house. A long thin access road, the pool, the glasshouse/conservatory, the workshop, the tunnels, and the planning permission.
I once came across a middle-of-nowhere midwestern house auction listing by the US government. It came with a detached 5-vehicle garage, and an attached multistory underground hole I assumed was a missile silo. I can't remember the exact starting price, but it was significantly lower than $400k IIRC.
You can get these types of things sorted (eg apply for retroactive planning permission) and the council will send a surveyor and give you an opinion but you are running the risk that they insist you either make it good (remedy anything they don't think was done right) or (worst case scenario) tell you to put it back like it was before the unpermitted work was done. This happens more often than people think.
That's why the house has been reduced in price so much - to find someone who feels like the headache is worth it. I have my doubts to be honest.
However, I think you're right that no bank will lend. They expect only a cash buyer who can "regularise" it and sell it on at considerable expense. Hence the price.
Apparently they have planning permission approved already to build houses on this land.
"Real" liability of the "if something happens I'm on the hook" kind is not what's driving down the value here. What's driving down the value is that now that there's a bunch of pictures floating around the internet the tunnels are worthless because some government inspector could choose on a whim to force you to fill them in at your expense (which you would presumably fight, expensively, in court).
EDIT: oops, forgot to select the 'Bungalow' filter too (ugh). 2 properties: £375k and £350k (very small, 60m2). Still...nothing detached around £300k
EDIT2: ohh auction...230m2...yeh won't go for £300k, way more
Detached sounds funny, as if the house was previously attached to another but not anymore. Like how you can only be divorced or widowed after being married to someone.
"The unique complex contains more than 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms - and even a hand-built railway."
(Edit: I mean the original article, not the submission)
that’s ~ 45 ft underground, I believe … perhaps not that impressive, but quite funny since I would hesitate to undermine my own house and surely this makes it worth less
Then everyone acted surprised when entire streets started sinking, or whole buildings collapsed into the ground: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/03/london-stree...
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/93958275
The chalk bedrock in Reading isn't generally susceptible to radon.
UK radon mapping data: https://www.ukradon.org/information/ukmaps
Tunnels and basements just trap it so it can't blow away.
They sure know their target audience - online prepper crowd
It is kinda nice to be copying based because it's highly reliable (against paywalls, blocking, IP bans, .onion services and other domain name thingies). It would be cool if there was some sort of reputation system. Obviously on top of the promise above.
Archive.today is great, except for the Google captcha. It's no small feat to run an archiving service especially against copyright law–the archive.today guy seems a bit crazy–I still have mad respect for him.
Something that the people who keep submitting these links get wrong, is on Hacker News you're supposed to submit the original link and then the archive / bypass in the comments. Hacker News is not against against Nongraph or something, most archive.today mirrors are also banned for post submissions.
Why is it for sale?
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/news/going-under...
https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...