holding on to this
we recently visited the banbury and cheltenham direct railway built in three stages between 1855
and 1906 ultimately the line would demand free tunnels carving their way through the undulating
cotswold landscape whilst we filmed the abandoned stations along the line it became a fascination
to us of how they did this with only three tunnels we don't normally get a chance to get right inside
as we started our journey heading east to west passing the great pyramids of oxford we wondered
how much tunnel success we'd have today would we gain full access to these long forgotten
relics dug out by navi's 150 years ago who knows but whatever the outcome we try and give these
beautiful long forgotten structures some context and perhaps leave a little legacy behind for them
anyway first up was hook norton which houses nature reserves at either end
so the portals themselves are relatively easy to access approaching from the northern end first is
quite a beautiful landscape you join us as we may have explained uh looking for the northern portal
of hook norton tunnel which is the first of three tunnels on this line
and i will never ever be disappointed in the approaches to tunnels um this one i have not
really seen one like this before where it's all sort of masonry lined about five feet
up like a stone wall along the side beautiful it's not often it's this
clear on the way up to a tunnel either no i think it's going to get a bit messier
all this is part of a nature reserve of course but i don't think this side necessarily is
there's a rather hefty land slip up ahead which is probably a good 10 15 plus years old
because obviously it's recovered in vegetation vegetation trees
but um yeah that's a big slip and a half that is
the construction of the tunnel itself started in 1875 however its completion was a decade away
owing to financial constraints got some good shots in there the water looks great it's obviously
very well flooded the lining looks fantastic good state tunnel clearly we're onwards to the southern
entrance which is another uh nature reserve and then we're going to head down to chipping norton
you go outside i'm not sure i'm going to make it down the middle because i've never got
boots on all right well i'm going down the middle rebecca's going up the side riveting
youtube content as we approach the southern portal we know how to entertain you
sizable gap still in the whole metal fence and get some good picks from inside
very um boring in terms of design again perhaps that tells you about the lack of money
they had when they built it and again top bits up there very like the um the great central great
central was built after this wasn't that 1900 but nevertheless onwards to chipping norton tunnel now
on a slightly sunnier day we managed to get back to chipping norton to see what could be seen
at the 715 yard tunnel here the tunnel itself suffered the same delays as hook
The
tunnel length was originally designed at 484 yards long
an increase of 150 yards in design occurred in 1877 with a final change once again in an
act in 1883 bringing the overall planned length to what it is today at 715 yards
huge breeze coming through um you can adjust it with a naked eye you can just see the vent
the other end um heck of a lot of water be able to hear the water now pulling through the tub
this one's much rounder should we say six brick bricks thick not very ornate um and of course
you go through the tunnel here and you come out straight away in a chipping norton station
excuse me oh thank god so we're pretty sure that that's um the southern spoil here but say
something spoil him it's another small heap it's right there big old lump of earth um randomly just
randomly there it's quite big maybe it's too big and we're now walking down to the southern portal
uh we're assuming again because we're very close to the southern portal we're assuming
that what you're looking at now people is another spoiler heap
smaller one does that make sense because we're much lower down we're like 50 meters long
yeah so it's obviously all flattened itself out as well
right so what they used to do when they used to build tunnels is they didn't use the build up
often sorry they didn't often use to build the portal first
so they would do a shaft into the ground where the portal was going to be roughly
and one of the last things they did was open out the end the actual portal so we stood right
now here next to um this which is clearly i would suggest one of those spoil heaps so they probably
didn't open up the tunnel until the last minute and here they're dug into the ground at some
point around here it'd be capped off put all the spoil heat there and then only at the end would
they open up the portals so here we are now look looking at the uh seven entrance to the tunnel
okay we're not gonna have as much luck this end because it's completely underwater
um but we'll see how close we can get
i think it's quite cool if you can if you see a culvert
go and have a look at it and there's a culvert now already underneath this bit that's raised up
towards kingham so um we've got a tree to hold on to something it's going to wing it
i don't normally get a chance to get right inside a culvert like this because it's normally pretty
wet but this is dry as you like um it's beautifully inverted all along the bottom
blue brick blue engineering brick as so many people have pointed out to us which is very kind
what treat this is
so we headed east once again for the final tunnel of the day already in mind that this was not an
easy tunnel to access or visit the eastern end is completely off limits as it lies in a very grand
estate the western end however is reputed to be just off the a44 a long search online brings up no
photos inside the tunnel so we weren't sure what to expect as we approached the eastern portal that
became apparent so worst case we might get nothing from this tunnel so let's go and have a look
the tunnel itself is only 384 yards long
a quick look at the old maps and therefore the alignment it certainly seems to be very straight
we found that there was this smallest of openings at the bottom here
perhaps enough to get a camera inside however we were then met with yet another barrier this time
one that would suck all the light from any camera so we stuck the gopro in and moved it around a
little to try and get the best lighting and the best image the results unfortunately weren't
great in some ways we were pleased we'd managed to get the camera in this tiny gap at the bottom
but also a little bit disappointed that you could really only see the light from the gaps above
not even a glimmer from the eastern portal giving us a chance of a view of this structure inside
thank you so much for watching our snippet of a tunnel video wasn't the most successful in terms
of getting inside the tunnels but sometimes that's just the way it goes and uh our job therefore at
the very least is to try and get to the portals and get some good snaps and such we do have a lot
planned however um where we have been successful coming up in the very near future so stay tuned
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