Monks Ferry Tunnel - Birkenhead

Having completed all the disused railway tunnels in Liverpool (if you count stepping foot in Dingle only to be removed by the angry owner), I set my sights across the Mersey to Birkenhead.

There are three disused tunnels in Birkenhead, and we managed to explore them all in one afternoon, thanks to it being the height of summer and the tunnels all being close to each other.

On our approach to Monks Ferry, we found ourselves wandering around some overgrown wasteland, looking for signs of a portal. A couple of dodgy looking characters were approaching, but they seemed to be heading somewhere with intent and didn’t give us a second glance.

Spotting black ironwork among the overgrown foliage, we managed to track down the portal, and to our surprise, the door that had stopped Gronk’s visit last year was resting in a nearby bush.

Monks Ferry is the shortest of the three and seems to have debris covering the floor, raising the level quite substantially, so high in fact that we noticed the top of a former refuge point visible, suggesting the build-up of debris is at least 2 meters.

Towards the end, the floor level drops, and it begins to resemble what a railway tunnel usually looks like, with its large, wide open void gathering dust and moisture in the air. The northern portal has been bricked up, and an old metal ladder at the end leads to a manhole cover, which looks as though engineers have repurposed a former air shaft for an easy access point.

History

“The Monks Ferry Tunnel in Birkenhead was opened in 1844 by the Chester & Birkenhead Railway to link the Grange Lane terminus with a new riverside station at Monks Ferry, providing direct connections to ferries across the Mersey. The single-track tunnel, about 371 yards long, was cut through soft soil and sandstone and lined with brick and stone. At its riverside end, Monks Ferry Station opened on 23 October 1844 with platforms, waiting rooms, goods sidings, and even a spur to the Cammell Laird shipyard. Growing traffic demands led to the construction of Birkenhead Woodside Station, which opened in 1878, shifting passenger services away from Monks Ferry and leaving the tunnel largely for goods trains. It remained in good use until 1961, with the tracks lifted by the late 1960s, after which the tunnel was sealed. Today, though partly infilled and inaccessible, the Monks Ferry Tunnel survives as a hidden relic of Birkenhead’s early railway and ferry infrastructure”.