Welcome to episode 137 of the London History Podcast, where we
share the stories of people, places, and events that have
shaped our capital. I am Hazel Baker, CEO of London
guidedwalks.co.uk. Today we are travelling beneath
the surface, quite literally, into a story of extraordinary
ambition, innovation and engineering genius.
Imagine Victorian London, the River Thames teeming with ships,
and beneath it, a bold and unprecedented idea to dig the
world's first tunnel under a river.
This was no fantasy, but the work of a remarkable father and
son team, Mark Isimbard Brunel and his son Isimbard Kingdom
Brunel. Our guest today is Catherine
McAlpine and she's the director of the Brunel Museum, which
stands on the very site where this groundbreaking project took
shape. Many know that Isabel Kingdom
Brunel was voted the second greatest Britain of all time in
2006, just behind Winston Churchill.
But fewer realised that his father, Mark Brunel, the true
architect of the Thames Tunnel, was French.
Forced to flee his homeland during the Revolution, he made
his way to New York before ultimately finding fame and
fortune here in Britain. Will return to that remarkable
journey in a moment. Catherine, welcome.
It's a real pleasure to have you with us.
Thanks. For having me, I'm excited to be
here. Now we've got a lot of things
that we need to cover today to absolutely jam pack it in, but
with focus on 1st. I think the Thames Tunnel in
itself, some people may have never even heard of it.
So what is it? So the Thames Tunnel was the
very first tunnel under a river anywhere in the world and we
take for granted now taking if you live in London, you're used
to ping ponging from north-south under the river using the
Underground. But actually 200 years ago in
1825, that was a complete novelty.
People have tried to dig under the Thames to connect North and
South and had failed. Unfortunately it hadn't worked.
So that's why the 10 panelists exciting and important because
it was the world's first and we we take it for granted now.
But actually there was no guarantee of success in 1825
that this tunnel would succeed, let alone it surviving 200 years
later. Amazing, how long is the tunnel?
Oh, it's not very long at all in terms of distance, in terms of
time. And to construct it, it took
them 18 years, which was quite significantly longer than the
three years that they had estimated because with no one
having done it before, they sort of, you know, it was a great
sort of finger in the air. Yeah.
Three years, yeah, but ended up taking 18 to build and.
Why did they choose that particular location then from
Wapping to rather Hive? What was in it there?
Couple of reasons. One of the really important
reasons is to do with the original purpose of the tunnel,
which was to carry cargo from one side of the river to the
other. Rather high than whopping at
that time was really important, kind of dot, lots of cargo
coming in from across the world across the Empire coming into
London, which was a huge port city and the only way at that
point of crossing from north to South, the furthest east was
London Bridge. There were plenty of bridges
further up the river to the West, but the most easterly
bridge was London Bridge. It would take a really long time
to get through traffic and nothing ever changes but to take
things by load over the bridge, who could be a long time.
And if you couldn't move your cargo, you had to run the ship
through in the warehouses, which meant that it's much more to be
susceptible to high risky and. Shrinkage.
I think we call. It it's shrinking sprinkles
exactly that that fantastic. So that was a real issue with
sort of trying to get cargo from one side to put it in the dark,
make it as convenient as possible.
The other reason is geology. And so one of the things that
was really clever about the way that Mark Brunel designed the
digging of the tunnel was he used the soft earth rocket hive
to his advantage. They thunk and shaft into the
ground and instead of digging, they built it onto the ground
and let it think. So having that sort of accurate
geology meant that they could supposedly meant that it would
be easier to dig this tunnel. So the location was one reason
and then the sort of geology the other.
And of course, this is going to be saving a lot of money, let
alone the shrinkage. But of course, keeping anything
in a warehouse rather than getting that product to market,
it's going to cost money by just sitting there.
So moving it as soon as you can was an advantage, which means
they are saving money. So who was putting in the money
to build this tunnel? So it was definitely intended as
a commercial enterprise. It was meant to be this sort of
toll tolled Rd. between the sort of the dock that you could move
your cargo and you'd get lots of income from that.
So lots of people saw the value of this from when Mark Brunel
patented this cunning shield in 1818.
In 1824, he gave a lecture to the Institute of Civil Engineers
about this fantastic idea that he's had, and he got all these
sorts of entrepreneurs, prime individuals, to invest in what
became the Thames Tunnel Company.
So that's how they got their original funding.
But unfortunately, because it was the first time they'd ever
done it, it was not the most kind of plain sailing
enterprise. It was really quite challenging
and they kept running out of money.
So they kept having to go back to the investors, getting new
investors, getting more people in.
They sold paper peak shows in order to generate income.
They'd bring visitors to look at the tunnelling constructions,
try and raise some of that money.
And actually at a point they they just completely ran out of
money. I had to block up the tunnel.
They're to stop construction. Construction stopped for about
the 7-8 years at that point. Mark Brunel spent years
petitioning, campaigning, writing letters.
So anyone who would listen to say we need to finish this
tunnel, we need to absolutely finish this tunnel.
And then the Duke of Wellington eventually got involved and
actually it was support from the government meant that they could
finally finish the project. So yeah, it had a, even though
it was intended to be a sort of commercial project, it was
really quite financially challenging the whole time of
it, the whole 18 years of its construction.
So what inspired Mark Brunel to undertake such an ambitious
engineering project anyway? There was a real kind of
commercial reason for wanting to dig, dig this tunnel to connect
up the docks on either side of the river.
That was really important, and it made a lot of sense at that
time. The thing that really made his
project a success where others had failed was the tunnelling
shield that he'd patented in 1818.
And it was a way of protecting both the miners, the people
doing the tunneling, but also protecting the tunnel itself as
construction was happening. And the inspiration for that
came from something called a shipworm, the humble Teredo
Navales, which is not a worm at all, in fact it's a mollusk.
But Mark Brunel, before he came to London, was in Portsmouth.
He was part of the Royal Navy and he saw first hand the kind
of havoc that these sort of tiny mollusks would wrought on all
the Royal Navy ships. So they would they'd dig hole
using, using the kind of shells at the top of their heads to dig
these holes in the Timbers of ship.
But the really clever thing that they do is they then create a
protective casing around themselves.
And that was the thing that previous attempts to dig a
tunnel under a river had failed because there wasn't this sort
of protective casing. So when Mark passages his
tunneling Shields, it had this kind of wooden cover for miners
to protect them for any kind of collapse from the soft earth.
But behind them you'd have these brick layers come in and then
they would line the tunnel with bricks, which meant it could
withstand the pressure from sort of the water and the geology
above. So that was being inspired by
nature is one of the great elements of the Thames Tunnel
story. So his focus wasn't on really
the the tunnelling as it were, because if we think of within
working in the Navy and reinventing that block making
system, his is actually the fixing a problem that no one
else could. They could do the bit of the
tunnelling, but it was the collapsing which they need some
help with. You have a model in the Museum
of this shield. Can you tell us a little bit
more about it please? It was made-up of 36 cells is
what they were called. They're all, all about the size
of a man. There were no women, as far as
we know, involved in the construction of the Thames
Tunnel, but you had sort of 12 cells along, so 12 men along and
three levels, so bottom, middle and top.
And each, each miner in front of them had a series of polling
boards, so just wooden panels. And they'd remove each wooden
panel, dig behind it by hand. This is all being done by hand
tools. There's no machinery.
And all 36 of them would dig the width of a brick.
And once they dug, they'd return the polling board, do the same
with the next polling board. And by the time the whole thing
had gone, they dug out the width of this brick.
The whole thing would move forward on a sort of series of
kind of cranks and screws and then the brick layers would come
in and do their level. So it's really painstaking work
that they do. And yeah, if for the poor miners
on the bottom, they're standing in Thames Water, which isn't
that lovely to stand in now, but at this time it was, this is pre
Basil Jet. This is, it's a, the Thames is
an open sewer. But they were provided with
boots by the Thames Tunnel Company.
So that would that would help them.
The only thing is they did have to share those boots with all of
the other miners, so you come into work and have to get into
someone's stinky wet. Boots, I couldn't do that.
Oh yeah, it's it's 100 times worse than bowling shoes.
It's horrible. So these miners literally at the
mud face, are these experienced miners?
Are they nabbies? What's their skill set?
So we think that they're sort of the miners and the tunnelers at
the mud face. I really like that.
I'm stealing that. I'm going to use that.
They were experienced miners from places like Somerset and
they were employed for their skill in this work at the brick
layers. I think were the most skilled
employees. And then they were the ones that
tried to go on strike because they weren't big paid enough.
But you also had but lots of these, lots of labourers moving
the spoil. So you had a bit of a sort of
hierarchy, lots of different jobs, more, some more skilled,
some less skilled. When you're talking about
skilled labour, did they have a little shanty town where all the
workers live together? A lot of them lived quite lived
locally. So the way that the kind of
shift pattern works was the shield was always, it was always
an operation, it was always going.
So you have sort of eight hours on, 8 hours off.
So you would finish your shift and then another miner would
come and replace you and then you'd swap that way.
One of the things about the Brunels that some of the workers
certainly appeared to appreciate is that they were very hands on
employers. Isn't Bard King de Brunel.
He was only 19 when the project started and he we've been
talking about, you see the original sort of nepo baby
because it was his dad got him the job and he then went on to
be this incredible civil engineers.
But he's really learned his craft under his dad on the
Thames Tunnel project. But he was, he was really, as
far as we know, quite liked and quite well respected by a lot of
the workers, not necessarily all of them because he was really
hands on. He was a bit of a workaholic
even then in the early days of his career.
He'd sleep in the tunnel sometime.
He just, he was like, I need to be back here in a couple of
hours to check, so I'll just stay here.
So yeah, it was a real, it was like a sort of mini town.
There were all these sorts of industries around the blacksmith
forges, people making bricks, lots of things happening.
It was very industrial and bustly.
And if you come to the museum where the Thames Tunnel is, it's
not like that today. It's like this sort of sleepy
hidden London village. It's very quiet.
But 200 years ago, it would not have been like that.
You've had, you've had people shouting, swearing.
Probably half of them were drunk.
They were given only. Yeah, the other half were
asleep, presumably. But they, they were given
whiskey as part of their sort of, presumably because the
conditions were so hard. And it was, this is how you get
people into work when it's such a kind of tough, challenging
job. Yeah.
It's really interesting what you're saying about how some of
the work has really appreciated IK being hands on because I was
reading his obituary in the Engineer magazine and it was
very picky saying he got too involved and too hands on.
But of course written by people who wouldn't even think of being
hands on. So you've got to keep the
workers happy. If you think 8 hour shift that
is gruelling with the amount of stuff you're having to step
through and work in. What about the air quality as
well? Yeah, the air quality was not
great. So if you think about it, the
air's only coming from this sort of from this kind of shaft on
the southern, on the Rotherhide side of the river.
That's where your kind of air is coming in from.
And the further under the Thames you go, the less good that air
quality becomes. Add to that the fact that you're
stepping in Thames Water, which is basically human waste.
And then also the other challenge that they had is as
they were digging, they'd occasionally encounter sort of
pockets of methane or other gases.
And bearing in mind that this is entirely lit by gas lamp, that
explosions were not uncommon. There were also times they'd
encounter, I think certainly I think it was sulfuric acid.
It was certainly an acid. And we've got reports of people
suffering from what was known as tunnel blindness, usually
temporarily but sometimes not. So it's really not a this is
Victorian health and safety at its best in in that it's
completely non existent. And what were the Brunel's
feelings? Thoughts on the kind of human
cost? So that's, that's a really
interesting question. Both Mark and Isenbard were
worked very hard. They were very quite driven,
quite motivated people. And we have a there's an entry
in Mark Brunel's diary from sort of Christmas one year quite
early on in the project where he's I can't believe that they
want Christmas off. I can't believe that they don't
want. So he comes across as a real
propest group, like a real sort of similarly was it's quite well
documented. He was, he works incredibly hard
ideas, modern ideas like self-care, very much not, not
something that he would recognize.
But actually when the workers went on strike, this was a week
into Isabad being resident engineer.
So he's just been given his first pickle job by your dad.
And then he's told, oh, now you've got to go and break this
strike, which he does because that's his job and that's what
he's been told to do. But in his sort of personal
diary he write, I don't really understand why these people
shouldn't be getting properly paid.
They should be compensated for their work.
So it's quite interesting that kind of public, private persona
as well. So yeah, they're quite, they
were very involved certainly both Brunel's in the kind of
day-to-day. But yeah, their attitude
probably differed in the way that they responded to the
people around them and. What about the public perception
then with this tunnel evolving and they must have been seeing
adverts to invest et cetera? So I think like anything new and
different and a bit novel and that there's an equal mix of
kind of fascination and frightening.
And I think people really saw that they, we've got reports of
the local vicar in his weekly sermon after one of the floods
saying that's what you get, but for digging towards the devil.
And that there was this real sense that hell was down there,
why are you going down there? And so some people really were
quite frightened by it. I thought it was really a bit
beyond the pale. And other people were just
completely fascinated. So that we've got some, we've
got some amazing accounts of people coming to visit the
Thames Tunnel because it was one of the ways that they generated
income for the project. Mark Brunel didn't like it.
He was worried. Interestingly, he was worried
about the safety of the visitors.
He thought this is quite a risky project.
I don't think we should be just letting you know, civilian down
here. But the the actress Fanny
Campbell came to visit and she was absolutely fascinated by by
the engineering that was taking place.
And another person that your listers might have heard of is
Anne Lister. Gentleman Jack from the TV
series tried to bring a date to the Thames Tunnel and the date
wasn't keen. I think the date never turned up
but analyst that went on her own and has written about the the
fascinating engineering that was happening.
So there were lots of people who were really quite swept up in in
this exciting project. And are there any particular
artifacts or maybe stories in the museum that you feel really
capture that spirit or drama of the Thames Tunnel project?
So I think we've got some fantastic, we've got some
fantastic kind of works on paper.
And one of the things that isn't on display yet, but will be is a
this sort of beautiful cardboard model.
It's handmade and it shows the tunnel in progress.
It shows the tunneling shield, complete with little, absolutely
tiny. It's about centimeter and a half
miners and brick layers. And they're paper.
They're absolutely, they're so delicate.
And the one we have in our collection was Mark Brunell's.
But these were made and sold. There was a little guide book
that went with them that is on display in the museum and they
were sold to raise money for the project.
They were, oh, look, we've made this lovely shiny the way that
you might get a brochure now if you're thinking about investing
in something instead, in the 1820s, you'd get this sort of
beautiful little paper model. And I just think that sort of
captures. But it's also this sort of
stylized view of what it was like that doesn't really capture
the sort of grim reality. And I suppose that's one thing
that all of the sort of images you get because of who produced
them show this kind of relatively sanitized view.
But we do have some amazing sketches as well that sort of
show the tunnel after the floods that sort of give you a sense of
some of the sort of danger that they were dealing with.
And how did the opening of this tunnel, if you've got this
little shanty town, how did that turn and also wider area of
London affect once the this tunnel was finally open?
So I think the important thing with the sort of tunnel finally
being open after after 18 years of construction and digging,
unfortunately, even though it was always intended to be this
kind of cargo tunnel to take horses and carts with cargo from
one side of the river to the other.
In order to facilitate that, they needed to build what they
referred to as the grand descent safts like we've got on the
North and South side at the moment, but much bigger, which
would have given you a much sort of a greater diameter for horse
and carts to go down. By the time they'd finished the
project 18 years later, there was neither the sort of finance
available. That's the the lenders.
The investors were just like, no, we're not giving you any
more money towards this project. It's already taken enough of my
money and they there wasn't enough money to purchase the
land to do those grander cents. But even if they had the money,
the land had actually been sold. Don't ask me why they didn't at
the beginning of the project, go, we need that land, let's buy
it now. That was characteristic of the
business decisions that they were making at that time.
So because they didn't build those descents, which meant that
they could move cargo. When it opened in 1843, the
Thames Tunnel opened as a pedestrian foot tunnel.
So not the cargo tunnel it was meant to be.
You paid a penny to go through it, which is much less than the
sort of cargo tolls that they've been anticipating.
So they needed to generate revenue some other way.
So it opened huge fanfare in 1843.
It was really exciting. People had been waiting for this
thing hugely popular, but actually they needed, they
needed other ways of generating income.
So it became this underwater shopping arcade that sort of you
had people buying and selling wares.
It became this just huge tourist attraction was really popular.
And what about special events then?
What was happening to get people down there?
The one of the other things that they did in order to make money
and recoup these costs where they ran things for fancy fares.
So they would have these sort of big extravaganza type events
with all sorts of Victorian entertainment, including I think
my there's two that are favourites for me.
One is electricity. That was, see that was such a
novelty at this point that was put on one of the posters as
something to come and see. And a woman, someone called the
Mysterious Lady and she was a sort of mind reader type act.
So she was a sort of proto Derren Brown in the Victorian
era. So all sorts of interesting,
interesting sort of Victorian entertainment you come and see
in the tunnel. And what kind of inspiration did
people take from this tunnel then?
Did it have a knock on effect elsewhere in other engineering
projects? In terms of tunnelling, one of
the things that we get asked at the museum is are you the
Rotherhithe Tunnel? And we have to explain that the
Thames Tunnel is now part of the Windrush line.
It's actually part of the Overground network and the
Rotherhithe Tunnel came later and is the road tunnel.
But what I think is really interesting about the different
tunnel under the Thames, particularly in London, is they
they took another generation for people to be ready to try to dig
another tunnel onto the Thames. So there's quite a good chunk of
time between the Thames Tunnel being started and finished and
then people looking at the rather high tunnel, the
Greenwich Foot tunnel, the Blackwall Tunnel, they were all
completed within about 15 years of each other.
But it took a good sort of 50 years between the Thames Tunnel
being completed to someone going, OK, I think we, I think
we're ready for this again, because it was my take on it is
that it was such a sort of undertaking and a bit of an
ordeal that it took a long time for the next generation of
tunnels to be dug. Today all tunneling projects
have this that their foundation was laid by Mark Brunel 200
years ago. So the tunnel boring machines
that made Crossrail possible, that are making HS2 possible,
that made the Channel Tunnel possible, that's all a sort of
modern version of Mark Brunel's tunneling shield.
That's a really nice way to to put it.
I remember reading a bit of a stat on a press release that we
in Britain are leading the tunnelling engineering world and
we have the only apprenticeships who tunnelling on offer.
Go us. There you go.
It's good. It's very important.
We would, if you, I hope that your listeners are after this
thinking, start to notice actually when they go under the
river a little bit more and actually there's sort of
engineering that goes into that. Actually, that's a really good
point. So you're talking about a
Victorian tunnel, which how many trains on the Overground go
through it a day? What about any restoration or
anything that's been going on? Or are we really on borrowed
time? Yeah, I think it is the sort of
last part of the story. So I always think of the sort of
10% of stories being so 3 chunks really.
They're the construction. 1820s to 1843.
There's it sort of shopping arcade and fantasy fairs kind of
time sort of 1843 to the late 1860s.
And then in the 1860s it was sold to the London Metropolitan
Railway. It's got a second light as a
train tunnel. This is this is in the very
early days of the London Underground and steam trains.
And so it was sold to the Metropolitan Railway.
It became the East London Line, which kind of ran from
Whitechapel to New Cross. So it's not a very long line.
And then in 2011 when the East London Line became part of the
Overground, it all connected up and there's and it's now always
the kind of Windrush on me. And I think something like
60,000 people go through it every single day, which is just
a phenomenal amount in terms of restoration in the 1990s.
It was only in the 1990s, sorry, I state that it the tunnel
itself was recognized as a sort of historically important
feature that it's been, it had trains running through it for
over 100 years by that point. But no one has really given it
much thought. And there were plans to put
shotcrete kind of concrete type material over the tunnel, over
Mark Brunel's fantastic tunnel. And it was only at, I think the
engineers were due on site at sort of 8:00 AM on the Monday
morning. And last thing on the Friday,
the minister for Heritage signed a letter saying please don't put
any shotcrete on Mark Brunel's tunnel.
So I think it is shotcreted under the Thames in the section
actually under the water. But the sections of the original
tunnel on the sort of whopping and rather hide side are
protective and you can if you stand up whopping.
If you stand on the platform whopping and look back towards
rather Hive, you can just about see the double arch of Marc
Brunel's original tunnel. I tell you what gave me
goosebumps for 60,000 people a day going through the tunnel and
one of them could be listening to this podcast.
They might be on it now listening to it now.
That would be amazing. If you are, just pop out on
Brother Hype and come and say hi to her.
Well, there you go. What aspect of the tunnel's
history fascinates you most? I just love that it's this story
of adaptability and kind of perseverance and continuing
against all odds because it was such a talented project.
And then it took so much longer than they thought it would and
but they completed it and they managed to make something really
amazing. And unfortunately, both, both
Mark and isn't bad died before before the tunnel was sold to
the railways. They never saw it.
Kind of Second Life, there's a railway tunnel and I wonder how
they would think 200 years later after they started construction
that, oh, it's being used by 60,000 people every single day.
This tunnel has survived and as it's adapted and it's become
something else that's really genuinely useful.
And that's what I sort of love when people come into the museum
and they we ask them how they got there and they're like, oh,
I just got on the Windrush line and from, from white Tupperware,
I'm like, you've been through the tunnel.
You've already been through this fantastic tunnel and now find
out about how it got there. So that's for me, I think is the
story that I think is just so interesting about it.
And what about a particular object or that really tells the
most powerful story? What is the to see other than
the the shield model which I think is absolutely fantastic?
Yeah, I love all the stuff to do with the construction.
I love all the sort of drawings and the models, but I think what
I also think is just so fantastic are these paper peep
shows. And we've got one in our, one in
our collection that and these are things that were sold to
raise money for the construction itself and gave this idea of
what it was meant to look like. And we've got this absolutely
brilliant one, which is quite rare because it's a double
layered Peep Show and the top layer shows you the river.
So it's showing you people on boats and some sort of ships,
but then underneath you can see the tunnel itself.
You can see the people walking through, having their
conversations. And I just, I love that it gives
you the full context of where the tunnel is, that it is under
the river. And sometimes you forget that,
But just, yeah, the amount of kind of energy and effort and
engineering that has to go into taking something for granted.
I think it's quite lovely actually.
Your team are very busy at the moment with the creation of a
brand new exhibit opening on the 12th of September.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
Yeah, absolutely. But we're really excited about
this because we wanted to ask the question about how does Mark
Grinnell, born and raised in front, has to leave, which is
the French Revolution end up digging a tunnel in rather highs
in southeast London? How do you get from Rouen in
Normandy to southeast London? And I think that I think that's
such an interesting kind of premise.
And it means that we get to put on display some of our most kind
of beautiful objects. And one of those objects which
absolutely love is a pair of shoe buckles and a silver with
jewels on. And they belonged to Mark
Brunel. And I think they just give such
an indication of his kind of personality and his character
that this man who built this tunnel and this this really
gritty engineering project loved a shiny shoe buckle.
And it also really speaks to his political affiliations because
he was a royalist. It's one of the reasons why he
had to leave France during the revolution.
And the shoe buckles were a sort of sign of his political
affiliation. And I and the fact that we have
those and these tiny little objects can tell such a big
story. I think it's just brilliant.
I'm really excited to share those with with our visitors.
Oh fantastic. You have very kindly shared us
some photos which we will be putting on the show notes in the
video and of course on the transcript page of the website
anyway. But of course, you can go and
see these super shiny buckles with some really wonderful some
of the oldest artifacts in the museum's collection in this
exhibition, which is 12th of September to 15th of December
2025. We've also got some films that
we can enjoy. Yes, we're also doing a series
of film screenings all about the French Revolution.
So we've got Dangerous Liaisons, we've bought, we've got Marie
Antoinette and Napoleon. So that's four weeks, Timber
October every Wednesday. And the brilliant thing about
that is we are screening them in our tunnel shop.
So the big structure that was sunk into the ground that made
the whole thing possible is now our major event space.
And you can come there and you can watch Marie Antoinette or
Napoleon and understand just that amazing story of how did
all these these events happening in a different country end up
with kind of the world's first underwater tunnel in southeast
London. And hopefully you're going to
tell that the love story between Mark and Sophia.
Oh, absolutely, yes. So actually we will be doing
some Valentine's Day events in 2026, all about the love story
between Mark and Sophia. I think that's a whole other
podcast their love. Story, I'm up for that.
All right, Catherine, thank you so much for joining us today.
It just shows you, doesn't it, how important the tennis tunnel
is and we don't really think about it, we just use it.
Exactly. And if any of you lovely
listeners would like to visit the Brunel Museum, then we have
a treat for you. Catherine has kindly set up a
super special discount code where you can use that when you
book your tickets online and get 50% off museum tickets.
Simply go to their website thebrunelmuseum.com and click on
Book Tickets and then enter this super secret code.
Are you ready? LDNHI ST25LD NHIS T25.
I'll put it in the show notes too.
That's all for now, until next time.