<i>One room even features a secret entrance — hidden inside a rocket by the pool.</i> — Ey — pshhh! :-)<p>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.<p>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.
Reading (the largest town in the UK btw) has other tunnels … for example <a href="https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/14492484.sneak-a-peak-at-the-emmer-green-chalk-mines/" rel="nofollow">https://www.readingchronicle.co.uk/news/14492484.sneak-a-pea...</a> and there is a rumour of secret escape tunnels from the (medieval) abbey.
Underground <i>kiez</i> would kill in Berlin
The listing of the property on the auction site:<p><a href="https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/202609101558sq_zlg8-281026/for-auction-reading" rel="nofollow">https://www.btgeddisonspropertyauctions.com/properties/20260...</a><p>It includes many more photos than the article, as well as floor plans for the subterranean areas
I claim 1% commission if anyone on HN buys it
Has the potential for an "EMP resistant server farm"? Is that a common thing that realtors need to find for their clients?
it seems as though it hath been hugged to death
lowercase m. 15 meters, not 15 million tunnels :D<p>If you're interested in secret tunnels, check out Colin Furze on Youtube!
Relatively secluded and private, Seymour Cray was also a tunneler... he wouldn't have been making videos about it<p>The story about him in Time at the time: <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080521163217/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967095,00.html" rel="nofollow">https://web.archive.org/web/20080521163217/http://www.time.c...</a><p><pre><code> 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."
</code></pre>
And an article someone wrote later... <a href="https://michael-starobin.squarespace.com/blogcontent/digging-in-seymours-cave" rel="nofollow">https://michael-starobin.squarespace.com/blogcontent/digging...</a>
I wasn't impressed by the 15 metres, but it turns out that is the maximum depth reached, not the length of a tunnel.
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'.
<i>not 15 million tunnels :D</i><p>That traditionally would be described as “a maze of twisty little passages, all alike”
Thank you. I definitely read this as million.
If you’re instead interested in a book about a house with 15 million tunnels, read House of Leaves!
I read it as 15 million tunnels too, was very confused. Thank you!
The most important comment on this article.
That is still an impressive water table. I wish ours was that low :-)
oops … sorry … now fixed
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<p>I'm joking, but it's heartening to see quirky hobbies by qualified people (he was a civil engineer).
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.
If I had 6 children, I would probably take up tunnelling.
Researching what the article meant by "rocket" (I assumed it was a Britishism), I found this article that includes more pictures.<p><a href="https://www.aol.com/articles/unassuming-bungalow-hides-network-tunnels-181220000.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.aol.com/articles/unassuming-bungalow-hides-netwo...</a>
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.<p><a href="https://www.tiktok.com/@engineer.everything?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://www.tiktok.com/@engineer.everything?lang=en</a>
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.
Freestanding house with a pool for 300k? That is incredibly cheap. Perhaps I should move there.
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)
Auction pricing.<p>It'll start out at £300k (to market it attractively) and end up selling for £500k+.
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.
There's a bunch of potentially unpermitted tunnels under the property. Quite the liability.
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.<p>"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).
It does seem cheap for a house in Reading, even factoring in that it is a bungalow. Maybe they factored in increased subsidence risk?
Suspiciously cheap. There are no detached (what we call 'freestanding') properties on Right Move in the area under £400k. The cheapest is £450k<p>EDIT: oops, forgot to select the 'Bungalow' filter too (ugh). 2 properties: £375k and £350k (very small, 60m2). Still...nothing detached around £300k<p>EDIT2: ohh auction...230m2...yeh won't go for £300k, way more
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.<p>Then everyone acted surprised when entire streets started sinking, or whole buildings collapsed into the ground: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/03/london-street-evacuated-after-two-houses-collapse-during-building-works" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/nov/03/london-stree...</a>
That 15 meters underground, not 15 million tunnels.
The title is "not even" clickbait, just very confusing.<p>"The unique complex contains more than 1,300 square feet of underground space, including tunnels and storage rooms - and even a hand-built railway."<p>(Edit: I mean the original article, not the submission)
sorry for the capital M … I have fixed in the title to 15m as in metres<p>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
Cool! Here's another example of a tunnel house: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens</a>
What are those dark brown cylinder shapes in the sides of the roughly hewn tunnel (first image on the right)?
This misses the most important question.<p>Why is it for sale?
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?
Looking at the pictures, my best guess is that the maintenance has been an issue for some time.
300k in Tilehurst for a house with a pool is incredibly cheap.<p>[Looks at interior photos]<p>Ah. Anyway.<p>Curious how he got planning permission. Or if he got planning permission.
15 meters deep underground in 4 levels, not just a 15 meters long tunnel.
So you just go digging under neighbours properties? What about underground infrastructure?
would love to see the radon measurements in those tunnels/basement.
15m is… almost nothing?
The masculine urge to dig...
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.
15 meters is a tragedy. 15 million is a statistic.
Colin Furze has entered the chat.
Maybe I missed it through all the ads, but it's pretty disappointing that there is no direct link to the listing?
sorry for the ads … but this made me smile
You'd probably be interested in this person's work: <a href="https://youtu.be/6CLF4QrYmYg" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/6CLF4QrYmYg</a>
The online versions of local British Newspapers are almost unreadable now with all the chumbox ads and continual page repainting. Ugh.
Can't access this site - wants me to enable some form of tracking that my DNS doesn't allow. Alternate source?