Joseph Williamson was born on the 10th of March 1769 in the West Riding of Yorkshire and his father was a glass maker in the small village of Gawber near Barnsley. The family moved to Warrington when he was quite young and in 1780, at the age of 11, Joseph left his family and went to Liverpool to lodge with, and be employed by, Richard Tate of Gawber Hall in his Tobacco and Snuff business whose main office was based in Parr Street, adjacent to Wolstenholme Square, near the city centre. He gradually rose through the ranks, gaining promotion within the business before also developing his own merchant's business in partnership with Joseph Leigh whilst still working for Tate's a few doors away. In 1787 Richard Tate died and control of the business passed to his son, Thomas Moss Tate. Joseph married Thomas' sister, Elizabeth Tate an amateur artist who was one of 13 women to exhibit at the Liverpool exhibition of 1784 and only one of five women to do so in 1787. The marriage ceremony was held at the family church, St. Thomas’s, near the waterfront in Liverpool in 1802 and united the two glassmaking families, since Joseph's father James Williamson and his uncle William were both glassmakers for a time at Gawber Hall, and Elizabeth was also from a glass making family. The following year Joseph purchased the business from Thomas Moss Tate and incorporated the Leigh & Williamson merchants company into Tate's.and from this he amassed a considerable fortune.
In 1805 he bought an area known as the Long Broom Field on Mason Street, Edge Hill, Liverpool, which was a largely undeveloped outcrop of sandstone. Mr. Edward Mason, after whom the street was named, once had his mansion on one corner of the then narrow pathway. This and a small number of other houses stood on this breezy outcrop, offering an unobstructed view down to the River Mersey. Significantly, the sandstone terrain had previously been quarried and several abandoned pits are marked on contemporary maps. When Joseph moved to Mason Street he began to build houses of a strange design with cellars and large gardens with orchards to the rear. There was only a small amount of space to the rear of each house as the bed rock dropped about twenty feet, down to the same level as Smithdown Lane. To accommodate the layout of the gardens and orchards, he had his men build brick arches so that they could be extended onto, which gave the first outwardly visible parts of the tunnels. Very much worried by the window tax inspectors, he had the windows carefully designed to come within half an inch of the tax limits. He continued to employ workmen, many to perform tasks which appeared to be useless, such as moving materials from one place to another and then back again. He also used them to build a labyrinth of underground halls and brick-arched tunnels through the sandstone outcrop and eventually the area bounded by Mason Street, Grinfield Street, Smithdown Lane and Paddington was riddled with these underground excavations.
A number of theories exist as to why Joseph built these structures. The most popular explanation is that he wished to employ the local poor, rather than give them handouts. Labour was plentiful at the time with the ending of the Napoleonic wars in 1816, and there were then even more unemployed men in Liverpool. Joseph, a bible reader and a religious man, noted how poverty brought with it "the attendant curse of stifled self respect". He was a regular member of the congregation of St. Thomas', the church where he married, and the numerous gothic, chapel-like features that have survived in many parts of the tunnels suggest that they could have been a refuge for his family and fellow 'believers' should a world Armageddon happen. He was by all accounts a strange man who spent the principal part of his time in his vaults and excavations, and literally lived in a cellar, as his sitting room was little else, being a long vault with a window at one end, and his bedroom was a cave hollowed out at the back of it. One day he sent out invitations to dinner to a number of the leading residents in the neighbourhood. Assembled in the breakfast room on the ground floor, they stood in front of a bare table with common trestles, just rough planks to sit upon. In the centre of the table stood several gigantic dishes, which were found to contain only beans and bacon. Several of the company resented what they considered an intentional insult and refused to partake of such common food or to remain in the house any longer. Joseph politely accompanied them to the door, and then, returning to his remaining guests, said, " Now I know who really are my friends. Please follow me upstairs." He preceded them into the large dining room above, where a sumptuous repast was awaiting them, and they enjoyed a banquet which was beyond reproach, Mr. Williamson remarking as they sat down that those who would not dine with him on beans and bacon should not dine with him at all.
Joseph Williamson, having retired from his business in 1818, would still often have his workers perform apparently pointless duties which some argued against but he would simply tell them that they were not paid for thinking. In the parts of the tunnels accessible today there is evidence of tunnels being built and bricked up again, alongside fine arches that lead nowhere. This supports the idea of keeping men busy simply to keep them in a job, but may equally lend mystery in the sense of keeping certain parts of the labyrinth secret. The street had become fully occupied, with all the residents vetted by the landlord himself. The 'King of Edge Hill' was now in control of his own kingdom.
His wife Elizabeth died in 1822 aged 56 which led Joseph to become increasingly eccentric, devoting almost all of his time to supervising his excavations and tunnel-building. In the 1830s he came into contact with George Stephenson who was building the extension of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway from Edge Hill to Lime Street station, where the main tunnel to Lime Street was dug right under his own street. Joseph Williamson died on the 1st of May 1840 aged 71 at his home in Mason Street, the cause of death being 'water on the chest'. He was buried in the Tate family vault at St Thomas' Church and left an estate of £39,000 with no immediate descendant. Upon his death the digging ceased and in 1911 St Thomas' Church was demolished with many of the graves removed but the Tate vault remained. In 1920 the site became a car park but during the Liverpool 1 shopping development in 2005 the grave was discovered in an archaeological dig lobbied for by the FoWT. A carved Egerton red sandstone Liver Bird replica which once adorned the old Sailors’ Home in Canning Place now denotes their memory in the St Thomas' Memorial Gardens at the end of Paradise St/Park Lane.
see also :- http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2021/06/a-liverpool-exemplar-margaret-kelly.html
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