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These mysterious brick towers hide a Liverpool railway secret – a forgotten tunnel that helped change railway history.

Demolition work in Chinatown has exposed this red brick and sandstone tower, complete with historic arches and a rather more modern Star Wars mural.

Eagle-eyed city walkers may notice that it matches another tower tucked away in Blackburne Place, in the Georgian Quarter.

And in Toxteth there’s a hexagonal brick tower standing proud in Crown Street Park, while Baltic Triangle visitors will have noticed a low-rise blank brick structure in the middle of the junction of St James Street and Jamaica Street.

Those structures all offer ventilation to the Wapping Tunnel below – the first underground rail tunnel ever built below a city.

The Wapping Tunnel opened in 1830 and ran from Edge Hill to the old Park Lane Good station, between Wapping and Park Road in what’s now the Baltic Triangle.

The station was demolished in the 1970s but the tunnel entrances can still be seen off Kings Dock Street and near Edge Hill Station.

The closed tunnel remains in good condition and is a tribute to its pioneering builders.

Paul O’Donnell, of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Trust, said: “We think it’s the fourth purpose-built railway tunnel ever. And it’s the first one ever built under a city.

Tunnels are usually out in the countryside somewhere but this was the first to be excavated this way.

“That’s why there are all these shafts – they dug down at various points along the way and joined them together underground. That was quite a feat of surveying.

“And it was all dug by hand – it’s a phenomenal achievement.”

The tunnel had at least two more ventilation shafts. Mr O’Donnell said: “There was one just in front of the cathedral, in Rathbone Street, in the middle of four court dwellings. That went.

“And there was one in Myrtle Street where the council depot used to be, behind houses. “

Since the Wapping Tunnel closed, several suggestions have been made that it could reopen.

Most recently, it has been suggested that at least part of the tunnel could be used to create a new underground rail link between Edge Hill and Liverpool Central Station.

The developers of the planned Circus scheme behind Lewis’s are even leaving space for the potential line in their plans.

Mr O’Donnell said he thought the Wapping Tunnel was potentially too small for modern trains and could be damaged by redevelopment.

He added: “They would be destroying what should be an historic monument.”

He and the trust – which honours the pioneering 1830 Liverpool an Manchester Railway – instead want to see the tunnel listed and honoured as an historic monument.

(Image: Chris Iles/LMRT)

He said: “We’re looking to 2030, for the 200th anniversary. We’re playing the long game – we’re looking at a decade away.”

“This (Liverpool-Manchester) is the one that started the rail network off.

“Stockton and Darlington went from a coal mine to the water. Liverpool-Manchester was between two towns that went on to be cities.

“It’s the world’s first inter-city railway.”

The tunnel was also used by Jaguar Land Rover as a test track for its new Range Rover Evoque in 2011.

The new Halewood-built cars drove the full length of the tunnel – and right through a flooded section in the middle.