Discovery of Victorian network hiding under some of London's busiest streets

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The ‘fun’ bit here, (which takes some reading), is they’ve no clue what these extensive vaults were for. …when we all know that it has to involve evil steampunk schemes, or else it would be well documented somewhere - yep.

Vaults of ambition: shock find under London Museum enchants its builders

Esther Addley

Discovery of Victorian network hiding under some of city’s busiest streets set ‘magical’ new challenge for multimillion pound project

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Mon 19 Aug 2024 01.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 19 Aug 2024 06.40 EDT

When a contractor working on the site of the new London Museum at Smithfield market knocked a tentative hole in a bricked-up basement wall, all he could see, peering in with a torch, was a muddy pile of rubble and some scurrying rats.

There had been hints on old plans of some underground structures, “but because everything was blocked in and bricked up, we had no idea that they still existed”, said Paul Williams, the principal director of the lead architects, Stanton Williams. …

(grocery storage or horse stabling are posited, but wouldn’t either of those leave behind clear remnants? [suspicious frowny emoji])

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Maybe they’ve dug into SCP-1678?

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That photo is astonishing. Such beautiful brickwork!

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The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’s lair.

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It’s one of the places where the Quiet People used to live.

They probably moved out when Smithfield stopped being an actual market.

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gentlemen

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Indeed!

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Having had some time to research them, the museum’s senior curator of archaeology Francis Grew knows a little more about the vaults’ history and purpose. They were built along with the general market in the 1880s, partly to help hold up the busy Farringdon Road above, but also, he thinks, as storage space for the huge volumes of goods that were coming in and out of the markets on what was then the busiest stretch of railway in Britain.

Very plausible.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a part of it was used as in ice cellar.

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