Pegwell Tunnels
This is designed to give you a short walk from the picnic area at the viking ship. down a short footpath. then onto a small bit of the old hoverport and onto the beach heading towards pegwell bay taking in two of pegwell bays manmade tunnels.
The first waypoint is the parking at the picnic area at viking ship.
The Second way Point takes you to the:-
The Seaweed Tunnel - Waypoint Two
A short tunnel has been driven through the chalk cliff. It is known locally as the Seaweed Tunnel and is believed to have been excavated to provide easy access to the beach where seaweed could be collected for use on little cliffsend farm as a fertiliser.
The tunnel can be found at the end of an overgrown footpath running south from a sharp bend in Chalk Hill along the west side of Little Cliffsend farm yard. The brick lined tunnel is open and easily accessible although silted and a little wet in places.
The Third Way Point takes you to the:-
The Frank Illingworth's Tunnel - WayPoint Three
Also known as the puzzle tunnel, There is a small opening about 8ft above the level of the beach. This leads to 500ft of low, artificial tunnel that is eventually blocked at the base of a shaft. Named after the man who explored and wrote about it in 1938; his opinion being that it was driven by smugglers. At that time, it apparently went much further than today and Illingworth found an ancient pistol and three buttons from an excise man's tunic. The tunnel slopes slightly towards the beach and, since the cliff is continuously being eroded away, it is possible that it emerged at beach level when in use. The shaft is next to a demolished house and it is possible that smuggled goods were taken along the tunnel from the beach and up the shaft. The tunnel is very tight with little or no room for turning and should be entered with extreme care.
The picture above shows the tunnel entrance to the right of the photograph, the line to the left of the tunnel entrance is an old well shaft this is no longer visible due to cliff erosion. and that actual entrance is now about 2 feet higher in the cliff than it was 20 years ago again due to erosion, at the moment their is a set of old iron railings and some old fishing net against the entrance which people have used to gain entrance
Here is the Frank Illingworths original Journal published in the Kent County Journal.
A Smugglers’ Cave.
By FRANK ILLINGWORTH.
KENT COUNTY JOURNAL
The following story of a hiding place used by srnugglers is of special interest in view of the foregoing article by Dr. Cock.
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AN old fellow hunting for sea-worms on the sands at Pegwell Bay told us a fantastic story of a system of tunnels running beneath Kentish soil between Pegwell and Margate, which at one time were used by smugglers.
“Nigh 50 year ago, as a small boy, I was lost in them tunnels for three days ! Aye, And when they got me out they blocked up all the entrances. All except one that is.’’
The point of the old man’s story was that the only entry to the tunnels nowadays was an air-vent about six feet up the face of the cliff which led to a shaft which in turn led to an old well. This well was used by smugglers who constructed a trap_hatch halfway down, beneath which water could be shown when needed to deceive excisenien. A connecting tunnel ran to various points.
With the old man’s story in our mind we went to interview the Banger brothers whose family have lived in this part of Kent for generations. They bore out the statement about the tunnels of which they had made partial exploration before the main en trances were blocked, years before. These tunnels linked the sea, the chalk pit at Osingall Farm and the Lord of the Manor cellars. But all the old entrances were now closed and the only way into the labyrinth was through the air-vent in the cliff. The Banger brothers gave us many smuggling tales which had been brought down to them.
The upshot of our talk was that we decided to get into the air-vent and explore the underworld for ourselves. Equipped with implements and candles we set off on the expedition ; there were four of us. We climbed into the hole in the cliff one after the other.
It was dark, dank. The rock pressed against both shoulders. There was barely room to crawl. The tunnel climbed steeply for a bit. Our torches illuminated the way ahead. Candles told us that the air was pure. We were 200 yards in
Suddenly a voice boomed out.
‘‘A shaft !‘‘
It was the well! And judging by the direction in which we had been crawling it was the one belonging to an old house, since pulled down. The trap-hatch was down and a quantity of earth covered it, the excise- men’s work probably.
Lying on our stomachs we dug our way through after four hours work and crawled on . . . on . , . on , . . on, till a fall of chalk blocked our way. By now we were in a tunnel barely 2 foot 6 inches wide and 22 inches high ! An air-duct, nothing else. If the old worm-digger was speaking the truth we were near the Main shaft, and the Lord of the Manor Cross Roads.
In all it took five hours work for two men, working in shifts, to break through that fall of chalk. We had reached a position where for many generations neither smugglers, excisemen, or anyone else, had been. Would we find anything?
An ancient pin-fire pistol and three buttons from an exciseman’s tunic came to view. One can only surmise how a customs’s man’s button came to be in a smugglers tunnel.
After five hours of toil a way was forced through and a beam of a torch showed a “dome” (underground room) and a tunnel leading in the direction of the Lord of the Manor. It was impossible to go any further. The air-vent was so narrow that one would have been trapped for good and all if by any chance one’s arms got jammed in the hole made in the fall. And short of using a drill (though how it could have been done in the space at our disposal I don’t know) it would be impossible to enlarge the little hole we made, for massive falls hemmed in the one little bit we had excavated.
We were peering into Unkown Kent, and could only guess its secrets.
The final thing to decide us to crawl back to the entrance was a fall. The leading man was scrambling and squirming feet first towards the entrance when a small rock fell on to his neck! So shallow was the tunnel that he could not move an inch till he man aged to work forwards and backwards, easing the rock over his head to fall onto the floor of the tunnel. For some distance the party squirmed backwards till the walls of the shaft widened sufficiently for each mem ber to turn round!
Our party had not got far into this unexplored part, but we had at least proved the old worm-catcher’s story to a great extent. And if he had spoken the truth so far, surely his story about being lost for three days was true also? If so those tunnels must be pretty extensive. We decided that when we had got over the exertion of our crawl we would return and force a way into the main shaft and explore the whole underground working, using a field telephone to connect us with someone in the outside world.
To get to the Cache location you need to head back to waypoint 2 and go through the seaweed tunnel
Cache is located on the small foothpath that leads from the tunnel to the entrance of little cliffsend farm industrial esate