A truly accidental find. Myself and Alias were originally looking for the illusive drains of Portsmouth when he suddenly shouted “what the hell is that”. I parked up in a nearby road and we headed over to what appeared to be a large bore hole.

There were several covers into it but they were solid concrete and heavy as hell. we managed to shift one enough for myself to squeeze in through. I entered into a large shaft almost identical to the one at Pimlico Steam. Roughly 5-7 levels high with large pipes coming in from every direction then heading down and off into a pipe heading under the river.

Since we couldn’t close the cover on us as we might not be able to get out again, Alias volunteered to stay up to and close the cover on top of me, letting me out when I returned. With a time limit of 10 minutes I headed down.

At the bottom the tunnel fed off down two different tunnels. One was barely big enough to stand up in so I passed on exploring it and chose the main tunnel. Didnt turn out to be too much. A long straight tunnel probably 500-600 meters in length ending in another shaft taking the pipes back up to the surface.

I took a few photo and headed back to the entrance and called to Alias to let me out. The cover began sliding open when I heard a massive “chink”, in turn the cover stopped moving. Ten seconds later I heard a “ermm, we might have a problem”. I look through the small gap to see Alias holding a now broken manhole key. The head had snapped off completely due to the weight of the concrete. Luckily the cover had moved enough to get my hands through and together we managed to shift it another ft so I could squeeze out.

We sat on the top as I told Alias on my findings and closed the cover, continuing on our search for the illusive drains!.