The search for Wakefield’s “secret tunnels” began right where I was doing my professional genealogical research, on Bread Street, in the heart of this ancient town that gained city status in 1888.
Bread Street is now a somewhat run-down street that runs parallel to Cross Square and Little Westgate and is frequented by shoppers looking for easy access to Northgate, the Cathedral or the Kirkgate shopping area, or by those crowding the back door of the Black Rock Pub, smoking cigarettes. The street, in its current state, is unappealing and in desperate need of a makeover. The abandoned and disused buildings retain their 19th-century shop fronts, but lack storefronts, as thin, cracked panes of glass show grime and grime and are framed by rotting wood contaminated by the rubble of crumbling bricks. This place, however, was once a prosperous street, with stalls offering for sale bread from the stately bakery, made from flour milled at the Molino del Rey. Behind the cabins and under the old structures that once stood in the place of their current counterparts, there was a hidden path of interconnected arched cellars that led to the parish church. These cellars, still in place, are now firmly rooted in Wakefield myth and folklore, but here they are revealed to be all too real.
According to the Reverend JL Sisson in his book Historical sketch of the parish church, Wakefieldtwenty-four priests of the Chapel belonged to the church, and each of the priests had lodgings in houses to the north of the Churchyard, that is, in Northgate and Bread Street, known in Sisson’s time as Ratten Row, and in Sisson’s time as Ratten Row. of the priests. like bread stalls.
Writing of old religious houses on Bread Street, Fancy Goods Dealer and local historian, Mr. John Hewitt in his quaint little serialized volumes entitled The History and Topography of Wakefield Parish and Surrounding Areasfirst published in 1862, it expands on the link between the street and the church.
“In times past, it was customary to set up stalls for the sale of bread in front of houses on Calle Pan, and for that reason this street was called “Puestos de Pan” and then its current name.
“… where Posada Miter is now, it was the residence of a Priest. There were also several other residences of Priests in the same locality; and from that circumstance, and from the number of people who came to the Church and to the houses of the Priests, the Houses of Bread were erected in order to sell bread both to the Priests and their friends.
“Previously, an underground passage was connected with this old house. It led from one of the cellars in the direction of the parish church. The entrance is now bricked up. The passage was arched with bricks and was about 6 feet high. Probably, this underground path was for the priests to proceed through to and from this building and the church.
“This old house is believed to have been used as a secret church in days of persecution.
In the late 1880s, the renowned octogenarian, Henry Clarkson, made the strongest case for the existence of an underground path under the houses leading to the church, when he described innocuously enough how entrance to the churchyard was obtained. church in the days of his childhood. Referring specifically to the years 1810 and 1811, in his charming Memoirs of Merry Wakefieldwhose first edition was published in 1888, explains that:
“At that time the parish church yard was much smaller than it is now, a series of houses and shops continued from Northgate, partly into the present street and partly into the church yard; these buildings blocked entirely the entire west side of the churchyard, extending to the front of the George Hotel, and the last house on that end was occupied by the Wakefield Dispensary, more or less where the present west entrance now stands.”
The quintessential set of double volumes that anyone serious about Wakefield history should have in their collection, Wakefield Its History and People by the most famous of its historians, John W. Walker, contains further details of the arched passage. He talks about a house next door to Mr. Bucktrout’s grocery store. Mr. Bucktrout is related to another well-known story about the Wakefield Passages, this one relating to the discovery, in a Northgate cellar, of religious images, smuggled out of the Chantry Chapel on Wakefield Bridge, through another underground passage. during the Reformation. In our story, Mr. Bucktrout shows up because his shop is next to a house occupied by John Bagshaw, a scissor grinder. JW Walker explains that under Bagshaw’s house ‘It was a low arched entrance to the cemetery facing Bread Street.’
Many of the houses that faced the cemetery entrance still in use today (to access the building through the West Gate, known as the Tower entrance) were cleared in 1821. Sisson tells us that the inhabitants must be especially praised. for helping to tear down their own houses to improve the view. Later restorers of the church have also convinced the public that the removal of the church’s sturdy structure is for their own good. Interestingly, any talk of tunnels has been denied by those ‘in the know’ in the church itself, possibly horrified at the idea of priests having their own congregation-free passage ‘back to base’. If such a tunnel existed today, it would be a slightly longer way home as the clergymen’s residences are a little further away, now adjoining Newstead Road at the north end of the town limits.
So is there any evidence of these ancient passageways today? The Register of Deeds on Newstead Road in Wakefield provides original documentation that largely answers this question with a resounding…yes! Several deeds deposited in the impressive collection make specific reference to the arched cellars below Bread Street, which are described in parts, with each part owned by the individual properties’ occupants and each adjoining the basement of the building next door.
One deed refers to the purchase of a building on Bread Street by Alfred Moodie, a wine merchant who is remembered today for the bar on Little Westgate (with his back to Bread Street) called Moody’s. Reference is made in the deed to James Wells’ purchase of the building from Elizabeth Hardcastle in 1812, and there is mention of an earlier transaction that took place in 1791 and involved Wells and Mr. Liversidge. Reference is also made to plans drawn up in 1866 and a contract from 1853. When marked, all of these deeds for these legal transactions, and the deed referenced here, each contain the following passage (brackets mine) :
‘…and also that part of the vaulted cellars below Bread Street (otherwise Ratten Row) mentioned above adjoins the same premises.’
Perhaps the worthy men of Wakefield, Clarkson, Walker, Hewitt and Sisson, are all wrong and the priests never occupied houses on the street and the arched cellars did not exist, but it is more likely that this route was built for the priests to proceed towards and from his place. of work, it was very real and perhaps a little excavation could show once and for all what lies beneath Wakefield.
