I should say His Grace first made contact with me a good year and a half before the work was begun. He had me travel up to Welbeck for a meeting where he told me all about his tunnelling plans. In some shape or form he had already worked out in his head what he wanted – he always had quite firm ideas – though he never mentioned to me what purpose they were to serve. Well, to be honest, tunnels weren’t what we were normally about and, when the opportunity arose, I told the Duke as much. Garden landscaping, the occasional lake or ha-ha was much more our line. The previous year we had done a little something at the back of His Grace’s London residence which, I was informed at that first meeting, had pleased him very much. As I recall, he was greatly taken with the wrought-iron fancywork on the frame of a sunk glass walkway. And so, right from the start, he was eager to impress on me the notion that my company was right for the job.
I remember how he had with him a small wooden box full of sketches which he emptied out onto the table. All sorts of drawings and diagrams, all jumbled up together. Then there were the plans he had never got around to putting on paper, some of which took a long while coming back to him and even longer to explain. But the basic idea was that there was to be a whole series of tunnels leaving the house and going out under the estate in all directions. Most were to emerge by gatehouses; only two were unattended, as I recall. But it would be fair to say that if you didn’t know about these last two you would not easily trip over them.
Of the eight tunnels we eventually built on His Grace’s estate – a good twelve miles of them in all – half were twenty foot wide, reaching fifteen foot in height and big enough for two carriages to pass without much difficulty, and the rest about half that size. I can’t say that they were very elegant to look at: plain red brick in a horseshoe arch, with vaulted roofs where they met under the house and tiled passageways off to the stables. But they were sound and did the job they were built to do and I’ve no doubt they’ll be standing a hundred years from now.
Once we were clear of the house and out into the gardens and surrounding fields most of the tunnel-laying was done by what is commonly called ‘cut and cover’, which simply means digging a deep ditch directly into the ground and, when the brickwork is completed, putting the earth back over the roof. Consequently, most of the tunnels on the estate are no more than a couple of feet beneath ground level. They were lit in the daytime by skylights – two foot in diameter and four inches thick – at regular intervals of twenty feet or so and each one requiring its own ‘chimney’, which is probably what slowed us down the most. Each tunnel had a line of gas jets plumbed in, both left and right, for use at night. I heard there were over five thousand such lamps put in place down there but am glad to say that particular task fell to someone else.
All in all, as you can imagine, this amounted to a great deal of work which took us some time to carry out. We employed, on average, a gang of about two hundred men – each on a shilling a day. The Duke insisted that every two men should have between them the use of a donkey for riding to and from the camp and that each man be given an umbrella. Well, you can picture the scene yourself, I’m sure. In the summer it was as gay as the seaside, but in the rain it was very grim.
On top of the tunnels we had stairwells and passages to put in, which went up into the house itself. He was very fond of trapdoors and suchlike, was the Duke. That was what got him going the most.
While I think about it, one thing does come back to me. On only the second or third meeting, I think it was, when we were still at a very early stage, His Grace came in looking highly vexed and asked me straight out, ‘What about tree roots, Mr Bird? What about damage to the roots?’ When I was quite sure I had grasped what it was he was asking, I did my best to assure him how the roots of the trees on the estate would be in no danger and that if there were any chance of us coming up against the roots of a great oak, for example, then it was quite within our means to steer a course round the thing. This seemed to put his mind at rest.
Anyhow, I don’t mind saying that I think we made a good job of it. It was the largest commission my company undertook. We were up there so long that by the time I left I felt like a proper Nottinghamshire man. I was sad to say goodbye.
There were stories, as you know, regarding the Duke’s appearance – how he was said to be deformed and dreadful to look upon. But the people who go about saying such things are nothing but gossip-merchants. Anyone who ever met the man will tell you just the same. I saw him a hundred times if I saw him once and the worst I could say was that on a bad day he could look a little ashen. A touch under the weather is all.
I’m afraid our tunnel-building did nothing but encourage the wild stories. When a man starts acting eccentrically and hiding himself away, people feel at liberty to give their imaginations some slack. By the time they’d finished they’d made him into a right monster, but it was all in their own minds.
The whole time we worked on the tunnels – and we were up there five years in all – I don’t believe I ever asked His Grace directly just what the tunnels were for. It quickly ceased to matter. In the end I suspect I was just as wrapped up in the project as the old man himself. From time to time some of the lads would quiz me about it or make up a little gossip of their own. People like to let themselves get carried away. It comes, I think, from idleness, or envy, maybe. But then His Grace would come out to the site and have a look around and that would nip it in the bud, right there.
There are times when I wonder if he did not simply suffer from shyness. Shyness in the extreme. But then it’s not my place to say. Most of us, at some time, have peculiar ideas we’d like to carry out but have not the money to put them in place. That was not the case with the old Duke.
Yes, I was sorry to see the back of him. He was a most gentle man.