Do you recall the recent post on CR regarding eccenticity? Here is the very dictionary definition of the term, tunnelling under Hackney in London. A man who lives in a house valued at 1 million GBP, that has a collapsed roof and borded windows. A man who spends his time removing 40 tonnes of earth from under his house making a giant basement and a snaking tunnel system.
Odd CR fact of the day, I once lived in Hackney; I was also once stabbed in the chest while waiting for a bus in Hackney. Ah, fun times. True story.
Their surveyors estimate that the resident known locally as the Mole Man has scooped 100 cubic metres of earth from beneath the roads and houses that surround his 20-room property.
“I often used to joke that I expect him to come tunnelling up through the kitchen floor,” said Marc Beishon, who lives a few yards from Mr Lyttle’s house.
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A spokesman for the council said yesterday it had since offered Mr Lyttle temporary accommodation at a nearby hotel and removed 40 tonnes of excavated gravel and junk from his back yard. Structural engineers will descend into the dark labyrinth to gauge the full extent of the damage later this week.
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In 2001, the pavement in front of Mr Lyttle’s house collapsed, yielding a wide gash in the road. “You could see all the tunnels sprawling out all over the place inside - it was crazy,” said one woman who lives nearby. “We don’t wish the man any harm,” said William Legg, 76, a retired civil servant. “He’s a hard-working man - he just doesn’t use his energy in the right way. Everyone around here just wants to see the place made safe.”
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1 The recursive web // Aug 10, 2006 at 9:00 AM
[...] I just looked at BoingBoing and two of the stories on the front page are stories that I covered days ago, weeks ago in the case of the Chinese bookstore, the other story was the Mole Man of London from a couple of days back. I nearly wrote about the frog in the bag but dropped it in the end; would have been three. [...]
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