Technology and Science07 October, 20262 min read
Tony Deane’s Reading Tunnel Home With Railway And Lift Heads To Auction
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Tony Deane spent two decades hand-digging 1,300 sq ft of tunnels below his Reading home. The subterranean complex includes an underground railway and a secret room hidden in a rocket.
8 outlets told this the same way.
Deane’s underground railway
Civil engineer Tony Deane began digging beneath his family home in the 1980s, and the project eventually grew into four levels of hand-dug tunnels descending more than 15 metres underground in Reading. The underground complex includes rooms and corridors, a railway, and a one-tonne goods lift, and the chalk and earth were removed manually using buckets and wheelbarrows.
A 23ft rocket beside the swimming pool concealed an entrance to another hidden room, and a 1.5-tonne sliding concrete wall hid one concealed space. BTG Eddisons Property Auctions is now offering the property with a guide price of between £300,000 and £325,000, and the tunnels are scheduled to go under the hammer at a live-streamed auction on October 28 and 29.
Manual excavation and hidden rooms
AOL.ca described the excavation as a family project that used only buckets and wheelbarrows to dig through chalk and move material to the surface. AOL.ca said the subterranean complex includes storage rooms, a one-ton goods lift, and two secret doors, including one concealed behind a 1.5-ton sliding concrete wall.
Richard Worrall, of BTG Eddisons Property Auctions, said, "In all my years as an auctioneer, I've never seen anything like this before - it's utterly amazing and, I think, unique." Worrall also said, "Incredibly, absolutely everything was excavated manually," while the property’s entrance is accessed through a secure gated driveway and the underground work remains hidden beneath a workshop.
Planning permission and possible uses
West Berkshire Council granted planning permission in December 2024 for a 5,000-sq-ft, five-bedroom, two-storey house to be built on the site of the swimming pool, and the workshop has permission to be converted into a three-bedroom home. AOL.ca said the property could offer an imaginative buyer a range of uses, from secure storage and a fallout shelter to an electromagnetic pulse-resistant data centre or a "prepper's paradise".
The Daily Mail said the entrance was hidden behind a 23ft-high rocket beside the pool, and it described the complex as reaching more than 15m below ground through four levels. The property is set to go under the hammer in BTG Eddisons Property Auctions’ live stream auction on Oct 28 and 29, with the guide price stated as £300,000-£325,000.