Sherwood Rise: 'Time capsule' train tunnel that’s been hidden in Nottingham for 57 years

You don’t need a history degree to realise that many of the nods to Nottingham’s bygone eras lie beneath the city’s streets. 

Nottingham’s expansive cave network, for instance, is the largest in the UK - with as many as 800 man made caves underneath the city. 

The caves have performed many uses over the years, from storing beer to sheltering residents from bombs during the Second World War. 

And then we come to the former train tunnels, many of which closed following the Beeching cuts of the 1960s. 

The majority of Nottingham’s lost tunnels were built by either the Great Northern Railway, Great Central Railway or Nottingham Suburban Railway. 

The sheer cost of demolishing these tunnels after their closure was simply too high, meaning the majority of them were sealed and left to decay. 

One such example of this was the Sherwood Rise Tunnel, which served the Great Central Railway until 1969. 

The Great Central Railway mainline from London Marylebone to Sheffield via Leicester and Nottingham was the last trunk route to be completed in 1899. 

After passing through a deep cutting in the sandstone south of New Basford station, southbound trains entered the Sherwood Rise Tunnel. 

After the Nottingham section of the Great Central mainline was closed in 1967, the tunnel became redundant and its entrances subsequently filled in. 

The southern end of the tunnel was completely filled in, while the northern end - off Haydn Road - was blocked off with a large metal plate. 

Besides occasional visits from urban explorers and intrigued locals, the tunnel has remained largely untouched for the past five-and-a-half decades. 

Alongside Nottingham’s other abandoned train tunnels, Sherwood Rise acts as a time capsule, preserving a long-lost era of British train travel.