THIS atmospheric photograph looks like something out of a 40’s noir thriller. You half-expect Orson Welles to loom out of the shadows, seeking to escape capture in the Viennese sewers in The Third Man. In fact, it shows the south entrance to the old Harbour Tunnel beneath the River Clyde, in late December 1961.
The Herald writer Pursuivant, writing in his ‘From All Corners’ column, said: “In all this talk about the Whteinch Tunnel, who knows that there is already a tunnel in use under the Clyde, and has been since 1895; and who uses it? The old Harbour Tunnel at Finnieston was closed after the Second World War, when the elevators became obsolete, but the adjacent passenger tunnel was still open, daily except Sundays, from 6am to 10pm, admission (since about the time of the First World War) free.
“Not many pedestrians were exercising their privilege when I took a trip along it yesterday,” Pursuivant continued. “But when a spot-check was taken a while ago 1400 persons in one day streamed into the big red brick domes [the two Rotundas] at either end, down the long flights of wooden stairs, and through the narrow, gloomy tunnel with its echoing wooden floor, white-tiled walls, stalactites on the roof, Govan’s water pipe running alongside, and somewhere in the background the sound of running water. It takes a stout heart to walk through there in off-peak hours.”
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