Generations of students at the Con have heard the story about the secret tunnel for Henry Parkes to meet a mistress. Did it really exist?
Deep below the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, myth-busters searched for evidence of one of the city’s most enduring urban legends.
Did the father of federation and 17 children, Sir Henry Parkes, have a secret tunnel connecting the Con’s 200-year-old castle to government offices on Macquarie and Bridge streets so he could meet a mistress?
With the Con’s facilities manager James Burns, artistic strategy director Scott Ryan, student and operatic soprano Hannah Burton and tour guide Marc Cote, the Herald’s search spanned two visits.
Up, down, over and through the school’s vast underground wing, completed in 2001, we went.
Entering the door to a bathroom in the basement, and surprising a man leaving a cubicle, another door yielded to a rocky cavern that a staff member had thought could be a likely spot.
It was not the tunnel we sought. It was The Void, an underground drainage ditch, a feat of engineering and architectural wizardry that is between six and 18 metres deep.
Surrounding the castle a bit like a moat, it protects the heritage-listed 1817 to 1821 sandstone tables (now the Verbrugghen concert hall) from the new wing.
Designed by colonial architect Francis Greenway for Governor Macquarie, the stables were among the most expensive and bonkers projects in the young colony. Called a “useless magnificence”, it makes the idea of a secret tunnel plausible.
It was, after all, a castle for horses and carriages, with turrets and battlements.
Cote was not disappointed to find The Void instead of Parkes’ love tunnel. The amateur historian gets constant questions about secret tunnels, and said the way the space joined the old and new building was “extremely cool”.
‘Some do exist, but there are also tunnels that exist only in some people’s minds.’Laila Ellmoos, city historian
He is running Lost and Buried tours as part of the Australian Heritage Festival program running to May 18 that offers tours about tunnels, ghosts, paranormal activity and phantoms.
Back on the search, another door was labelled Sewer Ejector Pit Access. No romance here.
City of Sydney historian Laila Ellmoos said Sydneysiders loved a tunnel, and those carrying water, trains, sewage, etc, crisscross the city. “Some do exist, but there are also tunnels that exist only in some people’s minds.”
She couldn’t find evidence in the archives of one underneath the Con’s Castle, despite the stories.
Like most people at the Con, Burton had heard rumours of a secret tunnel. The stories are also popular on social media.
Burton, an operatic soprano completing her master’s in music studies before performing in Prague later this year, tested the acoustics of the below-ground spaces wherever we went.
Burns had discovered nine or 10 tunnels, most used for maintenance. “Everywhere I have been in this place, I have never seen a tunnel that someone dug. I’ve looked, and I could never find it.”
Back on our search, a door opened to reveal a massive tunnel. It was a rare view of the curved roof of the two City Circle tracks that provide a rumbly melody. “That’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Cote said.
Mary Casey, co-author of a 300-page report by research company Casey and Lowe into the stables’ archaeology, didn’t find any evidence either during the excavation of the site coinciding with the new wing.
The Con’s dean and head of school, Professor Anna Reid, said the tunnel didn’t exist.
The story was “hot air and rhetoric”. During the rebuild, there were architectural drawings and “discovery moments” but “nothing about the supposed sneaky tunnel between our various government buildings”.
Former Herald reporter Tim Barlass added to the intrigue with a report that the underground tunnel from Bridge Street to the Con was to keep carriage drivers’ red jackets dry. In the rain, the colour would run. “Pink wasn’t a good look.”
For Cote, this detail was compelling; likely based on fact but embellished over time.
Reid dismisses it as silliness. “The stables were waterproof,” she said. Carriages would wait at the State Library of NSW, and drivers would be notified by flags.
Former premier Bob Carr was said to have sighted Parkes’ love tunnel. He hadn’t. He said if one had existed, some clever public relations person would have put him in a hard hat and taken a photo. Nobody else had evidence. NSW Archives and the State Library of NSW didn’t.
Despite that, a heritage listing for the Chief Secretary’s Building said a staircase was hidden behind a bookcase in Parkes’ office, and led to tunnels to Treasury (now the InterContinental Hotel), today’s Police and Justice Museum and Circular Quay.
This could be the missing link, but the secretary’s building is undergoing work and we couldn’t visit. If tunnels existed, Reid said, they likely connected the two Bridge Street buildings which have visible basements below ground level.
The police museum’s heritage listing doesn’t refer to a tunnel. Nor does the one for the Treasury/Intercon building, and the building manager of 40 years had seen nothing.
Myths can engage the public yet they shouldn’t overshadow facts, said National Trust chief executive Debbie Mills. “The key to preserving and sharing history lies with historical accuracy.”
To add to the intrigue, one Parkes descendant said the tunnel did exist, and denied the former premier had a mistress.
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Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: www.smh.com.au
