on Williamson's excavations, Williamson's friend, the artist Cornelius Henderson, threatened to sue Stonehouse both for libel and trespass, leading to the paper's suppression for some years. The most commonly related explanation is that they were a philanthropic endeavour. Williamson's own explanation was reputed to be that his motive was "the employment of the poor"; his workers "all received a weekly wage and were thus enabled to enjoy the blessing of charity without the attendant curse of stifled self respect". Certain features of the tunnels appear to support this theory; there are many architectural features that seem unnecessarily decorative, hidden deep below the ground in chambers that would likely have been dimly lit and rarely seen. By way of example, at the Mason Street site a beautifully-constructed stone arch was recently uncovered in an otherwise plainly-constructed side chamber, deep underground, with no obvious explanation for its purpose. These features could be interpreted as Williamson helping his employees improve their skills. Another suggestion, that he was a member of an extremist religious sect fearing that the end of the world was near and that the tunnels were built to provide refuge for him and his friends, originated in recent times with a casual suggestion made on a television programme. No evidence has been found to support the existence of such a sect or that Williamson, a practising member of the Church of England, belonged to one. Stonehouse and Hand both felt the excavations were simply the largely purposeless folly of an eccentric man. However, while Stonehouse called the works "stupendously useless", Hand concluded that Williamson's philanthropic purpose was a noble one and felt he "should have been both pleased and proud to have known him." Many of Williamson's workers were said to have later found employment in railway construction with the skills they had learned. More recent research by academics at Edge Hill University has concluded that the 'tunnels' were in fact the result of work by Williamson to restore ground levels after quarrying. Most of the excavations are directly within a band of high-quality sandstone and show clear signs of having been carried out using established quarrying techniques designed to produce single large pieces of stone suitable for building use. In addition, the cross-sections of the works produced by the 1881 survey reveal a typical stone quarry profile. The apparently aimless nature of the excavations was likely a reflection of the