Mole Man fined £300,000

A pensioner who created a labyrinth of tunnels under his house over 40 years has been forced to pay £300,000 for repairs carried out by a council.

Excavations by William Lyttle, 77, who is also known as the “mole man”, almost caused the property in Mortimer Road, Hackney, east London, to collapse.

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In 2001, his digging led to a 15ft-wide hole in the public footpath.

An earlier news report gives an idea of the scale of his obsessive tunnelling:

AN eccentric known as The Mole Man has been banned from his £1million home after digging a 60ft network of tunnels beneath it.

William Lyttle, 75, spent 40 years burrowing under his 20-room house, removing 100 cubic metres of earth with a spade and pulleys.

It is now feared the street could give way. Philip Wilman, a surveyor for Hackney Council, told Thames magistrates: “There has been movement in the ground. He’s fortunate a London bus is not in his front garden. It’s liable to lead to catastrophe.”

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The house is also filled with so much junk surveyors are worried about the pressure on the floors.

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