Mole Man fined £300,000



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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.

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.”

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

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Posted on April 17, 2008 at 10:38 pm by Emperor
Category: 1 Other Neat Things, Architecture



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