TUNNELVISIONWhen artist Sue Webster took on the
former home of Hackney’s Mole Man- and its underground warren – she
didn’t predict the ensuing excavation of
her personal life, discovers Ellie Pithers.
Photographs by François Coquerel
79LIVINGny Londoner who has ever dreamt of
acquiring more space can empathise with
the Mole Man of Hackney. “I thought I’d
try for a bit of a wine cellar, and found a
taste for the thing,” William Lyttle, the
so-called Mole Man, reportedly said. It was
a blithe justification for the network of tunnels – stretching
66ft in every direction and as far down as the water table –
that he burrowed deep beneath his home in De Beauvoir
Town, east London, over a period of 40 years.
Urban legend appears to have added only mild embellishment
to Lyttle’s extraordinary excavatory tale. A retired engineer-
turned-landlord in a grubby trench coat, he dedicated his
time to collecting scrap metal and digging tunnels. His tenants
called him Catweazle, after the 1970s television character.
He delighted in his rudimentary burrow, as the rest of
Hackney was being developed at great expense. One minor
tributary, according to the writer Iain Sinclair, who
accompanied the Mole Man on a nocturnal journey, led
directly into the Dalston Lane tunnel – and the railway line.
Lyttle was evicted in 2006, after sections of pavement began
to cave in. Hackney Council plugged up his tunnels and his
concrete digging “igloo” – complete with homemade pulley
system – with aerated concrete. The number 76 bus was
rerouted as a precautionary measure. As for Lyttle? He tried
to dig his way out of the ground-floor room in the social
housing block to which he had been consigned. When he died
in 2010, the house, which had originally been two residences
SUE WEARS VINTAGE ALEXANDER Msubsequently divided into 16 bedsits, remained boarded up. >cQUEEN TOP, HER OWN.TROUSERS, ALEXANDER McQUEEN. SHOES, BALENCIAGA
Sue Webster at home
in Hackney. She stands
in front of a collage of
her girlhood influences- from Siouxsie Sioux
to her old love letters.
Hair: Paula McCash.
Make-up: Jo Frost. Sittings
editor: Naomi Smart
A10911-19-FOB-Interior-MoleHouse.indd 109 10/09/2019 10:56