For nearly 40 years, William Lyttle, dubbed the “Hackney Mole Man,” secretly dug an extraordinary network of tunnels beneath his London home.
What started as a plan to create a wine cellar spiraled into an obsession that would see him burrowing up to 60 feet under his Victorian villa on Mortimer Road in Hackney.
Lyttle, an Irish civil engineer, inherited the 20-room house in the 1960s and began digging.
By the time authorities intervened, he had removed 100 cubic meters of earth, causing parts of the pavement to collapse and sparking safety fears among neighbours.
In 2006, Hackney Council evicted him, citing structural concerns. Engineers removed 33 tons of debris, including a car and a boat, from the tunnels before sealing them with concrete.
But Lyttle didn’t go quietly. Neighbors recalled seeing him sneak back into the house at night, using crowbars and chain cutters to access his beloved tunnels.
“He’d slip in through the corrugated iron with a torch,” longtime neighbor Tom Costello told the Daily Mail. “He didn’t care about eviction; he was a rebel.”
Lyttle’s eccentric digging was a big menace to the neighbourhood. Once, he accidentally hit a 450-volt cable, plunging the street into darkness.
Neighbors joked he was “digging his way to Barclays” bank, but many were unnerved by the subsiding pavement and relentless drilling.
However, Lyttle’s behavior wasn’t just odd – it was also controversial. Former tenants claimed he acted inappropriately, with some exchange students reportedly shouting at him on the street.
Artist Karen Russo, who worked with Lyttle in 2007, described him as “paranoid and misogynistic,” adding that their collaboration ended after he became violent toward her, the Mail reports.
Following his eviction, Lyttle was rehoused in a flat, where he reportedly began digging again.
He passed away in 2010, leaving behind a bizarre legacy and a hefty £500,000 council bill to repair the damage.
In 2012, artist Sue Webster purchased the structurally unstable property for £1.12 million.
Renovated by Adjaye Associates, the newly named “Mole House” has since been transformed into an award-winning, three-story live-work space, even receiving the Best Dwelling category at the New London Awards in 2021.
