The Wellington Quarry in Arras

The Wellington Quarry Museum (La Carrière Wellington) in Arras is an exceptional, eerie place. It’s buried in the tunnels that crisscross the ground 20 metres beneath the attractive city of Arras. What you are about to experience is the story of the Battle of Arras from the beginning: the secret tunnelling, the life underground, the lead up to the battle on April 9^th, 1917 and the sad aftermath. It’s a remarkable insight into a less well-known aspect of World War I.

A Short History of The Wellington Quarry and the Battle of Arras

The battles of Verdun and the Somme in 1916 had been a disaster. So the Allied High Command decided to create a new offensive on the Vimy-Arras front.

Arras was a ghost town, continuously bombarded by German troops, smoking and in ruins. From 1916 to 1918 the town was under British command, which was unique in the history of World War I. The chalk quarries under the town, originally dug out in the Middle Ages to provide building material for the ramparts and churches and abbeys, gave the chance to build a huge series of rooms and passages to hide 24,000 troops very near the German front lines.

The Wellington Quarry Tunnels

The extraordinary story begins with the digging of what became an underground barracks. Chalk quarries dating back to the Middle Ages had for centuries provided the growing town with rock for the ramparts, the religious buildings and houses that were making Arras such an important city.

500 New Zealand tunnellers, mostly Maori miners, helped by Yorkshire miners called Bantams, dug 80 metres a day in two interlinking labrynths. The whole project was called Wellington by the New Zealanders; underground the tunnellers named the different sectors after their home towns. For the New Zealanders it was Nelson and Blenheim. For the British, London, Liverpool and Manchester. The work took under six months. Eventually the 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) accommodated 24,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers.

One of the greatest engineering feats of World War I, it was discovered by archaeologists in the 1990s. It must have been an extraordinary moment when they began to see the graffiti on the walls and realised the significance of the tunnels in the history of the Great War.

Setting the Scene

As you wait for the visit, there’s a chance to walk around the small exhibition that covers the lead-up to The Great War, the main areas of war, the New Zealand tunnellers and more.

Going Deep Underground

Wearing a helmet and warm clothing (it’s 11°C  down there) you descend in a lift down into the quarries with a bi-lingual guide and audio guide for the 90-minute tour. Setting the scene, you slowly descend past images of Arras as it collapses. You step out of the lift to a panoramic film bringing to life the full horror of the war on the city.

The guide takes you along the long twisting passages and past cavernous spaces roughly hewn out of the chalk.  You stop to see old films and hear long-forgotten voices on small screens that disappear into the darkness.  There’s the sound of pickaxes and it feels as if the miners are actually there with you. ‘Each man had his own war’, a solider says.

You pass by piles of rusting tins, graffiti of names, drawings of loved ones back home and prayers, and hear more voices as you round a corner and see a film flickering on the wall in front of you.

Voices Echo from the Past

‘Bonjour Tommy’ says a Frenchman against footage of civilians and soldiers chatting in the streets. ‘They do not hate the Germans. They do not insult the prisoners and are attentive to the wounded’, writes a French journalist.

You hear poems by war poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon who wrote The General.

Good morning. Good  morning” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ‘em dead,
And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.’

You hear Yorkshiremen singing On Ilkla Moor Baht ‘at (which translates as On Ilkley Moor without a hat); it became the unofficial anthem of Yorkshire.

The Wellington Quarry was a small, albeit primitive barracks. The walk shows you the life of the soldiers underground, their grim or flippant humour, and their camaraderie.

A chapel, power station, light railway, communications room, a hospital in a series of rooms that could fit 700 beds and operating theatres, and a well were all built in the pale, flickering electric light. There were showers and a transmission room. On pillar 5E a film shows the last prayer service held before the attack.

The Battle of Arras Begins

Then you come to the sloping passageways that led up to the light, and for many of the young soldiers, ‘too young’ as one Frenchman said, to their death. For a few days before, the artillery had been firing at the German lines. It was 5.30am, snowing and deadly cold on April 9 Easter Monday, when the order was given to burst out of the quarries from Exit no 10.

Each year, on 9^th April at 05.30 a memorial service attended by thousands is held at the Wellington Quarry.

The Battle of Arras Continues

A film tells you the aftermath of the Battle of Arras. The initial assault was highly successful. Vimy Ridge and the village of Monchy-le-Preux were taken by General Julian Byng’s Canadian Corps Vimy Ridge. But for two days the Allied troops, on orders from above, held back. In that time the Germans, who had retreated initially, formed a new battle front and brought up reinforcements.  On Aril 11, British and Australian forces attacked around Bullecourt. Fighting continued unto May 16.

For British soldiers the average daily loss rate at Arras was the highest of the war at 4,076. Total casualties were, with the Germans losing around the same number.

Outside The Wellington Quarry in Arras

Outside the passage leading to the Wellington Quarry there’s a memorial wall. It commemorates the infantry and cavalry units who fought in the Battle of Arras with portraits, sculptures and memorials. A large block of stone has a silhouette of a miner.

Information on the Wellington Quarry in Arras

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Declaration: I travelled to France courtesy of DFDS from Dover to Calais on a self-driving press trip as a guest of Pas-de-Calais Tourisme.

More Information on Ferries to France including DFDS details.