Owners of The Dirty House, Tim and Sue have taken on an exciting new home project, the former property of William 'Mole Man' Lyttle
To coincide with Frieze London 2014, we revisit one of our favourite art stories from the current issue of AnOther Magazine: Tim Noble and Sue Webster's intriguing new house. The British duo have been working together since meeting in the late eighties. Owners of 'The Dirty House' in the East End of London, a dilapidated early twentieth-century furniture factory, the couple's latest project is the property known as the 'Mole Man' house in De Beauvoir. It's going to take years before it's complete as a living/working space, but the duo gave AnOther a sneak preview...
“I came across the Mole Man house whilst cycling. It wasn’t for sale and was protected by corrugated iron fencing. I called Hackney Council to find out more and quickly became hooked on the story – William ‘Mole Man’ Lyttle singlehandedly dug a maze of 20-metre tunnels under his house for 40 years. Buying the house wasn’t easy – it was in probate and three of our offers were ignored or rejected. In the end, I discovered the house had been put up for auction. There is so much preparation work involved in the project – so far we have cleared 23 skip loads of rubble as the roof collapsed and took all the internal floors with it. We have taken on a monster. What’s fascinating is that it’s almost like a piece of our work – a piece of trash we will recycle into something that will become a piece of history.”
“Curiosity is my curse. If I make a start, I must know where it ends,” said William Lyttle, Hackney’s infamous Mole Man. The local council put a premature stop to his compulsive tunneling in 2006, fearing damage to the rest of the street, and Lyttle died four years later. New owners, artist duo Tim Noble and Sue Webster – known for assemblages of personal items and household detritus – are redeveloping Lyttle’s labour of love with the help of architect David Adjaye. “How much do you let Lyttle have his dream? How much do you create a house you want to live in?” Noble asks. Their vision is a three-storey home, with a basement studio using what remains of Lyttle’s tunnels.
Top 5 William 'Mole Man' Facts...
1. William Lytlle was a former civil engineer, who had Irish heritage. He quickly became a legendary character and Iain Sinclair dedicated an entire chapter to him in his book Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire. Sinclair described his work as "a completely mad, visionary project. Illegitimate in the present era."
2. The Victorian 'Mole Man' property sits on the corner of Mortimer Road (number 121) and Stamford Road in the De Beauvoir area of east London. It originally belonged to Lyttle's parents. Lytlle resided with his wife and split the house up, allowing him to rent out rooms to tenants. Little is known about his wife. It is believed the couple had one daughter.
"Lyttle was obsessive and hated anything to go to waste"
3. "I first tried to dig a wine cellar, and then the cellar doubled, and so on. But the idea that I dug tunnels under other people's houses is rubbish," Lyttle told the Guardian in 2006. "I just have a big basement." The tunnels ended up being 8m (26ft) deep, spreading up to 20m around the property. Lyttle was obsessive and hated anything to go to waste. He created "bathrooms" from small passageways in the house and would cut light switches in half.
4. The tunnelling created extensive damage and neighbours made countless complaints to Hackney Council which were ignored for over 40 years. In 2001, a 450-volt cable was disrupted by Lyttle's digging causing the whole of the opposite side of the street to lose power and an 8-ft hole appeared in the pavement.
5. Lyttle was ordered to pay £293,000 by the high court in 2008 to cover the costs of repairs, scaffolding and new foundations, and banned from going near the property after he failed to pay. The council was left with a £408,000 bill and more than 33 tonnes of debris and waste. He was rehoused in a high-rise flat on the nearby De Beauvoir housing estate.
This article features in the A/W14 issue of AnOther Magazine alongside AnOther Thing I Wanted to Tell You... with Gia Coppola, Buzz Aldrin and more.
Text by Laura Bradley
