N. Kósa Judit - Szablyár Péter: Underground Pest - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2002)

Water-filled quarries in Quarry Town - the subterranean reservoirs of Kőbánya

were found 15-20 metres below Óhegy Park. The holes had been used as air-raid shelters in World War II, but the entrances and air vents were later filled with domestic rubbish and construction rubble. The large system had been damaged in several places by the lack of ventilation and by water leaking in. Reinforcement and filling was started in places which posed the greatest hazard to the structure of buildings on the surface.

Today the municipality of Kőbánya is aware of the existence of cellars of a combined length of 32 kilometres with a total floor space of 195,000 square metres. In addition to the presence of the Dreher Brewery, a company experiencing a second period of boom in its history, Budapest Liqueur Ltd., the Promontorvin company, and a few smaller businesses growing mushrooms in cellars, the district would like to open some sections of these enormous labyrinthine cavities to the public.

A technical curiosity of underground Kőbánya are the two reservoirs on the Ihász utca plant of the Budapest Waterworks Co. Their history goes back to the second half of the 19th century.

The establishment, in Kossuth Lajos tér, of the first temporary waterworks was necessitated by the cholera epidemic of 1866. The construction of its counter pressure pool was begun in March 1868 on Ó-hegy, or Old Hill, of Kőbánya (in today's Ihász utca) under the supervision of an English engineer, W. Lindley. By the end of 1869 the first and by 1870 the second pool had been completed.

■ One part ofi the Kőbánya cellán

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