Carrière Wellington The Carrière Wellington is a museum in Arras , northern France . It is named after a former underground quarry which was part of a network of tunnels used by forces of the British Empire and Commonwealth during the First World War . Opened in March 2008 , the museum commemorates the soldiers who built the tunnels and fought in the Battle of Arras in 1917 . History . From the Middle Ages through to the 19th century , the chalk beds underneath Arras were extensively quarried to supply stone for the town ' s buildings . The quarries fell into disuse by the start of the 20th century . In 1916 , during the First World War , the British forces controlling Arras decided to re - use the underground quarries to aid a planned offensive against the Germans , whose trenches ran through what are now the eastern suburbs of the town . The quarries were to be linked up so that they could be used both as shelters from the incessant German shelling and as a means of conveying troops to the front in secrecy and safety . 500 miners from the New Zealand Tunnelling Company , including Māori and Pacific Islanders , recruited from the gold and coal mining districts of the country , were brought in to dig of tunnels . They worked alongside Royal Engineer tunnelling companies , made up by now of British coal miners and expert tunnellers who had built the London Underground . Many of them were " Bantams " , soldiers of below average height who had been rejected from regular units because they did not meet the height requirements ; others had been initially rejected as too old , but their specialist mining experience made them essential for the tunnelling operation . The work was difficult and dangerous . In the New Zealand units alone , 41 tunnellers died and another 151 were injured during countermining operations against the Germans , whose own tunnellers sought to disrupt the Allied tunneling operations . The Arras tunnels linked the quarries to form a network that ran from the town centre , under no man ' s land , to a number of points just in front of the German front lines . The tunnel system could accommodate 20 , 000 men and were outfitted with running water , electric lights , kitchens , latrines , a light rail system and a fully equipped hospital . The tunnellers named the individual quarries after their home towns - Auckland , Wellington , Nelson , Blenheim , Christchurch and Dunedin for the New Zealanders , Glasgow , Edinburgh , Crewe and London for the Britons . Thousands of soldiers were billeted in the tunnels for eight days prior to the start of the Arras offensive on 9 April 1917 . At 05 : 30 that morning , exits were dynamited to enable the troops to storm the German trenches . The Germans were taken by surprise and were pushed back . This counted as an extraordinary success by the standards of the time . However , the offensive soon bogged down and it was eventually called off after casualties reached 4 , 000 a day . During World War II , the tunnels were re - opened to serve as air raid shelters . They were sealed again in 1945 and were largely forgotten until their rediscovery in 1990 . Much of the network has now collapsed and most of the rest is extremely unsafe . With the sponsorship of the Arras town council , the regional council and the French state , one section around the Carrière Wellington was restored and converted into a museum at a cost of €4 million . Museum . The Carrière Wellington museum consists of a visitor centre displaying historic artifacts and presenting the historical context of the Battle of Arras , including the work of the tunnellers and the military strategy that underlay the tunnels ' construction . It was opened to the public on 1 March 2008 . The tunnels are accessed via a lift shaft that takes visitors approximately 22 m ( 70 ft ) below ground to the galleries around the Wellington quarry . Visitors are taken on a guided tour along some 350 m of tunnels to see audio - visual presentations of various aspects of the campaign and the soldiers who built and stayed in the tunnels . At various places , graffiti and painted signs can be seen , along with relics of the troops such as cans of bully beef , helmets and bottles . The museum is on the Rue Arthur Deletoile , a turning off the Avenue Fernand Lobbedez ( D917 ) , approximately 1 km south of the city centre ( GPS navigation may lead an unwary visitor astray ) .