Even the robots do it
Photo credit this guy, I gather it was taken during a 1950 renovation.
“Bo Peep Tunnel is a 1,318-yard-long (1,205 m) railway tunnel located between Bopeep Junction and St Leonards Warrior Square station on the Hastings line in East Sussex, England. Constructed by the South Eastern Railway (SER) between 1849 and 1850, the tunnel was opened to traffic on 13 February 1851.” Thus spake Leo, the AI associated with Brave.
It’s a railway tunnel. I went through it today. The only thing interesting about it is the name.
It turns out “bo peep” is much older than the nursery rhyme. It’s the medieval name for peek-a-boo, where you put a child on your knee, cover your face and go “bo!” then uncover it and go “peep!”
Grok tells me “This game is mentioned as early as the 14th century in legal records — for instance, in 1364, an ale-wife named Alice Causton was punished for short measures by being forced to “play bo pepe thorowe a pillery” (peek through the pillory holes).”
The nursery rhyme first appeared in print in 1805.
The connection to Sussex is said to be smuggling – this area was a hotbed of smuggling in the 18th C – but sources were vague on the exact meaning. Either revenuers peeping on smugglers or smugglers peeping for revenuers or some kind of shootout at the local Bo Peep pub. There’s still a Bo Peep pub in St Leonard’s (where there was once a dragon).
In one multi-paragraph information dump from Grok, every single citation was from Wikipedia!
November 3, 2025 — 7:40 pm
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