09-05-2021, 01:47 AM
1
Weoldham Manor
Part 1
Martin Watson was happily digging away in his back garden when his spade suddenly hit something hard with a thunk that sent shockwaves up the haft of his spade before jarring his wrist.
He was eleven years old and currently in the process of digging a trench so he could plant a row of peas for his dad in exchange for extra pocket money. His parents were in town shopping, and his older brother was out playing cricket for his school.
His dad was a keen gardener, having learned all about growing fruit and vegetables during the war when he had been part of the Land Army, and had shown Martin the proper way to plant things. Father and son had stripped turf from an area at the back of their house that had been a corner patch of feeble grass in the shade of two fences in order to double the size of their existing vegetable plot.
Martin’s dad had stuck two pegs into the ground with string between them to mark out where he wanted the peas to be sown and then left his son to it. Starting at the far end of the garden, the young boy began the trench, a spade width and a spade depth, parking the spoil in a long neat heap next to the string as he went. Next, had he not hit the hard object, he would have half-filled the hole with well-rotted manure and compost, raked in a layer of soil, planted the peas in a pattern like five dots on a dice or domino, then raked the remaining soil over the top to cover the peas.
After shaking his arm to relieve the pain in his wrist, he picked up the spade and started to scrape around the bottom of the hole, enlarging it as he went until he had uncovered what appeared to be a stone flagged floor.
The family had moved to the village of Weoldham in Lincolnshire when he was four after his dad had been promoted to a manager of the building society he worked for and tasked with setting up a brand-new branch from scratch.
The house had been built across the main road from the church of All Saints in the 1950s within the grounds where an old manor house had once stood. The crumbling ruin had been demolished and the land cleared to make way for a dozen houses in a cul-de-sac called Manor Close. It looked like the builders had just dumped a layer of top soil over an old floor rather than go to the trouble of digging it up.
Gradually working outwards, Martin scraped and shovelled away until he found the edge of the stone slabs. There were seven in all; six rectangular ones, each about two feet by one foot, set out in a square surrounding one large central slab about two feet square. Fetching a hand brush, he swept the stones of soil that was rapidly drying in the sun, revealing cement between the rectangular stones, but a gap filled with dirt round the larger square one along with a metal ring in a soil filled recess near one edge.
The young boy’s first thought was that he had found part of the manor floor, or perhaps the floor of an outbuilding, but when he discovered that the extent of the slabs was only a few paces across he changed his mind and thought instead that perhaps it was the entrance to a World War 2 bunker. He and his friends often explored the series of outbuildings and air raid shelters along People’s Lane and the field by “Second Beck” that backed onto the old Bomber Base that had once been home to 100 Squadron.
He was surprised that there was a shelter or bunker this far from the old aerodrome, but then he thought perhaps the Manor House had been used as the Officer’s Mess, or even as a secret headquarters, and this was its air raid shelter. Thinking further though put doubts in his mind. Surely a shelter from bombs would have quick access. Having to heave up a heavy stone slab didn’t make sense if bombs were falling all around and people needed to get to safety in a hurry.
He then thought instead that this might be the cover to a deep well, or an access to some sort of water storage. A cistern. He had learned that word on a visit to Lincoln Castle the year before and discovered what it meant. That would make much more sense than an air raid shelter that would need to be accessed immediately that an alarm was sounded.
How to get it open though; how to lift the slab? Going back into the garage where his dad kept his tools, he started to have a rummage around. His dad’s dad had been a stonemason, and his mum’s dad had been a farmer, but both had died when Martin was too young to remember and his father now had some of their old belongings.
His dad also picked up things when he was getting a house tidied up ready to sell, so occasionally came home with some interesting object.
As Martin searched, he found the drill-bit from a pneumatic drill that had fallen off a lorry and bounced along the road, nearly hitting his dad’s little A35 company car. It was big lump of metal, but the young lad couldn’t get his hands round it or barely lift it, so he kept searching.
He collected an old, blunt, bone handled knife that used to belong to his Granny, that was now used to scrape garden tools of mud after use. He also picked up his favourite gardening trowel; stainless steel with a maroon painted wooden handle. He had found it in a neighbour’s garden whilst digging weeds for yet more pocket money. When he showed it to the owner, he was told he could keep it.
Taking these outside first, he went back in and began searching under his Dad’s workbench. Eventually he found a jemmy and a short crowbar that he thought might do the job, so took them back outside as well.
First, he dug out the soil from around the metal ring with his trowel, then began to scrape more soil out of the joint round the square slab with the knife, pushing it in then flicking out dirt with the back of the blade.
He then hooked the curved end of the jemmy through the metal ring, put a brick under it half way along, then jumped up and down on the other end.
Suddenly the square slab moved. Not very much, but enough to encourage the boy. After another few minutes of heaving and straining, he managed to get one side of the slab up enough to put the crowbar underneath it. Then he stopped, fearful that he might drop his dad’s tools down a well or deep shaft, and never be able to get them back. Thinking for just a moment, he went into the kitchen to get some string.
There had been a fair on the village green with traction engines and men fighting with swords, as well as a group of soldiers who fired blanks from a field gun to the amazement and delight of all the local kids.
Martin and his friends got talking to one of the soldiers who had the bonnet up of the lorry that had towed the gun to the fair. He had told the boys that when they worked on a tank engine, they had to tie their tools to their wrists because if they dropped them they sometimes couldn’t be got out again without having to take the engine out. This would cause delays, make their superiors angry, and could get them into a lot a of trouble.
Remembering all this, Martin tied the crowbar and jemmy together with a length of string, then tied them round his mum’s line-post before redoubling his efforts to lift the stone slab.
After another minute of heaving, the slab swivelled up on an unseen hinge, to stand upright revealing a black void below. First he moved all the tools away, then whilst lying flat on the ground, Martin looked into the blackness and could just make out a set of steep stone steps descending below.
Light. He needed light. He had a small torch in the house, but it wasn’t very bright, or reliable for that matter. Then he remembered the toy Aldis lamp his friend Tony Trott had given him. It was one of a pair, with the Morse Code embossed into the back of it, and the two friends would sometimes spend an evening in Winter by flashing messages to each other from their bedroom windows. It had a trigger so as soon as you released it, the light went out, but it was bright and would stay on as long as you kept your finger on the trigger, and as long as the bicycle battery that powered it would last.
He also remembered that there was an old paraffin hurricane lantern in the garage, again originally belonging to his Granny who used to keep chickens on her 1/3rd of an acre plot in Somerset.
The house was heated by two coal fires and there was always a box of matches on the mantlepiece in both the dining room and little used front room, so Martin went off to fetch everything he thought he would need to explore the world below that he had just discovered.
Carefully lighting the hurricane lamp before giving it a few pumps as he had seen his dad do during a power cut, then putting the box of Ship’s safety matches in his trousers pocket, he held the Aldis lamp in his other hand and descended the stone steps. At eleven years old, he was not yet five feet tall, but the roof of the tunnel he found at the bottom of the steps wasn’t much taller than he.
Holding the paraffin lamp up to the ceiling, he looked around, then pulled the trigger on his battery lamp and looked along the tunnel.
Strange, it ran straight for about fifty yards then stopped in a dead end. Releasing his finger from the signal lamp he walked to the stone blocks at the end of the underground passage, only to find that it wasn’t the end at all.
The tunnel turned at right angles for double its width, then turned again to continue its original direction for another forty yards or so.
The floor was flat, and felt hard underneath a thin layer of powdery dry soil, so as he walked, he left distinct footprints in his wake. He used the Aldis lamp a few seconds at a time to preserve the battery life, but it was long enough for him to check for obstacles in his path The hurricane lamp hissed and gave off a yellow glow enabling him to inspect the tunnel walls as he carefully made his way to the next apparent dead end.
09-05-2021, 01:48 AM
2
Re: Weoldham Manor
Part 2
Again, it took a right-angle turn, this time to the left, then another to the right to bring Martin’s direction back to his original track. Stopping for a moment, he thought again about his visit to Lincoln Castle, and how it was built with defence in mind. Spiral staircase favoured a right-handed soldier facing down towards the enemy who would be restricted if fighting upwards with a sword.
Entrances had two sets of gates or a portcullis that could be dropped in a second, and slits or murder holes between them to fire at the attacking foe.
An escape tunnel from the old Manor House! That’s what this was. If someone was being chased, their enemy wouldn’t be able to fire in a straight line. They would only have a clear shot every forty or fifty yards. “That’s clever”, thought Martin.
After two more sets of double turns, Martin finally came to the true end of the tunnel, with another steep staircase leading up. At the top he could see a round hole in the tunnel ceiling, but it was blocked by a stone slab. Well, that wasn’t really a surprise.
Then he felt more than heard a strange eerie noise, vibrating on and off at irregular intervals through the stones and the very air that surrounded him.
It almost sounded like someone moaning at times. Somewhat unnerved, Martin took a step back, only to feel something touch his neck. This caused him to shriek and drop the lantern, spilling paraffin that quickly spread and ignited, including several splashes on his trousers. He immediately stepped away and picked up handfuls of dirt from the floor that he then rubbed hard into his legs in order to put out the flames on his clothes.
Fortunately, he was quick enough to avoid injury, but just for a second whilst he was bent low to the ground, he had seen something just above floor level. By the light of his burning trousers, he had seen a small metal lever.
Triggering his Aldis lamp that thankfully he still had hold of because of the cord at the base of the handle he had looped around his wrist, he kicked more dirt over the remaining burning paraffin that was alight on the floor before standing the lantern upright once more.
Looking up with the lamp he saw a large spider hanging by a thread. He was annoyed. He wasn’t afraid of them normally, but it was the sudden contact with the creature touching his neck that had caused him to jump.
Bending down, he searched for the metal handle again. He tried moving it up and down and to the right but it wouldn’t budge. However, when he moved it to the left, a section of the tunnel wall moved with it.
Looking into the opening that had appeared, he saw a large wheel and handle with a series of cogs and linkages. It looked a bit like a much larger version of his dad’s hand drill. The handle on the side was attached to a large cog that turned two other cogs, the bottom one of which turned the chuck of the drill.
The mechanism was coated with a layer of dust, but on closer inspection he could see that the dust was sitting on the surface of huge blobs of grease. Due to a ratchet system, the wheel with the handle could only turn in one direction. At first, when he tried to turn it, nothing happened, but after a moment the whole thing rotated a quarter turn with a jerk.
Further winding of the handle took up slack, and then a vertical square rod that looked like a stout wrought iron bar started to rotate. The bottom of the rod sat in a recess in the alcove floor, and the top of the rod disappeared into the ceiling next to the blocked off round aperture.
First Martin felt some resistance, but all of a sudden there was the sound of stone grinding against stone, and the mechanism started to move freely with every turn of the handle.
Dust fell from the round hole in the ceiling blocked by a stone slab, then all of a sudden, the resistance in the mechanism reduced considerably, and a thin crescent of light appeared at one side of the round opening. The more Martin turned the handle, the bigger the crescent got. As it did so, the mournful sound increased then suddenly cut off completely.
Turning the wheel ever faster now there was almost no resistance, the light coming through the hole in the ceiling increased and changed shape just like the moon when it was waxing, but very fast, taking only a few seconds to reveal the circular hole completely clear at the top of the steps.
The light coming through produced an almost cylindrical effect, as if it was a bright solid entity, picking out dust motes and producing a ragged circle on the floor.
Carefully climbing the stone steps, Martin poked his head through the hole whilst looking up and around him in, and then gasped.
“Hello Martin. Trust you to make such a spectacular entrance. Still, I’m pleased you’ve decided to join my service today”, said the most Reverend Robert Timms as he looked down at Martin from his pulpit.
“Cor” was all Martin’s friend Bobby Bolsover could say as he leaned over the handle of the organ pump to get a better look.
Christopher Marchant, the church organist was speechless, as were the sixteen members of the congregation who had been singing a hymn when the font suddenly started to rotate to reveal a hole in the floor of the south transept of the village church of All Saints.
After a moment, Martin climbed all they way out, smiled meekly at the congregation, then turned to the bomb-proof vicar and said, “I think the stories Mr Deer told us at Lees school were true after all when he said there were rumours of a secret tunnel between the old Manor and the church.”
“My Dad’s not going to be pleased though. T’other end has ruined his veggy-patch.”
is it true?
09-05-2021, 02:14 PM
8
Re: Weoldham Manor
Originally Posted by Mags
->
That has similarities to the Black Castle tunnel, Fruitcake 
Is it connected in any way?
I've never heard of that. When I were a lad living in a small village in Lincolnshire, there was indeed an old manor house that was demolished to make way for houses, just not ours. We were told at school about rumours of secret tunnels from there to the church.
Nobody has ever found them, but much of what I have written is true representation of my life.
We lived diagonally across from the church and about a hundred metres from where the old manor building stood, so I just moved it's location to make the story fit.
I still have the trowel.
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