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.