Simon Marks, 37, believed he had driven onto a flowerbed when his car’s wheels became impaled in a crater.
The damage he had caused to his car made him think, “Well, this day couldn’t get any worse.”
He was ready to examine the damage more closely when he heard the horrible sound, which caused his heart to accelerate. Exactly what was that?
Simon knelt down to get a better look and noticed that the driveway’s stones were cracked; then, just in front of him, the driveway started to give way.
A completely new surprise was revealed as the pavers continued to shatter with an ominous sound.
He effortlessly removed the dirt, revealing a bit of metal underneath.
He used his bare hands to uncover it until he could grasp it, at which point he tried to pull as hard as he could without success.
He made the decision to go around and try to piece together as much of the mystery surrounding the object as he could.
Simon made a help request. His father joined him, and the two of them moved buckets of tightly packed muck.
When they finally came upon an entrance, they down a rusty, old ladder to see into the ground hole.
“My dad saw it and instantly said it’s an air raid shelter,” Simon said. “We googled it and found there are quite a few in this area.”
After a thorough investigation online, Simon found out that the shelter had been built during WW2! “The previous owner must have known it was there and when he built the house and put a garden in… he must have filled it in,” Simon told the reporters.
During WW2, a man named Sir John Anderson was tasked to devise a strategy to protect its citizens from the onslaught and bombings that they knew were coming.
His strategy was to build these underground shelters.
“One of the walls has been bricked up. I’m 90 percent sure we won’t find out any more rooms but we don’t know. They might have bricked up one of the walls when the house was built to make way for the foundations,”
Simon told reporters. “If that’s the case we’ll just have to leave it,” he added. But it wasn’t long before the discovery went viral.
Simon and his father plan to restore the shelter and preserve it — they hope that one day it will be declared an important and historical monument.
They believe that just because the war is over and long past, the period shouldn’t be forgotten.
They hope this little physical piece of those difficult times will be a place people can visit and see a tiny glimpse of that part of history.
Watch the tour of the shelter:
NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED TO THE AUTHOR OF THE VIDEO) [Youtube/BBC Three Counties Radio]
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