Rickmansworth man discovers underground shelter beneath back lawn

5:30pm Friday 4th January 2013 in News Photograph of the Author By Ben Endley, Senior reporter

Man discovers underground shelter beneath back lawn Man discovers underground shelter beneath back lawn

A Rickmansworth resident got a New Year’s Day shock when he pulled away turf from a dip in his manicured lawn to discover the entrance to a mysterious underground shelter.

Anthony Abadjian, 62, noticed a slight dip in the garden of his home and removed a section of turf to discover a brick structure five feet below his garden.

The visible brick arches lead down into the ground but until an expert can be found, the true purpose of the underground structure remains a mystery.

The hole runs directly below an area of the garden where Mr Abadjian erects an above-ground swimming pool during the summer months and he believes years of draining water onto the ground may have washed away soil from around the entrance.

Mr Abadjian said: "I noticed the dip which was about two feet across and decided to lift the turf and see what the problem was, what I found was amazing.

"It just started sinking in the wet weather and when I lifted of about six inches of turf there was just this hole.

"It is absolutely not what I expected to find under there.

"I wonder if the amount of water that has been poured on it over the years is part of the reason why it has revealed itself."

The picturesque detached home in Pheasants Way was built in 1929 but the historic looking stone has caused Mr Abadjian to question whether the subterranean structure pre-dates it.

The semi-retired computer consultant has made contact with Three Rivers District Council but they hold no record of any structure under his home so he is appealing for help from any aspiring archaeologists.

He said: "I am hoping someone can shed some light on what it was.

"I have spoken to my local councillor Barbara Lamb who suggested contacting the county council and I have also been in touch with the museum.

"I’m going to strip away some of the turf and put a ladder down there but would like to hear from any budding archaeologists who want to investigate."

Mr Abadjian has lived in the detached house for 27 years and says prior to making the discovery he had no idea there was anything under the ground.

"It is quite a strange thing to find in one’s garden," he added.

Comments(19)

Harry Caine says...
10:46pm Fri 4 Jan 13

The cellar in my central Watford House (Built in 1872) was re-enforced during the blitz to provide a bomb shelter.

Seemingly quite a necessity given the number of properties destroyed by enemy action at that time

Is this a record?

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Boosey says...
5:17am Sat 5 Jan 13

Be careful, Bassini is hiding down there!

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Roy Stockdill says...
10:31am Sat 5 Jan 13

If the house was built in 1929 has no-one considered the obvious, i.e. that it could be an Anderson shelter from WWII?

There's a hump in the ground at the end of my garden which, when we bought the house in the 1960s, we were told by the previous owner was the site of an Anderson shelter. I've never bothered to dig it out. My house was also built in the late 1920s.

Presumably neither Mr Abadjian, anyone at Three Rivers Council or the young WO reporter has heard of Anderson shelters, being too young! They were named after Sir John Anderson who was placed in charge of air raid precautions when war looked imminent and by 1939 there were around two and a quarter million of them throughout the country. I doubt you had to get planning permission for them, which would account for the lack of documentation.

If this "mysterious" shelter does turn out to be an Anderson shelter. it's not exactly rocket science to find out more about it. There's lots to be found with Google.

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theturpster says...
10:45am Sat 5 Jan 13

Most Anderson shelters in Edinburgh were sunk into the ground as well during war time. When i moved down here into our house in Vicarage, we had an Anderson as a shed, apart from a bit of surface rust, it was in relatively good nick. Due to work being carried out in our garden, i offered this shelter for a quid in ebay, but the guy had second thoughts about disassembling the thing. It took about 4 angle grinder disks to cut through and was sadly skipped. However it was quite funny hearing the expletives from the landscape gardeners attempting to slice it up.

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MarsLander says...
11:19am Sat 5 Jan 13

The council have a crack team of people who look at holes that open up in the ground. It's what they were trained to do and what they live for.

I am talking about that brave team of men and women councillors who go to any lengths to be photographed next to a hole so that their brave exploits may be told in the pages of the Liberal Democrat publicity sheet.

Where are these heroes when you really need them?

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TRT says...
11:35am Sat 5 Jan 13

Andersons would very rarely have a brick component. In my back garden, I discovered about eight feet down some foundations of a small, brick built room the floor of which was covered with broken glass plates and brown bottle fragments. As that section of garden was previously owned by a former professional photographer's shop on the corner, long since converted to a house, and had a wonderful old apple tree, it's my belief that structure was a dark room. So it's worth researching the history of the house!

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LSC says...
1:16pm Sat 5 Jan 13

I know of a brick built shelter that still stands near me. It was a community shelter rather than a family one like an Anderson.
It is not sunk into the ground, but is covered with a large amount of soil; probably due to flooding considerations from the high water table around here.
A community shelter in a private garden however is unlikely, but it is not impossible that some local residents got together and built one to share.

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TRT says...
1:22pm Sat 5 Jan 13

Unlikely to be an icehouse, but maybe a coal or other fuel store.

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crazyfrog says...
2:18pm Sat 5 Jan 13

I was thinking ice house or meat store myself, but usually they are on part of a big estate cassiobury estate had one and i believe it is now in someones backgarden on the cassiobury estate area, if the inside is totally bricked then alot of time and effort has gone in to building it so i would not think it would be an air raid sheltar, i think being pheasants way the nearest big house could of been money hill house.
go to www.old-maps.co.uk but all that appears is farmland also go on google earth then select historical imagery and move the slider to 1945, i dont know which house this sheltar is in but google earth does show up a black dot in one of the backgardens in 1945 could this be the entrance? if it is a sheltar? please update us to what the inside is like ! is it bricked totally.

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TRT says...
3:27pm Sat 5 Jan 13

I'd be cautious in case it's a cess pit!

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John Dowdle says...
4:31am Sun 6 Jan 13

During 1940, Churchill ordered the setting up of a secret underground army in case Britain was invaded from the European continent.
Under conditions of considerable secrecy, a number of underground shelters were constructed so that the members of the secret army and their weaponry could be stored out of sight so they could operate at night behind German lines in the event of Britain being occupied.
This could be one of the secret shelters built in 1940 but abandoned well before 1945.

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Phil Drackley says...
5:26am Sun 6 Jan 13

TRT wrote:
I'd be cautious in case it's a cess pit!
Where I used to live, there was always a dip in the middle of the garden due to a disused cess-pit. That was brick-lined as well.

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Andrew1963 says...
12:04pm Sun 6 Jan 13

I expect it is an underground reservoir to store rainwater for a former block of glasshouses.If the land had previously had a large house or walled garden these reserviors were very common before mains water.

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Roy Stockdill says...
12:54pm Sun 6 Jan 13

Out of interest, because this story has obviously created quite a bit of attention, I spoke to Mr Abadjian on the phone (it's the reporter in me, I've never lost the natural curiosity to solve apparent mysteries).

He told me that before the housing estate was built the land was open farmland. It's been suggested that there could have been a farm building with some kind of cellar/reservoir, or whatever, beneath it which obviously wasn't discovered when the houses were built and the foundations for the homes were being laid.

If that turns out to be the case, then it would obviously have been there from well before WWII as Mr Abadjian suggests. So an investigation into the history of the land may prove interesting. There must surely be some documentation somewhere to show who owned the land before the houses were built and what outbuildings were on it.

I've now changed my original view that it was a wartime Anderson shelter because, as has been pointed out, they were metal structures and were not buried beneath the ground. The one at the end of my garden forms a hump which has long become grassed over.

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crazyfrog says...
1:28pm Sun 6 Jan 13

Roy the whole area used to be part of Shepherds Farm which was situated in Mill End (where the dairy was) the farm house i believe is still there but been incorporated into the new housing development, i only live 5 minutes walk from pheasants way and have studied the area on old maps website that only go back to 1800s i do know that the fields next to field way used to be a pit and the fields are still today known locally as the pit, speaking to one old local lady who has since passed said tons of asbestos was buried there years ago, if Mr Abadjian's sheltar is from ww2 era and was used as a communal sheltar there may be a chance an elderly local resident may remember it !

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crazyfrog says...
1:37pm Sun 6 Jan 13

i would suggest the best person who could help clear this mystery up is a chap called Nick Catford from
http://www.subbrit.o
rg.uk/

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Roy Stockdill says...
2:33pm Sun 6 Jan 13

I should add that I owe an apology to the WO reporter Ben Endley because I learned from Mr Abadjian that he did in fact know about wartime Anderson shelters and this was one of the possibilities they discussed.

Thanks also for the additional information to crazyfrog.

Hopefully, when this mystery has been cleared up we will be told. I loathe unfinished stories and I hope Ben will tell us about it if it is solved in the fullness of time!

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garston tony says...
9:22am Mon 7 Jan 13

Werent anderson shelters corrigated iron? This appears to be brick, although I have to said air raid shelter was my first thought too when I saw the headline.

Rather exciting, and worrying at the same time. Sounds like a good thing the home owner was observant and noticed the dip otherwise if its come to light due to water errosion someone might have had a nasty fall.

Lets hope the WO update us on anything that might come to light about this structure

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deadphill says...
2:08pm Tue 8 Jan 13

Have you considered getting the boys from time team in? Certainly the guys with their 'geofizz' might be able to help out!

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