Have you lived somewhere with a secret / dark past?
Discussion
prand said:
Shakermaker said:
Aah, the place you get to on the Paignton and Dartmouth Railway? I've not got off there when on the train, but we have family in the area and I heard them telling part of this story to someone at party last year
The whole area around Slapton Sands was sealed off and taken over by the US Army to practice for D-Day and the locals evacuated. The German navy caught a whiff of something going on and torpedoed some of the landing craft with the loss of over 700 soldiers and navy men. The shore defences were using live ammunition for realism, and they accidentally shelled and shot at some of the first landing craft too. The number of casualties is thought to be much higher but due to secrecy around the exercise to protect invasion plans, and tdue to he lack of official records, the final number has never been confirmed.
Riley Blue said:
Musing on the recent thread about secure places, I wondered about places with secret or 'dark' pasts.
Back in the '60s I was briefly at what was called in those days a 'college of education' - not a corrective institution but a place where teachers were trained. It was not far from Milton Keynes, in a largely brick built building in the grounds of a mansion now open to the public.
Any guesses yet?
Decades later I revisited it, it's better known as 'Station X' or Bletchley Park. In the '60s its wartime history was not known, at least not by us.
Anyone else lived, stayed, or worked in a similar 'secret' place?
I was there in the NATS College of Telecoms Engineering back in the '80s. Good times. Back in the '60s I was briefly at what was called in those days a 'college of education' - not a corrective institution but a place where teachers were trained. It was not far from Milton Keynes, in a largely brick built building in the grounds of a mansion now open to the public.
Any guesses yet?
Decades later I revisited it, it's better known as 'Station X' or Bletchley Park. In the '60s its wartime history was not known, at least not by us.
Anyone else lived, stayed, or worked in a similar 'secret' place?
Ayahuasca said:
I'm pretty sure Westbury has an army base in it. Did my RCB there.
It does; Leighton house. I did my AOSB there (that's what the yoofs of today call the RCB).It's being sold off as part of the latest round of cost cutting measures though.
As for dark local history, I am currently renting a house in Hepworth, West Yorkshire. This village is the northernmost point reached by the great plague of 1665 (carried by fleas in clothes delivered from London to a local farm) and the road I live on is where a barricade was built to keep the infected quarantined from the rest of the village. The farm is still there too, I drove through it earlier on my way to take the dog for a walk and a quarter mile up the road is then 'plague pit' where they buried the dead.
On a lighter note, I live very close to holmfirth which is where last of the sunmer wine was filmed
Shakermaker said:
Aah, the place you get to on the Paignton and Dartmouth Railway? I've not got off there when on the train, but we have family in the area and I heard them telling part of this story to someone at party last year
The railway stops off just before the tunnel. You can follow the road down to greenway house and the quay or take higher un-named lane that leads to Maypool where we were. The whole Maypool area was commandeered and closed off (as was Greenway House).Loads of books on the subject and I used to know the family who still own most of it so heard a lot of what happened from people who were there at the time. Whilst it was very serious stuff and quite tragic there were a fair few parties at both houses!
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