oddities of my youth

A few oddities of my youth

There was a very odd school in the forest when I was young. I dsitinctly remember my entire class being taken there for several days, but I can't at all remember what it was all about.

Up on beacon hill I remember various schoolmates of mine referring to "airraid shelters", evidently extensive subterranean chambers. Only once did I ever hear them referred to and I've no idea where they might be.

On the front page of the local papers on a single occasion was mention of horse rippers, a plague of mutilations against local horses. Also the discovery of various bits of pagan paraphernalia such as stone tomahawks. I also once saw some scaffolding on my street with an inverted pentagram built into its side. A local bridge currently has graffiti on its underside reading "do what tyhou will is that whole of the law". The Templars, of course, were kept in the dungeons of the local castle (the then property of the Bishop of Lincoln). They have left various pieces of graffiti, especially ladders, many of which are similar to those to be seen in the cells they were kept in at Lincoln castle.

In 1906, so legend has it, a royal personage came to retrieve something hidden in one of the castle dungeons used by the Templars. The sites bear evidence of ritual use and the retrieval, of who knows what, was from an alcovve in the original stone work which was then hidden behind an eighteenth century layer of bricks (built when the dungeon was used to store imported ice). The story goes that Templars, of some group identifying as such, worshipped down there from their dissoultion in 1312 until the destruction of the castle by Parliamentary forces after the Civil War (during which the town was notoriously pro-Stuart, incidentally, withstanding three sieges, being relieved by Prince Rupert himself and being the place the Scots were besieging when the king gave himself up to them).

The governor during the civil war was supposedly saved from death after abandoning his house due to a series of dreams, the house burning down after a cannon ball hit it.

And there's clay lane, down the side of beacon hill, which is very steep.