i love every aspect of the landscape and every so often something grabs my attention especially when
he's looking at old maps or in this case a modern one every so often something pops up which we just
can't explain so what exactly have we found that has caused much debate in the house this week
so this is north dorset chalk downland area and the the lovely os print out just for clarity
uh and you'll see at the north here in the center we've got a lovely probably iron age hill for
we've got a trig point here so we're up quite high now let's put this on screen so you can see
if we zoom in a curiosity two air shafts in quite close proximity to one another doesn't
seem quite right does it so let's have a look at the possibilities now first of all you're thinking
railway tunnel right nope this is real map online and it highlights that there isn't anything for
miles and in fact this is canal map online and it says the same thing okay so it's probably not
transport related as such maybe it's more military maybe cold war maybe an roc bunker or something
maybe more modern military you'd think but look at these maps from national library of scotland
they're dated 1880 so they can't be world war related or even anything more recent wait i saw
on that old map two big chalk pits so clearly they were connected by some kind of tunnel and they are
ventilation shafts for that tunnel right no not really but as you say some hill forts did have
flint pits and chalk pits and they did have up to 200 shafts and yes some of them did connect
but in this case they're 200 yards apart and they don't even align true and they are so close
together as to largely be pointless and of course would iron h-folk really construct air shafts
so that most obvious base is covered um but what's paul going to decide to do
so i decided there was only one thing to do and that was to come and have a look
for myself with my own eyes so the roads around here are quite narrow narrow lanes
or fast roads that are still quite thin themselves so i've had to park about a mile away
so i'm way down in the distance there in duntish farm but what that does do
is that gives me the opportunity to have a look at a couple of other features on the way
okay back onto another road before we cross in again into that castle hill
first thing i notice is this hedgerow which is sort of i want to say non-indigenous
i'm not quite sure what it is like rhododendron kind of
leaf hedgerow so that tells me that sort of planted here deliberately by a landowner
oh wow so an archway on this public right away
um
wow this is really really different we're obviously on a part of an older estate despite
the fact obviously there's public access to this park and uh yeah crazy landowner
don't know sort of what era this is because there's not a lot of information on it as it
happens we do know a little bit about this site and its potential link to dungeon hill
and those mystery shafts did you just emphasize the word shafts
no it's all in your head oh so 1764 a chap named fitzwalter foy had a grand
house built for him and that gives us some context to all the crazy things i'm finding on this estate
over the following decades he had all these crazy things built you did find a secret grotto right no
that was one thing i couldn't find and it is there because a lady called Tess
went there recently as well and found it so but it also gives us some context
of all the crazy things that this guy got up to on site now local legend is that dungeon hill is
named so because there is a dungeon somewhere on site so could that have been built by him
okay so let's get to the actual shaft so you can get to the shafts can't you well
yes but not directly so i had intended to speak to the local farmer but i arrived on a saturday
so all i found were a whole bunch of inquisitive cows so i decided to go in from a
different direction okay look at the bridleway now that footpath runs alongside
the field with the hill fort and the shafts so where are the dungeons
so we're almost level now east-west with the pillars
with the air shafts i say plus because they look like pillars looks like someone's
entrance to their driveway um now first thing you notice about this hill fort up ahead of us
dungeon hill fort is the views all around really quite stunning today helps because it's a clear
day you can see a very long way right now i'm looking at the stone pillars the shafts
so first of all i decided to check out the chalk pits because as we
heard a lot of people mentioned that maybe these were connecting one another
when we put this out on social media so i checked out the first chalk pit
and then i went up and round to have a look at the hill fort now the beauty about all this is i
didn't have to cross any fences as such so these were open gates i went through which was great
so i was able to walk south from the hill fort down towards shafts and then if there was somebody
watching it didn't look too sort of conspicuous there's also a trig point in that field as well
so
here we are never seen an air shaft look like this but i'm not an expert on air shafts
it's got vents at the top. So lets stop the cameron don't know what was down there if
the gopro could see but we'll have a look at that and see what we can find out
the mystery remains uh let's go back to the studio so a couple of notable points
number one the brickwork technique is english bond now that was stopped uh being a construction
method in around 1900 late 1800s so that fits in with the maps perfectly number two
we did manage to get a gopro into the hole it looked deep but it did look dry
so let's slow this shot down let's take a screen grab and low and behold a friendly face from
twitter played with the image and came up with this so it doesn't solve anything as such but
it does give us an idea of how deep this shaft really is so what next can we solve this mystery
now this crazy landowner did repeatedly do some odd things up here and he found a whole bunch of
treasure reputedly but at the same time he didn't have much regard for the archaeology i mean look
at this bridge he built in the middle of the hill fort could this lead to the sinister purpose of
the shaft i would like to think that but my logic head's kind of thinking water water you mean like
an underground reservoir or system yes okay that would kind of make sense because i guess a spring
could feed it um maybe but there's a couple of questions that go with that number one i didn't
hear any water and number two do you get springs up that high on chalk down and we don't know but
there's more it turns out post-production there was indeed luckily we filmed that
just in case after much help from a lot of people on twitter one person came up with this now how
reliable or accurate it is remains to be seen but it does look quite good so it turns out that this
is highly likely a deep vent for some form of water supply be abandoned or disused it's
definitely something to do with either the removal of water or the supply of water now
sadly this doesn't help us find the dungeon i conclusion mate now we know all adds up
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