A Skeleton Riddle

Unearthing a 14th Century Plague Victim

Skeleton Finders: L-R: Martin Cook, Ivan Gasson, Steven Cook (Me) and Robert Gasson. Front page of The Wallington & Carshalton Advertiser No. 5486. Thursday, February 21, 1974. (My mother bought this copy of the photo from the newspaper.)

In February of 1974 our little town of Carshalton was subjected to something akin to hurricane force winds; a very rare occurrence. The force of nature was so great that many of our old trees were uprooted and came crashing down. One particular tree knocked a bloody great hole in the wall of St Philomena’s School, otherwise known as ‘The Convent’ opposite my house.

A Polaroid view from my bedroom window, showing the gatehouse and wall of The Convent. c.1974.

St Philomena’s School had always been a mystery to me and my kin. The kin I’m referring to here are my cousins Ivan, Robert and Darren, and my brother Martin. It seems unusual now, but most of our family lived in the same road, in small terraced houses that were owned by my Great-grandfather, who lived in a house he’d built just a short walk away. Number 7, was my family’s house. Next door at number 6 were my grandparents on my father’s side. At number 5 lived my dad’s sister, her husband and our cousins. Three doors away from them was my grandmother’s cousin and her daughter. Anyway that’s the lowdown on the reason I hung around a lot with my brother and cousins in 1974.

One of our favourite pastimes included hanging out in the reference room of the local library and photocopying maps of the tunnels and hidden places in our locality, because Carshalton was steeped in history and we loved to explore.

Anyhow… back to February 1974 and the discovery of this hole in the wall of ‘The Convent’. Realising this was the perfect excuse to gain entry, we climbed over the rubble and into the grounds, to see what had been obscured from view by the massively high wall surrounding the entire twenty-five acres of land. The view was breathtaking.

There was a very grand looking building known as Carshalton House which, according to history, the Daughters of the Cross purchased in 1893. There was also a mysterious and ancient looking Grotto that was overgrown and rather ruinous looking. The Water Tower was the first building we decided to check out, because we’d only ever seen it from the other side of the wall, due to the height of the tower itself, and it was at this point we encountered one of the Daughters of the Cross.

The only other opportunity I’d had to speak to a nun was when I was about 6 years old. She was making her way down the road from the gates of St Philomena’s and I was marching towards her, way ahead of my mother and my younger brother in the buggy she was pushing. The sister must have seen that I was proudly wearing my ‘Hopalong Cassidy’ watch and said “Excuse me sonny, can you tell me the time?” Much to my mother’s horror, I completely blanked her and carried on up the hill. After my mum had had a little conversation with the nun, she grabbed me by the arm and asked why I’d been so rude as to ignore that nice old nun. I said, “but you always told me never to speak to strangers!” and she replied, “yes, you’re right, but not when I’m only six feet away from you!”.

Later in life I asked her what they’d spoken about. My mum said she was so embarrassed by the way I’d ignored the woman, she’d apologized and told her I was deaf!

A Polaroid of the water tower, 1974.

So now I had another opportunity to speak with a nun. At first, the four of us were sure we’d get reprimanded for being in the grounds, but she was surprisingly friendly and offered to give us a tour. Apart from her kind face and little round glasses, she had something that fascinated me immensely. As she raised her arm to show us the door to the water tower I noticed that her hand was made of dark, beautifully polished wood. Of course, we never inquired about her prosthetic and she didn’t inquire as to what we were doing in the grounds, but suggested we venture on to look at the grotto, and then wandered off in the opposite direction with a wave of her lovely wooden hand.

The Grotto as it looked in 1909, thanks to The Past on Glass.

The grotto was pretty spooky looking, it has to be said, and we knew that the tunnels within were supposed to link up to other places outside of the convent, but today was not the day to be climbing into those, especially as the light was beginning to fade. We decided to make our exit via the main gates and hope that we didn’t get spotted by the gatekeeper; however, a few yards from the gatehouse we spotted another massive tree that had been torn up by its roots.

The rather neglected grotto, 1974.

We could never resist a hole in the ground, and without hesitation the four of us found ourselves at the bottom, surround by the roots of the tree. What immediately struck me as odd was something that looked like a bone caught up in the roots. As I yanked it out, I thought it looked a bit human, and I said to the others, “Does this look like a human femur to you?” As we were analyzing it, I realized Ivan was nervously holding something in his trembling right hand. It suddenly became apparent that he was holding the lower part of a jaw, along with most of its teeth.

I have no idea why we thought these would make great souvenirs but we scrambled out of the hole as fast as we could clutching our treasures, and ran past the gatekeeper’s house and across the road to the cul-de-sac where we lived.

By pure chance, our parents had all been out for the day and chose that very moment to pull into the road as we were running behind their car waving our spoils. As the car stopped they wound down the window to ask what we had. A couple of femur and lower jaw observations later they decided to call the police.

It didn’t take long before the sound of sirens, and a police cordon was set up around the gates. Inevitably of course the questioning by the police began. Our youngest cousin Darren had not been involved, which was probably best for him, though I think he was a bit envious of our brief moment of fame that followed.

The story even made it into the London Evening Standard newspaper.

The Wallington & Carshalton Advertiser was the first newspaper to hear of this event and asked us for an interview and a photo for the article, which was an incredibly exciting prospect. A day later, the photographer arrived and set the shoot up just outside of the main gates. The four of us stood there rather proudly while he took our photograph. This only took a short while, after which he thanked us and left. Our tremendous excitement was suddenly interrupted by my brother Martin, shouting, “Oh, Noooooo!!!” We turned to see him looking down at his trousers with the realization that his fly had been undone the whole time.

As luck would have it the photograph was cropped anyway, so he needn’t have panicked, and the immense joy we experienced seeing this article as the headline for the front page inspired us to buy a whole stack of newspapers. I know our parents were pleased for us, except for Ivan’s father, who apparently gave him a clip round the ear for ‘the state of his hair’. In his defense, it was kind of windy that day.

We were very fortunate that the Wallington & Carshalton Advertiser was published before the County Post Times Herald, because the Daughters of the Cross had created their own version of the story that made no mention of boys lurking in their grounds, but instead had a photograph of two of the sisters gathered around the hole, giving the impression that they’d discovered the skeleton themselves.

Our little escapade made it onto the radio, and caught the attention of the local archaeological society, and their head honcho, Mr Pryer. He very kindly invited the four of us to observe the excavation of the site and even let us sift through some of the findings, one of which was a large medieval looking key. I offered to let him use my metal detector but he explained to me why archaeologists weren’t keen on using them. The way they excavate, is by sifting through the ground layer by layer. Each of these is witness to a specific period of time and often retains elements of pottery and other artifacts that are easy to date.

After this bit of insight, I felt guilty about using my metal detector from then on. This was the very first thing I’d saved to buy with the money I made as a newspaper delivery boy. My plan was this:

1.  Purchase a metal detector.  
2.  Apply for a license to use it. (In those days you had to.)
3.  Discover and unearth buried treasure.
4.  Never have to work again.

It all seemed so blatantly simple.

Mr Pryer seemed to confirm that the skeleton was in fact a woman who’d died of the bubonic plague pandemic, also known as the Black Death of 1665 to 1666.

Realising the likelihood of a plague pit situated just a short walk from the front door of our house may well explain the disturbed nature of the brick and mortar we grew up in, but that’s a whole other story.

Now that we knew what had been hidden from view behind those high walls, we’d often sneak back in there to explore further. I even attempted to make a film with the incredibly original title of The Time Trippers, inspired mostly by the ATV show, Timeslip. Here’s a small clip. It’s terrible, but it was filmed inside those hallowed walls, and gives you a blurred, out-of-focus idea of the scenery within, via transfer from 8mm film, to VHS, to DVD, to iPhone, and iMovie. The only prop used was a Victorian newspaper, and as you’ll see from the intro, I used the trendy (at the time!) Data 70 typeface.

I present a teenager’s attempt at a short film using a dodgy 8mm cine camera!

The 1970s… oh, for an iPhone or digital camera!

Thanks to Jason Atomic for reminding me to tell this tale!

Polaroid photos © Steve Cook