Kitchen Garden Forum

This lunch time, I dug an 80cm post hole as part of a fruit cage I am putting up.

I used a normal spade and simply kept digging into the clay, which turned out to be surprisingly easy to extract.

However, just as I had convinved myself I had gone deep enough - I had to lie face down on the ground to ensure I could pull the spoil out of the bottom of the hole! - I made one last thrust with the spade AND GOT A HOLLOW RESPONSE!

Bearing in mind that this land hasn't been worked since 1985, having been a former farmer's field, and we are on the crest of a hill, what on earth could be hollow at that depth?

Dig it up and find out To be honest, that's what id do. Probably nothing interesting but still fun to look

A gas main.

Archaeology?

If it goes bang when you hit it again, then you shouldn't have hit it again
Seriously; take care

The bulk of the £2.8m stolen in the Great Train Robbery was never recovered

If you dig around what ever it is very slowly and carefully you may be a millionaire by this time next year>

Of course, as you are in mid Kent which many enemy bombers flew over in WW11, there is also the possibility that you could make a complete Rodney of yourself.

Proceed with caution, no point in just covering it back up as it could still go off with an almighty bang just when you weren't expecting it. I think a portaloo on your plot might be a good investment.

Now if your luck is really out it might be part of the robbery haul AND a WW11 bomb in which case you might see money flying everywhere and bring to mind the saying " You were only meant to blow the bloody doors off"

Maybe a non emergency call to your local fire brigade might be advisable. It could of course be some container, the contents and structure of which have completely rotted away over the years.
No odd human bones hopefully. I doubt somebody would have buried a dead dog that deeply which could have decomposed. On the other hand, we have heard of a dead cat that was buried too close to the surfaced and was subsequently dug up by a fox before it had had a chance to decompose.

Primrose,

a 80cm hole is not that deep in terms of burying a dog or suchlike. It is only approximately just over 2ft 6ins

Would somebody put it in a metal containers that is thick enough to ring hollow when struck though.

Barry, you have got to find out t he excitement is killing me

Hi Barry
I came across something similar in my patch a few years ago. My guess after some wary feeling around was that it was the abandoned work of rabbits. The females make chambers for their young.

John

oh dear, first thing in the morning and the penny has dropped after reading John's post.
Up to that point I had been assuming this was a metallic hollow thud.

Now John has thrown another possibility into the pot, it could be just a hollow chamber.

As long as it isn't a long disused loo chamber, or chamber pot, you should eventually come back up smelling of roses.

Barry. A job for OH ?

Silly divertive question. How do rabbits succeed in making hollow chambers which don't cave in? They must do it all the time but perhaps it's all down to the "sticking" quality of the soil and the relatively small size of the chambers.
After all, men need pit props when they dig out tunnels in mines.

About a metre - my money would be on either a drain (sewage or surface water) or a pipeline (oil, gas etc.... ) lots of on line sites which you should be able to check.

Some of this infrastructure probably dates back >50 years, so if your plot only started in 1985, it's very probable.

Pawty

Now Barry has always been one of my favourite members on the forum......and i'm not just saying that in case he has found a treasure trove... ...

Any news? My bet is on a water main. Had that at one house I was at...