1966 Going Back in Time

In 1966 my family lived in an army quarter near Warminster in Wilshire, England. Aged fifteen, during the summer vacation, I traveled home from boarding school in Surrey and was able to get a laboring job on an archeological site which involved the early stage of digging a burial mound. So strenuous was the digging work that my friend and I were forced to sit down to recover. We were told our services were not required on the following day but we could be employed on a dig taking place on Lugershall Castle.

Every morning the journey from Warminster to the site required an early start and we sat in a portable aluminum shed on the back of a lorry for the journey which lasted about an hour. It took us over Salisbury Plain and within sight of Stone Henge. When the lorry arrived at Lugershall Castle the metal shed was unloaded and was used to give us shelter during breaks from work. Most of us doing laboring work shoveled earth into wheel barrows and pushed them along wooden planks onto a heap about thirty or so yards from the dig area where archeological volunteers worked with their towels, brushes and buckets on the castle ground level rooms. They received 10 shillings a day whilst we laborers received a proper wage.

"Excavated between 1964 and 1972, the castle has been extremely well researched in terms of excavations, documentary research and an earthwork survey. The excavations revealed the development of various defensive and residential buildings, in both timber and stone, between the 11th and 13th centuries." (English Heritage).

One fact I still remember as interesting. The roof tiles dug up on this medieval site were glazed in the case of the wealthy and unglazed in the case of the poor. Only on one occasion do I recall an exciting find. My friend came across what turned out to be a spur. I imagined that spur may have belonged to a knight and the find was impressive if one has the romantic notion that the winning or losing of a knight's spurs is a story never to be told.

A couple of memories about those weeks of working at Lugershall Castle are worth recording. At one particular lunchtime the rain was so heavy that we decided to stand inside the hut and literally carry it down the road to the village where we purchased our lunch. The sight must have been hilarious to any onlookers but it saved us getting drenched!

At the end of that holiday when the dig season ended we were all invited, back in Warminster, to partake of a glass of sherry or two. My consumption may have been too generous because on my way home on my bicycle I had to do an emergency brake which sent me straight over the handlebars!

That brief coming of age saga brings me to remember another week's holiday in the Easter vacation of the same year of 1966. A Christian housemaster at my boarding in Surrey invited myself and two other school friends to an event which included a party of young men sharing a walking holiday in the Lake District in the North West of England in Cumbria, England. Living in Warminster, I spent the first two weeks of the Easter holiday working in a factory in order to raise enough money to join the trip to Cumbria. The job involved heating up hundreds of shoe soles in an oven to a certain temperature and then bending them vigorously in order to reject any which had developed any defects in the process. Forgive the pun but it was a soul destroying occupation!

I was then picked up from Stoke-on-Trent and together with my two school friends, our housemaster drove us in his Austin Mini to Ambleside where we stayed overnight before continuing the journey to the site near Scarfell where we were all accommodated in an isolated wooden building.

The other members of the party were mainly university students and also a few mature leaders who took us on our daily trecks and then gave us some Bible ministry in the evenings.

During that time of the year the trecking in Cumbria was cold and arduous. It was also hazardous and one of the group broke his leg and had to be taken to hospital in Whitehaven. My main recollections of the week was having a ravenous appetite in the evenings after the day's walking. Also that the group of young men were very boisterous in their conversations. I was hugely entertained. One particularly amusing student, who was studying at Leeds University, took a quiet moment with me and asked about my reading habits. In those days they were rather juvenile and I told him I was reading anything and everything by Dennis Wheatley. I even suggested that were I to become a writer I would want to write fiction of that genre. He thought I should raise my sights a lot higher and I never forgot his advice. A few weeks after the holiday, my housemaster shared with me the tragic news that our friend, the student from Leeds University, had been found dead in his room having died of carbon monoxide poisoning from his faulty gas fire!

I had not then become a Christian on that walking holiday but it was a very valuable experience and I never forgot the young man who, being the life and soul of the party, took time to give me some good personal advice. Having lost his life in such tragic circumstances did leave me with conflicted feelings about faith in God but I now recommend that Isaiah 57: 1-2 be read by those who find the same challenging experience. One of my school friends who was on that trip to Cumbria has died this year. He and I always kept in touch and we shared the same career working for the Probation Service.

Kevin Bettany 2024 Memories on the day of the Winter Soltice.