Hidden bomb

My uncle Tom Clappinson owned an isolated rural farm in Ottringham Carrs near Holderness in east Yorkshire. He farmed it with his brother, with whom he did not get along at all. They hardly spoke to one another except to discuss business. How they ever managed to run a farm is beyond me. There were two houses at the farm. The one my uncle lived in was the original farmhouse dating back to the 19th century. There had been a house on the site for many years before that.

There was an old story passed down through the generations. Somewhere inside the farmhouse there was reputed to be an old bomb – the old-fashioned spherical type with a fuse coming out of the top. It was said that if the bomb ever left the house bad luck would befall anyone living there. Around the time of World War I, Walter Clappinson, my uncle’s father, decided to decorate one of the upstairs rooms. Here he found a small cupboard that had been wallpapered over, inside which he found the bomb. Ignoring the legend, he threw it into a large duck pond opposite the farm on the other side of the road.

After about two weeks, livestock began dying and his horses began acting very strangely and refused to work the land. In desperation, my uncle’s father retrieved the bomb and put it back in the cupboard, which he then bricked up. To my knowledge, it remains there to this day. After the bomb was returned to the house things returned to normal.

John Hoe Fulbeck, Lincolnshire