Find episodes and links to where to listen on the pod website here.
Links
Below are various links to information mentioned in this month’s episode: What’s Haunting Potton Wood?
Paul’s blog
Below is the link to Paul’s blog about his visit to Potton Woods:
https://www.modquokka.com/single-post/2018/04/30/potton-wood-and-the-ghosts-of-airmen
Plane crash
Graham Hague’s fabulous website, a cornucopia of historical information relating to Potton and war time history, is linked to below:
http://www.grahamhague.com/pottonliberator.shtml
The information about the crash and it’s victims brought together by John Spiller’s children and grandchildren can be found following the link below:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/tedandjen/10821492515
Bedford archives resources have information about the crash also:
https://bedsarchives.bedford.gov.uk/CommunityHistories/Cockayne-Hatley/Liberator-Crash-Memorial.aspx
Aviation safety website also has information
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/230165
Information about the orchards
References to the trees being grubbed up and burned can be found below:
Here’s the extract from Hansard about Copo:
https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/1943-02-03/debates/97742c48-35b1-4a9b-804a-f2e4988a50a0/CopoLtd
Ground fire theory evidence
Here’s the article linked to below about ground fires that Paul shared with me:
Articles in the Guardian
Cockayne Hatley has featured in a couple of articles in the Guardian including the Guardian country diary:
Guardian article about the grave yard: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/10/country-diary-remembering-those-who-never-grew-up
Luton Paranormal
Here you can find more information about Luton Paranormal: http://www.lutonparanormal.com/hauntings/bedfordshire/cockayne-hatley-potton-wood/
Script
Dramatic intro
It’s the evening of 18th September 1945. In a dark wood, a young woman is running.
Running as best she can over the uneven ground, a torch beam judders in front of her, sending splinters of light into the darkness. Tree trunks, bracken, and ferns flicker with flashlight as she passes. We do not know her name, but I am going to call her Betty, an Elizabeth after the then Princess Elizabeth who repaired and drove ambulances in the second world war. Our Betty is part of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force Crew, part of an ambulance team who reported to a plane crash on the edge of Potton Wood earlier that afternoon. Three airmen were rescued from that crash and sadly three bodies were also recovered.
So why is Betty back in the woods, in the dark, searching?
After the initial rescue of the air crew from the burning plane, the survivors were taken by ambulance back to Tempsford hospital, 8 or so miles away to the north of the town of Sandy. Once there, tentative questions were asked of the injured and the injured began to ask their own questions. What happened in that plane? Why did it crash? Who had survived? which of their friends hadn’t? And so nearly four hours after the crash happened, it became clear that one of the air crew was unaccounted for. Flight officer Noel Gilmour of the RAAF was still somewhere in those woods.
Betty, still on shift and familiar with the crash site from that afternoon drove back with other volunteers and medics to search for Gilmour. They must have thought they were searching for a body but hoped to find a survivor.
It’s a lonely spot on a gentle sloping ridge. By 8pm its pitch dark, something they all got used to during the war during blackouts but unnerving none the less amongst the trees. The initial search of the crash site shows no sign of Flight Officer Gilmour. Betty is one of the party fanning out from the crash site searching further, deeper into the woods. All thoughts of how eerie it is to be in a dark wood at night are crunched down inside her by her fear for Noel Gilmour and her hope to find him alive. The smell of burning wood and aircraft fuel is thick around her. She can hear her colleagues calling in the distance, occasionally she catches the flash of another’s torch illuminating a twisty tree branch or mossy trunk to her side. The search seems impossible.
Then she hears it, at first, it’s a yelp. Maybe a fox she thinks. But then it comes again louder, more insistent. It’s a bark, a dog. The yapping bark of a small dog, a puppy even and she stops still to listen.
It could be a local dog being walked through the woods but unlikely at this hour. None of the ambulance crew nor volunteers brought a dog with them.
Then she remembers overhearing one of the injured air crew, on learning of the death of the pilot McNulty, he asked in a trembling voice if anyone had seen Bitsa, McNulty’s puppy. She’d thought the man must have been confused by the pain medication he was on. But now she can clearly hear a dog barking. It sounds like a puppy. Could it be? Could it be Bitsa?
Betty begins to move towards the sound of the dog.
She calls out to her colleagues “There’s a dog barking!” “Listen for the dog barking! There was a dog on the plane!”
Now she is not the only one moving with added purpose through the undergrowth. She is swift as she can be, alert for the ditches that criss cross the woods ready to trip her with one misstep.
She calls out
“Hey, Hey! Hallo! I’m coming! Please call out if you hear me?!”
She listens the dogs yelps stop for a moment. Then…
A weak shout joins the barking
“Here! Here! I’m here with the dog”
And carefully moving towards the shouts and barks, she finds them. Her torch beam sweeps across a young man, with fair hair, and a long face, he winces as the torch beam lands on him, but gives her a lopsided grin. He’s lying against a tree and sitting between his legs is a tiny black Scottish terrier now yapping and wagging its tail as if to say “What took you so long!?”
Soon the area is full of people, a medic assesses Noel’s injuries and they work out how best to remove him from the woods to the ambulance. He is suffering with broken ribs, a concussion, burns, bruises and some nasty cuts.
Throughout all this the little puppy stays by his side. Betty bends down to check on the little dog which seems to have escaped the crash remarkably unscathed. He lets her inspect him and as they prepare to make their way back to the ambulance the little hero pup lets Betty take him in her arms and carry him out of the woodland.
The story goes that she adopted Bitsa and he lived out the rest of his life happily with Betty. He quite possibly saved the life of flight officer Noel Gilmour by alerting the rescuers to where they were. Gilmour himself had no memory of the accident nor how he managed to get so far away from the crash site nor why Bitsa chose to stay with him, even whilst he was unconscious and there were others in the woods that afternoon who could have taken Bitsa to safety.
But that’s not the end of the story because ever since that fateful crash, and we’ll learn more about it later, there have been reports of strange happenings in and around these woods. Strange lights in the sky were reported just 8 years after the crash, and other tales involve phantom smells, and hearing a ghostly dog barking deep in the trees late into the night, when no actual dog can be found. Could it be the ghost of Bitsa the brave hero pup? Or a strange timeslip phenomena? Or the folk memory of the crash playing on people’s minds. We’ll explore all these theories later in the show.
Today we’re going deep into the woods. Amongst the trees. Beneath the spreading branches. Through dappled shade and over mossy banks. [Footsteps and twig snapping.]
We’re going to visit ancient forest that still clings to the gentle slopes of the greensand ridge. Where legends old and new spread like lichen, twisting through the trees like ivy.
There’ll be bluebells and birdsong.
And there’ll also be tragedy, sadness, mysterious lights, phantoms playing with our senses, possible time slips, politics, fruit production and outlandish theories. As we explore what’s haunting Potton woods.
Welcome
Hello, I’m Nat Doig, and welcome to weird in the wade. Episode three, what’s haunting Potton Woods?
A friend once asked me if I had to make the impossible choice between the two, ocean or forest, what would I choose? The rules were that I’d never visit again the one I rejected. I chose the forest because although I love the ocean I said I could hear the sea in the wind through the trees. I grew up surrounded by trees. Until I was 18 months we lived in a caravan in a clearing in the woods. hugged by the Chiltern hills, looking up at the favourite picnic spot of the Rothschild family. My parents would watch deer and foxes on our doorstep and at night the heavy footsteps of badgers would tread outside the caravan. And before you think this sounds idyllic my Mum recently reminded me that they only had a sink to wash in and a chemical toilet. But even when we moved to a house, an air force quarter, we had the spinny behind us. At night I could still hear the ocean in the trees, the dark restless waves that rocked me to sleep. The owl, the fox, the deer were still just the other side of our garden gate. I was seven when we moved away to Bedfordshire, where trees are definitely in shorter supply especially on our side of the county, facing Cambridgeshire and the flat farmers fields that stretch on forever.
But there are woods and today we will visit them.
Setting the scene
Potton woods isn’t in Potton at all. It’s just on the western edge of Cockayne Hatley a hamlet which literally is built on a road to nowhere. You can drive into Cockayne Hatley but your only way out is the way you came in. It’s about 6 miles away from Biggleswade.
For whatever reason these woods are called Potton woods and at one time they were part of the great Ampthill Forest which sprawled across much of Bedfordshire. Pockets still remain near to Ampthill and here at Potton woods. Other newer woodland has been planted in the ancient forest’s place around the old monastery villages of Old Warden and Chicksands. Over at Ampthill there are associations with Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon but at Potton woods there doesn’t seem to be any royal connections.
I can’t find any spooky stories connected with the area reported before the 1950s though there are definitely some interesting ones. Long John Silver and the inspiration for Peter Pan’s Wendy are buried in the grave yard, right next to the woods, but more on that in a bonus episode. It seems that the crash of the Liberator plane just after the second world war is what sparks the strange stories.
The crash
The Liberator was the name given to the B24 bomber by the RAF and adopted by the Americans later. It was big with four engines, though it could take off with just three, it could fly for 3000 miles and was the first big bomber size plane to regularly make the journey across the Atlantic to the UK in one go. It had a top speed of 300 miles an hour.
I am no expert on world war 2 planes or planes in general even though I grew up on air force camps and visited the annual air shows from a tiny age. I have used for this episode Graham Hague’s brilliant account of this accident from his website grahamhague.com the links are in the show transcript and notes over on weirdinthewade.blog. I’ve also used information form the national archives who also reference Graham’s brilliant work. It’s a really sad story, although ultimately for some of the crew and Bitsa the pup there is a positive ending.
On the 18th September 1945 just a month after the end of the second world war with victory over Japan, and four months after victory in Europe, there was still a lot of war associated work still to do. Not least liberating the former prisoners of war from Japan and returning troops home to the UK, the commonwealth and America. It was on the 18th September that a training flight for the new Liberator KN736 plane took off from RAF Bassingborne in Hertfordshire. The Liberator plane in question had only undertaken its delivery flight from the US to the UK and so this was the first time it was going to be flown in an exercise.
The point of the training flight was for the crew to practice emergency engine failure conditions. So taking off and landing with only three engines functioning and then the same but with only two engines in use.
The test flights had been delayed by bad weather for several days, in fact the September of 1945 was remarked as being one of the dullest on record by the Met Office. The crew of the aircraft was made up of a mix of RAAF and RAF crew who were:
- Captain, Flt. Lt. Pat McNulty, DFC, RAAF in the photo I have seen of him he has fair hair and a childlike infectious smile, like he’s genuinely laughing at a joke.
- Pilot Instructor: Flt. Lt. John Spiller, DFC, RAF age 28 was dark, and handsome with large kind eyes and a shy smile.
- Co-pilot, Flying Officer Frank Doak, RAAF in his photograph has quite a penetrating stare, like he’s thinking hard on a problem.
- Flying Officer Noel P. Gilmour, RAAF who we met earlier being rescued in the wood, fair haired with a lobsided cheeky smile in his photo he is next to McNulty maybe they have both just shared a joke as they both look very happy and a little mischievous.
- Flight Engineer: Flt. Sgt. Roy Turner, RAF in his photo he has dark curly hair and a shy smile like he’s remembering something he’s not quite ready to share. He’s also photographed with Bitsa the dog, smiling down at him kindly.
- Instructing Flight Engineer: Flt. Sgt. Ray V. Carling, RAF In Ray’s photograph he looks earnest, and thoughtful there’s a stray cow lick of hair sticking out to the side of his head. I can imagine his mum sticking it down with warm water when he was a boy.
- Wireless Operator: S. O. Jim Potter, RAAF has fair hair, he’s standing straight and tall, he’s smiling broadly he looks completely dependable.
The Captain, McNulty was described as a veteran of many operational flights in the similar Halifax plane. Flt Lft John Spiller of 59 squadron RAF Waterbeach was instructing. After a successful take off and flight over the east Anglian countryside, John Spiller made the decision to practice with two engines whilst they were on this flight. It’s speculated that there was a great deal of pressure to get these tests done because of the previous bad weather hindering the schedule and the training session that day was running late. They needed pilots and crew ready to fly these huge planes out to the east to bring back their comrades. So, John made what must have seemed like a sensible decision to not land the plane straight away after testing with three engines but to move straight on to testing with two.
At first the shutting down of the engines went well but as Graham explains:
“the effort to maintain straight flight required full left rudder. The aeroplane was losing altitude gradually, and the exercise had started at only 1,200 feet. Any attempt to make a turn to the right would have immediately spun the Liberator into the ground, and the crew discovered there to be insufficient control input remaining to achieve a left turn. Unable to maintain altitude at such a low level, the pilot was flying the plane in an exceptionally risky condition at the limit of control, and as KN736 headed north-west, the land was gently rising towards the Greensand Ridge at Potton; before very long it became essential to restart at least one of the engines.
This was a critical time, as the propeller blades had first to be set to a fine pitch and allowed to ‘windmill’ to generate the momentum that a starter motor on the ground would have provided; this naturally added drag and slowed the plane significantly at a time when it needed all the speed it could get. The crew performed the tasks required but the engine stubbornly refused to restart, and the plane began to more rapidly lose speed and altitude. Unable to turn and with the ground rising to meet them, the crew were suddenly in deeply serious trouble, with very little time left to sort it out. They hurriedly un-feathered the inner starboard engine, again slowing the plane yet more, but all attempts to restart this engine also failed, and fairly quickly, the starboard wing stalled, KN736 went into a dive and crashed into the southern boundary of Potton Wood. The plane broke into sections and burst into flames.”
Two local men Mr Sam Bonnett and Mr C Dennis provided aid at the scene of the crash. In fact Flying Officer Frank Doak remembers them bravely entering the burning plane to pull out the remaining crew. Soon residents from nearby Cockayne Hatley farms also came to provide help.
Sadly, the captain, Pat McNulty and the instructor John Spiller along with Warrant Officer Jim Potter were killed outright in the crash. There was nothing the locals could do for them once they were pulled from the burning wreckage.
Flight Sergeant Roy Turner, survived the initial crash and although he was rescued from the plane by the brave Bonnet and Dennis his injuries and burns were too great and he died at the military hospital at Tempsford at 23:30 hours that night.
Two of the other crew were flung from the plane in the crash and were helped at the scene. Flying Officer Frank Doak was the only survivor to be classed as “walking wounded” but was still seriously hurt. Flight Sergeant Ray Carling was very seriously injured too.
Initially there was no sign at the crash scene of Section Officer Noel Gilmour from the RAAF. And as we discovered at the start of the show he wasn’t found until many hours later. Once rescuers returned in the dark to search for him, he was located thanks to the barking of the little scotty dog, Bitsa who refused to leave his side. Gilmour is reported to have stated the following:
“I heard a loud bang and knew nothing more until I awoke minutes later rather confused but realising unbelievably, I was still alive, I remember blindly tearing my way through the hot wreckage burning my hands in the process.”
He then crawled away from the scene and passed out. It is thought that little Bitsa the dog stayed with his unconscious body guarding over him. It’s quite amazing to think how far he managed to crawl with his injuries including badly burnt hands, broken ribs, and a concussion when he was found, he was deep into the woods.
The crash and loss of life must have been especially horrific, it coming so soon after the war ended when families must have felt the danger was over and that they’d soon be reunited with their loved ones. Spiller aged only 28, left behind a wife and two children. It’s thanks to his children’s efforts to preserve his memory that we have a lot of information about the crash and the lives of the crew involved. Again, in the show transcript and notes on the blog I’ve shared a link to the pictures and information they shared on Flickr.
If you want to know more about the crash and it’s possible causes then there will be links in the show notes where you can read much more. There’s also a picture of the memorial to the aircrew who lost their lives at the church at Cockayne Hatley.
Legacy
It’s not surprising that such a tragic and dramatic incident lived long in local people’s memories. Though throughout the war there were other dramatic crashes not far from this one. In the same year two planes crashed in the middle of the town of Sandy, the details of the accident were kept secret for many years as it involved USAAF and RAF planes colliding. A kind of “friendly fire” situation which was not good publicity. There was also extremely graphic eyewitness accounts from local children who witnessed the incident. Yet this accident doesn’t seem to have ignited the same level myth and legend as the Potton woods one has. This is likely to be for several reasons. The fact that the Potton Woods Liberator crash happened in such a lonely location, on the edge of an ancient wood, lends itself to stories of the uncanny. The story of Bitsa the dog waiting with the unconscious Gilmour and then helping rescuers locate them both, is just a wonderful story in itself. Also, often when there aren’t hundreds of witnesses and where reports of the accident are more scarce, it provides room for other associated stories to grow and take root. But it seems at least at first, the strange happenings around the woods, were not linked back to the crash at all.
1953 Lights
Just eight years after the crash, on Tuesday 1st December 1953 a strange flying object is witnessed by a Mr W Brett and his wife over Potton Wood. The story reported in the local newspaper is that Mr Brett and his wife saw a strange, bulbous cigar shaped craft which he describes quite charmingly as a fierce blue colour, flying above Potton woods. Brett says the object flew six or seven times faster than an airplane at about 10,000 feet, so relatively low in comparison to a modern jumbo jet. As well as being a fierce blue colour, the object had sparks flying off it. Brett says he thinks it was a flying saucer, and that it came from the southwest. Once it had moved over the wood and was above Church farm Brett says it split in two and then disappeared. He says no debris or parts appeared to fall from it.
Biggleswade is about 5 miles southwest of Potton Wood, and beyond Biggleswade another 6 miles in a south-westerly direction is the US air force base Chicksands, mentioned in the last episode. And those of you who listened to the last episode may remember the significance of the date 1st December, because in 1956 and 57 there were UFO sightings just south of Biggleswade. So, we can now add 1st December 1953 to the list of UFO sightings on that date during the 1950s!
No mention is made of the Liberator crash, this report is focused on the flying saucer sighting, and as we found out last time, they were growing considerably during the 1950s.
I will revisit the UFO sightings in a future episode and try to find out if there are any others at the time that happened on the 1st December.
Paul
I couldn’t find any further unusual phenomena reported at Potton Wood until we get to the 2000s and 2010s.
I first read about the Liberator crash and the spooky phenomena at Potton woods from a lovely blog entry by author Paul Jameson in 2018. And I’m really pleased to say that Paul agreed to speak with me and be interviewed for the podcast.
I met with him on a slightly damp and cool morning in early June. We sat in Biggleswade market square for the interview so you may hear some background noise but hopefully that will just give a flavour of Biggleswade to the recording. Paul looks like a modern day Gandalf with long white hair tied back in a pony tail, a white beard and kind eyes behind dark framed glasses. Here’s what he told me about his experience in Potton Woods.
I asked Paul if he was the type of chap who had unusual or uncanny experiences often:
“It’s the only place I’ve had this sort of experience I used to go walking in lots of woods around the area Sheep’s bridge wood, Peg nut wood, Sandy Hills where the roman forts are and all that sort of stuff. And they’re thick woodland and I’ve had no similar experiences, it’s just in this one little corner of woodland. And everyone I’ve spoken to, I’ve spoken to a few friends who have been there since, and they’ve all said the same thing, it feels like there’s something there it feels different.
The first time I went to Potton wood, I didn’t actually know about the crash. I’d actually been there before for a walk with the dogs and I’d smelt smoke. A really strong scent of smoke. But there was no fire, there was no one there. But I just chalked that down to a rather strange experience. I just thought it was very strange but there must be a fire somewhere deeper in the woods perhaps.”
I then asked Paul when he first found out about the Liberator crash:
“When I went to Cockayne Hatley, the church at Cockayne Hatley. My daughter and I were doing photography and the church is absolutely beautiful so it’s a great scene. And while we were there we discovered the graves of Peter Pan’s Mary and Long John Silver, well the inspiration for those characters. And at the same time we discovered this small little memorial that said there was a crash in Potton wood. That led us on to find out that the wood behind or facing the church was Potton wood. And so from there we went to look more into the crash and look more into the wood it’s self.
So later then when we had found out about the crash and went back we realised there’s been these experiences there, paranormal experiences there. So when we went back I wasn’t expecting anything to happen but I smelt that scent of smoke again. With my daughter this time, so we both smelt it. And it’s incredibly strong.
And we actually found the crash site. Whilst at the crash site we found some artifacts. Which we left there, but the big bolts obviously not from anything from a big machine of some sort which was probably the crash. And that’s how we started looking more into it, like the pilots and what happened there.”
I asked Paul if he could explain what his experiences there have been like:
“For me I’ve had a couple of experiences, the smoke has happened twice or I think maybe three times the smoke. Including the first one, and then twice once aware of there being a crash site.
The other thing that happened was that whilst my daughter and I were looking at the artifacts we found I heard someone cough behind me. A very polite cough twice which was quite strange because it was close enough for me to think that if I turned around I’d see an actual person and there was no one there. (Gasp from Natalie) which was quite strange.
And the other thing which has happened once I think, is I’ve been walking along the path where the crash site is and a plane’s come in like really low like massive so low that it’s caused me to duck. As if it’s going to come into the trees. And then when you stand back upright you realise that there is no plane there’s nothing. (Natalie says wow) So those are the experiences I’ve had whilst in that little corner of woodland. (Natalie says wow again)
There’s definitely something strange about that part of the woodland, it’s not dark, that would be the wrong word. It’s close, that’s the word I think I’d use, it feels close, like the trees are close to you, even though it’s not it’s quite a I mean it’s a thick woodland but in that part of the wood there’s quite a lot of open space but it feels closer than it should do. And erm when I’m walking along the path I’ve had this experience a number of times, I feel like I’m being watched. That’s the only thing I can say, it feels like there’s someone behind me, someone walking behind me. And whenever you turn of course there’s nothing there. I mean it’s a woodland that not many people go to because it’s off the beaten track.”
My experience
And Potton Wood really is off the beaten track. In the time that we’ve lived in Biggleswade there hasn’t always been a bus running to Cockayne Hatley but there is now, so in April I took advantage of it. Bus pass in hand, flask of tea and a sausage roll packed, I made my way early in the morning on the rickety white bus, to the little wooden bus stop at the crossroads at Cockayne Hatley.
It’s then a short walk past the church and up an apple tree lined farm lane to the wood.
I was worried about it being so lonely but there were workmen fixing something at the church and not long into my walk past the apple trees I met a friendly dog walker. This made me feel a lot less anxious.
Obviously, I was going on to this walk, knowing what others had reported. Knowing about the plane crash, the burning smell, having read Paul’s blog post and some of the information on Luton Paranormal’s website. (we’ll come to that later.) As I’ve said before, I’m not a paranormal investigator. I don’t claim to have any psychic abilities or unusual sensitivities. Neither am I well placed as a sceptic to debunk theories. I have an open mind. I waver between holding on to rational explanations and wanting there to be something mysterious and otherworldly as well. Sometimes I don’t mind the mystery. The not knowing is rewarding in a different way. I have a very vivid imagination and I love solving puzzles (though currently not the ones I’m having to solve in Zelda Tears of the Kingdom!). I’m suspicious of anyone who says they have all the answers. For me doubt and curiosity are your greatest allies in life along with common sense and kindness.
So, it was with buckets of curiosity, sloshing with doubt that I’d find anything in the woods other than trees, and carrying a large amount of hope in my heart that I entered the woods. And throughout this section of the podcast I am going to play for you some of the recordings I made whilst in Potton woods as we explore what I found there.
“This is Nat Doig live from Potton Woods, I’m recording this live it’s April 26th 2023. Hopefully you can hear some of the birds singing I am surrounded by bluebells. You can smell the bluebells on the air it is gorgeous. And I am in search of a World War Two aeroplane crash site. The only thing strange I can report is that on my way here I could smell burning. It was at one spot, not where the crash site was, just before the crash site. And I’m guessing that the farmers might just have a bonfire. But it was strange that suddenly I could smell burning and then it went away. And well that’s from me now and I will update later.”
I recorded that once I had walked along the southern edge of the wood. So, here’s a little information about the lay out of the woodland, the crash site and surrounding area. In the show notes there are links to maps too. The wood is an oblong shape. You generally approach it from the south either to its south west corner by a water tower, or the route I took from its south east corner by the church. The crash site is on the southwest edge of the woodland. There is a path which runs from the southeast corner all along the southern edge of the wood to the main gate at the southwest corner by the water tower. Directly to the south of the wood are farmers’ fields stretching down to the road which runs parallel to the southern edge of the word going to the east towards Cockayne Hatley and to the west to Potton. The edge of the wood is elevated, and you get a good view to the south across the farm land of Bedfordshire. We can see the Potton Wood water tower from our bedroom window at home as it is unusually elevated for Bedfordshire being on the far edge of the green sand ridge.
I first smelt smoke as I made my way along the path which follows the edge of the wood. I made a screen shot of my ordinance survey app GPS marker and it shows that I was still some way away from the crash site. Up until that point the wood had smelt of bluebells, green and growing things, and the not unpleasant smell of dead and rotting wood. It was also quite muddy at places and it’s the thick black clayey mud of the area that has a very distinct smell to it.
As I walked, the strip of trees between me and the fields often thinned out enough so that I could see across those fields. There are pictures on the blog. When I smelt smoke it was pungent, strong and coming off the fields, the wind was in a south westerly direction that day and although the breeze was constantly gusting the scent of smoke was strong at only one point as I walked along the path towards the south west water tower corner. It definitely wasn’t coming from the crash site. So, it seemed natural to assume it was a bonfire in the fields. But I could see no signs of workers in the fields and just after recording that audio I walked to the entrance of the woods by the water tower and using my camera long lens scoured the fields and surrounding area for smoke or signs of people and found none. There were no houses nearby with chimneys smoking either.
The woods themselves, along that southern path had a beautiful atmosphere. Peaceful, young trees nestled amongst a few older ones. Something special like woodland in the shire in Lord of the Rings.
I made my way back along the southern path until I found a ditch and a track leading over it towards where the crash site is indicated on the map. The kind of track made by animals or occasional dog walkers. Just discernible through last year’s dead leaves and the spring shoots of green. It led away from the ditch deeper into the woods and straight through the bluebells. I followed the path to the edge of the bluebells but then could not go any further without damaging them so had to give up finding the crash site that day.
And as I explained in a recording I made standing on the edge of the bluebells:
“There is another reason to not go any further today there is a very very unstable dead tree that is creaking, and it sounds like it is likely to fall over and topple any minute. Obviously I don’t want to be under that tree when it falls over! Ah there it goes creaking again! It does lend a very eerie atmosphere to this area. But I’ll be honest with you it is one of the most peaceful and tranquil spots I’ve been in locally in a very long time. It feels much more secluded and tranquil than a lot of the other woodland around here. Obviously it’s beautiful to see it with all the bluebells and the celandines out, looking absolutely gorgeous in the sunshine, it is a little chilly today.”
After tracing my steps back towards where I’d entered the woods, I again smelt burning, not at the exact spot I’d been before but near to it. I again searched through the gaps in the trees to try and locate any source of fire but found none.
I decided to explore further into the wood through the main path that cuts straight through the woodland in a broadly northerly direction. It’s a wide grass covered path lined with telegraph poles with no telegraph wires attached. It reminded me of the wide grass path running through Hag Wood in Armthorpe where I used to live. That path once held a railway line taking coal away from the pit. But I can’t imagine there was ever a railway line here but clearly this path is wide enough for vehicles to have driven along at one time. There was also a strange ladder and viewing platform in the centre of the woods with a sign warning you to not climb it. Speculation on twitter when I shared a photo was that it could be used for hunting but the hope was it was for scientific study or photography of an area blocked off to the public by bushes.
I didn’t like this part of the wood as much as the path through the southern edge as I explain here:
“This doesn’t feel as tranquil or as cosy as the bit did where I was walking near the crash site and I’m not really sure why. But here I feel a lot more on edge, as if I’m being watched by little creatures in the wood. And maybe I am, maybe there are some deer near by or something.”
Even though it didn’t feel as cosy in this part of the woods, I felt like I’d left the hobbits in the shire behind and was now in a different kind of wood something more influenced by humans, it was the area of the wood which lent itself to sitting down and having a picnic so I found somewhere to rest and open my flask of tea.
“So I just smelt burning again, I’m sitting on the main path almost in the centre of the woods, not quite. And I was eating my lunch, just a sausage roll and some tea and suddenly really strongly I could smell the burning again. And it’s definitely on the breeze and it’s coming from the direction of the crash site where I was previously, but it comes and goes. It comes and it’s really strong like there must be a fire in the woods. And then you can’t smell it at all and yet the breeze is quite strong and still in your face and your thinking, why can’t I smell the fire? I am going to investigate, when I get out of the woods I’m going to have a good look around, maybe the chaps, who were fixing the church have got a fire going. Maybe someone in the farmers field down by the water tower is burning something, I’ll see if I can locate an actual fire. Otherwise, intermittently through out the woods I have been able to smell burning. So anyway, I’m just going to walk, I’m heading back now and I’m going to investigate like I say outside of the woods because there’s clearly nothing burning inside the wood. It’s something outside the woods if it’s something real I can smell that’s been lit outside the woods.”
As mentioned earlier, I did not find any source of fire or burning. I was actually quite surprised and taken aback by how strong the smell of burning was. It was so strong, and very much the smell of burning wood. It smelt like old fashioned bonfires from my childhood or like the apple loft I stayed in on holiday once which had a wood burning stove but also just smelt of apple wood in general. The fact that it wasn’t constant but the breeze that day was, also seemed a little strange. If it had been just once or if it had been pretty constant that would have been easier to explain.
When I returned to the church the workmen were gone and there was no sign of any fires there or where you’d light one. I couldn’t see anything in the fields and the farm house which would have been a likely culprit was north of the woods and the wind which had blown the smoke my way was definitely southerly.
It didn’t smell like the kind of fire you’d associate with a plane crash. There was no smell of fuel or burning rubber or other man-made materials. It smelt like wood burning. When I was in the centre of the wood at that point it smelt like the very trees around me were on fire. That was nowhere near the crash site.
I’ll come back to the burning in a moment.
In summary I found most of the woodland utterly charming. I felt like a hobbit on a lovely adventure. Smells of burning aside on the southern stretch of the wood the only area that felt a little strange was where the eerie creaking tree groaned. But I think my feeling of unease there can be explained by the sound of the trees creepy creaks and not wanting to be crushed by a giant dead tree.
I sat on a log for a while not far from the creaky tree and drank tea and ate some breakfast. It was magical. A couple of dog walkers came by and we chatted. Perfectly ordinary. I heard an old-fashioned airplane at one point, but a very real vintage plane flew overhead, we get plenty of them with the Shuttleworth collection being close by.
The central part of the wood with the bizarre ladder possible hunting look out thing and telegraph poles with noting to telegraph did feel a bit strange. I did feel like I wasn’t alone there. But that could easily be down to deer being close by. I think in this area it was the man-made encroachment onto this beautiful woodland that created some of the unease.
I returned home feeling refreshed and excited to find out more about the woodland and the history of Cockayne Hatley but what I stumbled across in my next set of research really made me stop and think. It was one of those hairs on the back of your neck standing on end moments. I found some evidence about another fire near Potton wood, in fact a man-made fire 50 years ago, a fire that has nothing to do with plane crashes. A blaze that destroyed over a million trees.
Cockayne Hatley Apples COPO
Before we get to the fire, I need to tell you a little bit about the apple orchards of Cockayne Hatley. It seems that there had been small scale apple orchards in the area for quite some time. But nothing big or commercial until in the 1920s when Alexander Whitehead set up an apple growing concern called COPO Coxes Orange Pippin Orchard. Whitehead seems to have been an unusual man. A website dedicated to him set up by his great granddaughter says that he introduced Mother’s Day to the UK in 1916 (He’d lived in the US for some years and I’m guessing brought the custom back over here on his return.) He founded an aviation company, worked on tunnelling through the Rocky Mountains and seems to have been a restless man moving from one venture to the next. After a stint in Canada Whitehead returns to England in the 1920s and in 1929 founded COPO and it wasn’t your average orchard. He had a unique vision and business model. He persuaded thousands of people to buy a fruit tree or multiple trees in the orchard. So, the trees were all owned by separate individuals. It wasn’t long until he had 2 million trees at his orchard. He employed ex-service men and others who “would otherwise by idle” without this opportunity to tend the trees. A fantastic brochure of the 1930s produced by COPO and shared with me by Potton History Society, sells an idyllic rural enterprise giving work to those who need it, creating a sustainable agricultural model that would stock “England’s larder” Local archives say that he was an enlightened and kind employer, who paid good wages, encouraged trade unions and tolerated the local youngsters who went scrumping in his orchards
His brochure sells what he calls the “romance of COPO ltd.” He says £500,000,000 needs to be invested in British agriculture. His dream is to end what he sees as Britain’s reliance on foreign apples and other products. A sentiment that just a few years later with the outbreak of world war 2 becomes a priority. Yet Hansard in 1942 records a debate in parliament about COPO and its extensive land. It seems the apple tree owners are being asked for more and more money whilst Whitehead isn’t diversifying the land quickly enough to meet the growing need for home grown crops that aren’t apples. Bad harvests and poor weather make the situation worse and although most of the apple tree owners and their association oppose it, a court rules in 1946 that COPO is sold to the co-operative.
The Co-op manage the orchards for the next few decades, though the number of trees shrink from 2 million to half of that. Other soft fruit is grown, and local people have shared with me wonderful stories of fruit picking on long summer days in the 1950s and 60s. Returning home with pocket money and faces smeared with fruit juice. One local person remembered visiting relatives up in Yorkshire and buying jam up there made from the fruit they’d picked at Cockayne Hatley. Apple picking too in the late summer and autumn was seasonal work many remember fondly. The beauty of the blossom each spring and fields of soft fruit through the summer was described as wonderful.
But it seems the end came to the fruit production during the 1970s, 80s until it ended in the 90s. And for the apples I have found reports that say, in 1974 the Co-op took the decision to grub up and burn most of the apple trees at the Cockayne Hatley orchard. They blamed Britain joining the EU on this decision and an influx of cheap European apples. But it’s clear that when Whitehead set up his orchard in 1929 he did so because he was concerned by the large number of foreign apples on sale in the UK then. It seems a long standing reliance on the larger, sweeter varieties of apples grown abroad was the issue here. Coxes Orange Pippin wasn’t a fashionable apple in the 70s. Ironically now coxes orange pippin is more sought after and considered the classic of English desert apples. Though its origins are in the 19th century its parent apples are most likely a ribston pippin (ironically grown from French apple pips in the 18th century) and one of England oldest desert apples the margil.
But whatever the reason for ending apple production the consequence was still the same. Council archive reports say that one million trees were grubbed up and burnt at Cockayne Hatley from 1974. I was surprised when I asked on local history and facebook groups about the destruction of the orchards that many simply didn’t remember it. They knew it was a thing that happened, but it didn’t leave a lasting mark. One person remembered that unlike the council reports which imply the burning happened in 1974, it was a more drawn-out affair where between 74 and the early 80s apple trees were dug up and burnt in stages.
I think their account makes more sense. I’m sure that a programme to dig up and burn a million trees would have left a mark on people’s memories and would have been remarked upon in the local newspapers and there’s no mention of it. The co-op fruit farm is mentioned from time to time, mainly photos of smiling soft fruit pickers in the 70s and 80s. But there’s no articles commenting on the destruction of one million trees and the enormous fire that would create. So, I think it’s safe to say that the co-op blamed joining the EU on winding down their apple production at the site and over the following years they dug up and burnt the trees to make way for different crops including more soft fruit but eventually peas, beans and oil seed rape. The site is no longer run by the co-op but is a large agricultural company manages it.
My reaction and theory
When I read about the destruction of the apple trees and the burning of them, I did catch my breath. Partly because it seems such a horrific thing to do but also because the smoke, I had smelt in the woods reminded me of that apple loft I’d stayed in. That smell of apples and in particular apple wood. Apple wood smoke has a very particular scent to it.
The romantic imaginative side of me immediately felt like this must be the cause of the smoke being smelt in the woods. Not the plane crash. I had the notion that these trees within the ancient forest, some of whom have stood for hundreds of years, witnessed these young cousins of theirs first springing up on the hill side and then being grubbed up and burnt. They haven’t forgotten. The trees themselves are holding on to their memory of that destruction and somehow conveying it back to us. Yes, I know, I have absolutely no evidence for this, and all scientific thinking shows that trees cannot communicate with humans in any way. And as I’ve already alluded to the Lord of the Rings in this episode, of course my imagination turns to ents and forests with long memories of human or hobbit or elf or dwarf interactions. If this was a novel, I would make it that the trees remember the fire and they taunt the humans who walk amongst them with the burning smell as a warning and in grief. It would make a wonderful fable of the folly of humans, our destruction of the environment at the whim of what’s going to make the most profit. This year its coxes orange pippin, next year its French golden delicious, three decades later we want coxes again. But too bad because those trees have gone, and we’re left with crops that give little back to the environment in those fields because that’s what makes the money.
But maybe there is a scientific explanation that links the trees being burnt and the continued scent of smoke in that area. It’s a long shot but Paul who you heard from earlier, sent me a link to an article about wildfires in Canada causing ground fires, underground which can smoulder and burn for years. You need dry conditions, soil rich with dead plant matter, (this isn’t going to happen in poor sandy soils), and you also need pockets of oxygen below the surface caused by tree roots for example. These fires can burn quite deep and as mentioned for years. They then also cause new wildfires to spring up each year and it’s a cycle that keeps repeating itself. I link to the article in the notes.
I have no idea if the conditions in Potton Wood could lend themselves to this kind of underground fire. But if they do then it could be an explanation. Or maybe something similar is happening. In a way it’s a natural explanation for what I metaphorically described. The land can keep hold of the fire, can keep replaying it underground and on occasions it can spring back up to life.
Obviously for my experience on the day the most logical explanation is that there was a fire burning nearby. But when you consider the repeated occurrences of smoke being smelt and at all times of the day, night and the year it does make you wonder if something else is going on there. Whether it’s ghosts, timeslips, the land and trees themselves holding on to the memory or ground fires underneath the forest, the woods, the crash, and the apple and fruit production are fascination stories that tell us a lot about ourselves, our response to war, tragedy, recent politics and how we treat the environment.
Luton Paranormal
But I mentioned Luton Paranormal earlier, and their reports about Potton woods. On their website and in their archives which they’ve kindly shared with me, are a whole host of different experiences they’ve reported. Potton Woods is a location they like to return to, and they plan to go back there later this summer. Links to their website are in the notes. I asked Luton Paranormal a few questions about Potton Woods, and they explained that:
“Potton woods is local to our group and we like to explore our local history in Bedfordshire and the three counties there are a number of places where incidents like planes have come down in particular to the second world war. If we can uncover anything through our research, be it paranormal or historical that could benefit the local community with further knowledge then we will have achieved our goal.”
So, it seems it was the history of the place which drew the group there to investigate rather than any existing reports of paranormal activity. I don’t think they were aware of the 1953 flying saucer sighting there. They also admit that sometimes when they take a punt on a location like this, they don’t find any paranormal activity at all.
But here’s a very short summary of some of the activity that Luton Paranormal have recorded on visits to Potton woods:
At one visit they honestly report that there was no paranormal activity at the site, but they seemed to enjoy the walk and the history.
Another time in 2013 they took along a member who had no idea of what the history of the site was. Obviously, we must take their word for the fact that they knew nothing of the site, and I’m not here to judge the methods of Luton Paranormal just look at what they reported. The person unaware of the history did suggest that it was linked to a fire which is interesting. On that visit they reported smells of smoke and the barking of a dog was heard in the wood.
On a later visit in 2015 the group reported more activity including:
Hearing old fashioned music drifting through the woods and interestingly someone heard coughing. It did make me think of Paul hearing that polite cough.
General feelings of unease or cold seem to be common along with the opposite of feeling boiling hot on a cold night visit to the wood.
And on that 2015 visit someone reported seeing a dark figure walking between them and another group member which must have been unnerving.
But there are a few things reported which I think are quite significant for the stories I’ve told today, and they are:
There is a report by Luton Paranormal of blue lights or sparks amongst the trees being observed. As I said earlier none of their extensive write ups about the history of the site mention the 1953 UFO sighting of the fierce blue craft. So, we have two independent reports here of people seeing blue sparks or lights around Potton Wood.
Next on a summer visit to the wood there is a lot of mentions of fire breaks in the wood. So, I’m wondering if it is an area prone to wildfires when we have a hot dry summer, obviously these fires are becoming more common with the impact of climate change but maybe this was a site historically associated with fires.
Finally on one visit they stray further than the crash site into the wood and clearly reach that part of the wood with the ladder and the crossroads. A member of their party really doesn’t like this area of the wood at all. They then mention some work done by a member trying to “divine” what might be going on in the wood and they mention Viking raids or fights with Saxons. It’s an interesting angle (no pun intended) as we’re on that border land between East Anglia, Mercia, and Essex.
Conclusion
After this investigation I’m not sure I know what’s haunting Potton Woods. What I do know is that a very tragic plane crash happened there which must have deeply affected the families of the crew lost and of course the survivors of the accident. It also left a mark on the memory of the local community.
There are reports of blue lights being seen in the area sixty years apart that don’t seem to be linked to the crash.
I smelt burning in those woods and now wonder if it’s connected to wildfires and the burning of all those beautiful apple trees.
But most of all my visit to Potton Wood and learning about the site have left me with a much deeper appreciation of that tranquil corner of ancient forest on my doorstep. I’ll definitely be going back for another visit.
Next Time on Weird in the Wade
A cottage in Wrestlingworth near Biggleswade is plagued by the ghostly crying of a baby. But this isn’t any old cottage, this was the home of Sarah Dazely who was known in Victorian Britain as the Potton Poisoner. Find out about her life, the crimes she was executed for and how Biggleswade and it’s surrounding area responded to becoming notorious for one of Victorian Britain’s most famous arsenic poisonings.
Next time on Weird in the Wade.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Weird in the Wade. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did making it.
I’d like to say a really, big thank you to Paul for taking the time to speak with me and for agreeing to be recorded for the pod. He’s an author whose books are described as “overtures to nature, folklore, paganism and fairy tales in stories that explore the liminal edges of a Wilde Wood or the urban cityscapes where monsters still lurk.
Nothing is ever as it seems.”
You can find out more about Paul on his website modquokka.com there’s a link in the show description and on the show blog.
I’d also like to thank Luton Paranormal for answering my questions and sharing with me their resources.
Links to further reading and information used in this episode can be found on weirdinthewade.blog along with photographs I took on my visit to Potton Wood. As always, the show transcript is on the blog too.
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The show was researched, written, and presented by me Nat Doig
Our theme music is by Tess Savigear
All other music and additional sound effects are from Epidemic Sound
Weird In The Wade 