Simon Marks, 37, believed he had drove into a flowerbed when his car’s wheels became trapped in a hole… Looking at the damage to his automobile, he said to himself, “Well, this day couldn’t get much worse.” He was preparing to inspect the damage when he heard a horrible sound that made his pulse beat. What in the world was that? Kneeling down to take a closer look, Simon saw that the driveway pavers had cracked, and suddenly the driveway started to give way right in front of him.

The pavers continued to fracture with an ominous sound, revealing a whole new world. The soil readily fell way, revealing a chunk of metal underneath. He exposed it with his bare hands till he could hold it and tugged with all his effort, but it was futile. He resolved to travel around and figure out as much as he could about the riddle that surrounded a curious item. Simon requested assistance. His father arrived and the two of them dragged buckets of firmly packed muck away.

They eventually found an aperture and down a rusted, old ladder to explore the hole in the earth. “My father noticed it and immediately thought that’s an air raid bunker,” Simon said. “We looked it up on the internet and discovered there are quite a few in this region.” Simon discovered the shelter was constructed during WWII after doing extensive research online! “The previous owner had to have known it was there, and when he constructed the home and put in the garden… he had to have filled it up,” Simon told reporters.

During WWII, a man called Sir John Anderson was charged with devising a plan to defend its population from the impending assault of bombers. His plan was to construct these subterranean shelters. “One of the walls is bricked up.” I’m 90% certain we won’t find out about any additional rooms, but we don’t know. When the home was erected, they may have bricked up one of the walls to make space for the foundations,” Simon told reporters.

“If that’s the case, we’ll have to abandon it,” he continued. But it didn’t take long for the finding to become widespread. Simon and his father want to rebuild and maintain the shelter, hoping that one day it may be designated as an important historical landmark. They think that even though the war is long passed, the time should not be forgotten. They hope that this little physical representation of those terrible times would serve as a location for visitors to come and get a taste of that period of history.