Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

As mentioned, I attended Culcheth Primary School along with my elder brothers, Alistair and Stuart who were four and five years older than me. I have a lot of memories from this school, but we have time for that later. What will be retold here instead are our unforgettable experiences that happened to me and Alistair near the school when I was only 7, and he, 11. When going home together, Alistair and I often walked, took the bus, or took the back route along a footpath. If we would go down that footpath, it would lead us through the fields going past Culcheth Hall, which we loved to call Captain Blood’s Manor. 

Unforgettable Experiences with the Hidden Treasures

Culcheth Hall was a sight to behold for us kids because it was rumoured to be the historic dwelling place of Captain Blood. We believed that there was a secret tunnel leading from the centuries-old manor into the surrounding fields meant to aid Captain Blood’s escape.

It was said that people were always trying to hunt him down for all the crimes, thefts, and misdeeds that he had committed. We thought that if we could find the entrance to the tunnel, we would also find Captain Blood’s hidden treasures; some of those treasures were the valuable stones that went missing from the Crown Jewels several hundred years before. 

History of Captain Blood

Captain Blood had long been a local legend, but during this time, there had also been a re-run of the Captain Blood movie with Errol Flynn in the cinemas. Peter Pan’s Captain Hook was also showing at the cinemas, which made our imaginations run riot. We knew that the story of Captain Blood was mainly a legend, but we believed that sometimes legends have some truth to them. The fact that he could have hidden some of the treasure in the Culcheth area is not unthinkable.

He was married to Mary Holcroft of Culcheth some years prior to the English Revolution in the seventeenth century. When Captain Blood tried to steal the Crown Jewels, what happened to the valuable stones that went missing? In addition, it is also thought that he successfully attempted other thefts that weren’t discovered. Such possibilities gave us courage and imagination to continue our adventure of searching for his secret tunnel and his treasures.

On some afternoons, we explored the land around the manor to find the tunnel. One day, we found a narrow entrance near a stream. However, the vegetation around it was so overgrown that even our skinny bodies couldn’t penetrate the narrow bushy passage. 

Unforgettable Experiences of the Hunt

Instead, we turned our attention to Culcheth Hall, or Captain Blood’s manor. Regardless of the name, it was actually just an abandoned and dilapidated old manor. However, the old manor contained a treasure trove of war materials that we could use in the petty local battles and skirmishes we engaged in. 

We often climbed through a broken window to get at the war ‘loot’, which included ‘lances’ (billiard cues), ‘headgear’ (army helmets), ‘bombs’ (nuts and bolts), and military clothing; all of which were needed to engage in local skirmishes. The old manor had functioned as an army store during the war, but had later been abandoned, so it was brim-full of army surplus materials.

We carefully explored the entirety of the ground floor of the old dilapidated manor, not daring to walk up the rotten stairs to explore the floors above. Alistair always had a scary story up his sleeve; he said if I went up the rotten stairs to the floor above, I would fall through the rotten floor. I would then be spiked to death on one of the billiard cues lined up on racks on the ground floor. Naturally, I was too ‘chicken’ to explore further after hearing that. I’ve always regretted doing so later, having imagined all kinds of treasures that I could have gotten my hands on.

Lance Jousting

The billiard cues weren’t of much use without a billiard table but they made handy lances and spears for our battles. At that time, our creativity was inspired by the Ivanhoe series that had been running on the television at the time.

We lacked horses when lance jousting, but pranced up and down as if we were sitting on a horse; we also made trotting noises by making clicking noises with our mouths, much like the ‘Coconut Scene’ in Monty Python.

Whatever, we managed to smash hundreds of ‘lances’ (cues) to smithereens in our jousts without much care as there were hundreds more in the army store. 

Nut-bolt Bombs

Our house garage was stocked to the brim with ‘loot’ from the manor. We got a lot more than just billiard cues. Happily, we brought home loot that not only included billiard cues, army helmets and uniforms, and large nuts and bolts; we also brought home electric motors, which we never used for anything. Still, they looked nice when we screwed them apart with their shiny copper threading of their engine cores. Also we raided the Atomic Energy warehouse, where my father worked.

Perhaps ‘nuts and bolts’ sounds a little boring; however, my brother Alistair was adept at making ‘nut-bolt bombs’ from large nuts-and-bolts (‘cap bombs’). There were rows and rows of these nuts and bolts and machine parts covered in grease wrapped in brown paper, as well as radio parts, and a lot of kerosene lamps. 

Of course, you could also buy ‘cap bombs’, but why buy one when you could make one? 

Cap Gun

The younger modern reader might not even know what a ‘cap gun’ or ‘cap bomb’ is. Neither would they know what ‘caps’ are. However, as boys, we knew which shops sold ‘caps’.

The caps were red, and sold in rolls of 100. The 100-cap roll could be inserted in a cap pistol, or you could also buy small boxes with individual caps which could be inserted in a cap bomb. A cap gun is a toy gun that creates a loud sound simulating a gunshot and smoke when a small percussion cap is ignited.

As boys we were ‘obsessed’ with guns and weapons – partly because the Second World War had just ended a few years before; another reason was because of the many American ‘cowboy’ series on British television. In addition, there were also the British productions such as “Robin Hood” and “Ivanhoe”. So it was imperative that we stocked up with guns, bows and arrows, explosive material, and so on.

Of course, most of these ‘weapons’ and ‘ammos’ were toys, but we also ventured into the ‘real’ world. That is, the more adventurous boys stole gelignite from army stores like my brother Sandy. Some bought air guns, or made dangerous ‘real’ explosives from fertilizer. Of course, I was only a young boy at the time, but some of the older ‘smarter’ boys with knowledge of chemistry were able to make largish craters in their back gardens by making a bomb from fertilizer which you could buy in any hardware store. 

Of course, this all sounds very innocent, but the worst terrorist act in post-war Norway committed by the Nazi Anders Breivik was enabled by making a simple ‘fertilizer’ bomb. 

Unforgettable Experiences as Trendsetters

Alistair and I weren’t the only ones raiding the old manor for loot. Alistair told me that our elder brother Stuart had been stopped four times by the local policeman, who then followed him home. However, these experiences never stopped Stuart from retrieving masses of ‘treasure’. He loaded it onto my wooden go-kart, which my father had made for me. Stuart pulled the go-kart along the tree-lined manor avenue, Withington Avenue, to our house in Hob Hey Lane; that was honestly quite a long way. 

Eventually, our ‘creativity’ resulted in us becoming trendsetters amongst the village kids. When riding our bikes, my brothers and I started wearing army helmets and ‘oversize’ army jackets; these were some of the things we retrieved from the army surplus store in the manor. The other kids in the village also started to raid the manor for army helmets.

During those days, safety belts in cars and bike helmets for kids were yet to make a debut. In other words, almost all the kids in the village were biking around in the village wearing army helmets. We were definitely ahead of the times because it wasn’t until thirty years later that wearing helmets for bicycle riding was made compulsory by law. Of course, we weren’t concerned with our own personal safety – but we had to be prepared for the invasion of the ‘Huns’. 

The Beginning of the End

As like all good things, our adventures with Captain Blood had to come to an end, unfortunately. One of the girls in Alistair’s class, Hermione Pidgeon, lived near the hall and had told Mrs. Bonse that she had seen me and Alistair breaking into the Hall. Alistair, who Mrs. Bonse already didn’t like, had gotten into even more trouble. To Alistair, Mrs. Bonse had stopped being his teacher and had become Mrs. ‘Witch’ – no doubt inspired by another running television show, the “Wizard of Oz”.

The thought of the “Wicked Old Witch Mrs Bonse” followed him throughout the seven decades of his life. She became symbolic of any old woman he didn’t like. And just to be fair, I didn’t like Mrs. Bonse at all; but in my world, she never got to be the ‘Wicked Witch’.

In the end, we never really found Captain Blood’s tunnel or treasure; however, he was constantly at the back of our minds especially if we were in the area near Culcheth Hall.