Hidden History

Set in the beautiful landscape known as Purbeck, Tyneham Village is a small hamlet amid nearly 8000 acres of land.

For many years the village housed generations of the same families who lived in the surrounding houses and farmland. While life was good it must also have been very isolated because there was not another village or town for miles. Tyneham was a self sufficient village with no shops or form of trade.

Walking around Tyneham you get a clear image of a very happy location, you can feel the laughter in the location, the happiness. The setting, just a few minutes walk from the beach is to die for, with nearby hillocks, and rolling meadow.

What you suspect to be a place of joy and happiness, was met one day in 1943 (exact date unknown) with a very different emotion....

Depending on whom you listen too, you might hear very different stories. I heard a particularly horrific tale when I was growing up how one day during 1943 the residents of the village disappeared, without a trace. Other rumors include a grizzly series of murders by invading Nazi soldiers who landed on the beach and stormed the village.

The truth of the matter is below, but there is little or no real information to be found on the truth of Tyneham and it's inhabitants who suddenly all left their village after generations of happy living.

It was the back end of the war, and as Germany got more desperate and less caring it was time for the allied forces to up their game. The surrounding area of Tyneham Village known as Lulworth was an Army camp, so military presence was quite strong.

In 1941 Tyneham house, the home of the leader of the village; was requisitioned by the Navy to make an administrative centre for the nearby radar station.

One year later and Winston Churchill arrived in the area to inspect some new tanks, taking the opportunity to take in the surrounding countryside and of course Tyneham village.

Then in 1943 out of the blue the government placed a purchase order on properties in a 12 mile radius, this included 106 dwellings, and most notably Tyneham Village.

Having been given one month to evacuate it just so happened that all residents of Tyneham opted to leave the area around the same time during the month of November, this is where I assume the rumour of mass disappearance comes from.

Sadly the purchase was not for the dwellings to be used, but to protect confidentiality and spare lives.

Nobody ever lived in Tyneham again, as the time of writing it has been nearly 65 years since the village was deserted.

While most of the buildings have fallen into an irreparable state of repair, two of the buildings have been more or less perfectly preserved; the church and the school.

Walking round the church, which is actually not much bigger than an average back garden, you get a real feeling of warmth. Special cushions lay on the benches, once the property of residents for kneeling on or sitting on. While over the years visitors have left their own cushions, often specially embroided to commemorate Tyneham's history.

In the school again you get a feeling of warmth, walking into the church you are greeted by pegs where children would have left their coats and lunchboxes. There are pictures in this area on the wall, some are photographs others are drawings by pupils like Dorothy Davy, who's family had great presence in the village. Moving away from the entrance there are rows of desks, on the desks preserved by plastic covering are text books that the pupils were working on, but left believing one day they might return to their homes. While on the blackboard is the latest subject to be covered in glass and information on the weather.

Walking round Tyneham is a great thing, its an experience to remember; especially when you consider that having your house compulsorily purchased is not a nice thing; nothing bad happened in the village. It's residents were happy souls, leading humble lives, simple lives.

What is strange about Tyneham is that despite being a tourist style attraction, it is not advertised, and its location even down to road signs is incredibly well hidden. Now forming part of an army firing range, you can frequently not even get near the village due to military testing, you can tell whether it's safe by the flag color flying in the vicinity.

If you find yourself in the area of Wool, Dorset please give Tyneham a thought, and while I don't remember how to direct you, any local will.

There is nothing I hate more than a majestic piece of history just forgotten, worse still nothing I hate more than history forgotten soon after it's time. Sat on Pentonville Road, Kings Cross, London is the well known Scala Nightclub, a location popular with upcoming bands and singers. Since 1999 Scala Nightclub has carved itself a certain reputation in London nightlife. But what is ultimately the saddest tale of all is that beneath what you see now, is an infinitely more appealing Scala that for 10 years became a hub of activity and controversy.

During the 1920's Scala operated as The King's Cross Cinema, and had for a period of time reasonable trade. Between 1921 and 1929 the cinema changed hands more times than some had varied dinners in the same timeline. From 1929 to the Second World War trade was constant and the cinema was owned by Gaumont British Pictures. But at some point, exact date unknown the building became bombed by enemy warplanes flying overhead. The result was that the cinema closed and fell into a dire state of disrepair until 1952, when it re-opened as The Gaumont. In 1962 the Cinemawas bought out and re-opened as the Odeon which lasted until 1970. In 1971 the cinema went in a dramatically different direction re-opening as Cineclub; the choice of movies was strictly of an adult nature. With raids, embarrassment and all sorts of other controversy after four months of trading Cineclub came to a sudden, but highly expected close. Later in the same year the cinema re-opened as The King's Cross Cinema again with a themed cinema and venue for music. Having then tried to change into a sports complex, the cinema finally closed in its known form in 1975 and began to fall into disrepair. It was the form the cinema took in 1980 that was the most bizarre, as a sort of Eco-Project the legendary seating was pulled out, untold historical damage done to the building, in order to lay grass and show strange "nature" style films, called the Primatarium the key interest to the then owner/tenant was monkeys.

In 1977 on Tottenham Street a group formed in a cinema known as The Other Cinema, this group was called the Scarla Club. Scarla was a speciality club showing classic movies to a select group of individuals. In 1978 Stephen Woolley later the part owner of Palace Pictures, took over Scala and began to change the format moving on from classic to cult movies. In 1981 Scala had grown in popularity and saw a window of opportunity by acquiring tenancy of the Primatarium. Opening under their own rights as The Scala, the cinema screened the original King Kong and progressed to show more unusual, and progressively daring pictures.

Scala was different to any other cinema in the UK, it was very much a place to turn up, chill out, and really let your hair down. Never the best part of Pentonville Road to be in, Scala was a place strangely out of time, it's clientele varied from business professionals, stuffy upper class types, punks, lesbians, gays, cannabis lovers, alcoholics, and plain good old movie lovers that wanted a different experience. Scala was a place where anything quite literally would go, if you wanted to have sex then it was off to the back row, if you wanted to smoke whatever took your fancy it was the center seats, and if you literally wanted to watch and love movies it was straight up to the front. Scala flaunted every public law it possibly could inviting its clients to do whatever they saw fit, smoke at the centre part of the cinema was so extreme that often the beam of the projector found it difficult to penetrate the smoke, smoking incidentally had been banned in cinemas many years before. Whatever your vice, Scala was a nightime venue for those that wanted more stimulation than pop music, those that wanted culture, and an ambience that they could not get anywhere else.

Over the next few years things at Scala changed dramatically offering its visitors a sort of experience they could not get anywhere at that time. Straight after the British board of film classification had their arms twisted to be more vigilant and video tapes of movies in the home became fashionable, censorship in Britain reached a pinnacle, with more or less any movie with an 18 certificate falling foul of the censors. At this time Scala again flaunted these rules and showed movies both in their uncut form, but also often showing movies that were banned in the UK. The Exorcist, Salo, I Spit On Your Grave, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were all movies boycotted by the BBFC and the government, yet Scala stood up and showed them. In the mid 1980's the focus moved towards bigger targets in the world of adult, gay, and horror cinema. And as these progressions occurred so did further change at Scala, the cinema showed different movies every night, with calendars of schedules released often months in advance. The cinema became the ultimate haunt, all night horror movie marathons proved incredibly successful driving people from the nightclubs into the cinemas, where they could enjoy both alcohol and the culture of movies they could not see anywhere else.

What is most strange about Scala was that at its height of popularity things were being ran at their worst, staff did as they felt, the projectionists were often so out of their heads on the drug of the moment that film reels were often placed in the wrong order, or not even played at all. The whole Scale experience became so hit and miss that people often thought they were just watching movies so weird that the stories to them just must have been that way. Outside the projection booth, staff performed, drank and fornicated with the patrons of Scala; but it just became all the more popular.

It's of no surprise I guess that this story but come to an end, and the past tense manner I have spoken about Scala in this whole piece is a clear indication. Censorship began to lift in the UK, and more and more movies made it onto video, the exact sort of movies Scala chose to show. It was indeed time to up the ante, and then manager Jane Giles knew exactly how to do that. Giles committed the ultimate sin, on April 1st 1992 Scala showed the full and uncut version of Staley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange; a movie outlawed in the UK after director Kubrick received death threats. Without permission to screen the movie Warner Brothers, FACT (Federation of copyright theft) and Kubricks own legal counsel all took a civil action against Scala, at a time audiences were at an all time low and the landlord wanted a hefty rent increase.

In April 1993 Giles was prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and in June after a screening of King Kong, Scala closed its doors. After months of campaigning, and incredibly hard partying nothing could save Scala, and a unique piece of history, the only ever Grindhouse cinema the UK had ceased to exist.

Scala's effect on UK cinema is far more than anyone will ever truly appreciate, making mockery of the government by screening banned movies, and films were forced out of censorship as copycat cinemas tried their hand at mimicking Scala's charm.

Come back again soon to discover about the abandoned hillside church, a serial killers victim, and the underground bunkers of Portland