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In the front beer garden of the Royal Oak public house are a couple of oak trees. Logical enough. One was planted to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's II coronation and the second in 1977 to celebrate the Silver Jubilee of that coronation. The second tree was protected by a deer guard that came from a piece of land known as North Park, which was part of the Home Farm for the big estate. 

The house for the big estate is now Vinehall School and was home to Lord Ashton who had moved Hyde in Cheshire. His name is recorded as one of the names for the houses in the school with Paxton and Rushton being two others - the former being thought to be the landscape designer and the latter being the name of a large residence within Mountfield. A final house name was added to cope with the increase of pupil numbers. A history of Vinehall School will follow at another time, however you can find a thorough history of the school here.

The house, like many in the Second World War, was taken over by Canadian Troops and once in a while, a piece of history comes back to remind us. During the 1970's, a potato harvester picked up an unidentified object, which got put to one side as more Désirée potatoes came up from the ground. It was only when my father, Derek Elliott (a past Chairman of the Parish Council) came to see the men that he recognised the object from his war days. It looked to him as a piece of high explosive ordnance as it had a splash of red paint on it. He immediately took it off the harvester to the side of the field and then rang the police from the farmhouse. This was a time before mobile phones. It was also a time when the police took bombs quite seriously, their bomb expert would turn up next Wednesday; worryingly, it was only Thursday or Friday when the bomb was found. When the bomb disposal team did arrive in a Volvo estate they correctly identified it as a Canadian bomb; but as they casually threw it in the back of the car, they explained it was only a smoke bomb.

Has anyone else had similar experiences where they found something strange on their land that should be mentioned in the Whatlington and Vinehall Street archive?