Mexborough and Swinton Times September 2, 1938

Swinton Mining Engineer Builds Dug-Out in His Garden

In 1914 a young mining engineer took stock of everything and decided there was only one thing for him to do. That was—join up. A few weeks later his Infantry Battalion was ordered on coastal defence duty to Saltburn and the recruit soon had his first experience of an air raid. He did not like it. Nobody did. Later he went to France and stayed to the end of the third act of that great world premiere of the new warfare. And scores of times he knew again the terrors of an air raid; and each time his original dislike was confirmed. Air raids were rotten.

Mr. E. T. John and family are here seen at the entrance to their garden “dug-out.”

Since 1919 he has been out of .uniform. Back in pit-clothes carrying on his peacetime job of mining engineering. But he remembers those air raids. And while the newspapers are black with headlines about this war and that serious situation while the Government and local authorities have been spreading themselves on Air Raid Precautions schemes, he has got on with a timely job of his own. He has built an air raid shelter in his garden for which he claims a million to one chance of vulnerability.

He is Mr. E. T. John, the Safety Inspector of Manvers Main Collieries, of `Four Winds’, St. Margaret’s Drive Swinton. This week he told me about his dug-out. Ex-soldier, ex-pilot in the Royal Flying Corps, and expert mining engineer, there is not much he does not know about dug-outs. If any further qualification is wanted, let me say he has been engaged on an A.R.P. scheme of considerable importance for Manvers Main.

Mr. John made it clear from the start that he did not construct the shelter because he is art alarmist or the victim of alarmists. The job interested him professionally, and he also wanted to show that, if the worst came, it is possible for such underground shelters to be built quickly and cheaply.

He has a large (and very decorative) garden, and he chose a site at a distance from the house. Then he began excavating. He went down 15 feet and cleared a space about 10 feet long, 7 feet wide, and 6 feet high. Steps lead into the shelter, rthe inside of which is timbered on the same lines as a pit. Actually Mr. John’s method of timbering was that used in the Welsh coal-field, all the timber being notched. There is a lining of corrugated iron.

The work of construction took a fortnight and about 35 tons of earth were moved. The cost reached between £ 5 and £6. Without foreknowledge anyone walking up the charming crazy pavement of the garden would fail to notice the entrance to the shelter, for it is concealed beneath flowers and the paving itself, and below that is 5 ft. of earth. It is a tribute to Mr. John’s skill that his garden is in no way marred.

`I did it more or less to amuse myself,’ Mr. John told me, ‘but it would, of course, be very useful as a. dug-out if need be. It would be quite safe from anything except a direct hit, which I think you can put at one chance in a million’.

I asked if it were gas-proof. He said no. But it could easily be made so. ‘I don’t think it would be possible for every man to make a similar shelter’, went on Mr. John. ‘They would need some expert knowledge, and of course a large number of gardens are not big enough for the excavations to be made without damaging the foundations of the house itself’.

Actually, Mr. John’s immediate neighbours need not make one of their own. He tells me that his dug-out will accommodate twelve persons for so long as a raid lasts. So there will be some spare room—if and when !