The mystery of an underground structure that was unearthed in a back garden in Finchampstead appears has been solved.
Last week, Peter Must of the Wokingham Society and Gillian Holmes, secretary of the Berkshire Archaeology Research Group, visited the site in Nash Grove Lane, took images and agreed to conduct further investigations.
Images included bricks that had been removed by homeowner Andrew Cracknell, who had been investigating damp issues and uncovered the structure beneath his patio.
His original through it may have been a bomb shelter was quickly ruled out.
After the story was first published, some users on social media suggested it could have been used for water storage, while others felt it could have been a food store connected with a former manor house or farm.
Now Peter, after sending images of the brickwork to his colleague John Harrison, believes the mystery has been solved.
He told Wokingham Today: “I sent John Harrison the picture of the pipe entering the brickwork from the direction of the house, and photographs of the names on the bricks.
“He concluded quite firmly that the structure is a soakaway and, from the age of the bricks, was constructed within the last 100 years, presumably when a house was first built on the site.”
The house is believed to date to the 1930s.
He added: “I have looked at descriptions of large soakaways online, and they stress the use of latticed brickwork to allow the collected water to seep into the surrounding soil, and that they needed to be sizeable when there was no access to a public drainage system.”
“I am sorry that our interpretation is less exotic than some offered, but I do think it will be hard to establish a more ancient origin.”
Thanking Peter for his help, homeowner Andrew said: ”That does sound like a very logical explanation and I’m completely OK with it not being exotic.
“A soakaway, in fact, is a very pleasing answer for me – rather than a cesspit or something else.”
