Photo: SWNS / Alex Cousins
Well, that only took two weeks. Two weeks after news broke that a man from Heckmondwike, UK, had discovered an entire 1950s Ford Popular buried in his back garden while trying to build a deck, the mystery of how the car got there has been solved.
John Brayshaw wasn’t expecting to dig up a hidden treasure when he set out to build a wooden deck in his garden, as a way to pass the time under stay-at-home orders. Instead, he uncovered an entire car laying on the side, and was later able to identify it as a 1955-1956 Ford Popular 103e.
The only thing missing on the car were the wheels, he told the media at the time. However, stranger than the fact that someone had buried an entire car in the back garden was that Brayshaw couldn’t find a single trace of it, even though he had both the license plate and the engine number available.
This paved the way to a theory about how it may have belonged to someone in the Secret Service, who had buried it to hide some obscure secret. The reality turned out to be less sinister, but the car was indeed buried with the purpose of making it disappear.
It belonged to WWII veteran Harold Lyles, who once lived at the house Brayshaw bought six months ago, The Times reports, citing SWNS. He had owned it for some years when a mechanical failure rendered it undriveable, but he didn’t want to pay to have it written off. The car was briefly used as a playing den by Lyles’ kids when he came up with the idea of burying it.
In 1964, with help from his builder brother, Lyles dug a hole and buried the Ford Pop. Imagining it would be someday dug up again, he actually turned it into a time capsule, enclosing with the engine a 1940s valve radio with certain “artefacts,” like a milk bottle and a medicine bottle used to store paraffin. Lyles may have been cheap, but he did not lack imagination, that much is sure.
Lyles died in 1987, but his 91-year-old widow found out about Brayshaw’s discovery on the news, saying she “giggled like mad when [she] first heard the car had been found.” Brayshaw says he’s equally happy the car now has a full history, though he didn’t say what he plans to do with it next.
After 56 years in the ground, the Ford Pop looks exactly like you’d expect it to. Shortly after discovery, Brayshaw was toying with the idea of having heavy machinery dig it up, on the off-chance someone might show up to offer to restore it.
The only thing missing on the car were the wheels, he told the media at the time. However, stranger than the fact that someone had buried an entire car in the back garden was that Brayshaw couldn’t find a single trace of it, even though he had both the license plate and the engine number available.
This paved the way to a theory about how it may have belonged to someone in the Secret Service, who had buried it to hide some obscure secret. The reality turned out to be less sinister, but the car was indeed buried with the purpose of making it disappear.
It belonged to WWII veteran Harold Lyles, who once lived at the house Brayshaw bought six months ago, The Times reports, citing SWNS. He had owned it for some years when a mechanical failure rendered it undriveable, but he didn’t want to pay to have it written off. The car was briefly used as a playing den by Lyles’ kids when he came up with the idea of burying it.
In 1964, with help from his builder brother, Lyles dug a hole and buried the Ford Pop. Imagining it would be someday dug up again, he actually turned it into a time capsule, enclosing with the engine a 1940s valve radio with certain “artefacts,” like a milk bottle and a medicine bottle used to store paraffin. Lyles may have been cheap, but he did not lack imagination, that much is sure.
Lyles died in 1987, but his 91-year-old widow found out about Brayshaw’s discovery on the news, saying she “giggled like mad when [she] first heard the car had been found.” Brayshaw says he’s equally happy the car now has a full history, though he didn’t say what he plans to do with it next.
After 56 years in the ground, the Ford Pop looks exactly like you’d expect it to. Shortly after discovery, Brayshaw was toying with the idea of having heavy machinery dig it up, on the off-chance someone might show up to offer to restore it.
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