You may have heard of people digging around the back of their sofa to find spare change, but you would’ve never heard of anyone actually digging the ground underneath it just out of curiosity.
Well, a pensioner just did that. And he continued digging the filled-in stone well until he hit the water at an incredible depth of 17ft.
Colin Steer from Plymouth, Devon had always wanted to dig the dip located beside his bay window ever since he moved into the Victorian terraced home with his wife more than 3 decades ago.
However, the couple had 3 small children at the time so instead of unveiling the mystery, they decided to cover it up till a suitable time.
Then after Colin had retired from his job as a civil servant, he started investigating the well back in 2011.
Colin sought help from one of his neighbors and both of them spent 6 months in excavation with a ladder and a bucket on a pulley.
The 67-year-old said: “There was a depression in the floor,” Colin said. “I thought someone was buried under there that there was a hole.
“I dug down and found the wall of a well. The hole was full of earth, but with the help of a neighbor, we have managed to get about 17ft deep.
“I always wanted to dig it out to see if I could find a pot of gold at the bottom, so when I retired that’s what I did.
“I was quite surprised really, I would have preferred it to be in the garden where I could have got at it a little easier.”
Describing the well, Colin said: “We think it’s a bottle well. It’s 30 inches wide now and could go down another 5-6ft.
“I thought I’d found a sword around 4ft down – it was a wooden thing that must have had a leather sheath on it as you can see stitch holes. That’s why I want to get to the bottom. Who knows what’s down there.
“We have no idea when it was built. There could have been a couple of cottages here or it could have served a farm.
“I’d like to find something down the bottom, something to give me an age.
“I wish I had a TARDIS to go back in time and see what was here.”
However, it’s not the first time Colin has discovered something unusual in his property.
The man also happened to unearth 2 German incendiary bombs when he was doing some building work in his back garden.
Concerned about the unusual discovery, Colin called in experts who placed them in sandboxes and took them away for safe detonation.
The adventurous man plans to continue digging and looking for other objects in his property.