IN January of 1978, the Portway Hotel in Frome was subject to an unearthly experience when it hosted a day-long exhibition on the subject of Unidentified Flying Objects.
The exhibition included pictures supplied by the ‘UFO Info Exchange at Trowbridge’ and the first showing of colour slides of what were claimed to be UFOs taken by the Apollo astronauts. The event was one of a number of events timed to coincide with the publication of a local tourist brochure entitled “Frome is Flying Saucer Land.”
The origins of what was to become first a local and then a national sensation lay back in 1961 when residents of Warminster began hearing ‘strange noises’ that seemed to come from the sky. This was followed by four witnesses seeing a UFO shoot across the heavens leaving a trail of sparks and over the coming months many more strange aerial events were reported in the area.
Reports soon reached the attention of the national press and the strange occurrences became known as the Warminster THING. Pigeons dropped from the sky, dormice and partridges lay on the ground stunned, cattle stampeded, car engines stopped and ‘elderly, very young and nervous people’ were reported as being scared and terrified of the strange noises and reports of unexplained objects in the sky.
In 1965 Hilda Hebdidge saw UFOs that were cigar-shaped, and covered in winking bright lights in various shades of gold and yellow. These were silent and stationary, with no beams or rays, high in the sky and gradually faded as she watched. In June, Patricia Phillips phoned Shuttlewood to describe a ‘brightly glowing, cigar-shaped object,’ that remained motionless over the south of Warminster for almost half an hour. Shuttlewood sold this story to the News of the World. Later in the month Kathleen Penton saw an enormous shining Thing going along sideways in the sky from left to right. It glided quite slowly in front of the downs and seemed to have porthole windows which ran along the whole length of it lit up the colour of yellow flames in a coal fire. It was very much like a train carriage she claimed, with rounded ends to it and gently gliding sideways.
At the age of 12 one of the present writers managed to persuade his aged grandfather to drive from the other side of Bristol, climb to the top of Cley Hill and spend an afternoon with assorted photographers, tourists and ‘spiritual people’ waiting for the aliens to make contact.
Many years later and back on the proper side of Cley Hill, the guest speaker at the Portway Hotel exhibition was Arthur Shuttlewood an ex-Grenadier Guardsman, one time local councillor and reporter for the Wiltshire Times and the Warminster Journal.
From the summer of 1965, ‘The Warminster Thing’ had become his life’s work. At first he professed to be the cynical old reporter who was not fazed by anything, but as the story picked up so did his interest and he began to feed stories to the national press. Soon he began to see strange objects himself and then he managed to signal to one of them with his torch, claiming that “They came down so low that I could see the dome!” Not long after, Arthur began to stretch the credulity of the most ardent believer when he claimed that the ‘saucer people’ had been contacting him by telephone! Not only that – the beings even told him which telephone box they were using!
As interest in his stories spread, so did his fame and the next logical step was to write a book which he did in 1966 entitled ‘The Warminster Mystery’ largely a rehash of his old newspaper articles but shortly followed by more outrageous revelations in, ‘Warnings from Flying Friends’ and a number of others. Lecture tours, promotions and magazine articles followed. People who met him were greatly impressed by his charisma, dedication and rustic charm and his audience was divided between those who respected his sincerity and those who thought him a charlatan.
Whichever view is taken, he certainly attracted a following and nobody can deny that some very strange things occurred along the Somerset and Wiltshire border in the mid 1960s, many of which remain unexplained to this day.
Mick Davis and David Lassman.
