An entombed mystery A MYSTERIOUS, extra-long lorry comes rumbling back into the memory of reader Bill Bridges who wonders if anyone can shed more light on the subject.

Bill, from Wargrave Road, Newton-le-Willows, writes: "I was employed at the Viaduct Works for a good number of years and did a lot of mooching about - though I did not spot everything."

After the works shut down, a chap who had been engaged on demolition work, preparing the old railway site for use as the Deacon Estate, told Bill of his unusual discovery. "He and his gang had uncovered a place in which was stabled an ancient and enormously long lorry."

The contractors had ordered that the place and its contents be sealed and bricked up. And this has Bill wondering if the lorry had any connection with the Earlestown market square obelisk - an impressive finger of stone known locally as the Milly Stone?

He says: "While I had never heard anything about this long vehicle before nor since, I have an idea that this lorry, if it ever did exist, was built specially to transport the Milly Stone from Newton (where it previously stood) to the market square."

THE plot thickens. Anyone else heard about that strange hidden vehicle and whether it still exists in its bricked-up tomb?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.