Another traveller has found a portal to the Bonkers Hall Estate

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An issue of Fortean Times generally provides something of interest for this blog. And the November one has hit the jackpot in the shape of another person who may have found the Bonkers Hall Estate.

That is not an easy thing to do. I once wrote that:

Growing up in Market Harborough, it was hard to ignore Lord Bonkers. If you climbed any of the hills that ringed the town then the slender spire of St Asquith’s, the gaunt pinnacles of the Home for Well-Behaved Orphans and, most impressive of all, the towers, domes and follies of Bonkers Hall and its grounds, would dominate the view to the North. ... 

As a teenager, armed with a water bottle and Ordnance Survey map, I cycled out to find Bonkers Hall many times, only to return defeated on every occasion. Those towers and domes seemed clear enough from a distance, but when you neared them strange things began to happen.

Rounding the final bend that would surely bring you face to face with the Hall, you found that it was not there after all but somewhere over your shoulder instead. Turn your bike round to complete the pursuit and the same thing would happen. The harder you pedalled towards the place, the more quickly it seemed to retreat.

Now a correspondent to Fortean Times remembers another eerie experience in this part of the world.

Clifton Stewart says that he has been a part-time lecture at De Montfort University for many years, and commutes along the A47, mostly through Rutland. A landmark on this route is the Old Rutland Inn. Now a private house, it stands beside the road near the village of Belton-in-Rutland.

Stewart recalls making the journey home on a really foggy evening in autumn or winter:

On reaching the Old Rutland Inn, I knew I was making good progress. Passing this location, the road veers left and then right, and suddenly ... the roads were no longer bounded by country hedges and fences. 

Instead on either side of the road it was as if there was a row of houses, living room windows bleeding light and street lights illuminating from above where I knew there were none. They were indistinct, almost but not quite present given the dense fog conditions, set back from the road a little. 

As I drove through, my brain was screaming that this wasn't right, the shouldn't be there. Part of me wanted to stop but soon it was over and the fog and the darkness closed around the car once more and I kept going,

The conclusion is obvious: the Old Rutland Inn is a portal to the Bonkers Hall Estate and he was driving through the village. The Bonkers' Arms and St Asquith's, like the Home for Well-Behaved Orphans, would have been obscured by the fog.