FROM the outside this home looks perfectly normal, however the inside hides a secret so incredible that it has featured on a hit Channel 4 show.
Francis Proctor, 76, has dedicated thirty years of his life to completing this unique home renovation.
Francis Proctor, 76, lives in Southport, Merseyside[/caption]
He has lived in the home for over fifty years[/caption]
The home has now become a tourist hot spot[/caption]
The retired photographer confessed that the whole project began with a daft idea.
Francis said: “It was pretty silly, but I got the idea from the Blue John Cavern in Derbyshire.”
This vision sparked three decades of work to his Southport home.
Today, the property has become a popular spot for gardeners to pay a visit to.
Although Francis said he built it as “something to do” in his spare time, it has become a popular tourist attraction.
Listed under the National Garden Scheme, it regularly opens to the public and pulls visitors from all over Britain.
It even featured on Channel 4‘s Amazing Spaces, fronted by presenter George Clarke, who praised Francis’ vision.
On the ambitious project, he said: “When we bought the house more than 50 years ago, I wanted to have an underground room that I could travel down to from the garden.”
What started as a small idea, transformed into an other-worldly labyrinth of underground caves 20ft below the garden of his home.
Thirty years in the making, Francis home now boasts a hidden subterranean network of tunnels, caverns and quirky surprises.
The entire cave system was hand-dug by him using spades and shovels.
The house sits on sand dunes near Ainsdale Beach, so the thought of building caverns below the garden seemed unthinkable.
But Francis’ late wife Barbara, a mathematician and statistician, had other ideas.
Francis said: “If you dig into sand, you can imagine what would happen – it would just collapse in on itself, so you’d think it would be almost impossible to build caves here.
“But the reason we were able to do it was because we underpinned the side of the house when we built the extension.”
He added: “Barbara looked at the plans and said it was quite straight forward.
“Under her direction, she explained what we needed to do.”
Her calculations proved right and the couple gradually burrowed deeper and deeper until they had a cavern plunging 20ft underground.
The caves can be found 20ft below Francis’ home[/caption]
The entire network was dug by hand[/caption]
Francis’ late wife, Barbara, was the brains behind the operation[/caption]
The home has featured on Channel 4’s Amazing Spaces[/caption]
Today, the home attracts lots of tourists and gardening enthusiasts[/caption]
The result is no ordinary back garden.
Alongside the caves is a bridge, waterfall, and series of eccentric features collected from around the world, including a skeleton prop salvaged from a Hollywood film set in the US.
But the centrepiece which really sparks conversation is the cavern itself.
Francis continued: “People always say they just can’t believe what they are seeing.
“A lot of professional gardeners have come along to have a look too.”
The garden is now a shrine to Barbara, who died four years ago.
It is complete with a plaque inscribed “Barbara’s Garden” marking its entrance.
A historic foundation stone anchors the site – one Francis personally tracked down and re-dedicated in his late wife’s memory.
That stone once sat at Southport Hospital, laid in 1922 by the Earl of Derby.
Exactly a century to the date alter, it was unveiled in Francis’ back garden as a memorial to the woman who made the project possible.
Despite the flood of attention, Francis never set out to wow the public.
He added: “We had no intention of building this for anyone else’s benefit, it was just something I worked on in my spare time with the help of others.
“It was something to do that I enjoyed.
It was a surprise when people started taking a lot of interest in it, and now more and more people are coming to see it.
“We wouldn’t have been able to do any of this if it weren’t for the fact that Barbara worked out how we could dig into the sand.
“It was because of her knowledge.”
The garden is now a shrine to Francis’ late wife[/caption]
Barbara passed away four years ago[/caption]
The garden features a plaque in her memory[/caption]
Barbara was a mathematician who worked out the project’s logistics[/caption]
Francis confesses that the project wouldn’t have been possible without his wife’s help.[/caption]