WHISPERING DUNGEON

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 115, 17 May 1930, Page 20

WHISPERING DUNGEON

LOUD ' SPEAKER 'ROCK " OF , HASTINGS

In Hastings Castle is tho;most' gruesome dungeon in England, which seems to have escaped the attention of the guide-books, writes Commander 11. M. Daniel. \ Apart from its horrible instruments of torture and its lethal chambers, I was fascinated by the whispering dungoon. I doubt whothcr engineers of to-day, with their elaborate apparatus, could construct a chamber in tho solid rock with such peculiar qualities. The prisoners, escorted to the clifCtop fortress, would bo ushered' through a doorway in tho rock into a narrow passage. A sudden thrust behind the knees and they would slide down to \a chamber some 15 feet beneath. Groping/in the darkness, they would themselves in a largo vault with- walls cut in the solid rock by the flint tomahawk of neolithic times. After the guards had gone, what more natural than the prisoners should talk in whispers, not only of their fate, but of the activities of their comrades? There in the darkness, with many feet of solid rock botween them and the outside world, such whisperings, they thought, surely must bo safe. Some 60 feet away, in a sort of sen-try-box cut in tho rock, stood the inquisitor. The- prisoners' whispers were intensified, .just as the wireless valve magnifies the feeble sound of a distant signal. Bach whispered confidence was .overheard; in fact, had the prisoners only known it, louder utterances, which tv oultl. become confused in sonorous echoes, would have been safer. Tho custodian, Mr. Stopton A. Isles, \ "- ' '

told mo that he could hcar^at .the listening jpost the ticking of a stopwatch in the distant dungeon. The only other placer in-, the world- with similar qualities, so> far aa is-he is aware, is a dungeon at Dijon, France, where, however, the effects are not.so phenomenal. At each place* he said, there is a strata of iron ore running through the rock. Mr. Isles the rormation of the dungeon^ andvits passages witlr that of a wireless circuit and the loud speaker. If a piece of paper, he said, were-placed in,front of a certain recess in the rock-face, the; acoustic properties would .collaspe, but would be restored if the paper wore pierced by an appreciable hole. ■ Mr. Isles told me how he rediscovered the dungeon's whispering qualities. Ho said:,"As I was.passing the listen-ing-post, I suddenly "heard myself boing reviled byla voice which seemed to come from the solid,.rp.ck., Xsearched and found a small' hole leading to What might be called' the echo-chamber' of the dungeon. A workman-whom I had told to do some work that he did, not like was there muttering disapproval under his breath. On being challenge cd with his own words the workman was inclined to accuse me of reading his thoughts." I heard myself tiie gentle scratching made by drawing the finger-nail across the rock. I whispered, and found that the words I used were clearly audible at the other^end,;.;; Byeiv th^ .;cra ; ck_Jing of a cigarette-paper in the dungeon can be heard at the post outside.