1968
Danny Howell writes:
As a child, growing up at The Dene, Warminster, there were lots of places around my home in which to play and explore. One of them was the old chalk quarry, known simply to us as ‘The Quarry’ which was situated between the southern end of Woodcock Road and Grange Lane, where some of the houses of St. George’s Close now stand. St. George’s Close was built between 1971 and 1972 and what I am going to write about now dates back to about 1968 when the quarry was already long disused and overgrown in places.
One of my great childhood friends was Simon Peck. He lived at No.69 The Dene and I lived at No.57. We spent a lot of our play time in the evenings, weekends and school holidays together and the Quarry was one of the places we often frequented. In the north-east part of the quarry was a large dip where chalk had long ago been extracted. Part of the steep slopes either side of the dip had well worn paths you could go up or down. One day, Simon and I were wandering about in the quarry and rather than go up one of the steep slopes using the pathway we started clambering up the slope, not where the path was, but to the side of it where there was some undergrowth and the terrain was rather rough under foot. It was all part of the fun of what boys did.
As we got near the top of the slope we suddenly saw a tiny cave-like opening among the brambles and nettles. It wasn’t really a cave, not one you could walk into, not even one you could crawl into. It was more a hole about two feet square, going into the bank of the slope, with the back of it in semi-darkness. It was all very earthy. To our absolute amazement we saw a very large toad sat in the middle of the hollow. It was the biggest toad I have ever seen. It would be an exaggeration to say it was the size of a football but it was very big, far bigger than any other toads I had seen in my childhood. I would say, if memory serves me right, it was about six inches from its mouth to its rump. One got the idea that it was probably very old but there’s no way of knowing. I think I’m right in saying that toads can live up to 12 years in the wild. A toad could have survived undisturbed many years in the quarry because the quarry had been left out of use a long time and was for the most part a forgotten wilderness.
Simon and I were so in awe of this toad because of its size we immediately decided we would capture it, so that we could study it more closely and show it to others. The question was how would we take it. A large box or a cage was needed. I knew that in my father’s garden shed at home, in which my family kept all sorts of discarded things, was an old birdcage. It had once housed my parents’ pet budgerigar. Simon and I sped off to my father’s garden shed and pulled out the birdcage. It was obvious that the toad was so large we wouldn’t be able to place it through the door of the cage. An alteration was needed. We decided that we would need to take the base off the cage and put the base back on once we had the wire cage over the toad. We hastily, using some of father’s tools, removed the base and rushed off back to the quarry, Simon carrying the base and myself carrying the wire cage part.
When we got back to the spot, which was no more than 400 yards from my home, the hollow was empty and there was no sign of the toad. We looked everywhere in the vicinity but it had gone, never to be seen by us again. Simon and I were very disappointed. This particular piece of fun was over for us but there was nothing we could do. It had been very exciting when we first spied it. It was probably just as well we had failed to capture the toad. It would have been unfair to it and who knows what the consequences might have been. Our encounter with the big toad was just a brief observation, but it was so awesome to see, even fleetingly, that it has remained a vivid memory in my mind ever since.