When maintenance crews are involved in engineering works across the UK they are probably well used to finding weird and wonderful things which have been buried for years as they’re lost by passengers. But even so the latest discovery on the Tyne and Wear Metro is probably more unusual as a set of cassettes featuring a BBC Radio adaptation of The Hobbit has been found during recent work on the network.
The tapes were found buried at the base of an overhead line mast during works taking place between Chillingham Road and Walkergate. The adaptation was originally broadcast on Radio 4 in 1968 and then released as a cassette box set 20 years later.
Rob Cochrane, Head of Infrastructure Works Delivery at Nexus, was on site when they found. He said: “We were just walking next to the Metro line when I saw something out of the corner of my eye at the base of an overhead line mast.
“When I went over to have a closer look, I could just see the gold front cover of the cassette box underneath the ballast. I dug around that and all four tapes were there, and you could see straight away what they were, as they had ‘The Hobbit’ written in black lettering on the front cover of the box.
“It’s an incredible find and certainly not the kind of thing you expect to discover when you’re out working on the track.”
David Punton, Nexus Communications Officer, added: “It was astonishing. It was the last thing that we were expecting. Without the tracks being excavated we may never have made the find. It’s up there as one of the more weird and wonderful items we’ve found during a major project.
“We’ve got no idea how the tapes got there. It’s baffling.
“When I went out on the site visit that day, I didn’t expect to come back with the main talking point being JRR Tolkien and The Hobbit.
“I’ve since listened to the recordings and I am pleased to say that most are still just about working. It’s a wonderful radio adaptation of Tolkien’s novel. As we understand it, this was made by the BBC for Radio 4 in 1968 and then released as an audio book in the late 1980s, almost 40 years ago.
“We’ve no idea how long these cassettes were buried next to the Metro line. We definitely don’t encourage the public to go on to the railway and hide items in this way.”