Map of Manor Farm Dugout

[marc coene]

Hello,

I live on Manor Farm where 154 Siege Battery was potioned with their 9.2" heavy guns. In their diarees I found they could shelter in a deep mined nearby dugout which had 2 stairs. The postion of the dugout and battery was in Zillebeke not far from Ypres and Zillebeke Lake.

I'm already years on the search to find a map of the dugout as my description is no based on the description of diary 2 nd Canadian Tunnelling Company. Normally there will be several maps of the dugout, but also on the Canadian website the map is not in between. It will indeed be not simple to find the map of Original construction, but you never know that suddenly.........There will certainly be maps, but in each case not in the digital Canadian Archive as far as I could find, so a mystery where the map could be found.

Such copy of map would give a light on the mystery underground.......

 

Manor Farm dugout is situated nearby Manor Farm, on the map, just under the top of Zillebeke Lake (see red coloured letters), good 100 meter of the railway.

I the past I posted still about this item but have the positive experience that suddenly new matter can come up.

In Canadian archives (the dugout was made by the 2nd Canadian Tunnelling Company) I found the company worked on it from 1/12/1917 till 25/12/1917. See in the document I inserted also this dates from the war diarees. In the diarees there is also some description of the bunks available and so one but no maps although there were maps from every relevant dugout.

25 days seems to me a very short time to make a deep (8 or 9 metres deep?) dugout with 2 stairs in the middle of winter time. Or perhaps they were so well specialized and organized in this job so that even in winter time this gave no particular problems to achieve in so short time?

The dugout is situated in the left under corner of map above and runs under the village street.

Now there are houses built nearby the dugout and as it is positioned partly under the main street it will certainly be never explored so even more a big question how it might have been made following the drawings or plans.

I would like so much to find a drawing of the dugout, but till now I did not find in any of the Archives. Perhaps somebody can help or even has the plan or drawings?

Quite some info is already known but not yet a drawing found about Manor Farm dugout https://sites.google.com/site/154siegebattery/manor-farm-dug-out

On the site above with link, there is to see which troops occupied the dugout, perhaps the first troops that occupied have maps in their archives? Don't know.

Special is also (see the timeline on my website) that the dugout was also a certain time occupied and used by German troops.

Thanks for all possible info in this difficult research.

 

Regards,

Marc