Man spends 30 years building a labyrinth in his garden that’s now a shrine to his late wife

From the outside, Francis Proctor’s suburban home in Southport looks like any other on the street. But it’s hiding a secret.

20 feet below his garden, the ‘eccentric’ has hand-dug a labyrinth of underground caves, which has become a shrine to his late wife.

Retired photographer Francis, 76, said the project was a labour of love over 30 years, but began with a rather silly idea.

When he first bought the home more than 50 years ago, Francis hoped to have an underground room, like the Blue John Cavern in Derbyshire.

His home is near a beach, so the idea of hand-digging tunnels seemed implausible, but Francis’s wife, former mathematician Barbara, helped the plans come to fruition.

He explained: ‘The reason we were able to do it was because we underpinned the side of the house when we built an extension. Barbara looked at the plans and said it was quite straightforward.’

With Barbara’s help, the couple kept digging until they reached 20 feet, also adding a bridge, waterfall and eccentric items collected from around the world.

But the centrepiece is the cavern itself, lined with tunnels that seem to transport visitors to another world.

His dream back garden is now listed under the National Garden Scheme, it regularly opens to the public and pulls in visitors from all over Britain.

After Barbara’s death four years ago, Francis dedicated the garden to her with a plaque, made by the same men who made her gravestone.

A historic foundation stone anchors the site – one Francis personally tracked down and re-dedicated in her memory.

The stone once sat at Southport Hospital, laid in 1922 by the Earl of Derby. Exactly a century to the date later, it was unveiled in Francis’s back garden as a memorial to the woman who made the impossible 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.’

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