A Victorian Ordnance Survey map – January 14, 2023 at 04:22PM

When I was about thirteen I spent my summer holiday, as usual, in the English countryside and used to cycle from the village where I was staying to the local town.

We usually did this journey by car and I was amazed at how much more detail I noticed from a bicycle. This particular day I spotted a small village or hamlet in the trees to one side of the road together with a small church or chapel. I thought this was quite wonderful — I’d never noticed this small group of dwellings before and thought cycling through on my way back from town to have a shufti.

As I cycled back later the houses were still clearly visible through the trees but due to the lateness of the day I pushed on home. A day or so later I passed along the road with my mother in our car and tried to show her the village I’d discovered, but there was no sign of it.

I cycled back and looked again and again on several days but to my confusion could find no trace of either a village, or of any group of buildings or farm that I might have mistaken for a small village.

Even a recent Ordnance Survey map didn’t show any building or buildings that could explain what I’d seen. In the end I just assumed I had been mistaken and had somehow misremembered what had happened.

About twenty years later I was in the local pub about three miles up the road from where this happened, and I came across a Victorian Ordnance survey map of the area and was looking at it when I saw a ruined village and church marked where I had seen the houses about twenty years before.

The site of the village was no longer shown on the more modern map, but this older map showed quite clearly the site of a small village and church. Could this have somehow explained what I saw? I wonder what would have happened if I’d actually visited the village instead of cycling past.

https://www.quora.com/Have-you-ever-experienced-a-time-slip