Torwood, Scotland
Hidden in a clearing in Scotland's Tor Wood Forest, the Torwood Blue
Pool is a man-made brick pool of unknown purpose that fascinated a local
man until his dying day.
The pool itself is 20-feet in diameter and filled with a varying
level of what was once, surprisingly blue water. At only about 12 feet
deep, the brick and mortar pool is not a bottomless conundrum, but its
builders and original use are seemingly lost to the (fairly recent)
ages. Enter local blue pool investigator Nigel C. Turnbull who would
devote much of his later personal life to delving into the spot's
origin.
Turnbull first saw the pool in 1961 when he was only 10 years old.
When he rediscovered the spot at the age of 45, its secrets got their
hooks in him. Over the next few years, Turnbull would look into every
facet of the pool from the make-up of its water, to the debris at the
bottom, to its ever-changing liquid volume. He collected eyewitness
accounts of the pool and tried to link it to other industrial works
nearby, each step recorded in detail on his website. Unfortunately
Turnbull passed away in 2012 at the age of 61, never truly confirming
the purpose of the pool.
The most likely origin of the pool is that it was an open air shaft
leading to a mine that had been covered, although alternate theories
such as it being used as an industrial dye vat were also proposed. With
Turnbull's passing, it is unlikely that the Torwood Blue Pool will find
another investigator as devoted as he, but then again it took even him
thirty years to be enticed by the pool's mystery.
