QUATERMASS AND THE PIT and HOB LANE

A classic science fiction film is Quatermass and the PIT, written by Nigel Kneale.

In the story psychic disturbances were discovered emanating from the ground, and an alien spaceship was unearthed.

An important thread which ran through the story was that the name of the site of the PIT was Hobs Lane, and that Hob was a medieval name for the Devil.
Here Quatermass is looking though medieval documents showing old woodcut images.
At the end of the film the spaceship vaporised into a horned figure in the sky.

The Hobs Lane in the story was intended to be fictional. There are however several real places named Hob Lane. There is a Hob Lane in Warwickshire, on the West side of Coventry.

On 6 June 1985, British Coal announced the discovery of a massive coal-field in Warwickshire and its intention to build Britain's biggest Super-Pit. By a coincidence, the road running across the centre of the designated real Super-Pit was the real Hob Lane. A map showing the Super-Pit area with Hob Lane running across its centre was published on the front page of the Coventry Evening Telegraph, 6 June 1985. In one scene in the film Quatermass is shown pondering the nature of "coincidence" and whether it is "simply coincidence" that the site of the Pit was named Hobs Lane.

Hob Lane The Place Names of Warwickshire, English Place-Name Society, vol xiii, by Gover, Mawer and Stenton, states: "Hob is a word which is used in a variety of senses in English dialects. It is impossible to determine its precise sense in these various compounds. Doubtless in many of them it has a reference to Hob as a name for Robin Goodfellow, a hob-goblin and the like".

The name on the gate of this old cottage in Hob Lane is "Hobgoblins". Also in Hob Lane, is Hob Farm.

Was It Just Coincidence?

The June 1985 issue of Prediction magazine (which was published in early May 1985), included an advert inviting people in the Coventry area who were interested in the paranormal to form a discussion group. The first meeting of the group was held in Coventry on 30th May 1985 (6 days before the Super-Pit announcement). The group included David and Sheila Bavington, who had been involved in some previous paranormal investigations in the Coventry area, and which are described in the book Eye of Fire by Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman. The book includes a photo of the Bavingtons outside their home. The Super-Pit announcement, Hob Lane and Quatermass, were discussed by the group at its next meeting, a week after the announcement. David and Sheila Bavington became very vocal opponents of the Super-Pit plan, and two letters from them were printed in the Coventry Telegraph (29 March 1986, 12 April 1986).

The coicidence was also described in a 3-page article, titled "Coincidences", written by Sandra MacGregor Hastie, in a paranormal magazine called "Beyond Science". The article included a forward written by Colin Wilson, a well known author about occult subjects, together with photos of Hob Lane, and the map that had been printed in the Coventry Telegraph.

Sir Simon Barrington-Ward was chaplain to to HM Queen Elizabeth until the Summer of 1985, when he took up the post as Bishop of Coventry (more: Sir Simon Barrington-Ward and career details). He had just been newly appointed as the Bishop of Coventry, and was consulted about the coincidence involving Hob Lane and Quatermass. In a statement made on 21st January 1986, about Hob Lane, he said:

"I would not like to see Quatermass and the Pit as more than a warning about our relationship with techology"

The following extract is from a letter written by Nigel Kneale, the author of Quatermass, about the origin of the name Hob, and Hob Lane:

The Pictorial Dictionary of Science Fiction Films says of this film:

The story is prodigal with ideas, and is the first film to send science-fiction backwards in time, with the suggestion that the evolution of mankind owed much, if not everything, to the intervention of aliens. The ten years between the Hammer movie its BBC serial presentation would see an upsurge in the number of genre films produced, but none with such resonance or so many concepts central to what Science-Fiction is all about.

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