Underwater ballroom

A few years ago I was watching something on BBC 1 I think, maybe about hidden treasures in the UK or something. Anyway, I remember one specific thing which was about an underwater ballroom in Witley, Surrey. To find it you allegedly had to find this lake, in the lake is a statue of a person pointing, you're then supposed to walk in the direction that they are pointing, which should take you to a woods, in the woods you should find a small door, you go through his door which takes you down stairs, underground. Once down the stairs, you should find a little rowing boat sitting on a small river/lake (I'm not quite sure on the exact details here), you then get in the little row boat and then pull on a rope I think which takes you to the other side where you get off. After walking down a windy, damp, rather smelly corridor, you apparently find this...

                                                       (This is the view if you look up)
          ...Where you end up is under the lake you originally visited to arrive where you are now, the lake with the stature in it. Now watching this n the TV I was astounded, and made a mental note to eventually visit this place, but of course I never got around to it.

UNTIL! Back in February a friend started to talk about this underwater ballroom to some other, extremely disbelieving friends. When I heard I obviously piped up with my little bit of knowledge from the TV itself, and you know, always believe what you see on TV! (Obviously, that's a joke.) But even with my input to justify his story, which by the way, was that he hadn't just heard about this place, he'd been, about a year previous, himself and some friends had driven out at night and managed to find it, they followed all the instructions and ended up actually looking up at the picture above for real, (I was so, so envious) our friends still thought we were full of shit. So on a chilly, wet February afternoon, we drove out to Witley common, the  place where my friend was 100 per cent certain we would find the lake holding the statue that would lead us to the ballroom. However, after walking for an hour, we realised that this little outing wasn't going to be as simple as we initially thought. After a few phone calls to his friends, we discovered that the lake was not open to the public on National Trust ground as my friend had remembered. Turns out that in fact, it sits on someones land, PRIVATE LAND. Which of course, we found. We walked across Witley common, crossing a road, we came to the entrance of Witley Manor I believe it's called. Here is a picture from good old Google maps, and I've added some red stuff to make it more clear...

                                                                                                            ...After we got to the entrance, we spent about twenty minutes debating what to do, and my friend who had been to this place before suddenly recalled that they had actually climbed over a thick stone wall to get to it (a key piece of information that we really would of benefited from knowing before we ventured out, yes). So we now understood that our options were limited, and that our chances of seeing this inconceivably astounding attribute to our countryside was fading fast. We figured our choices were like this:

• A - Give up and go back to the car, accepting that the world is an unfair place, and also ensuring that the one of us who had work would make it on time.
• B - Climb over the wall, forgetting the fact that it's daylight and we're not exactly masters of breaking and entering, risking getting in a little bit of trouble, which at the time was far more serious for some because of work related positions.
• C - Walk back along the wall to arrive at the intimidating gates that are the entrance, and argue over who has to ring the big bell (ha) and ask if we are allowed to 'pretty please' see their lake.
• D - Come back soon when we can be less visible with the cover of night, and attempt to find it then - but to be honest we all knew this meant it would more than likely NEVER happen as it wasn't very often that we left the house, unless we were forced to complete some kind of foraging (either food shopping or going to earn money to buy the food).

Unfortunately with time and risk of getting caught being issues we had to consider, our options ultimately were A and C. And there was no way I was leaving this place without at least trying to get a look at what we had come to see, so C was indeed our choice. But the door bell didn't bloody work. So we waited in this driveway for someone to notice us, which no-one seemed to for quite some time. Eventually though, a guy who was doing some kind of work at the manor began to appear from behind the opening gates in his white van. As he was a guy, it was myself and the other female of our foursome who approached him, in the hopes that he would be potentially more inclined to give any information he had over, and maybe even get us in. We told him our pre-prepared story that we were four art students, wanting to photograph the lake for a project (complete bullshit of course). He turned out to be a pretty nice guy, but regrettably explained that he thought it unlikely we would be allowed to see the lake, as the owner(s) of the land liked to keep it protected from the public, especially as they had recently experienced a lot of problems with people braking in at night in order to see it. With a little persuasion however, the nice man drove back down to ask someone in charge if it would be possible for us to see the lake. But he returned with the answer he expected, a solid no. 

Disappointment, such disappointment. We had been walking and waiting, and walking and waiting some more for almost two hours by this point, and more importantly, we had been really, really genuinely excited to see this treasure. And I don't know what your reaction was when you read the reason above of why people, even a few excited 'art students' just wanting some photographs, were not being permitted to visit it, but personally I was pretty pissed off, and even more stunned.

'So their not letting people in to see the amazing underwater ballroom, because people keep breaking in at night to see the amazing underwater ballroom. Surely the best thing to do would be to open it during the day so that people aren't forced to break in at night, unsupervised or whatever, this way it could be controlled and there will be a greatly reduced risk of things getting damaged.'

Now, firstly, I didn't realise that this sort of astonishing landmark could be kept as completely private land, if you look at places like Longleat house near Warminster, for example, a stately home where a family ACTUALLY still inhabit, it's open to the public 6/7 days a week I think, so how is it possible that this gem in someones mass of land is being kept solely for their viewing?! I kind of assumed that all those sorta things get picked up by the National Trust. Maybe that's me being a dumbass. And obviously I do understand the difference between the ease of controlling the flow of visitors in an incredibly large mansion with huge corridors, compared to managing all those people down tiny winding stairwells and onto a little boat, if my information is correct anyway. But I am honestly shocked that something so wonderful could be closed to the public. Surely this is something that we all should be allowed to view and appreciate? After all, what's the point in it existing if it is never seen and marvelled at? Even if the owner(s) want to keep it  as their own land, would it not be a good investment, or even just a beautiful thing to share by opening it for people to view, even if this has to be done with some kind of tour that you can get tickets for? I don't know, maybe I would want to keep it for myself too if I lived there, but I struggle with the idea that I could spend enough time down there to justify that selfishness. 

Anyway, here are some more mind-blowing pictures of this incredible wonder that I hope to one day see for real...