The Sealed Masoleum Believed to Be a Fully-Functioning Time Machine

The mausoleum of a Victorian Egyptologist’s friend is sealed, but if opened may reveal a shortcut to a Paris cemetery.

Ray Godson and Stephen Coates are both keen to get their hands on a key to the thick bronze door that shields the entrance to an imposing granite mausoleum in Brompton Cemetery in west London.

For Mr Godson, a replacement for the key that went missing in the late 1970s would allow him to pay his respects to Hannah Courtoy, his great-great-grandmother, who is interred in the tomb with two of her three daughters. Mr Coates’s interest is rather more esoteric: he is keen to test a long-held theory that the tomb is a fully functioning Victorian time machine. Read more