Doug’s Search for Time Capsule

A circus ringmaster is looking for help in locating a time capsule he and his classmates buried at an island primary school. 

Doug Francis, the ringmaster at Invisible Circus, was a pupil at Kewaigue School during the 1970s. 

While he was at the school, Doug remembers him and his former classmates burying a time capsule, but efforts to find it have so far not proved fruitful and no-one at the school knew anything about it. 

He said: ‘I was copied in with a few of the ex-pupils who were like “yeah we did bury a time capsule”. So somewhere in the grounds, I think there’s a garden area and a playground now, but it was just kind of rough ground at the end next to the playing field. 

‘We buried it in there with all written messages to ourselves, like how old you’d be in 2000 and we were going to dig it up in 2000, so I was sort of interested in, you know as they say “what message would you write your former self?” well I was wondering what my former self had written to me. 

‘I’m a storyteller at heart and I was interested in that as a story just what these kids from that time would have written about the future and what they wanted and all that kind of stuff.’ 

Despite his career travelling the world with the circus, Doug says he ‘probably’ said he wanted to be an astronaut or a motorbike racer. 

Since gaining permission from the school, he has tried to survey the area with a metal detector but failed to find anything and is hoping to find a way of using ground penetrating radar to search  for it.

Despite the half-century that has passed, Doug is convinced that the time capsule must still be in the ground. 

He said: ‘No-one at the school ever remembers it being found and if it had been dug up when they were doing the groundwork, then you’d think the school would know about it, but my feeling is that it is still down there somewhere and worth a mission.’ 

While the time capsule search goes on, Doug said he has happy memories of his time at Kewaigue School. 

If anyone has any info that could help with the search for the time capsule, you can contact Doug at doug@invisiblecircus.co.uk. 

We’ll be revisiting our interview with Doug later this week as we find out how a boy from Kewaigue goes on to travel the world as a ringmaster and explore his love of Manx mythology.