.  Around Woodford Barry Claghen is something of a local legend. The structure pictured is locally known as Barry's shed. Specialising in house clearance and scrap metal, Barry scours the obituary columns and bancruptcy notices of the local papers and works his network of contacts in the nursing homes and scrap metal yards of West Essex. Local legend suggests Barry's shed may contain more than just the sad leftovers of so many broken lives. It is rumoured that Barry is also a seeker of arcane truth. After one particularly fruitful forage through the remants of an auction at a large house somewhere near Piercing Hill in Epping Forest Barry came across a box that would change the course of his life forever. What he found that day in 1986 remains a mystery, although speculation in Barry's local, the Railway Arms, favours the theory that what he discovered was a notebook which had belonged to Thomas Lovecraft. Lovecraft was squire of Copped Hall, an active freemason and rumoured to be a practising magician. A.J.P. Taylor