Puzzling James Bond Note Found Buried in Concrete of a 400-Year-Old Castle

Recently, during restoration work in Elizabeth Castle, Jersey, workers found a note about James Bond in a glass bottle that was buried in concrete. Historians are now trying to determine who would have written it.

The note was in a glass bottle, along with two pages (pages 15 and 18) of the Reveille newspaper. The glass bottle was buried in concrete in an old, bricked-up fireplace in the officers’ quarters on the first floor.

Elizabeth Castle is named after Elizabeth the First, who reigned as queen when the castle was built. The island acted as a defensive stronghold for Port Helier during the 16th century and later as a military base.

Therefore, the notes and newspaper were written just two months after the release of the James Bond movie “Thunderball.” Historic buildings officer Harvey Doolan has said to BBC News that the author of the note was “clearly a very big James Bond fan.”

The movie follows MI6 agent James Bond (played by Sean Connery) on his mission to track down two stolen NATO atomic bombs. Bond must save the world from SPECTRE, which is holding the world ransom for £100 million in diamonds.

When talking to BBC News, Harvey Doolen said his first thought when examining the note was that they (the author) “might have been a well-known Jersey artist, Edmund Blampied.” There’s an issue with this theory, though, as stated by Mr. Doolen: “However, he was 79 years old at that point in time, and he passed away in the August of that year, so we thought it was possibly unlikely that he was shoving bottles into fireplaces at Elizabeth Castle.”

After studying, he continued to work in art before being conscripted as a guard during WWI. Then, after the war, he went back to working in etching and eventually opened his own art studio. During his life, Blampied worked on and illustrated many books, including “Peter and Wendy,” published in 1939. He passed away on the 26th of August 1966 in Saint Aubin, Jersey.

The post mentioned where the note was found, what it had written on it, the newspaper pages found with it, and how it was discovered. Jersey Heritage then asked again for help with solving this puzzle.

According to Jersey Heritage, they are “responsible for the Island’s major historic sites, award-winning museums and public archives. We hold collections of artifacts, works of art, documents, specimens and information relating to Jersey’s history, culture and environment. These collections define the Island, hold the evidence for its historical development and act as the community’s memory.”

In 2019, an interesting discovery was made relating to James Bond. This discovery was the real-life spy, James Charles Bond. The historic discovery was made by Stephen Phillips, the grandson of James Charles Bond. James’s life as a spy during WW2 was kept secret from his family and was only discovered when Stephen Phillips went through old WW2 documents after his grandfather’s passing in 1995.

Bond was a member of the elite Special Operations Executive (SEO), which had previously been kept guarded under the Official Secrets Act. He was part of a team of six elite SEOs chosen by Ian Flemming for a mission behind enemy borders that we still do not have details about, due to the Official Secrets Act.

He managed to “catch” a 10th-century Viking sword using a powerful magnet. The finding was immediately handed over to his local finds liaison and then experts to verify the authenticity of the sword. Penny told Metro that the verifying process was thrilling but also came with stress. He explained, “There was a little dispute with the landowner and the river’s trust, which doesn’t permit magnet fishing.” The sword he found has been verified and dated to around 850 AD.