12 pictures inside a creepy abandoned house and its World War 2 air raid shelter, hidden in Pontefract

The Priory House, also known as the White House, is a large, two-storey property that has a hidden bomb shelter dug to the rear and has been left abandoned.

Over the years, the property has also been the victim of numerous fires and criminal damage.

The fires have destroyed the roof which opened the property up to the elements.

The bomb shelter located behind the decaying house was dug out in 1939, at the beginning of World War 2, by a local man and resident of the house at the time, Frank H.W.

In an short autobiography written in 1971 named ‘Recollections of Pontefract’, he said: "It was in 1938 that I joined the Air Raid Precautions Organisation, taking up first-aid, and in the same year, by my recollections of first war experience, I began digging a shelter in the Priory Wood.

"The site proved unsatisfactory and I abandoned it.

"In the spring of 1939 I commenced operations nearer to the house, but soon reached hard rock.

"Hand work was useless, so after much enquiry, I organised conversion of a Jowett van to serve as an air compressor, procured an air-pick, and (with a negligible amount of assistance, all voluntary) ultimately attained a shelter with fifteen steps down from the surface, eleven more in a second flight, and a passage twenty feet long at the bottom, all of it in rock and not less than six feet high."

The abandoned shelter now sits hidden in the undergrowth behind The White 'Priory' House, disused and forgotten.

Explore the abandoned Priory House, and its bomb shelter, through these 12 photos taken by urban explorer, Lost Places and Forgotten Faces.