The Roman Soldiers in the Cellar of Treasurer's House, York (Harry Martindale, 1953)

Treasurer's House stands on Minster Yard in York, beside York Minster. It lies inside the old Roman legionary fortress of Eboracum. The National Trust says the house "sits atop the Roman road via Decumana."

February 1953. Harry Martindale, 17 or 18 years old, was an apprentice plumber working alone. It was his second day in the cellar. He stood on a ladder, cutting through the vaulted brick ceiling for a heating pipe. The ladder rested on a section of floor dug down to the Roman road surface. That detail would matter.

Just before midday, he heard it. "Just a blare of a note," as he later told Ciaran Brown, that "seemed to be coming from within the wall." The National Trust says it came three times. The third time, it appeared to be coming from the other side of the wall.

He glanced down. In line with his waist, the top of a plumed helmet was coming through the wall. The first soldier walked through and disappeared into the opposite wall. Then a large horse, "like a great big carthorse," with a Roman soldier sitting astride him. Then more soldiers, two abreast, 20 in total.

They were small, dark, bearded men in green tunics, with round shields and spears. Weary, miserable and dirty. And they were visible only from the knees up. Until they reached the excavated section. There, on the Roman road, their lower legs and feet were there. He could hear their speech and their footsteps. Not one of them looked in his direction.

His hair stood on end. He came off the ladder and crouched in a corner while the procession passed. Then he ran up the cellar steps, leaving his tools and ladder behind. The curator's words became part of the legend: "By the look of you, you have seen the Roman soldiers!"

A doctor signed him off for two weeks with shock. Then came about 20 years of silence. He first spoke publicly on television in the early 1970s, reportedly needing his medical records to confirm the date. He later became a police officer and led York ghost walks. He died on 21 October 2014, aged 79. His own words stand: "I don't know about ghosts… But I do know what I saw down here that day."

The curator's remark hints that the story was already known in the house. In February 1957, the National Trust says, housekeeper Joan Mawson heard horses' hooves in the cellar, then saw Roman soldiers and horses go past. Later her young ward, Caroline, spoke of a loud trumpet sound. Mawson had never told her about the sighting.

No official investigation was ever recorded. No 1953 newspaper report has been found. Supporters point to the Roman road beneath the cellar floor, and to claims that the uniforms matched late Roman troops with round shields. The retellings disagree. Some say fourth century garrison soldiers. Others say the Ninth Legion, which was at York around AD 71 to 120. None names a historian. And Martindale's first public telling came after the claimed 1969 road find.

Gordon Bonnet of Skeptophilia called himself "unconvinced but interested." The legend was well known, he noted, so imagination or prior knowledge "cannot be ruled out." Yet he found the weary soldiers and the buried road hard to dismiss. Others cite the case as an example of the Stone Tape theory, the idea that buildings can store and replay past events.