On June 3, 1960, Herald readers opened their papers to a story that sent a shockwaves through the town: the ancient Farnham Castle had been violated by vandals.

For more than 900 years, the castle had watched over the town, first as a seat of the Bishops of Winchester and later of Guildford. But in 1960, it stood silent and empty, unoccupied since January the previous year. Into that quiet, on a Tuesday evening, a group of local boys forced open the French windows, stepped inside and began a rampage of destruction.

What followed was described by the Herald as an “orgy of vandalism” – an hour or so of mindless destruction.

Fire extinguishers were torn from their brackets and sprayed in great arcs across the Great Hall. Fine inlaid furniture stored there was dulled and damaged by corrosive soda. Paintings, windowpanes, carpets and walls all suffered the same fate.

The boys wrenched decorative spears from the walls and drove them deep into a settee and straight through the portrait of a former bishop who had once lived there. Black printer ink was splashed across carpets.

Two cabinets containing small museum relics, including seals, books and other fragments of the past, were smashed open, their contents scattered across the floor. For all the havoc, nothing was taken.

It was the caretaker’s wife, Mrs Hewins, listening from the cottage, who first heard the unsettling noises drifting across the evening air. Her husband, Mr H Hewins, went to investigate and found the devastation. Police were called, and three local boys, all under 15, were soon questioned. They later faced charges of malicious damage at Farnham Juvenile Court.

There was clear shock in the town that the castle – which had survived sieges, bishops, restorations, centuries of weather and even an assault by Parliamentarian forces during the Civil War in 1642 – could be so casually and recklessly violated in a single hour.

For the lads involved, who would be mature men in their 70s now, it certainly wasn’t their finest moment.