Trawling around the internet is a wonderful, if time wasting activity. Thanks to Badscience for this link:
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2010/02/08/433-secret-caves-of-the-lizard-people/ 

It does put me in mind of various myths about tunnels under various places, growing up in Bangor, I was always told about tunnels from the pier to the cathedral, anyone got examples of other unlikely underground connections?

What an ace topic... Heres three to get us going-

Codnor Castle to Heanor Church.... Hmmmmm Very doubtful and if it were true a monster accomplishment it would be at 2+ miles long, going down hill thru chronic loose ground and coal measures, under a notoriously waterlogged valley bottom and then going up hill for the last half mile at 1 in 7... didn't stop us all looking for it as kids up at the castle or in Heanor Church...

The Peacock pub at Oakerthorpe to Wingfield Manor. Another tunnel again of amazing length if it existed and a real feat of tunneling. There is a good length of tunnel in the beer cellar at the Peacock but it is collapsed and flooded some way in and seems to have been more to with avoiding the excise men... rather than the escape route of anti Elizabeth the 1st supporters from Wingfield, great legend tho and well known..

Babington family home at Dethwick to Wingfield Manor. This tunnel was another plotters escape route for reason given above and again would have been some engineering feat as it would have had to drive down thru sandstone and under the river then driving up to Dethick a good few miles away.

These stories are great and its nice that even today these myths continue... I was listening to a Dad in the Peacock telling his 5 yr old about the tunnel and the skeleton in the cellar (part of which is real!). 😉

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Try this lot......

http://www.wcms.org.uk/pages/secret_tunnels_page.shtml 

Looks remarkably similar to some of the stuff written about Inca tunnels acroos South America supposedly filled with tablets of gold engraved with pictures of space ships etc. etc.

Here in Cambridge I have often heard of the tunnels that join the different colleges usually said to pass under the Market Square, it's possible but I doubt it, the only thing I am definitely aware of under there are the old public bogs.

I've also been told by several people of similar tunnels under Huntingdon - usually related to Cromwell, again unlikely I think but perhaps one day I'll risk looking silly by asking in the Cromwell Museum.

Just South of Cambridge in the village where I grew up, Sawston, there are stories of a tunnel linking Sawston Hall with the Church, again unlikely but not too difficult to imagine as the distance would only be a few hundred yards. There is definitely a "Priest Hole" in the hall and this may be where the story comes from. In my youth we looked for this tunnel under the cover of darkness and did find a manhole that led to a brick arched tunnel this was only explored a short distance before our nerve failed us however it was going in the wrong direction and was undoubtedly an old drain of some sort.

Also in Pampisford, the next village there is an intriguing slab in the churchyard with the single word "crypt" on it......

A sort of secret tunnel that does exist is that from Under the Guildhall in Kings Lynn to the quayside, a couple of hundred yards. The first part is a cafe oft frequented by Summer and I. Through a curtain at the back the tunnel continues and for a short distance is used for storing cleaning materials and furniture. Said to be originally used for offloading barrels straight of the ships to the cellars, apparently some other building have them too.

It's in one of the Robin Hood legends that he escaped from Nottingham castle to St. Mary's church via a hidden tunnel. The local press got very excited a few years ago when someone broke into part of a tunnel near the galleries of justice which they claimed proved the legend.
check out:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2198224.stm 

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if there's a tunnel under Cambridge Market Square, I don't know anything about it; and having worked at various times on the reconstruction of the old NatWest Bank site in Bene't St ( where we excavated down to 4.5m below road level ), the Lion Yard project and Grand Arcade foundations, I probably would

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Try this lot......

http://www.wcms.org.uk/pages/secret_tunnels_page.shtml 

Does anybody know what the story with the Crowborough Caves is?

These don't seem to have made it into the Aditnow database either.

http://www.treacleminer.com/locations.htm 

I notice Crowborough crops up on that list too.

my old house in Sandbach used to be a coaching inn, there was a tunnel from there to the church (until some philistines called the council or water board put a large sewer straight through it ) it continued to the church joined by tunnels from two other pubs. interestingly I found a Crobane 1d mining token under the tiles in the floor..I still have it

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if there's a tunnel under Cambridge Market Square, I don't know anything about it; and having worked at various times on the reconstruction of the old NatWest Bank site in Bene't St ( where we excavated down to 4.5m below road level ), the Lion Yard project and Grand Arcade foundations, I probably would

Agreed, probably pure legend. I have been told similar stories about a tunnel under Emmanuel Street.


Also forgot about the Wisbech Tunnels - these definitely do exist although most are really large cellars extending under several properties and silted up tunnels leading to the quays probably for a similar purpose to the Kings Lynn ones.

You have to look hard to find caves and mines in Cambridgeshire :lol:

There is an underground mine in Cambs though, any guesses?

Try this lot......

http://www.wcms.org.uk/pages/secret_tunnels_page.shtml 

Does anybody know what the story with the Crowborough Caves is?

A complete spoof, also the Slough Caverns.

there is a crypt under Great St Mary's Church, and the fountain once had a conduit serving it ( part of the Hobson's Conduit complex ), which I would guess is the origin of the story.

There is a pedestrian and service tunnel under Emmanuel Street. It links the two sides just beyond the bus stop and arcade of shops.

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I don't know whether this quailfies but it's sure interesting. The Sacred cave of Rome.

According to myth, Lupercale is where a she-wolf suckled Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of the war god Mars and mortal priestess Rhea Silvia, who had been abandoned in a cradle on the bank of the Tiber River.

The cave's name, in fact, comes from the Latin word for wolf, lupus.

The brothers are said to have later founded Rome on April 21, 753 B.C., at the site. But they eventually fought for the leadership of the new city, and Romulus killed his brother.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/01/070126-rome-palatine.html 

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the only thing I am definitely aware of under there are the old public bogs.

Durham has a similar "secret cave" under the market place, which rumour has it will be reopened...

There are also tales of tunnels running right under the city centre, from the cathedral and some of the nearby colleges. I've heard that there was a way in somewhere on the riverbank but I've never found it :confused:
I'm sure there is truth behind all the stories, but whether or not any of them are still accessible, I don't know.

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Optomistic legend in Llanelli of a tunnel from Machynys House (a large farm / small manor house owned by the Mansell family), beneath the Burry estuary to emerge in the Gower Peninsular!

Many people repeat stories of a walled-up arch at the end of the cellars of the house. Some slightly less-gullible souls suggest that the tunnel lead to the shore a couple of hundred metres away and was used to transport smuggled goods. This suggestion ignores that the shore is open tthe winds and is not a place to land cargoes at all, that the Mansells were the local squires and could have smuggled with impunity had they wished, and that if they did smuggle to Machynys House then on a dark night there would have been no one to see what was happening, making a tunnel superfluous.

More concretetely, tales of a tunnel from the north end of Tenby Harbour up into the town centre. Stated to start what is now the old fishmarket (mid C19); I'm told it was intercepted in a number of C20 building projects. I've seen it mentioned in a respectible local history book but can't off-hand remember the reference.

there were persistent rumours circulating among them miners at Combe Down ( most of them were from S Wales ) about a sewer tunnel project in Tenby in the coming year, for Welsh Water. Contractor seemed to be Bar Hale.

Miners usually have highly developed antennae for such things in my experience!

from experience, projects of this kind usually consist of driving a larger diameter tunnel bypassing or replacing some part of the older, often Victorian, system. The one Amec did in Whitby a few years ago was a typical example. So, I would guess there is a sewer collector tunnel, possibly with a sea outfall, somewhere under Tenby.

however this seems more the stuff of mystery and rumour..

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/tm_objectid=14071749&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=tunnel-into-tenby-s-dark-past-name_page.html 

[tweak]link fixed[/tweak]

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Derrickman, I first heard of the Tenby harbour tunnel in the early 1970s; its route is significantly removed from the one described in the article. The article concentrates on the 2004 discovery of a short (40 foot mentioned in the article) from a quarry near the Croft (at the north end of the town) to North Beach. At the end of the article is a repsise of the harbour tunnel that I mentioned in my post - that one is around 3/4 of a km from the one at the Croft. There isn't a major outfall tunnel under the town to confuse the harbour tunnel stories - the town's sewage goes inland to a treatment works and then south for a couple kilometres to a long sea outfall (I used to work for Welsh Water as a sewage works inspector).

There are secret chambers all around. In cornwall, one of the locals found a tunnel in his house that went to the sea, old smugglers tunnel. Even had a rusty old flintlock on the floor.

My great grandfather lived in Knowle, bristol, in an area that used to be a farm. When they knocked down buildings to build houses, they didn't bother sorting out some of the old tunnels etc. He used to tell a story about the big barn near his house, which had a deep cellar. Apparently they put concrete blocks down at ground level, leaving the actual cellar intact, and then just put turf over the lot of it. The upshot being that one of the guys (I like to point the house out when I'm up that way) only has to dig a bit of turf up in his garden and he's got access to a massive underground chamber.

There is an underground mine in Cambs though, any guesses?

Er.... go on, tell us! 😉

Assuming we're not talking about Cambridge, Massachusetts, that is! :lol:

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