Not sure if the Templar stuff is correct or not - I've seen nothing to corroborate this. Having been in the temple - it certainly seems very old.
The entrance is a hole carved out of the sandstone that you have to squeeze down into - it may look like a rabbit hole but it's not.
Lots of local kids & others know about it and use it as a place to hang out and drink and I'm pretty sure it's used for some sort of New Age rituals judging by the number of candles and detritus that are sometimes in there.
It's a hard place to find if you don't know about it. On private land - completely hidden and it's never really been publicised... until now.
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caynton_Caves
> One suggestion is that they were the result of quarrying during the 19th century, and were then turned by the landowners, the Legge family, into a grotto. It is alternatively speculated that the caverns are older, perhaps dating back at least to the 17th century, and some have associated them with the Knights Templar.
> The caverns are located beneath privately-owned woodland. Since at least the 1980s, they have sometimes been used for informal secret ceremonies and rituals, and vandalised, and were closed to the public in 2012 as a result. Later reopened, they were accessed by a photographer in 2017, and received widespread publicity.
- I wonder what the oldest vandalization is?
- Could it be that there are many others in the area, which is why this hasn't been formally discovered before? How many times has it been "rediscovered" in the last 700 years?
- Is it actually a rabbit hole (as in: a hole used by rabbits) or just a "door"? Seems likely that it "looks" like a rabbit hole, but is actually a (perhaps maintained) door into the cave.
http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2017/03/07/in-pictures-se...
[edit: oh, article about it... https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/03/adrie...)
[edit 2: http://www.pompeiana.org/Resources/Ancient/Graffiti%20from%2... - lots of examples of texts they found: "Daphnus was here with his Felicla", "Restitutus has deceived many girls", "O walls, you have held up so much tedious graffiti that I am amazed that you have not already collapsed in ruin"!]
"If anyone sits here, let him read this first of all: if anyone wants a screw, he should look for Attice; she costs 4 sestertii." Seriously, I'm pretty sure I saw this same graffiti in a truck stop restroom stall once.
I would conjecture that very few locals know about it - it really isn't something you'd find unless you knew what you were looking for and the few conversations I have had about it with people in the surrounding towns and villages frequently yield blank looks; the creation of a Wikipedia page for the caves only yesterday [1] also supports this hypothesis. That said, the inside is littered with cigarette butts and tea lights, so I am far from alone in knowing of its existence.
As for its purpose, I've always assumed it was some priest hole [2] variant, but have no evidence to support that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caynton_Caves&act...
As a child, my friend and I used to hang around there all the time, we followed "The Burn" which is just a small stream really which is many hundreds of miles long. However we followed it for a long long time, and in the way of the stream, there is a cave, you need to go underground to get to it, and when you get there you need to enter a small collapsed column of stone, and then go back up.
In there is a cave and if you crawl through, you end up going back down again to end up in a cave which is very much like this image. At the front of the cave is a stone Altar and what appears to be a V shape carving that would hold a small book. There are carvings in the walls to hold what I guess are candles.
Anyway, it is our secret, and to this day, based on our observations over time, our intended collapse of the entrance remains in place, and even the outer rocks have caved in beside it.
I know that what my friend I found is of huge historic significance to the local area, almost certainly related to the St Margaret era and yet, knowing something is there like that, and knowing no one else knows is amazing.
I personally keep a 4x doze of Heroin accessible should life ever be grim, or should I ever be a burden, and that is where I plan to go to take the last train west. By the time someone else finds this, the skeleton will baffle them. (I might collapse hugging the altar just to fuck with them a while, o appear on a "Creepy" subreddit well into the future)
If you ever feel the need to do that make sure you take a couple of dozen devices with you ranging from say the 1940's up to current tech.
You'll give some future historian conniptions.
An hour of good lighting in a subterranean cave in those days must have cost a fortune. (Per Jane Brox, anyway...)
https://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Evolution-Artificial-Jane-B...
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/02/309040279/in-4-000-years-one-t...
Rabbit hole leads to 700-year-old Knights Templar cave
Frankly, I found your post to be shockingly low-humour.
