
Rabbit hole leads to 700-year-old Knights Templar cave - chris_chan_
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-39193347
======
manicminer
Not a discovery. Not a rabbit hole. I grew up 2 miles from the caves/temple
and went down the hole pictured many times. There's existing stuff about them
online if you Google - not sure why the media is depicting this as a discovery
- it's not!

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.

~~~
kristopolous
Teenagers and children seem to find everything. We may make some significant
archeological discoveries with a couple cheap surveys.

~~~
gambiting
One of the largest caves in Poland was discovered by two teenagers playing in
the forest(the English article on wikipedia is very poor,sadly)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Cave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise_Cave)

~~~
jacobush
Same story in Sweden !
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lummelunda_Cave](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lummelunda_Cave)

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roywiggins
Info via an archaeologist friend: while these caves are "said to be used by
the Knights Templar", they probably date from the late 18th century at the
earliest and have nothing to do with the medieval order.

[https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-
entry/1...](https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-
entry/1367600)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caynton_Caves](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.

------
frikk
An interesting observation from the photos is that you can see evidence of
light vandalization (mostly "names" carved into the rock). This implies these
caves are part of some hyper local knowledge (at least as a party room for
teenagers).

\- 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.

~~~
pera
> _In 2012, it was reported that the owners of the caves closed them to people
> wanting to visit after they found they had been filled with candles,
> graffiti and rubbish. The entrance to the caves was sealed up in attempt to
> keep the trespassers at bay._

[http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2017/03/07/in-pictures-
se...](http://www.shropshirestar.com/news/2017/03/07/in-pictures-secret-
knights-templar-caves-beneath-a-shropshire-field/knights-templar-cave-5/)

~~~
frikk
Cool. The original article was lacking on details. Thanks for the context.

------
0xADEADBEE
How strange to see this atop Hacker News! I used to live in the nearby city
and have been to these caves many times since being shown them around 2014
(I'm not sure why they're saying it was sealed up - it has been perfectly
accessible via the 'rabbit hole' in the picture since that time at least, if
you didn't mind a few spiders!).

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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caynton_Caves&action=history)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_hole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priest_hole)

------
Fifer82
Hey by the way, you know Andrew Carnegie? Your Hall, and Universities, and
public libraries? He was a very rich man back in the day, Rockerfeller would
send him cardboard vests as an insult to his meagre past as a gift, and Andrew
would send back bottles of whiskey to equal the insult (he was T-Total). He
purchased "The Glen", an area of Land to be used by the public and gifted to
his home town.

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)

~~~
noir_lord
> By the time someone else finds this, the skeleton will baffle them.

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.

~~~
Fifer82
We really have put some drunken thought into it over the years! A collection
of random electronics spanned over generations would cause some wrinkled brows
for sure.

------
brownbat
It looks like the archway is filled with holes for candles. Lighting for
meetings could not have been as trivial a task as it was for the researchers,
who seem to have been able to toss down some cheap super bright LEDs(?).

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...](https://www.amazon.com/Brilliant-Evolution-Artificial-Jane-
Brox/dp/0547520344)

~~~
knz
I'm curious if you recommend the linked book?

~~~
brownbat
The Planet Money discussion was a good teaser:

[http://www.npr.org/2014/05/02/309040279/in-4-000-years-
one-t...](http://www.npr.org/2014/05/02/309040279/in-4-000-years-one-thing-
hasnt-changed-it-takes-time-to-buy-light)

------
saycheese
The reference to a rabbit hole makes no sense unless it's symbolic, since
rabbits holes are about the size of a rabbit.

------
c3t0
Video walking through the cave on Youtube is worth watching.
[https://youtu.be/maDTJsGgmD0](https://youtu.be/maDTJsGgmD0)

------
hulahoof
Be interesting to know more about the land owner, the title made it seem like
they 'found' the entrance but the article implies the owner always knew about
it

~~~
taneq
I guess they 'found' it in the sense that you find a library or a good coffee
shop.

------
moon_of_moon
It's a metaphor folks..

------
ourmandave

      Rabbit hole leads to 700-year-old Knights Templar cave
    

An adventures for characters level 4-7.

------
AlexB138
There are a shocking number of low-effort reddit-like replies here. Can we
please not turn Hacker News into yet another blackhole of "joke" replies?

~~~
zeveb
Oh c'mon, that bit from Monty Python was the first thing I thought of too.
There's nothing wrong with having a bit of fun every once in awhile.

Frankly, I found your post to be shockingly low-humour.

~~~
exclusiv
Also - sometimes it's refreshing to see an interesting post and not have to
see replies about how someone is an expert at estimating the weight of rabbits
based on the size of their hole. Or read about "orders of magnitude" of this
or "straw-man" that.

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quirkot
Looks like the Knights Templar ripped off Morrowind. The architecture is
nearly identical. Sad!

------
awinter-py
that farmer chose ... wisely

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swoop_me
We've all been there

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wyldfire
Likely the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog

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jmpeax
What are those candles made of? 700 years and still going. Unless of course
that is an anachronism designed to make the cave look more mystical.

~~~
SmellyGeekBoy
"Urban explorers" stage scenes like this all the time. Some people seem to be
dead against it but I like it. Certainly better than the people who get into
these places just to vandalise everything. :)

------
baldfat
Title is Wrong. There is no consensus that this cave dates 700 years nor
actually a Knights Templar Cave.

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chrisseldo
Is anyone going to say it? "That rabbit's dynamite!"

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DoodleBuggy
And after publicizing the name and blasting the location onto the internet,
the unique archeological site will be vandalized profusely and destroyed in no
time at all in the name of selfies and social media points. At best, visitor
access will be limited or prevented entirely.

------
benmcnelly
They should have waited till April first to publish this, so people would
think its a Monty Python reference :p

------
NikolaeVarius
I thought there was only one Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. How did they get
past the rabbit?

~~~
abraves10001
Look at the bones!

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nogenerix
No, no... I recognize that. That is where the Nac Mac Feegles live.

------
enjo
Dan Browns reaction upon hearing the news:

[https://media.giphy.com/media/90F8aUepslB84/giphy.gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/90F8aUepslB84/giphy.gif)

