Historic Building Mythbusting E-Book

James Wright

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 425

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

'Funny, occasionally filthy and ultimately fascinating.' - Richard Herring, comedian Go to any ancient building in the land and there will be interesting and exciting stories presented to the visitor. Tales of secret passages and hidden tunnels, strange marks and carvings left by stonemasons – all commonly believed and widely repeated, but are they really true? From ship timbers being repurposed on dry land to spiral staircases giving advantage to right-handed defenders, and from archers sharpening their arrows on church stones to claims of being the oldest pub in the country, Historic Building Mythbusting seeks to uncover the real stories. Buildings archaeologist James Wright explains and unpicks the development of these myths and investigates the underlying truths behind them. Sometimes the realities hiding behind the stories are even more engaging, romantic and compelling than the myths themselves...

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR HISTORIC BUILDING MYTHBUSTING

Funny, occasionally filthy and ultimately fascinating. Will bust many of the historical myths that you readily believed, you dolt! Bust a nut to read it (I did)!

Richard Herring,history-inclined comedian and host of RHLSTP Book Club

James Wright pours gallons of boiling oil on myths about ancient buildings. But it’s not really boiling oil, is it?

Jonathan Foyle,television presenter and architectural author

This erudite and analytical work constructively picks apart the folklore and myths surrounding many of the most misinterpreted aspects of our rich historic architecture. Anyone with an interest in architecture should read this book!

Marc Allum,BBC Antiques Roadshow specialist, writer and lecturer

If you are expecting a diminished, slightly less colourful sense of the past that you might expect from a ‘mythbusting’ book then think again, for what emerges in these pages is exactly the opposite. Here the familiar gives way to the extraordinary, fiction bends to wild truths, and historic buildings themselves emerge as a living and breathing means of understanding our environment, our ancestors and, indeed, ourselves.

Alex Woodcock,master stonemason and author of King of Dust

As the Fake History Hunter, I search museums, books and the internet for history related misinformation - debunking myths and misconceptions where I can. James’ knowledge has been an invaluable weapon in my armoury, and he proves his talent for this kind of detective work in this wonderful book!

Jo Hedwig Teeuwisse,Fake History Hunter, author of Fake History: 101 Things that Never Happened

An entertaining and informed jaunt through the world of buildings archaeology, that opens up the many and varied stories of our shared past – and lovingly breaks down many of the myths that that still linger. A thoroughly enjoyable – and informative – read.

Matthew Champion,archaeologist and author of Medieval Graffiti

With the confidence born of hands-on knowledge, James Wright dismantles myth after myth about old buildings – but he’s never unkind, and never forgets that stories matter just as much as histories.

Jeremy Harte,folklorist and author of Cloven Country

Forget everything you knew - or thought you knew - about medieval buildings. From secret tunnels to boiling oil, James Wright firmly dispels the myths in this thoroughly entertaining and informative tome.”

Sharon Bennett Connolly,historian and author of Heroines of the Medieval World

An authoritative, accessible and superbly researched exploration of the perpetuation of some of our most prevalent buildings-related tall tales, presented with vigour and a hefty dose of common sense.

Tracey Norman,folklorist and author of Dark Folklore"

In this fascinating volume, James takes an insightful look into many popular assumptions about historic buildings which seem to proliferate widely and in doing so helps us question the real reason things were done the way they were.

Brian Hoggard,independent researcher and author of Magical House Protection

A magnificent achievement. James has written a ground-breaking, scholarly work that shatters old myths without losing any of their magic. Historic Building Mythbusting is all at once learned, witty, personable and captivating.

Duncan McKay,archaeologist and author of Echolands

Whatever you thought you knew about the stories behind the curious architectural features of our medieval properties, this book will show you that you didn't know the half of it. Entertaining and endlessly fascinating.

Mark Norman,author and founder of the Folklore Library and Archive

For Kit

First published 2024

The History Press

97 St George’s Place, Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire, GL50 3QB

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

© James Wright, 2024

The right of James Wright to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 80399 448 2

Typesetting and origination by The History Press

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ Books Limited, Padstow, Cornwall.

eBook converted by Geethik Technologies

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Wright is an award-winning buildings archaeologist and former stonemason. He is the founder of Triskele Heritage, a consultancy based in Nottingham, which helps people to uncover the archaeology of historic buildings. James is an author, lecturer and broadcaster with credits including work for the BBC, Discovery Science, Smithsonian Channel, and regular appearances on The Great British Dig.

For several years he has written the Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog, which seeks to examine commonly repeated and believed stories about mediaeval buildings. He has more than two decades’ experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics, and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the past.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

1.    SECRET PASSAGES

2.    WHAT IS A CASTLE?

3.    FIGHTING ON SPIRAL STAIRCASES

4.    STONEMASONS’ MARKS AND CARVINGS

5.    ARROW STONES IN CHURCHES

6.    LEPER SQUINTS AND DEVIL’S DOORS

7.    BURN MARKS

8.    SHIP TIMBERS

9.    THE OLDEST PUBLIC HOUSE

CONCLUSIONS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION

Historic buildings matter. We go to meet our good friends in the creaky old pub. Days out often centre around a trip to a country house. Holidays are taken in towns with a wealth of eye-catching edifices. Weddings are held at rambling, ancient castles – perfect backdrops for the all-important photographs. Some people dream of moving to the idyllic cottage in the country. The good times in our lives are closely associated with beautiful ancient buildings. Even the trying moments of life can take place in historic structures – examinations in school or university halls, planning applications made in town halls, or funerals in mediaeval churches. Society places a very great importance on buildings steeped in history and architectural design is integral to how communities perceive themselves and are, in turn, perceived.

Part of the attraction of historic buildings are the human stories connected to them. Some tales are accurate (to the best of our knowledge). We can visit Newark and see the castle where King John died in 1216, the spot where Henry VIII witnessed the sinking of the Mary Rose near Southsea Castle in 1545, and the church of Holy Trinity at Stratford-upon-Avon where William Shakespeare was baptised in 1564.1 Some stories are more debatable. It is no longer certain that Edward II died at Berkeley Castle and Richard III may not have slept at the White Boar in Leicester the night before the battle of Bosworth Field.2 Other events probably did not happen at all. If Dick Turpin had a pint in every pub that that he is rumoured to have supped in, he would have pitched up at the gates of York in an advanced state of shambolic inebriation*.

This book is fundamentally about the stories that are told about the fabric of buildings. The ways in which buildings were constructed. The ways in which they were used. The ways in which people have altered their appearance. Tales grow up around buildings that are faithfully assumed to be true and are commonly repeated. Repetition by figures of authority – including older relatives, builders, teachers, journalists, media presenters, local historians, curators, and academics – help to make these stories believable. However, many are mere hyperbole, tall tales with foundations built on sand.

In this book we will look at some of those yarns in detail. I am certain that some of them will be familiar to you. Indeed, you may have believed and repeated one or more of them. Tales of secret passages linking historic buildings can be found in all corners of the country. The belief that spiral staircases in castles turn clockwise to advantage the sword swing of right-handed defenders is repeated daily. The patrons of old pubs are frequently told that the very timbers of the buildings in which they drink were reclaimed from shipwrecks. If you have believed any of these tales, there is no judgement here. Historic buildings are complex structures and understanding them can take a lifetime of study. Many of these stories are eminently plausible on first encounter – especially so if repeated by someone who sounds like they know what they are talking about.

Some of the book is concerned with the archaeology of buildings (although not exclusively so), for that is my profession – I am a buildings archaeologist. Unlike many of my archaeologist colleagues who are crouched in muddy holes, plagued by the wind and the rain and the cold, I study the archaeology of buildings. There are certain advantages. Most places that I work at have roofs, some have heating, and, on the really good days, there might even be a bar (see Chapters 8 and 9). But why, you ask, would an archaeologist be interested in something that is standing – in plain sight – above ground? Well, most historic buildings have never received any meaningful research and, even when histories have been established, the structural fabric is often left unconsidered in detail. Architectural historians are constrained by the availability of archives that reveal the documented story of a structure and the origin of many buildings can be shrouded by a lack of written records.For example, the earliest reference to a house that I surveyed in Sible Hedingham, Essex, was 1673, yet the archaeology of the building indicated that it was constructed during the late fifteenth century. Without buildings archaeology, a whole two centuries would have been missing from the record.3

The role of the buildings archaeologist relies upon a multi-disciplinary approach – colloquially referred to by my old university tutor, Philip Dixon, as ‘using all of the available tools in the toolkit’. First and foremost, buildings archaeology relies on the trained knowledge and experience of practitioners – our eyes and brains are the most important pieces of equipment on site (followed by camera, clipboard, piece of plain paper, pencil, rubber and measuring tape). We make observations of the form, function, materials, history, phasing, setting, context, and significance of historic buildings. This work is done by deploying a combination of techniques that may include visual observation, note-taking, measured drawings, photography, laser scanning, photogrammetry, archival research, and dendrochronology (tree-ring dating). Much of our time on site is spent trying to work out the physical relationships between various phases of building. We then write up the results of the survey as grey literature site reports, journal articles or books. Additionally, our work can be presented through apps, websites, videos, interpretation panels, media stories, leaflets, guidebooks, lectures, podcasts, or television programmes. Much of what you will read about in this book is gathered from the last two decades (and more) during which I have been ferreting around in buildings looking for historical, archaeological, and architectural clues.

Despite the rather forensic nature of buildings archaeology, it may surprise some that I am equally happy in the world of folklore. That requires an altogether different set of approaches, but the subject can be incredibly rewarding when trying to understand how and why people think the way that they do about buildings (and much else). It is acknowledged that many of the stories interrogated within this book do not have foundations in the lived reality of the supposed historical period or setting. Without giving too much away, the story covered in Chapter 5 – that the walls of some churches have grooves created by bowmen sharpening their arrows – is not rooted in mediaeval archery practice. The tale grew up during the post-mediaeval period, but it still has value because it tells us some important truths about the concerns of the society that created it.

It would be easy, and unfortunate, to write a book in which popular myths about historic buildings are debunked in a high-handed, condescending, or patronising tone. I genuinely hope that is not what I have done here. Instead, I have tried to pen something that adopts a questioning curiosity and attempts to understand if there could possibly be any truth behind the tales. Sometimes there is foundation to the stories (see Chapter 8, on ship timbers). However, if it is found that there is no basis in fact then I am still deeply interested in the way in which the stories formed and what they can tell us about the people who have told and continue to tell them. Folklore is partly the study of traditional beliefs that permit insight into the way that people think. The ability to understand folk belief, even mistaken belief, provides tremendous insight because, throughout history, written chronicles have tended to emphasise the lives of elites and other voices are often absent Folklore offers one way to understand thought patterns, emotions and psychology that is lacking from some other fields. Archaeology can sometimes do this, too. That is not to denigrate the work of historians. The written word plays a strong part in this book and many of the conclusions are based on historical sources. Most often, though, our springing point will be a piece of folklore or ‘urban myth’. In Chapter 7, folklore really comes into its own as it is partly through the context of traditional beliefs that we can attempt to understand the meaning of burn marks in historic buildings.

Most of these tales are connected to mediaeval buildings but I freely admit to liberally straying into the early modern period (sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and, on occasion, into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Each chapter will take on a particular subject in detail. The tale will be articulated initially using real-world examples, the evidence for and against will be examined, and an assessment will be made as to whether it is a complete myth, a plausible story, or if it is entirely factual. There will also be an attempt to explain the context of the story. Some of the conclusions surprised me. When I set out on this project, I never anticipated that, in Chapter 2, I would be able to potentially identify the earliest citation of the spiral staircase myth and to be able to understand its genesis through the biography of its probable inventor.

When attempting to debunk any myth there is always a danger that the individual doing the myth-busting may get certain points incorrect. To try and alleviate this concern, at all points in the book, I will show my ‘working out’. The text is strewn with superscript numbers that link to endnote references (gathered in a list towards the end of the book). The endnotes will show the source of my information. This might be a Harvard-style reference to the author, year of publication and page number of a book that can then be found in the bibliography. Additionally, there will be references to newspaper articles and websites. The latter were all compiled during the research for the book, spanning April 2020 to September 2023, and were still active when the manuscript was handed over to my publishers during the autumn of 2023. I can only apologise if the information on any of these sites has been subsequently altered or if the websites are no longer active as you are reading this. When writing about urban myths the tales told are not always available in more stable formats such as printed books. The internet has been an absolute gold mine for case studies that are otherwise unavailable to the researcher. I ask that you place faith in me that I have not invented any of the stories that are referred to here.

There is a loose format to the book, but all chapters can be read as stand-alone sections. We will open with a discussion on secret passage folklore. Such tales are ubiquitous across the country and can be found in connection to almost every type of building. It is also a subject that is likely to have been encountered by most readers and so seemed an appropriate beginning. After that, Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are largely related to castles. Chapter 2 tries to understand the varied functions of castles, Chapter 3 is an interrogation of the swordsman theory of spiral staircases, and Chapter 4 looks at myths surrounding stonemasons. Chapter 4 also has a strong focus on parish churches and this emphasis is continued in Chapters 5 and 6, which look at stories of arrow stones, leper squints and Devil’s doors. The last three chapters are concerned with tales about vernacular buildings – especially those constructed in timber. Chapter 7 ponders the origins of the curious, tear-shaped burn marks found frequently on timber framing. Chapter 8 assesses whether there is ever any evidence for the presence of reused ship timbers in historic buildings. Chapter 9 offers analysis of the claims made to be the oldest public house in existence. We will begin, though, by delving underneath the buildings with a look at tales of hidden tunnels.

Dr James Wright F.S.A.Nottingham, Autumn 2023

*   Although the story of Turpin’s overnight ride from London to York is a myth. When he eventually arrived in the city, in 1739, he was a prisoner being transferred from Beverley, East Yorkshire.

1

SECRET PASSAGES

STONE PRIORY

I grew up in a small central Staffordshire market town, Stone, where my parents ran a public house on the northern edge of the settlement. Like most of the pubs in the town, we attracted a mixed bunch of regulars – lots of factory workers lined the bar, rubbing shoulders with postmen, builders, draymen, plumbers and truckers. There was also a smattering of bookkeepers, solicitors and a much-loved artist who was forever escaping his easel in favour of a crafty pint. Meanwhile, the high street was full of independent restaurants that relied on the passing trade from tourists cruising on the Trent and Mersey Canal. Long before the canal came to Stone, in the 1770s, the mediaeval town had developed as a commercial enterprise outside of the gates of an Augustinian priory founded around the year 1138.1 The monastery is long gone, eighteenth-century St Michaels parish church now stands in its place, but the characters that populate the pubs and restaurants of Stone still love a good tale relating to the monks – the taller, the better.

The most well-trodden stories are the hazy recollections of vaults and tunnels lying beneath the site of Stone Priory. My own father, John, told me these tales when I was just a young lad: ‘It’s always been known that there was a tunnel between the priory and a house where retired priests used to live at Aston* – my mum and gran told me the stories, as did our next-door neighbours. I really believed them when I was a child.’ 2 The comments section of the local social media page – A Little Bit of Stone – seem to confirm my father’s story: ‘I worked at the priory and in the cellars the archways were bricked up and the rumours said behind them were tunnels leading to Aston.’ Elsewhere, ‘It’s right there is a tunnel from St Michael's church to Aston. I was born in Stone and it’s true and the tunnels do exist, one runs along Lichfield Road and finishes at Aston.’ 3 Meanwhile, Philip Leason, the Chair of the Stone Historical and Civic Society, reports that: ‘I quite often get enquiries about the tunnels in Stone. I had one person recently who told me that their grandfather had walked in a tunnel from under St Michael’s Church to Aston when he was a boy.’4 The tales remain very popular among the locals to this day. Eventually, I left Stone to study archaeology at the University of Nottingham and, subsequently, I have worked all over the country in the heritage sector. However, that story of the tunnel beneath my hometown has stuck with me.

Stone Priory was founded in the mid-twelfth century as an Augustinian daughter house of Kenilworth Priory. It was dedicated to the early mediaeval martyr St Wulfad. The priory was provided for by generous grants from the powerful de Stafford family, who used the site as a mortuary. By the early thirteenth century the priory was the joint wealthiest in Staffordshire, a factor that may have attracted the marauding forces of William la Zouch, Justiciar of Chester, who looted the monastery and burned the town to the ground in 1263. However, the priory maintained its prominence due to the continued de Stafford patronage and the presence of the shrine of St Wulfad.5 Even Edward II took notice of the priory, in 1312, when a grant was made ‘on account of the devotion which the King bears to St Wulfad’.6 Later in the century Richard II almost certainly lodged overnight at the monastery with his household retinue.7

In the following century, the priory went into decline, and, on the cusp of the Dissolution, there were only eight monks and two novices present. With the closure of the monasteries, the site was bought by William Crompton, a London merchant, although the priory church was retained for parochial use. It remained standing until the night of 30 December 1749 when the piers of the nave collapsed, whereupon the mediaeval building was demolished and replaced with St Michael’s – a very early example of a church in the Neo-Gothic style.8

Rumours of tunnels leading from the priory abounded even before the collapse of the mediaeval priory church. In the early eighteenth century, the antiquarian Thomas Hearne recorded the experience of a visitor – Mr Arblaster – to the ruins of Stone Priory on 28 April 1719: ‘I descended into the Cellars which were very spatious [sic] and large. There are many stone Arches almost like Church windows. Under one there is part of a vault, which is said to have been half a mile in length, and that it was made for the monks to walk in.’9

Although Hearne’s account of Arblaster’s experiences was not originally published until the late nineteenth century, it still demonstrates the existence of tunnel stories connected to the priory in the minds of the residents as early as 1719. The tales were given a further boost in 1789 when an article appeared in The Topographer stating that ‘about 14 years ago, when that new road [i.e. Lichfield Road] was made, a considerable piece of wall was demolished for that purpose, and also in the foundation several subterraneous passages were discovered by the workmen.’10 Subsequently, this apparent physical discovery of a section of tunnel was made more accessible to a much wider public readership through an entry in William White’s History, Gazetteer and Directory of Staffordshire, published in 1834. White reported that, ‘The priory stood at the south end of the town, in what is still called the Abbey-court, here a small fragment of the foundation walls is still visible; and at the construction of a new road, about 60 years ago, several subterraneous passages were discovered.’11 Was this then actual physical evidence of the reputed tunnel?

As in White’s time, very little of Stone Priory remains to be seen today – just a small vaulted undercroft, a low section of wall, and the base of a moulded doorway.12 The undercroft lies in a cellar beneath an eighteenth-century house, known as The Priory, and consists of two bays and two half bays of a plain-chamfered rib vault dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth century.13 The presence of underground or partially subterranean cellars was a common storage solution for monasteries used to receiving goods from their widespread estates.14 However, at Stone, this relatively utilitarian space has been noted to include ‘signs of blocked openings’15 which may have added a sheen of enigma to the undercroft – hinting that the vaulting once stretched much further and had been deliberately blocked off. This is partly true – the priory structures have been vastly truncated and, when creating a serviceable cellar, the eighteenth-century builders probably filled in former openings that once led to other areas of the lost monastic cloister. Even in above-ground ruins such as Rufford Abbey, Nottinghamshire, there are blocked doorways in the surviving dormitory undercroft, some of which relate to remodelling during the mediaeval period and others to the post-mediaeval country house that reused the site.16 Blocked openings are not unusual in historic buildings17 but they do not automatically relate to secret passages. Yet, it is the hint of lost splendour that helps to sow the seeds of mysterious tales relating to half-remembered tunnels.

Although Arblaster reported what was essentially local hearsay, both The Topographer and White’s published accounts of the actual discovery of an underground passage, noted within living memory, gave the story an apparent veneer of respectability. However, we must remain cautious. Neither gives us the source of the information – which would have already been quite a distant memory by 1834. In their assessment of the historic character of the town, Debbie Taylor and Michael Shaw concluded that, ‘Antiquarian reports of tunnels and passages are a common phenomenon and, in this case, probably refer to the vaulted undercroft or perhaps to a large drain.’18 Although we should be careful before dismissing oral accounts or assigning romantic exaggeration to antiquarians of the period, the physical evidence for the existence of any tunnel is often scanty. By contrast, the written word is a very powerful medium and by including an oral tradition in his written account White had, in a sense, made it real. When he published the story, it was over half a century old and there is a strong chance that it may not have survived without his reporting. For the local community, White’s tale then became a tangible source of pride, entertainment, and speculation.

The stories, which were still doing the rounds in Stone when I lived there in the 1980s and ’90s, all seemed to agree that the tunnels led to the satellite village of Aston-by-Stone. Lying immediately to the north of the village parish church is Aston Hall – designed in the mid-nineteenth century Neo-Gothick style by Edward Welby Pugin for the Reverend Canon Edward Huddlestone.19 It has strong associations with the Roman Catholic faith. The hall sits within a much older moat that was presumably the mediaeval manorial enclosure. By the time of the Reformation, this manor was held by the staunchly recusant Catholic Heveningham family and later owners also continued a stubborn adherence to the old faith.20 Just a decade after the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, the bones of the seventh-century churchman St Chad were, somewhat miraculously, rediscovered at the hall by a mission priest. Following the Reformation, the saint’s bones had been removed from a shrine at Lichfield Cathedral and were passed through the hands of a number of prominent Catholic families in the Midlands, including the Fitzherberts of nearby Swynnerton, prior to reappearing at Aston-by-Stone.21 The hall then became pivotal in the re-establishment of Catholicism in the wider area when the luminaries Father Dominic Barberi and Mother Margaret Hallahan based themselves at Aston in 1842. Hallahan eventually founded a church and convent at Stone during the 1850s and such were her endeavours that the Catholic population of the town increased from just fifty to 1,300 by 1868.22

The earliest accounts of tunnels by Mr Arblaster, The Topographer and William White do not record any mention of a connection to Aston. Instead, the period of the mid-nineteenth century seems to be key in understanding the development of the story. Firstly, in 1829, the Emancipation Act encouraged a renewal of interest in the Catholic faith. Then, just five years later, White relayed the tale of the discovery of the passages at the priory site. St Chad’s bones were recovered at Aston-by-Stone in 1838. According to Stone’s origin legend, the churchman had been a mentor to the young St Wulfad, who is alleged to have been martyred and buried at what became the priory site.23 Finally, the foundation of the new Catholic complex at Stone, in the 1850s, was part of an increased local awareness of and engagement with the faith. This congruence of events may have concentrated the minds of Stone’s people to consider the links between the two notable Catholic sites of the priory and nearby hall. With talk of underground passages spreading after White’s publication, it may have appeared logical to connect the two sites both conceptually and physically. A version of this connection appears to be still current in the minds of residents, with one contributor to the A Little Bit of Stone page commenting that, ‘I was always told that there was a tunnel from St Michael’s church to Aston which was used by the monks to get from church to church.’24

Unfortunately, as with many stories of secret passages stretching for miles across the landscape, the tale does not appear to have foundation in physical reality. White’s story of subterranean discoveries, coupled to the recent revival in Catholic enterprises at Stone, probably led to the formation of a legend, but the engineering difficulties inherent with such a feature seem insurmountable. As the crow flies, Aston Hall is fully 1.8 miles (2.9km) distant from Stone Priory and the geological landscape between the two sites includes free-draining gravels and the small challenge of tunnelling under the River Trent. Such conditions would have troubled even the prowess of the Cornish tin miners of White’s day, despite their vast experience of draining passages, let alone a mediaeval sapper. Moreover, why would a monastery of Augustinians require an underground line of communication with a nearby secular manor house? What purpose could the proposed tunnel have possibly served? How would such a vast construction project be kept secret? Where would the spoil be put? How would the passage be maintained, ventilated, and kept dry? In this instance, the story of how the myth of the secret passage came about is possibly more interesting than the actual concept of underground tunnels. However, Stone is by no means alone in having a legend of secret passages. Virtually every settlement in the land can make a similar claim.

CATHOLIC SKULLDUGGERY

In July 2021, the enduring fascination for tales of lost passageways was demonstrated by a front-page headline of the Daily Star that proclaimed ‘Raiders of the Lost Park – Holy Grail and lost Ark of the Covenant hidden under a crumbling country estate in, er, Burton-on-Trent’.25 Dubious puns aside, the story was based on the ideas of the pseudo-archaeologist David Adkins, who alleged that the treasures of the Knights Templar were hidden beneath Sinai House in Staffordshire. Adkins claimed that, when the Templars were disbanded during the early fourteenth century, Sinai House, which was owned by the abbey of Burton, was selected by the militant order to house its treasures. He maintained that the location was chosen because it had connections to the first Templar Grand Master, Hugues de Payens. Furthermore, not only was it protected by the nearby Forest of Needwood, but the Abbots of Burton were anti-establishment figures whose discretion could be relied upon. The name Sinai became associated with the property due to the biblical and Templar connections. Finally, after the Dissolution, William Paget, a descendant of Payens, bought the abbey and its lands to try and reclaim the treasures. Adkins further claimed that, ‘Sinai House sits on a labyrinth of natural tunnels and caves. A geologist once told me that there were caverns as big as Westminster Abbey beneath the house … As such the natural caves and chambers would have naturally drawn the Templars wanting to conceal their valuable hoard.’26

There is a lot to unpack here, but very little of Adkins’ theory can be supported. There is no evidence to suggest that the Templars ever had a cache of portable treasure, let alone the Holy Grail and Ark of the Covenant.27 Neither did they have any connections to Burton Abbey or Sinai House. The property was originally owned by the Scobenhal family until they donated it to nearby Burton Abbey in the early fourteenth century during a perfectly regular land transfer. The monastery used the site as a location for rest and recuperation, which included medicinal bloodletting, and the place name Sinai derives from the Latin sanguis, meaning blood.28 The Abbots of Burton were not especially anti-establishment – they routinely served on papal commissions. The Forest of Needwood was a managed hunting reserve that had no military function.29 William Paget had no familial relationship to Hugues de Payens, the latter being a member of a celibate order and having no recorded children.30 Finally, the house stands upon mid-Pleistocene till and the slopes below are characterised by Mercia Mudstones – neither of which support natural caves and would offer an unstable geology for the creation of artificial tunnels. Fringe theories about the Templars are especially popular in the murky world of pseudo-archaeology but here the alleged subterranean aspect of the story fits in with an established genre of folklore that posits there are networks of tunnels connected with mediaeval Catholic buildings. There is usually a whiff of skullduggery about these tales, with the implication that those Catholics must have been up to no good!

Accounts refer to tunnels running between the abbey at St Albans and nunnery at Puritani, Hertfordshire,31 between the cathedral, castle, and Three Tuns public house in Norwich,32 and from Canterbury Cathedral to various pubs and a reputed brothel in the town.33 In all three cases the scandalous behaviour relates directly to churchmen who were frequently seen as lecherous and drunken characters in the popular imagination. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales includes a groping friar in the Summoner's Tale, a philandering monk in the Shipman’s Tale, and the eponymous character in the Pardoner’s Tale is a flagrant drunk.34 Attitudes became harder after the Reformation and the transference of former monastic land to monarchy, aristocracy and gentry who were able to largely control public opinion of the Catholic legacy.35 Clerics were tarnished by inflammatory tracts defaming monastic institutions as hotbeds of corruption, sodomy and drunkenness.36 Even the antiquarian John Leland was not averse to accusing monks of thievery when he speculated that the reason for the demolition of Worksop Castle, Nottinghamshire, was the opportunistic robbing of stonework by the incumbents of the nearby priory.37 As drinking and public houses feature so frequently in popular tales and legends of tunnels connected with the Catholic church, we should perhaps look towards a puritanical streak within the national post-Reformation psyche that may help to explain their widespread repetition.

Various tracts against drink were published during the early modern period, such as Philip Stubbes’ 1583 polemic The Anatomie of Abuses, which criticised drunks for ‘vomiting spewing & disgorging their filthie stomacks, other some … pissing vnder the boord as they sit’.38 Moral indignation can also be identified in the reaction to the gin craze of the eighteenth century and in the activities of the late nineteenth-century temperance movement.39 During the modern era, the connection between drinking and nefarious behaviour is periodically made by the government, public health bodies, and the media in a manner intended to elicit a sense of moral condemnation that is seldom justified by the statistics.40 Such reports, especially when presented in the tabloid media, usually rely upon titillation masquerading as outrage. Similarly, the sense that drinking is in some way a disreputable activity appears to be an essential part in stories of secret passages that shield the wanton or illicit toper on his or her way to and from the pub. Legends of tunnels leading to pubs can be found in every single county, with networks of subterranean passages alleged to stretch out from establishments including the Castle Inn at Newport, Isle of Wight; Lamb Inn at Eastbourne, East Sussex; Minster Tavern at Ely, Cambridgeshire; Old Red Lion at Llannon, Carmarthenshire; Old White Swan at York and the Black Bird Inn at Ponteland, Northumberland.

TUNNELS UNDER TOWNS: URBAN MYTHS

The universal appeal of secret passages has led to rumours that the undersides of entire townscapes including Exeter, Glastonbury, Northampton, Peterborough, Loughborough, Newark, Shrewsbury, Carmarthen, Dublin, Norwich, Sheffield, Knaresborough and Edinburgh are absolutely littered with secret tunnels connecting a myriad of buildings.41 The online forum Guildford Past and Present has had several threads discussing many and various tunnels alleged to lie beneath the town.42 These included proposed links between the Royal Grammar School and Allen House, The Star and St Mary’s Church, as well as Guildford Castle and various locations, including the settlements of Artington and Godalming, St Catharine’s Chapel, The King’s Head, Royal Oak, Angel Hotel, NatWest Bank and Racks Close Quarry. The latter may offer a clue as to the origin of many of the local tunnel stories as Guildford does have an extensive system of mediaeval underground chalk quarries at Racks Close, alongside later excavations at Foxenden Quarry that were converted into air raid shelters during the Second World War. Despite this, both the genuine quarries and the entirely imaginary tunnels are variously explained as relating to escape routes from the castle, passages to assist the movements of persecuted Catholic priests or to shelter locals from invading forces, smugglers’ delvings, and – most colourfully of all – to allow the mistresses of the aristocracy to visit their paramours!

The pages of the forum are punctuated with the knowledgeable commentary of the dedicated local historian and Custodian of Guildford Castle, Philip Hutchinson, desperately trying to firefight the tunnel stories. He has relentlessly articulated that the subterranean tunnel ‘network’ of Guildford is limited to the two known quarries, an icehouse, former public toilets, cellars under the High Street (including the remains of a twelfth-century Jewish Torah reading room) and a very short passage leading between the police station and court house.

Notwithstanding, the users of the forum seem most beguiled by the potential existence of lengthy passages – the most protracted being a supposed tunnel stretching between the early seventeenth-century Abbots Hospital and the greensand mines known as the Smugglers’ Storehouses at Puttenham. This proposed passage would be approximately 4.6 miles (7.5km) long and would have to drop around 50m in contour to be driven beneath the River Wey and then rise a similar height on the opposite side of the valley. Regardless of the impracticality of such a project, and Hutchinson’s efforts to dispel the myths, many members of the discussion group remain belligerent in the face of criticism, with one user stating: ‘Many experts have unfortunately a linear way of thinking … Experts believe they are never wrong and don’t like it when they are.’

Philip Hutchinson may have a tough time of it online, but he was still keen to discuss the legends of Guildford tunnels when I contacted him during the summer of 2020. He told me that, ‘Guildford owes much of its historical flaws to the Victorian historian and eventual honorary Town Remembrancer, George Williamson,’ going on to say that, ‘He was a prolific author on the history of Guildford and a great deal of his writings were fanciful to say the least. With no accurate records to rely on, and in an era where the romantic always triumphed over the factual, the legends were printed as fact in the absence of anything tangible.’43

One of the most common details of secret passage stories is that the tunnels are now blocked up and have not been accessible for many years. It is found at the Chequers Inn at Battle, East Sussex; Swan Hotel at Wells, Somerset; Tutbury Castle, Staffordshire; Greasley Castle, Nottinghamshire, and the Ram Inn at Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire. So widespread is this phenomenon that it can even be found in the pages of academia as part of a discussion of the Manor House, No. 11 Sparrow Hill at Loughborough, and the adjacent parish church.44 Some of the more outlandish stories involve tunnels that are alleged to weave beneath staggeringly distant stretches of landscape. In particular, the link is made between monasteries and castles such as Wigmore Castle and Abbey in Herefordshire (1.3 miles),45 St Radegund’s Abbey and Dover Castle (3 miles)46 or Framlingham Castle and Leiston Abbey (a staggering 9.8 miles).47 As the most prominent surviving mediaeval buildings in a given locality, which often had a common patron, castles and monasteries could be easily connected in the mind, yet the engineering problems of linking them physically seem insurmountable – particularly where intervening watercourses are taken into account.

A vast number of tunnel stories are reported second-hand. It is very rare for the person that claimed to have found a genuine secret passage to be the one who reported it alongside hard evidence. For example, during my research for this book, I received reports of ‘my sister’s friend’ having discovered a tunnel connecting a Hertfordshire house to a castle; or the West Midlands tunnel between two manor houses that, ‘According to my nan, an entrance, since collapsed, was in her garden.’ Family members and those close to us play a strong role in the transmission of the stories, ‘a neighbour recalled seeing some form of tunnel in the garden of an adjacent house which apparently linked a mediaeval house to a priory a quarter of a mile away.’ Philip Hutchinson has noted that the stories are ‘firmly adhered to by certain proponents who appear to value their archaic family stories over fact: “Grandad couldn’t be wrong – how dare you!”’48 One of the great issues with such accounts is that they are not from primary sources and are usually given a long time after the proposed events. There is a distance in time prior to the repetition of the story that is repeatedly encompassed by phrases such as: ‘someone that I know has a memory of playing in it as a child’ or ‘someone who lived there as a child remembered walking along part of it’. The great cataloguer of secret passages, Jeremy Errand, noted that, ‘The existence of many passages is vouched for only by the memories of boyhood exploration’49 – which takes us right back into an age of frolicking innocence.

Sigmund Freud famously, or perhaps infamously, connected dreams of constricted tunnels with a fear connected to latent memories of birth and emerging sexuality – again linking the interest in the concept of passages to a child-like state of mind.50 Regardless of Freudian interpretation, the distant recollections of hunting through apparent secret passages in childhood must give us pause for consideration. Can these distant second-hand memories be trusted? Neuropsychologists such as Tim Rogers of the University of Wisconsin-Madison warn us that the distance of time can create a cognitive dissonance:

False memory studies show us that our memory is always a blend of what we know about the world generally, plus what we retain of a recent experience – that’s adaptive because usually what we’re using our memory for is to cope with new situations … Memory is always a reconstruction from these two sources, to allow us to make a reasonable inference about what was likely to have happened that is almost always useful, and only occasionally will we be led astray.51

Despite the widespread use of oral history as a valid technique in studying the past through memory, we must be mindful before taking second-hand reports at face value, especially when they are not recorded in a rigorous, scientifically controlled, environment.52 In retelling the distant memories of other people, it may be the case that those repeating the stories wish to disassociate themselves with information that they, consciously or unconsciously, perceive may not be entirely accurate. Yet the stories do capture the imagination of the public successfully.

Narratives that become embedded in a societal consciousness, despite little or no critical evaluation, are commonly known as urban myths – a phenomenon given renewed prominence by the ease of immediate information sharing on internet platforms. American researchers Chip and Dan Heath have posited that the spread of dubious information can be made to stick if it includes a simple central message coupled to data that is unexpected, concrete, credible and appeals to our emotions to create memorable stories (handily forming the acronym SUCCESs). Such stories will likely be received openly by a large percentage of people – even if they are palpably untrue.53 We can apply the Heath brothers’ SUCCESs analysis of why urban myths spread so easily to the subject of secret passages by assessing the sentence: secret passage between castle and pub discovered by young boy playing in fields. It forms a simple passage packed with hook-laden information that is unexpected (secret passage), concrete (between castle and pub), credible (discovered by), and plays on our emotions (young boy playing in fields) to create a memorable story. This style of delivery is one of the primary reasons why tales of underground tunnels are just so universally pervasive. It is essentially present in White’s 1834 account of passages at Stone but can also be found in a wider range of tales.

Inevitably, simplistically enchanting tales of secret passages have been co-opted by an ever-cynical media to help maintain or increase circulation. Media headlines including secret tunnels are relatively common. In March 2021, the BBC reported the discovery of a ‘secret medieval tunnel system’ at Tintern, Monmouthshire. However, a little probing revealed that the stone-lined tunnel was almost certainly a post-mediaeval water conduit associated with the industrial manufacture of wire in the Angiddy Valley.54 Another BBC article, in May 2023, advertised the sale of a property in Fowlmere, Cambridgeshire, that came with a 30m-long secret passage. It was alleged to have been constructed beneath the house of the parish curate, shortly after the English Reformation, so that people could escape from Henry VIII’s tyranny.55 Romantic as this sounds, the reality is that the tunnel was probably created when two chalk mining adits intersected and has nothing at all to do with religious persecution. Mention of secret passages has an enchanting allure of which we must be wary.

The desire to pass on tall tales of historic buildings is rarely malicious and may often be linked to a sense of whimsy, romance, nostalgia, or loyalty to the person who originally told the story (especially if they were a loved one). Meanwhile, adventurous narratives that include secret passages are a substantial feature of our cultural experience. Many of us were brought up on tales of derring-do such as John Meade Faulkner’s Moonfleet, Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows, Enid Blyton’s Five Go to Smugglers Top and J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series; or films such as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Clue and Skyfall, which all feature secret tunnels. There is even the possibility that the fictional use of a secret passage in the novel The White Ladies of Worcester by Florence Louisa Barclay, published in 1917, may have actually been the foundation of later rumours that a tunnel in fact existed between Worcester Cathedral and a former nunnery on the site of the Royal Grammar School.56 More recently, the use of Lincoln Cathedral as a location in 2005’s blockbuster movie The Da Vinci Code may have fuelled an increase in stories of gold belonging to the Knights Templar buried in tunnels beneath the city.57 Exciting adventure stories can leave strong, lasting effects, especially when first encountered at a young age. Are we seeing simple wish fulfilment by linking the fantastical fictional world to mundane realities? This technique of storytelling is one reason why novelists who intermingle real and magical worlds such as C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, and Alan Garner have been so successful.

In the Weirdstone Trilogy, Alan Garner blended the mid-twentieth century reality of Cheshire with a terrifying, gruesome, and haunting alternative landscape based on British and Viking myths. Over three decades after I first read his novel, The Moon of Gomrath, I still feel a lingering sense of deep dread, unease and trauma when considering the book. Central to Garner’s plot is the Fundindelve – a network of magical tunnels beneath Alderley Edge, Cheshire, in which a sleeping army of knights is protected by the wizard Cadellin. In the first book of the trilogy, two children, Colin and Susan, act as narrative intermediaries between the two worlds when they are rescued from the menacing svart-alfa (goblins) by the wizard. Later in the narrative, an extended section depicts their alarming ordeal in escaping from labyrinthine, goblin-infested, mines beneath Alderley Edge.58 Garner openly drew upon a well-established local legend that a wizard protected a sleeping king and his knights in a hidden cave under the brooding hill of Alderley Edge, which itself acted as a significant landscape character in the trilogy.59 Not only did Garner use folklore to great effect, but he wove in realities of Alderley Edge’s subterranean history of copper mining, known to have taken place from around 2000 BCE through to the 1920s.60

Alan Garner picked up on a rich and ancient seam of storytelling that used tunnels as a conduit between the ordinary world and a much stranger otherworld. During the mediaeval period, this was apparent in the chronicled accounts of the Green Children of Woolpit, the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the fragmented Welsh myths known as The Mabinogion.61 Meanwhile, a staple folk tale relating to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table recounts that the host are sleeping in a giant cavern awaiting the perilous time when they will awake to save the country from certain destruction. Many sites have been claimed as the location of this cave including Cadbury Castle, Somerset; Richmond Castle, North Yorkshire; and Sewingshields Castle, Northumberland.62 By the mid-nineteenth century, the Arthurian legend had even been grafted onto the story of the anonymous sleepers beneath Alderley Edge.63

SUBTERRANEAN REALITIES

I worked for the heritage department of a local authority in the mid-2000s. We would repeatedly field telephone calls from extremely animated folk informing us that they had discovered a secret passage during groundworks. A further snippet of information would invariably follow in which the excitable excavator would note that the tunnel looked as if it was aligned between the local pub/manor house/nunnery/church/brothel/castle (take your pick). A member of staff would be duly sent out to some far-flung and remote spot where they would stare, dejectedly, down into a post-mediaeval field drain lined with ceramic building materials. So frequent were these trips out that we began to keep a log of the discoveries entitled The Tiny Book of Tiny Tunnels. It has been over a decade since I worked for that local authority, but I am reliably informed that the perhaps no-longer miniature tome is still very much in active service.