I had not intended to stay until the Sunday, but when invited to extend my visit another day, I was only too delighted to do so. I had mentioned that I had made tentative plans to hook up with my friend D- that afternoon to visit the Royston Cave, but as this was just a few miles down the road, H- and S- and their young son were inspired to go there themselves.
Thus we drove down to the little Hertfordshire town to see this peculiar local feature. I could not contact D- in the end, but left instructions as to where and when he might find us were he to make the trip himself.
Down we went into the earth. The cave, just north of the church, is accessible through a steep passageway carved into the rock, and which reminded me of the narrow tunnel that leads out onto the observation platforms over the Avon Gorge in Bristol.
The cave is man-made, though it was never intended to have an entrance at the bottom, this having been added after its rediscovery in 1742
It took a while for my eyes to adjust to the light and even to see the carvings at all. Most of them have been defaced by nineteenth century graffiti anyway, which makes them hard to distinguish, but so rough-hewn is the cave itself that it is also hard to tell the carvings from the tool-marks from its construction.
The guide was selling a clear message. The relief carvings were evidence of the Knights Templar. They had used the cave as a secret meeting spot, out of sight, where they could practise their pagan and heretical rituals, sacrifices, mumbo and, indeed, jumbo. This was presented as a concrete fact. The town council, which runs the place, even celebrates this ‘fact’ on its website, and seems committed to the belief that this is one of the major Templar artifacts in Britain. I squinted at the chiseled scribbles but could see nothing to suggest their involvement.
The crucial ‘evidence’ was an image of two men sitting on a horse, a certain Templar and Masonic symbol, apparently.
‘We had a Mason in here and he took one look at that,’ the guide said, ‘and he recognised them.’
‘Recognised them as what?’ I asked.
‘Oh, he wouldn’t say,’ the guide replied. ‘They don’t, those Masons. They keep their secrets. My father was in the Brotherhood of Zion and he didn’t give away anything. They fear the chop if they do. But he knew that’s a Masonic sign all right.’
Well, that’s clear proof, isn’t it? I looked again. Not only could I not see any Masonic symbolism in the image, I couldn’t even see a horse. The carving was incomplete. Was that meant to be a tail or a crack in the wall? Who cares? That’s all the proof the Templar fans needed. Were there any other carvings that contained any Templar imagery? No. Just that one. Isn't that enough?
So, no evidence the Templars were anywhere near the place, no evidence they carved any of the images in the cave, no evidence they did anything with it. It all adds up, eh? That’s right. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, no evidence is all the real evidence you need.
The guide indicated a crude image of two adults and what could have been a child next to them.
‘The Holy Family,’ he announced. ‘Or is it? Mary and Joseph? I don’t think so.’
Indeed not. It was instead clear proof that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalen, raised their daughter and trusted the Knights Templar to keep the secret of the Sacred Bloodline. Of course. Holy Dan Brown! Well, blow me down, what did he do next but hold aloft his chief source of research knowledge, The da Vinci Code!
I could see S- was about to walk out on the spot. Or punch him. I was wondering how long it would be before he brought out Erich von Däniken's Chariots of the Gods as well and demonstrated the carvings proved our Mediaeval ancestors had been probed by aliens.
H- was appalled by what we had heard.
‘Knights Templars!’ she said. ‘What nonsense. I’m convinced it was a hermit’s cave.’
‘That makes the most sense,’ I said. ‘They had lots of them in those days. Anchorites were sealed up in caves and things like that. It’s far more likely to be a anchorite cave.’
Anyway, if the Knights Templar had been using it I would have expected them to have got a decent sculptor in to do them. These all look very amateur. H- made a local connection with it all. Some of the images were certainly related to the Bible and the lives of the saints, but some might just as easily have been inspired by the legend of Tom Hickathrift and the Wisbech Giant. This would account for the images of cartwheels, with which Tom defeated the giant. But who can tell? The carvings look like the work of numerous, untutored hands, with a lot of time on them: in other words, hermits and anchorites.
For more information on hermits and anchorites in the Middle Ages:
http://www.willinghamchurch.org/Lander/Lander.htm
For Keith Fitzpatrick-Matthews’ scholarly debunking of the Templars connection in Royston:
http://www.badarchaeology.net/conspiracy/royston_cave.php
For the Templar-obsessed “authorised” version, but with fine images:
http://www.detecting.org.uk/html/Royston_Cave-A_lost_cave_rediscovered.html
UPDATE:
A friend writes that a shell grotto in Margate has remarkably similarities with my cave, "mostly in that during the process of rediscovery a small boy was sent down on a rope. A symbol of fertility??"
http://www.shellgrotto.co.uk
I had a look for some more and turned up this rather interesting page:
"In 1570 the historian William Lambarde wrote in his 'Perambulations of Kent': '...There are to be seen ... near this town ... sundry artificial caves or holes in the earth, whereof some have ten, some fifteen and some twenty fathoms in depth: at the mouth (and thence downward) narrow, like the tunnell of a chimney or passage of a well: but in the bottom large, and of great receipt: insomuch as some of them have sundry rooms (or partitions) one within another, strongly vaulted, and supported with pillars of chalk, and, in the opinion of the inhabitants, these were in former times digged, as well for the use of the chalk towards building, as for to marle their arable lands therewith…'
Lambarde was describing the excavations which have become known as deneholes. The term denehole (or dene-hole, dene hole or danehole) is semi-modern in usage, the earlier writers on the subject describing them as 'pits'. The particular holes mentioned above were in Stankey Wood near Bexley and Crayford..."
The shape of these 'Deneholes' are astonishingly similar to that of the Royston Cave, I have to say.
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