The mysterious British cave with drawings that have intrigued historians for 3 centuries

It was a hole in the ground, below the English town of Royston, 75 km from London. In it, I could see, softly illuminated by the shimmering light, a gallery of roughly excavated figures, with expressionless faces, carrying instruments of torture.

The cave manager, Nicky Paton, pointed the pictures out to me one by one. “That’s Santa Catarina, on the execution wheel. She was only 18 years old when she was martyred”, he said, excited. “And that’s Saint Lawrence. He was burned to death on a grill.”

Amidst these terrifying Christian scenes, there were also pagan images – a great carved horse and a fertility symbol known as the sheela na gig – a woman with exaggerated sexual organs.

Another image depicted a person holding a skull in his right hand and a candle in his left, theoretically representing an initiation ceremony – a fascinating hint at the cave’s possible purpose. And, to make the carvings even more frightening, there was its rudimentary, almost childlike execution.

Imagine the surprise of the people who accidentally rediscovered Royston Cave in the summer of 1742.

Digging the foundations for a new stall at the town’s butter market, a worker found a buried millstone and found it hid the mouth of a deep shaft in the earth.

As there were still no health and safety regulations, a passing boy was quickly given a candle and lowered into the well on a rope to investigate, while the people of Royston chattered excitedly about the possibility of buried treasure.

What was discovered in the pit was less lucrative but far more mysterious: a broken cup and some jewels, a skull, human bones and walls engraved, top to bottom, with strange expressionless figures.

Three centuries later, Royston Cave remains one of the most mysterious places in the UK. More and more theories arise about its purpose, without even coming close to an answer.

The mystery of origins

“What makes the cave so curious to visitors and historians alike is that it’s still an enigma – to this day it’s a mystery who made it, when and why,” says Paton.

“Mainly because there is no documentation of its existence prior to that accidental discovery. No books, no drawings, no diaries – nothing to suggest it was there.”

But there are many theories. People with esoteric leanings claim that the cave sits at the intersection of two ley lines – ancient pathways believed to connect places with spiritual power. One of these lines, the so-called Michael Line, also runs through the stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury.

What is most easily verified is that the cave lies just below the junction of two very important ancient roads: the Icknield way, a historic road that runs along the chalk escarpment of southern England, from Norfolk to Wiltshire; and Ermine Street, a Roman road that originally led from London to York.

Today, a large headstone is all that remains of a cross that once stood at the junction of the two roads, named after Lady Roisia, a woman of the local nobility, from whom the town of Royston is believed to have taken its name.

Antiquarian William Stukeley, who visited Royston two months after the cave’s rediscovery in 1742, wrote an early study of its purpose.

He noted that such crosses were common at major junctions. They served two purposes in this era of high religiosity and low literacy rates: “to remind people to say their prayers and guide them to the path they wanted to go.”

Religious people, he said, built “cells and caves in rocks, caves and beside roads”, guiding travelers and praying for them.

There is a large carving in the cave illustrating Saint Christopher, the patron saint of travellers, which lends credence to the theory that the cave served this type of function.

But the theory that has captured the public imagination more than any other is that Royston’s Cave was an underground lair of the Knights Templar – that enigmatic order of warrior monks who amassed vast wealth and influence across Europe, until it was violently eliminated in 1307.

The Templars founded the nearby town of Baldock in the 1140s and there is evidence that they traded weekly at the Royston Butter Market between 1149 and 1254.

Local historian Sylvia Beamon believes that the cave was an existing structure that was used by the Templars to store perishable food, for their various daily prayers and for spending the night on market days when they were no longer welcome at the priory of Royston after several documented disputes with the local prior.

“A Templar chapel probably became a greater need than anything else,” she wrote in her book Royston Cave: Used by Saints or Sinners? (Royston’s Cave: Used by Saints or Sinners?), published in 1992. “It provided a night refuge for Templar merchants and…a warehouse for the goods of the market.”

How to date the engravings?

Beamon interprets the circular shape of the cave as a reference to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem and has suggested that the carvings contain symbols of Templar art, such as his illustrations of the heart symbols and of the biblical King David.

But it is impossible to prove the origin of the carvings. Although the cave is believed to have been painted in bright colors, very little pigment still remains – and what little remains is too contaminated for carbon dating.

There is no other organic material in the cave that can be dated. The human remains, discovered in an era before modern conservation practices, were long lost. So the most reliable way to date the carvings is a stylistic examination, which was conducted in 2012 by the Royal Museum of Arms, Leeds, UK.

The analysis concluded that the men’s short clothes and the women’s hairstyles and hats indicate a time between 1360 and 1390 and the image of Saint Christopher was dated to the same time.

The report concluded that it is unlikely that any of the carvings were made before about 1350 – a century after Templar activity at Royston and decades after their complete elimination.

Furthermore, the carvings feature Christian iconography, without the symbolism typically associated with the Templars, such as illustrations of the Holy Sepulcher and Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, or of two knights riding on a single horse.

The Knights Templar were known for building round churches, but the circular shape of the cave is not necessarily a link to the Templars. After all, the largest number of round churches are in Scandinavia, where the Templars never set foot.

Nor the presence of pagan symbols such as the sheela na gig, is so mysterious. The same image appears in medieval churches in the United Kingdom and on the European continent.

So why this alleged connection to the Templars? Well, perhaps the elements that make up a good story now had the same effects in 1742.

“The risk is that people have been trying to tell stories from day one: ‘come see the cave of the Templars!'”, says Tobit Curteis, who is in charge of conservation at the cave.

“Just because someone made up a story 300 years ago doesn’t mean it was truer then than it is today.”

Professor Helen Nicholson, a medieval historian and author of several books on the Templars, agrees.

“People in England have been fascinated by the Templars since they were outlawed in the 14th century,” she says.

Trials of the Templars included accusations that they conducted occult ceremonies in secret underground places.

“Actually, they’re gothic horror stories,” according to Nicholson. “They were probably invented because people who had worked with the Templars were under strong pressure from the papal inquisitors to say something to confirm the accusations.”

“Anyway, these stories are probably why the Royston cave carvings [foram] attributed to the Templars. In reality, the Templars were not an underground order”, concludes the professor.

‘Incredibly special’

The real fascination of the cave, according to Curteis, is its survival and rediscovery.

“We’ve lost 99% of the other artwork from that period, so the cave is incredibly special,” he says. “But perhaps not for the reasons that some people imagine.”

Which isn’t to say that Royston’s Cave isn’t a huge mystery. Someone, probably in the mid or late 1300’s, made those inscriptions and the most impressive of them – the figure holding a skull in one hand and a candle in the other – remains unexplained.

We could easily reduce it to mystifying graffiti added shortly after the cave’s discovery to attract tourists, were it not for the way it harmonizes with the human skull, ceremonial pottery and jewelry also found at the site.

In an age when most mysteries are solved, Royston’s Cave continues to raise more questions than it answers. This includes the most fascinating question of all: what else lies beneath our feet, waiting to be found?

This text was originally published here.