4/2/2023 0 Comments Lost caves paOne of the most well-known and well-connected cave systems is the Broadmarsh Caves, which is open to visitors under the name “City of Caves.” This visitor attraction can be accessed from a dilapidated shopping mall, the Broadmarsh Centre, which is scheduled for demolition and redevelopment. As recently as January 2017, a group of students living on one of the main roads into the city, Mansfield Road, discovered a series of steps leading down from their cellar into a previously unknown void under the city streets. Some have been surprised to learn that their particular cave was previously unknown. The Nottingham Caves Survey, a project by researchers at Nottingham University to digitally map the caves, has seen many local homeowners come forward to reveal that they too have caves leading off into the subterranean maze from their basements or tucked away in the corner of their garden. Scattered across the city are small doors and gates, complete with rusty padlocks that cover access points into the greatly interconnected labyrinth. The caves were dug for many reasons: as workplaces, such as the medieval tannery that exists underneath a shopping mall as homes, such as those at Sneinton hermitage as secret passages and tunnels, such as those at Castle Rock as storerooms, brewhouses, and public houses as prisons and dungeons and in more recent history, as air raid shelters during the Nottingham Blitz. The exposed soft crumbly rock is incredibly easy to cut and burrow into. Nottingham sits on a ridge of soft sandstone hills, which in places have been cut into low cliff faces by the action of the River Leen and River Trent. The oldest recorded name for Nottingham is “Tigguo Cobauc,” which, in the pre-Roman ancient British language is thought to mean “Place of Caves.” The name is still appropriate today, as there are more caves underneath the city than any other in Britain. Over 800 caves, tunnels, and passages cut into the sandstone rock lurk beneath the city, and more are discovered every year. Underneath the modern city of Nottingham is a large and ancient labyrinthine underworld.
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