Caynton Caves

It’s easy to miss if you don’t know where it is, but an innocuous-looking rabbit hole in Shropshire, holds the entrance to an intriguing cave, which legend has it was built and used by the mysterious Knights Templar for their secret rituals. But there’s no concrete evidence to link this site with the 12th-century religious military order and many experts have refuted the accuracy of this rumor. 

The mysterious cave system is intriguing nonetheless. The caves, which appear largely untouched, are located on the grounds of Caynton Hall and contain a network of walkways and arches beautifully carved out of sandstone. Spelunkers may need to crawl through some particularly narrow chambers to fully explore the tunnel. Walking (or crawling) through the caves, you can see niches created for candles and symbols drawn on the walls and roofs, and deep within the cave is a font, a stone structure used to hold water for baptisms. 

The Caynton cave site is listed as a grotto, an artificial cave, on the Historic England site, which also dates it to the late 18th or early 19th century. It was sealed off in 2012 when vandals were misusing the space. It is on private land, and it may be inaccessible.