Mystery of secret labyrinth of tunnels under house owned by Freemasons
History sleuths are using high-tech kit to probe a mythical house thought to have secret underground tunnels dating back hundreds of years.
Guy’s Cliffe in Warwickshire, where the recorded history began in the 5th Century, is one of the country’s most fascinating and mystifying buildings.
Owned by the Freemasons, the partially ruined manor and grounds beside the River Avon are said to contain the final resting place of Guy of Warwick, a knight fabled to have seen out his days as a cave-dwelling hermit.
Mounds of earth under the buildings — probably the oldest masonic meeting venue in the world — are thought to hide tunnels, chambers and rooms which have been buried over the years.
The top of an arch can be seen at the head of one escarpment underneath the austere stone facework of the manor, suggesting that it was once the entrance to an entire forgotten level.
‘Multiple unexplained voids’ have also been detected in a courtyard which would once have been the entrance for the wealthy Greathead family.
Custodian Adrian King spoke to Metro ahead of teams from two technology companies revisiting the landmark on the outskirts of Warwick to continue scanning beyond the stone and soil.
‘I can only speculate as to where the tunnels lead to,’ he said.
‘If there was a series of castles, or strongholds, perhaps they were interconnected. It could have been that they were useful as a way out, perhaps in case a siege had occurred around the town and that could have been Guy’s Cliffe’s route to and from the town in that respect.’
The romantic buildings lie on a sandstone outcrop that has scientific interest dating back to the Triassic era around 200 million years ago when the first dinosaurs roamed Earth.
St Dubricius is thought to have founded an oratory amid the secluded cliffs and water in 448AD as he converted Pagan shrines to Catholicism.
Legend has it that Guy of Warwick spent his final years in the 13th Century living as a hermit in a cave at the foot of the cliffs.
The retreat evolved over the years and became a licensed place of worship in the 15th Century following a visit by Henry V.
Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries beginning in 1536 would have been a tumultuous time for worshippers at the place of hermitage and pilgrimage, and it’s possible that the purported tunnels were used to escape or hide from the king’s inspectors.
A Palladian Georgian house was built by Samuel Greatheed after he bought the estate circa 1750 as a seat for his family, who had acquired riches through the slave trade in the Caribbean.
Fortunes dipped after World War Two, with the house and grounds entangled in development and ownership wrangles.
The core buildings returned to regular use in the 1970s, with the Freemasons becoming tenants and carrying out renovation work.
In 1981 they took ownership from the then split estate of Aldwyn Porter, Guy’s Cliffe’s former owner.
A huge setback came when flames tore through the main house in 1992 while Granada Television was filming an episode of Sherlock Holmes.
Exploration work that may peel away some of these layers of history is now being carried out by RiVR, a UK-based virtual reality production company who have used LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and drones to survey and model the site.
‘We all know it’s a very old place,’ Adrian said.
‘The written history starts in the year 448AD when St Dubricius supposedly came here and founded a small chapel on the site, an oratory, and then things snowballed in terms of its growth as a place.
‘From what we’re researching and using modern devices and techniques, such as aerial archaeology and LiDAR imaging, we are thinking the site might be bigger than first thought.
‘We are trying to go back to pre-history to find out if there was something large-scale here. We are asking the question of whether a settlement was originally in this location before it moved to a better defensive position where Warwick is today.
‘This is possibly why there are interlinking tunnels, or something else, hiding behind the rock.’
According to folklore, the knight is said to be buried within ‘Guy’s Cave’ after dying in his wife Felice’s arms.
An Anglo-Norman poem says she then threw herself from the cliff which now lies above the crumbling buildings and courtyard.
Further along the same path leading away from the site another mystery is presented in the form of a large cave with arches carved into the stone.
Inside the main house, a cavity space resembling a dungeon also refuses to reveal its origins.
‘It might possibly have been some form of confinement chamber, but again, we don’t know the exact details,’ Adrian said.
‘Once upon a time places such as this would have had some sort of holding cell for people such as poachers, to hold them while they decided what to do with them.
‘Like a lot of things here, the original use has melded into what was needed in future years, in this case an ice house.’
Layers of the past are hidden amid structural collapses and the Greatheeds’ construction work which took place over the original house erected by Sir Andrew Flammock in 1547.
An old manuscript at Guy’s Cliffe shows there was a passage leading to a subterranean layer, where all the rooms are filled with rubble.
Above ground, the regular uses include the masonic lodges’ activities and volunteers undertaking to rejuvenate and preserve the estate’s natural and human heritage.
‘To begin with it’s always been a mysterious place, although I’ve managed to figure out some of its past,’ Adrian said.
‘To me, the early history is the most interesting part and it’s a case of putting the pieces of the jigsaw together.
‘LiDAR has shown that there was certainly something here to a much larger extent than the cliff face.
‘The later building has obliterated quite a lot of that but not all of it.
‘I would say there is more here historically than meets the eye. If there is something there, it is of not just local but national significance.’
Sophisticated gear is being used by UK-based virtual reality company RiVR and global surveying experts Leica Geosystems to explore the site.
A team from Leica equipped with ground penetrating radar (GPR) is due to meet RiVR in January to conduct a more extensive scan of the courtyard and hillside.
RiVR co-founder Alex Harvey told Metro: ‘I’ve lived in Warwick all my life and exploring Guy’s Cliffe has become my passion.
‘The myths and legends include Guy of Warwick living in a cave under the cliff but we’re interested in the facts, so we have laser-scanned the whole place, taken hundreds of hours of video and created a virtual reality replica for people to explore.
‘Through GPR we have found multiple voids in the courtyard, which are unexplained.’
Alex plans to use the technology to ‘see through walls and beneath the soil’ in trying to solve some of the puzzles of Guy Cliffe.
‘We have also used GPR on the hill and, having spoken to historians, we think there may have been a settlement there,’ he said.
‘We believe that, before Warwick Castle was established, there was another castle nearer Guy’s Cliffe and the two places may have been connected by the tunnels which have long been spoken about in the area.
‘The site has collapsed in places over the years, including after the Sherlock Holmes fire, so along with the team from Leica Geosystems we’re using technology to see through walls and beneath the soil to solve some of the mysteries about this fascinating place.’
The Freemasons’ United Grand Lodge of England said in the summer that Guy’s Cliffe House is probably the oldest place in the world that the organisation uses as a meeting place.
The Grand Lodge warned that the ‘old house alas remains a building a risk’ but is still a ‘historical gem.’
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