Tintern Abbey, Monmouthshire (Picture Source: Saffron Blaze / Wikimedia Commons)
5 March 2021
Many folk with an interest in heritage have been intrigued by the recent discovery of a ‘secret medieval tunnel’ near Tintern Abbey (Monmouthshire). The find was discovered by a team of engineers from Western Power Distribution and was shared widely on social media prior to being reported by the BBC.
During a project to re-site a timber stanchion, adjacent to a public footpath, the team of engineers broke through the roof of a stone-lined underground feature which was later described as ‘an ancient and unknown medieval tunnel.’ It was reported that: ‘Further investigation revealed it was a manmade tunnel around 4ft in height. The tunnel system was tucked away underneath a footpath, running parallel to the Angiddy Brook, and seemed to follow the brook’s route along the valley.’
The company uploaded photographs of the feature which showed that its walls were composed of four courses of rubble stone which rake outwards to support a segmental vault. Meanwhile, other images, released by the BBC, show that in places the roof is made of flat stone lintels and the walls are of uncoursed rubble. Apparently, different stretches of the construction were built using varied techniques. It is a truly impressive piece of engineering.
Is it really a ‘secret medieval tunnel’ though?
Monasteries and Tunnels
Firstly, there is nothing diagnostic in the construction of the feature which points specifically towards the mediaeval period. The implication in the quote seems to be that, as Tintern is most famous for its twelfth century Cistercian abbey, the tunnel might be in some way related to the monastery. Perhaps it was intended to supply the monks with water?
Mediaeval abbeys were highly dependent on complex water management to support their endeavours. However, the newly discovered feature is located over 1000 metres from the monastery. Tintern Abbey was supplied with water, via sluices and conduits, drawn directly from the River Wye (Aston 2000, 24-26), from springs on the lower slopes of nearby Butcher’s Hill and from the mouth of the Angiddy where it flows into the Wye just west of the site (Robinson 2006, 282 – I am indebted to Natasha Coombs for this reference). However, the newly discovered feature is located, far to the north-west, over 1000 metres from the monastery and it seems unlikely that the monks would need to channel water from this distance when closer sources were available.
The universal appeal of secret passage stories has led to rumours that the undersides of entire landscapes are riddled with subterranean tunnels. In particular, monasteries are often singled out as being the point of origin for passages; including those alleged to stretch between Wigmore Abbey and Castle (Errand 1974, 73), St Radegund’s Abbey and Dover Castle (Huitson 2004, 6) or Leiston Abbey and Framlingham Castle (Clayton 2015, 164).
Tintern is no exception and is said to be connected to St Anne’s Well (3 miles away). Recent online commentators have referred to other stories of tunnels leading from the monastery to Redbrook (6.2 miles to the north) and it has been speculated that the recent discovery could have been an ‘escape tunnel’ for the monks of Tintern. As prominent mediaeval buildings in the landscape, monasteries are often the subject of such tales – yet the engineering problems of creating underground tunnels wandering miles beneath the mediaeval land seems physically insurmountable and entirely impractical.
Why would a remote community of Cistercians actually require an underground tunnel? How would such a vast construction project be kept secret? Where would the spoil be put? How would the passage be maintained, ventilated and kept dry? How on earth would they have managed to tunnel beneath the River Wye at Tintern to drive a passage to Redbrook, over six miles away, on the other side of the river?
Tunnel folklore can sometimes have an air of scandal and skulduggery -especially when linked to mediaeval Catholic buildings. Accounts refer to tunnels running between the abbey at St Albans and nunnery at Sopwell (Clayton 2015, 121), between the cathedral, castle and Three Tuns public house in Norwich and from Canterbury Cathedral to various pubs and a reputed brothel in the town (Caroline Brooker & Susan Turner, pers. comm. 09/05/2020).
In all these cases the perceived scandalous behaviour appears to relate directly to churchmen who were frequently seen as lecherous and drunken characters in the popular imagination. Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales includes a groping friar in the Summoner’s Tale, a philandering monk in the Shipman’s Tale and the eponymous character in the Pardoner’s Tale is a flagrant drunk (Benson (ed.) 1987, 134; 196; 204-5)
Attitudes became even harder after the Reformation and the transference of former monastic land to monarchy, aristocracy and gentry who were able to largely control public opinion of the Catholic legacy (Clayton 2015, 112). Clerics were tarnished by inflammatory tracts defaming monastic institutions as hotbeds of corruption, sodomy and drunkenness (Moorhouse 2008, 103-07). Even the antiquarian John Leland was not averse to accusing monks of thievery when he speculated that the reason for the demolition of Worksop Castle was the opportunistic robbing of stonework by the incumbents of the nearby priory (Wright 2008, 35-36).
However, tall-tales aside, we still cannot get around the fact that Western Power Distribution did genuinely uncover a stone-lined underground feature. Yet, there are different explanations available to us for its original function other than ‘secret medieval tunnel’.
Metallurgy
A bit of landscape detective-work (comparing details in the released images to maps and aerial photographs) seems to indicate that the engineers were working in an area of the Angiddy valley, around a kilometre to the north-west of the ruins of Tintern Abbey, in a patch of ground between Forge Road and Glyn View. This location was particularly significant in the history of industry during the post-mediaeval period.
Back in 1975, H.W. Paar and D.G. Tucker wrote an article for the Journal of the Historical Metallurgy Society on the industrial archaeology of the Angiddy valley. Starting in 1566, the lower two miles of the valley were dedicated to the manufacture of wire and, from the mid-seventeenth century, to the production of iron. All of the works were powered entirely by the river (steam was never introduced) and a complex system of leats and ponds were developed to store up enough water to guarantee a constant flow (Paar & Tucker 1975, 1, 4).
Waterpower had also been used in the Angiddy valley during the mediaeval period in corn-grinding mills. By 1707, one of these mills – known as the Abbey Mill – had been converted to grind linseed oil. By 1813 it had been altered again into a wire-drawing mill and, by 1821, it was known as the Chapel Wire Mill. Immediately to the north-east was a second wire mill, known as the Middle Tongs Mill, which had been founded by at least 1763 (Paar & Tucker 1975, 3). These two structures were located immediately to the east of where Western Power Distribution were apparently working. An inventory of 1821 lists four waterwheels at the two mills but, importantly, Paar and Tucker (1975, 6, 12) noted that: ‘there is no sign of where they could have been or how the water got to them.’
Now, without further detailed research it is not possible to be absolutely certain that the newly discovered underground feature directly relates to water provision at either of the two mills – but the possibility is compelling. It is also worth considering that buried deep within the Western Power Distribution press release there was also an admission that the site had been inspected by Cadw (the curators of heritage in Wales) who concluded that the feature ‘could possibly be linked to the iron work ruins previously discovered in the area.’ However, that doesn’t make as attention-grabbing a headline like ‘secret medieval tunnel’ does it?
Fascinating Folklore
The use of the phrase ‘secret medieval tunnel’ will always garner intense fascination but there is rarely any archaeological truth to the notion. The most recent volume to deeply interrogate the topic of underground passages, Anthony Clayton’s Secret Tunnels of England, looked at the subject primarily from a folktale perspective, but took a cautionary approach to the reality of such features: ‘the vast majority of these tantalizing tales clearly belong to the realm of folklore, or are fanciful misinterpretations of shallow mines, sewers, drainage tunnels, underground conduits or closely adjacent undercrofts and cellars with vaults and arches’ (Clayton 2015, 5).
Scepticism of secret tunnels is not even a recent phenomenon. In 1913, whilst discussing the rumoured tunnel between Dover Castle and St Radegund’s Abbey, a writer for the Invicta Magazine for the Homes and People of Kent pulled no punches when they stated that ‘the cellars and drains of this old abbey provide food for those superstitious people who love underground passages to furnish with phantoms and ghosts and other disembodied creatures’ (Fielding 1913, 196-201).
A few years later S. E. Winbolt was a little more generous when he said that: ‘Underground passages are of course, always ‘intriguing’, and until the pick, shovel and the light of an electric lamp are brought to bear on them, extravagant legends persist… Drainage is the less romantic explanation of many of them’ (Winbolt 1935, 195). Perhaps Jeremy Errand put this more poetically when he concluded that ‘a large proportion of stories of secret passages contain more moonshine than a fisherman’s boast’ (Errand 1974, 156).
References
Aston, M., 2000, Monasteries in the Landscape. Tempus. Stroud.
Benson, L. D. (ed.), 1987 (1990 edition), The Riverside Chaucer. Oxford University Press. Oxford.
Clayton, A., 2015, Secret Tunnels of England: Folklore and Fact. Accumulator Press. London, Hastings & Cosmopli.
Errand, J., Secret Passages and Hiding Places. David & Charles. London.
Fielding, C. H., 1913, ‘The Abbeys of St Radegund’s, Bradsole and Langdon’ in The Invicta Magazine. Snowden Brothers. Dartford.
Huitson, T., 2004, Danger – Falling Masonry: Rebuilding the Ruins of St Radegund’s Abbey, Kent. University of Kent. Unpublished MA thesis.
Moorhouse, G., 2008, The Last Divine Office: Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Bluebridge. New York.
Paar, H. W. & Tucker, D. G., 1975, ‘The old wireworks and ironworks of the Angiddy Valley at Tintern, Gwent’ in Journal of the Historical Metallurgy Society Vol. 9 No. 1
Robinson, D. M., 2006, The Cistercians in Wales: Architecture and Archaeology 1130-1540. Society of Antiquaries of London. London.
Winbolt, S. E., 1931, ‘St Radegund’s Abbey, Dover’ in Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 43
Wright, J., 2008, Castles of Nottinghamshire. Nottinghamshire County Council. Nottingham.
About the author
James Wright is an award-winning buildings archaeologist. He has two decades professional experience of ferreting around in people’s cellars, hunting through their attics and digging up their gardens. He hopes to find meaningful truths about how ordinary and extraordinary folk lived their lives in the mediaeval period.
He welcomes contact through Twitter or email.
The Mediaeval Mythbusting Blog blog is the basis of a forthcoming book – Historic Building Mythbusting – Uncovering Folklore, History and Archaeology which will be released via The History Press on 6 June 2024. More information can be found here:
