A piece of history hidden in plain sight

A routine excavation lead to a surprise when a team uncovered a mysterious medieval tunnel in Wales.

Originally, it did not appear on any map, but when technicians in the Wye Valley were called to remove an electric pole, they found something they’d never have imagined.

“I had a phone call about two hours into the work … they said, ‘Allyn, we’ve found a cave,’’’ Allyn Gore, the technician working on the project said. The digging had unearthed a tiny opening hidden beneath a cluster of rocks and covered by vines.

Although caves are usual in the Wye Valley (popularly known as Tintern Abbey), when Gore and the team took a closer look they realized it was a stone tunnel.

Gore added that when they first arrived they only saw a part of the side of the banking that had caved in and it was immediately clear that it was something man-made. 

The discovered tunnel trailed a public footpath along the Anghidi River towards Tintern Abbey, the 12th-Century abbey built by Cistercian monks whose ruins are visited by many each year. 

“It was almost as if the public footpath, people had been walking over it forever how long that footpath had been there and no-one knew what they were walking on top of,” explained Luke Summers wayleave officer, Western Power Distribution (the company working on the electric project).

The company then called in Cadw, the Welsh historic monuments body. The Cadw estimated the tunnel to have been built around the 14th Century. 

The firm promptly stopped its project to allow for further archaeological investigation.

The arching stonework tunnel where people would have to hunch to walk through as it is only 4 feet in height, seems to be large enough to have allowed people to move to and fro undetected through the countryside. 

For now, the tunnel is filled with cobwebs and puddles, the tunnel has only revealed a few secrets from the primary search. It will require a more thorough investigation to accurately date the historical structure and to determine what the mysterious tunnel might have been used for.

Source: Agencies