Historical Sites
Historical sites around the world tell us stories about who was there before us. Whether you are exploring ancient ruins or walking the length of an old battlefield, there are secrets hidden everywhere. Secrets that can tell you who was there first and what they had experienced.
Subterranea Britannica
Subterranean Britannica is a group of people with a few common interests. They love searching abandoned mines, out of commission tube stations and manmade caves. They are a UK based group, and Hayley Clark and Ed Waters love to go underground. Then, they bring their remarkable attention to detail with them on every excursion. They know that this is essential when they are searching for old relics.
British Midlands
The Sub Brits, as they call themselves for short, headed to the British Midlands. They headed towards a Creswell Crags, which is a limestone gorge with a series of archaic caves that last inhabited over 10,000 years ago.
Robin Hood Cave
Haley and Ed were right in front of what is called the Robin Hood Cave. At the entrance, they stopped abruptly. They surprised at what they saw. They went straight to the rocky walls and ran their hands over the cool surface. And they made an amazing discovery that they never expected. On the walls, there were carvings and scratches that had to be thousands of years old. To the untrained eye, they looked insignificant; however, Haley and Ed knew better.
Victorian Period
For years, the locals and the people who worked at the facility were sure that the carvings on the walls were meaningless graffiti that dated back to the Victorian era. Most people who passed through the caves had no idea what they were looking at. Before the two men noticed the markings, the meaning hidden for centuries. There were hundreds of individual characters that were etched into the cave, but it was the two-letter, VV, that caught their eyes.
Virgin Of Virgins
The two men knew immediately what the letters meant, Virgin of Virgins. This was a prayer for Mary of Nazareth for her protection against dark forces. The VV repeated dozens of times on the wall. The two men went back and shared their findings with the rest of their group. Their guide, the Heritage Facilitator John Charlesworth, was shocked.
Creswell Heritage Trust
As soon as the two men told John what they saw, he notified the Creswell Heritage Trust. They called in experts to the cave to examine the symbols. The experts scoured every inch of the caves, including the hard-to-reach nooks and crannies. They found markings everywhere. There were crosses, maze patterns, and boxes, that repeated again and again, the same way the VV was repeated. They believe that these messages used to trick evil spirits and then to trap them.
Why?
Based on the series of dramatic markings, they knew what the people were afraid of. A dark force had driven them in desperation, so they carved symbols on the walls of the cave. They needed help. To figure this out, they needed to know who left the markings. The group was sure that they knew who could help.
Allison Feqarne, Ph.D.
To answer the question, they called upon Allison Fearne, a Ph.D. of Archaeology at the University of Leicester. She was sure that these markings were associated with places or worship or door frames of the home. She says that the people spent hours everyday chiseling into stone. Someone would only do this if they were scared.
An Amazing Find
Ed and Haley thrilled that they were the ones to discover these fantastic markings and that they were able to tell that they were more than random marks and scratches. With the help of a few experts, they were all able to see that there was something amazing in that cave. Ed and Haley say that their find is the reason that they are part of the Sub Brits in the first place. They know that there are many things out there that still need to be discovered.
If it weren’t for groups like theirs, there is a lot about our world’s history that we wouldn’t know. So far, this has been their most significant find. They say that finding something like this just makes them more motivated to get out there and discover something else. They don’t do it for the notoriety; they do it so that they and the world can learn more about what life was like before history was recorded. This man exploring an old cave uncovers strange markings with an ancient history along with one of his friends. For them both, it was the find of a lifetime.
