In Shropshire, primarily around the Bridgnorth area, one can find several caves that were once inhabited by people. The weird thing is, some of them were actually occupied surprisingly late into the 20th Century.
Many of the Bridgnorth caves are well known and famously sealed of for being unsafe, but these ones are a little more obscure. I discovered them completely by accident, while looking into something else entirely, and decided to have a quick mooch. What really baffled me is that they show up on Victorian maps as regular dwellings, with nothing to distinguish them as caves whatsoever. This one was depicted as a house on maps as recent as 1950.
While clearly no longer being lived in, they still retain features that are unmistakably man-made. I'm fairly certain that if one came here with a shovel, they could uncover a full-sized doorway. But decades of exposure to the weather, with no maintenance, has somewhat submerged it all in the dirt.
But I think this natural decay is what makes it all so intriguing, but also a little sad. Regardless of the structure being a cave instead of a brickwork, this was a persons home once. It mattered to someone.
The majority of information out there only really talks of the more infamous cave dwellings of Bridgnorth. I've found one book that mentions these ones specifically, but all it really says is that they are seasonally obscured by foliage, and that they are just one example of many similar structures along the river, some of which were still being lived in during the 1960s.
But, there is one small clue about the history of these specific caves and their occupants, and that is the mention on Victorian maps of a ferry across the River Severn. Prior to there being as many bridges as there are today, the river had quite a few points where one could catch a ride across. These caves just so happen to be situated near one such ferry, but what makes it particularly interesting is that this ferry service provided access to a rich estate with some 8,500 acres of land.
So these occupants were likely servants living on the land, whose job it was to help people cross the river.
Imagine that job advert. "Help me, my family, and all our guests, get to my big swanky mansion. Perks are, you get to live in a cave."
But allegedly many of the riverside troglodytes did work in river
transport, so while I'm speculating that the family that lived here
worked on the estate as ferry keepers, it does seem logical. It's
important to remember how important river travel was back then. The
river Severn was one of the key points of access to Shrewsbury,
Ironbridge and Bridgnorth during the industrial era, so there would have
been a lot more boat traffic than there is today. The cave dwellers may
not have just operated the ferry, but provided services to people
traveling by boat, too.
Obviously the ferry service no longer exists, nor do the people that lived here.
Here in the ground is an old circular brick pillar, no doubt once a bit more vertical.
Slipping inside, I found the cave to still retain some signs of its former use. Buried under all the dirt, we might still be able to find a tiled floor.
Numerous shelves and alcoves are also carved into the rocks.
It all appears rather primitive, but one only has to look at the rock houses of Kinver, now National Trust property, to get an idea of how this place might have looked. The walls would have been painted, the door frames would have had actual doors, and the windows would have had frames and glass too. And of course they would have been fully furnished. Some of the better preserved cave dwellings actually look surprisingly cosy.
And here's the base of that circular brick pillar. A few more chunks of it are dotted around. It seems it provided some sort of ceiling support, a rather ominous notion. I'm no expert on structural stability, but I do know that when the thing holding up the ceiling is in broken pieces on the floor, one shouldn't put too much confidence in the ceiling.
There are numerous little alcoves like this. This one has a birds nest in it, but probably once held a candle.
Another possibility exists about the caves former occupant. If these caves are part of the larger, rich estate, then it's possible that the occupant was a hired hermit. During the Georgian and Victorian era, it actually did become popular to have a hermit live on the land. In the early days of Hermit Frenzy, they were merely hinted at. Follies
and grottoes would maybe have a few bits and bobs lying around, like a
table and chair with an open book, suggesting someone was there and had
just nipped off for a quick wank. But later rich people actually did hire people to serve as hermits in purpose-built grottoes on their land. The hermits would be paid and fed, and their job role would entail merely staying on the land as some sort of human ornament, forbidden to trim their beards or nails, and were often contractually obligated to wear a dunces hat.
An advert from 1797 advertises the job as such: "The hermit is never to leave the place, or hold conversation with anyone, for seven years during which he is neither to wash himself or cleanse himself in any way whatever, but is to let his hair and nails both on hands and feet, grow as long as nature will permit them."
And in a bizarre twist, this practice of keeping an ornamental human is the origin of the modern garden gnome! It's pretty bonkers!
But also, I think being paid, fed, and given accommodation just to not talk to anyone for seven years sounds like a pretty sweet deal. At last, a job I'm qualified for! Take me back and sign me up!
I thought at first that this was a fireplace, but I was mistaken. Here the cave wall has just fallen down, revealing the brickwork. The
brickwork is a chimney, but the fireplace faces a different direction,
actually outside, which indicates that the dwelling extended beyond the
cave.
Moving on outside, we can see the actual fireplace. And if you look very closely, you'll notice a smaller fireplace above it, as well as a horizontal gash above the existing doorway. This suggests that at one point the cave had an entire two-floor structure tacked onto the front of it, making it much larger than it currently is. No wonder the old maps depict it as a dwelling. It's not entirely a cave at all, but rather a house that incorporated a cave into it.
Unfortunately, only a chimney survives of this brick structure, and a tree is growing on top of it. Some of that brickwork looks a bit precarious though. No doubt that will all come crashing down eventually.
This does, of course, raise the question of where the remnants of this structure have gone. I assume some of it is buried in the dirt. Perhaps when the home was left unoccupied, it was plundered for building supplies.
As expected, there are a few signatures from those who have also found these caves. They aren't spectacular. The earliest is dated 2001.
There are remnants of other brick structures nearby, but it's not really possible to know what they were. Perhaps this was the privy.
But in conclusion, the cave houses made for a nice excursion. It was a riveting mooch out into the countryside to see something I've not featured on this blog before. However I can promise you now this will not be the last.
The whole concept of living a relatively remote life right next to the river does sound quite idealistic, at least until one considers that the river floods all the time. But a cave dwelling does sound like a nice summer retreat. It would be interesting to see what this place actually looked like before the humans left and nature started to take it back. In fact, it would be pretty cool to see it all restored, but it doesn't seem likely. These are among the more obscure of Shropshires cave dwellings, so they'll probably stay as they are until nature pulls it all down.
My next blogs will be on the travel blog. It's my 300th blog post and I'll be doing something awesome and invading France. But I won't be doing all my France blogs in one go. The one after that will be an awesome folly in Wales. In the meantime, you can keep up with my blogs by following me on Instagram, Vero, Reddit, and the ones everyone hates, Facebook and Twitter.
Thanks for reading!
