Tales of tunnels underneath village prove to be true

"Since I was a boy, there were rumours circulating and, as you do, you listen to all of the villagers - and that's where the stories came from."

In 2024, a Facebook discussion in Bloxham about a long-mythologised set of hidden tunnels running underneath the north Oxfordshire village saw locals compare their subterranean tales.

Following that exchange of stories, Dave Green - along with a group of fellow villagers - decided to set up the Bloxham Underground Tunnel Society to see if there was any truth to the legend.

In the two years since it was first formed, the society has now investigated and uncovered an ever expanding network underneath the quaint village on the edge of the Cotswolds.

"You've always got sceptics that say there's no such thing as a tunnel, there's nothing like that, but we're out there to prove that there are," Green said.

He explained that the tales of the tunnels had "come from the past, but the problem is people don't investigate and people die, and the stories die".

"Unless, that is, you do something about it and try to find out - which is quite difficult," he said.

The society located and entered their first tunnel last year, which initially came about from "a story from somebody who said when he was a boy he found a tunnel entrance".

Once uncovered, a group of expert cavers scouted out the passageway to check it was safe, before the society members inspected it.

"That was a fantastic feeling, going in there - our very first tunnel," Green said.

Since that first discovery, the society now have "quite a few lines of enquiry" on other potential spots around the village.

But their latest discovery had more to do with luck than anything else, and Green said it had been located "just by accident".

"In March we found a really big underground tunnel," he explained.

"That came after a builder was digging out footings for his garage and the ground caved in, and it [the tunnel] all appeared."

He said the society thought it may be part of a "big network" of underground passageways.

The group has so far been unable to confirm when the tunnels under Bloxham date back to, but a discovery in the recently uncovered cave has given them some clues.

"We found animal bones and one of the skulls we found was a red deer skull - it was a long, long time ago when red deer roamed the countryside, it was definitely pre-medieval," Green said.

"We need to get it carbon dated because that will hopefully prove the age of the tunnels, although that is very, very difficult."

He suggested the tunnel network could date as far back as the Roman period, and may have been "used a lot across different centuries" - including by Catholic clergymen during the English reformation and the dissolution of the monasteries ordered by the then King, Henry VIII.