A castle in south west Wales hides a secret below its floor, as our correspondent Clive Owen discovered.

Castell Carreg Cennen is perched high on a limestone crag in south west Wales. The castle, built in the late 13th century at the time of Edward 1’s conquest of Wales, has an unusual feature buried deep under its stone walls – a cave.

The cave is accessed by a gallery carved into the face of a 90m high cliff on the castle’s south side. The floor of this section is ridged concrete and has a good, non-slip surface.

At the end of the gallery, which has natural light from ‘windows’ opening out onto the cliff, there’s a 3m drop down some uneven steps into the start of the cave, a keyhole shaped passage 2 – 3m high with stalacmite covering most of the walls. There are warning notices about how dark and slippery the cave is and they aren’t exaggerating. The cave runs for about 50m before pinching out, though with an enticing natural chimney above it.

In several places, graffiti has been engraved or (more recently) written in marker pen. The best quality markings date from the 19th century, when the castle was widely known as a romantic ruin and was sketched by Turner, but there are others dating to the 18th century.

At the end of the gallery where it drops into the cave, still in daylight, is a wall of limestone blocks with built-in recesses. This was almost certainly a dovecote, which would have been a source of eggs and meat for the castle’s constable. There aren’t any pigeons there now, they have found better quarters under people’s solar panels.

The privately owned castle is open every day except Christmas Day and is managed by Cadw. There is a tea room on site.

Report by Clive Owen 

This article was originally included in the newsletter of the University of Bristol Spelaeological Society and is reproduced here with permission.