Mystery · Royston · Legendary
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Beneath a busy crossroads, a chalk chamber crowded with strange medieval carvings.
Check opening times
Royston Cave opens for weekend tours from April to September, with paid tickets that must be booked online in advance. Outside the season there's nothing to see from the street.
Beneath the streets of Royston, just ahead, lies a carved cave in the chalk that many believe was a secret chapel of the Knights Templar.
In 1742 workmen setting up a bench in Royston's butter market lifted a buried millstone and found a shaft leading down into a beehive-shaped chamber cut deep into the chalk beneath the crossing of Ermine Street and the Icknield Way. Its walls are covered with medieval carvings of saints, crucifixion scenes, figures thought to be kings, and odd symbols. Popular tradition holds that it was a secret chapel or initiation chamber of the Knights Templar, who held land nearby at Baldock, and one panel is often read as a memorial to their last Grand Master. Other theories make it a hermit's cell, store or Masonic room.