A CAVING club has invited businesses in Cirencester to allow it to explore the prospect that there could be a network of ancient passages under the town.

For months speculation has risen over whether bricked up entrances in cellars in the town’s Market Place lead to a network of hidden tunnels that link to the Parish Church in the town and the site of the now demolished Abbey in the Abbey Grounds.

Businesses including the Edinburgh Woollen Shop believe tunnels in their basements were created by monks in the 1500s to escape danger during the Reformation, a period when church’s were attacked.

Earlier this year, one Cirencester resident, May Bunt, said she has been inside a tunnel in the Abbey Grounds when she was a child in 1940 and psychic medium Erin Venn said she sensed the existence of tunnels when she explored the town.

Now, Gloucester Speleological Society said they would be happy to use its caving equipment to help businesses prove once and for all if the tunnels are fact or fiction.

Jonathan Maisey, a member of the group said: “If they want us to investigate tunnels we would be more than happy to survey entrances and make a recording. Hundreds of years ago people did create tunnels and over the years things never change. What is below ground generally doesn’t change - it is what is on the surface that changes.”

He said that the club would start their investigation by removing a block of stone in the bricked up entrance and only investigate further if they believe there is a tunnel beyond it.

Mr Maisey, who is from Tetbury, explained: “We will make sure there is minimal disturbance.

“We will not do anything without permission of the landowner because that is not fair. We want this to be fair for everybody.”

Mr Maisey, 50, added that he thinks there is a possibility that tunnels exist in the town as quite often old tunnels are often forgotten about as they are not recorded.

He said: “The other thing is up until recent times people were really interested in tunnels and things in the ground. As a little kid you might have played in a tunnel. All of a sudden you come forward a generation the people that use to play in the things have died,because there is no record there they are lost for good or they turn up if there is a new house or a new road.”

Would you be happy for the Gloucester Speleological Society to investigate a tunnel entrance? If so email bmc@wiltsglosstandard.co.uk