[MR] BBC: Royston Cave, Alleged Templar Hangout

[Garth Groff and Sally Sanford]

Noble Friends,

Today the BBC is offering an illustrated story about Royston Cave in the
Hertfordshire market town of Royston.

The cave was discovered in 1742 during building construction. It is either
man-made, or a reshaped natural well cave, consisting of one main chamber
about 16-feet across (plus a more modern access tunnel from the gift shop
above). The walls are decorated with all sorts of crude graffiti, some
pagan, some secular, and some Christian. The carvings are now thought by
professional historians to date from the mid-to-late 14th century.

For years various romantics and promoters have claimed the cave was used by
Templars. The order was indeed active in this area, but none of the
carvings are obviously Templar, and the style of art post-dates the Templar
dissolution by some 50 years.

In a recent episode of the History Channel's CURSE OF OAK ISLAND, the
show's "stars" (I don't regard them as serious researchers) visited the
cave with a local Templar booster. The carvings were proclaimed in the show
to definitely be Templar, despite a number being somewhat randy pagan sex
symbols. Their conclusion during their visit, which claimed about seven
minutes of air time, was based on the similarity of just two or three
carvings and a date carving somehow already associated with the Oak Island
mystery. The BBC story pretty much debunks the Templar connection, but
the myth has now been given a great deal of new energy. (Sigh!) Cable
television pseudo-science triumphs over reality again! At least the show
has yet to bring in space aliens, Big Foot, or the Bermuda Triangle.

Yes, I will admit to being a regular watcher of the Oak Island program. But
I also howl and groan over the program's amazing "intellectual" leaps,
particularly the way the breathy voice-over announcer plants notions of
Templar links to nearly every piece of rusty scrap iron the team unearths.
Yes, I know it is flakey infotainment, but it is addictive just the same.

If you can't visit Royston, but would like to see the cave, go to this
site:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20221212-a-secret-site-for-the-knights-templar
.

More on Royston Cave is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royston_Cave .

Yours Aye,


Mungo Napier, Laird of Mallard Lodge  🦆