Behind the patchouli-scented shop of crystals and esoteric books that looks as though it should be in Glastonbury, an unassuming doorway opens off a yard. Yesterday a small group of intrepid souls followed a lady with a torch down a steep staircase behind this door, into a strange bell-shaped chamber decorated with images roughly scored into the chalk the cave is made from. One of the figures is a crowned woman who holds a wheel - blessed Catherine the Great-Martyr, in whose honour the place has been opened. 'This is who we're all here to see', says the guide. For this is Royston Cave, and the time is about 1pm on St Catherine's Day.
The cave is decidedly eerie. There's no mistaking the Christian nature of the crucifixion scenes - three of them - and the saints, not only Catherine, but Christopher and Lawrence waving his gridiron aloft. But the rest of it, a chaos of figures, insignia, and ambiguous marks, lurches out of the dark into the torchlight and back again, keeping its secrets. That figure might be St George, or it might just be a man with a sword. The man and woman who seem to be wearing crowns were identified by William Stukeley, who saw the cave when it was first discovered in 1742, as Richard I and Queen Berengaria on the grounds that the 'queen''s crown seems to be hovering above her head (Berengaria was never crowned); not one of Stukeley's better guesses, it seems to me. There is an excited pony and what seems to be a sheela-na-gig; there are rows of rough figures that look like versions of the Lewis Chessmen made by a less accomplished hand; there are hands bearing hearts.
Nobody, whatever they might tell you, knows why this place exists or what it means. One volunteer has written an entire erudite book arguing that it was a secret Knights Templar chapel created after the order was suppressed in 1307: but even if the virtually-vertical entrance shaft was outside the town centre when the cave was made, any surviving loyal Templars would have been pushing their luck coming in and out of such a bizarre and inaccessible site, let alone making it in the first place. Such an argument puts aside the simple fact, too, that there's not one single unequivocal bit of Templar imagery in the whole place. The saints presumably date it to the late Middle Ages, but that's the best we can do.
When one of the visitors began describing how the Templars were founded to look after the secrets of Atlantis I decided it was time to go! I emerged blinking into the sun and reflected that the long journey was far from a waste.
No comments:
Post a Comment