After seeing numerous posts this week after someone had broken into Peel Street Caves, I come to realise I never blogged our visit in 2018 on this fantastic little hidden gem within Nottingham.
I want to make clear that Peel Street Caves is owned. Scott who puts his heart and soul into preserving the caves – at his own cost, does not receive any help from Nottingham City Council to do this. If approached, when he can, he does do tours of the caves at a really small cost.
His tours are very historical and he actually takes you to parts of the cave which if you go alone you just would not find. So its really not worth it and if I see any posts from this location, I do inform Scott and luckily he as managed to secure it this week due to us seeing posts. Sorry, if that comes across as me being a snitch, however it is part of Nottingham’s history that does need preserving and Scott deserves the respect in what he does to save it.
HISTORY
The concrete-roofed doorway is the entrance to the former Rouse’s Sand Mines, which flourished c. 1780-1810. Later in the 19th century, their origin having been forgotten, fanciful and unscrupulous entrepreneurs opened the caves as a tourist attraction, the credulous paying to enter “Robin Hood’s Mammoth Cave”, which at Goose Fair time was transformed with lights to “a scene in fairy land”. During the Second World War the caves – along with 75 others in the city – became air-raid shelters. This is the northern entrance dug then. A sloping tunnel, protected by brick blast walls, leads down to the main galleries. The blockhouse entrance is relatively new, dating from road widening at the time these houses were built.
The Mansfield Road area was, in the 18th and 19th centuries, the site of a number of sand mines, some remains of three of which may still be seen (a fourth has been filled with concrete). Mining ceased in the 19th century and the caves were later put to other uses .
