EVERTON’S TUNNELS AND CAVES
Local
gossip, unsubstantiated by exploration, has it that there is a cave system
beneath the village. Whilst underground passages and tunnels are part of many
village’s folklore, there are stories of underground space in the area.
The
local geology is the Lower Cambridgeshire Greensand which, over the 90 odd
million years since its deposition, has had much of its iron content leached
out by the rain to produce an iron pan. This is a very hard band a metre or so
below the surface which, with the development of the deep plough in the late
Industrial Revolution, allowed better surface drainage and much of the sandy
heathland to be brought into cultivation. The water draining through this iron
pan can erode out considerable spaces. A visit to the sand pits at Potton will
reveal an astonishing assortment of tubes and hollows in the Greensand where
the iron has crystallised allowing water to drain through it. It is possible
that quite large systems have been formed beneath the village.
One
story has it that a workman was called to investigate the collapse of a well at
Manor Farm. What was unusual was that it hadn’t collapsed inward to fill the
bottom of the well. There was just a gaping hole in the side. On investigation
it was claimed that the opening led into a vast cave, a lake filling its bottom
and stretching towards Gamlingay!
There
is a story that there used to be a duck pond in Gamlingay which one day
disappeared, along with the ducks! Many days later the ducks reappeared. No-one
knows where they went but it is supposed that a cave beneath the village got so
large that its roof collapsed and the overlying duck pond disappeared into it,
along with the ducks. If the story is true, then presumably the ducks found a
way through the cave/tunnels to find another opening elsewhere in the village!
Manor
Farm tunnel
Another
story tells of Italian prisoners of war digging a tunnel from White Wood House,
the residence of Edward “Mouse” Fielden, the wartime commander of RAF
Tempsford, down to the airfield. This story has not been substantiated.